SaaS lead generation is getting more difficult. Audience requirements for content skyrocket with  light speed. The same situation is with the number of companies competing for their attention. The SaaS market grows 25% every year.

Business requires fresh lead generation strategies. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in this article. 

Discover top nine ideas to attract quality leads with detailed examples on their implementation and distribution. 

But first, let’s check if we’re on the same page about the basics.

What is SaaS Lead Generation?

It’s the process of capturing target audience attention, and then contacts and qualification data in exchange for a valuable incentive: content, tool, or service that is relevant to the company product/service. 

Usually, it’s just the beginning of the long process aimed to nurture right leads into paying clients. The entire lead generation process covers rather more than just capturing data. It’s identifying the target audience, email outreach, social selling, and much more:

Consider this when choosing SaaS lead generation tactics.

What are the different types of leads?

One more thing before you jump into lead generation campaigns is the choice of the target market leads type. Because different strategies work for each group.

Here are the key players:

Effective B2B SaaS lead types. Image source.

• LinkedIn, Facebook subscribers aka Information Qualified Leads who show interest in your information. They’re learning, researching, or exploring. 
• MQL Marketing Qualified Leads want a SaaS solution to their problem. Such leads share more information about themselves in a quiz, return to your site repeatedly, download multiple lead magnets.
• SQL Sales Qualified leads fit your ideal customer profile and have high buying intent. They book a demo or ask for pricing.
• Opportunity leads have talked to sales and are almost ready to buy. But they need proof of your solutions efficiency like case studies.

How to get them? Here are some of the best generation strategies👇

9 Lead Generation Strategies for Any SaaS Business

It’s easy to get lost in the variety of tactics on the web. But which ones really work? Surely, you can shortlist and test them all. But if you want proven options, consider the ideas below. 

Offer a lead magnet to your customers

It’s the most obvious idea within B2B SaaS lead generation. But it’s not that simple. 

A lead magnet is a piece of useful valuable information SaaS companies give access to in exchange for the contact information of their potential customers. It can be an industry report, research, how-to guide, case studies, templates of designs or text or scenarios for the SaaS product usage, course, etc. 

The success secret is to bring value: save audience time, educate or inspire them. 

Examples of how it works 

Here is a great example from the AppFollow app store marketing service. For the customers lead magnet they chose a report on industry benchmarks.

SaaS lead generation landing page with lead magnet value description. 

In addition, the business highlighted short stats and advice from the report:

Then, they collect potential customers’ data. By company name marketers can define if the lead fits their ICP and segment it accordingly.

Example of a SaaS lead generation form to convert visitors into customers.

But the best thing is that in addition to the Resources menu tab, they highlighted this lead magnet in a popup on their entire website. The audience: new visitors whose contacts they don’t have:

Opportunity to win a free account set up

Yes, this idea is for the MOFU or even BOFU audience, but still it works. If your SaaS product is sophisticated and has a variety of setup aspects depending on the customer’s case, the onboarding takes some time. There is always a part of the audience who’d like to skip that part and get straight to the action part. 

It can be even more valuable, if usually you offer workspace setup as a paid service. 

So the idea is to offer them something like “We’ll fully set up your workspace if you win. Just answer a few questions to enter.” Due to the specific nature of each case, you can ask for as much info as you need.

Example of how it works 

Let’s say you’re a marketing analytics service that integrates with the clients website, GA, and other tech stack. Usually there are two ways to set it up: either users have an expert in their team who set up the service based on your self-service guides, or they hire your experts. 

Now imagine the moment they see a tempting opportunity to have it done for free 🤩

Since the process requires a lot of data, it is better to use a chatbot for this goal. (One question for the screen is much better than a long list of fields in a form).

Example of a SaaS lead generation chatbot.

And then a list of lead qualification questions follows.

Launch it on your website pages for all of the visitors whose contacts you don’t have. Since chatbot pricing is very flexible, it’ll be easy to choose a lead generation software to make this idea real.

Pro tip: During the chat is to keep the balance between product setup and lead qualification questions.

Free expert consultation or audit

It’s a great idea if you have an in-house team of experts working in an industry for a long time. They definitely know all the aspects of your target audience’s pain points and how to resolve them. This is a valuable resource to attract target audience attention because usually such consultations cost a lot.

But don’t mix it up with a demo call. When the last one is focused on the product presentation and selling, free consultation is about listening to potential customers’ pain points and offering a relevant personalized solution. It also includes product presentation, but in a more native way, let’s say, in examples.

Example of how it works 

Ideally, you should create a separate landing page here, like AppFollow did it to collect the contacts of app marketers👇

Generation of potential customers with consultations campaigns.

The main thing here is to deliver the value of your consultation. For this, highlight results your team achieved, mention companies who trust you, and their testimonials.

Another moment is to explain solutions to what use cases you can provide during a consultation.

On top of that, list the steps of the business consultation flow. Thus, there is nothing unexpected left for a client.

And the main element – lead capture form or in-built chatbot (depends on the number of lead qualification questions).

Example of a SaaS lead generation form. The moment marketers get requests, they start email outreach campaigns. 

Apply an automated scroll to this part of the landing page from each button you place above.

Host webinars

A webinar is a format of an online event devoted to some topic. Usually its content includes theoretical and practical parts delivered by one or a number of people. 

Audiences love this format for an opportunity to talk to experts, get quick insights about industry trends, some pro tips, how-to guide to some issue or task. The topics can be different, but what unites them is a SaaS product mentioned in examples and a bunch of useful compelling content its visitors get after an event on their emails.

73% of B2B marketers confirm webinars are a top source of high-quality leads. 

Example of how it works 

SEO fans definitely know Semrush for their tool. But the company also holds multiple webinars for its new and existing clients. For instance, this one on local SEO:

The first screen contains key information: event title, hint at the agenda, time, and CTA to register leading potential customers to the lead form at the end of this landing page.

To engage people in the event, they focus audience attention on the speakers and their experience. Then, provide the subtopics list and finally collect visitors data:

B2B SaaS lead generation form. Image source. 

The only qualification data they ask is organization type. Since their marketing channels include messengers and SMS, there is a request for a phone number as well.

After the registration, you’ll get a confirmation email and a list of lead nurturing emails. 

Organize offline events

Offline events are not only about lead generation, it is a lot about branding as well. Since this idea is rather more expensive than webinars, usually it isn’t about free attendance. 

This type of event takes much more time and money to prepare. Thus, usually, it’s not about a SaaS company, but a list of speakers from different brands. However, there are exceptions, like Ahrefs 👇

Example of how it works

In the events section on the Ahrefs site there is an announcement of a great upcoming event in the U.S.

As you see, there are still no details, but you can be among the first who’ll get them:

B2B SaaS lead generation form. 

In such a way, they started collecting prospects ahead of time, even without a detailed agenda of the event. But it works only because everyone knows their brand. If you’re a small SaaS business, it’s better to work on the landing page and the event promo campaign ahead.

Create free useful tools

Usually, it’s a functional feature of your product (surely limited) or a calculator of  industry metrics available for free. Potential prospects can interact with it and get useful results. 

And here’s the moment when you capture their data. It always comes when prospects get a desired result in the form of a complementary offer like get in-depth results on your email or like an invitation to the product trial.

Example of how it works 

The review management marketing service Reviewtrakers created a star rating calculator page on their website:

Example of a free tool strategy in the B2B SaaS lead generation.

Visitors enter their data, get results in the number of reviews needed to achieve that. And at the moment when the “How?” question appears, SaaS service shows target customers a free demo form.

Modash, a B2B app marketing service, uses another approach. They offer potential prospects to analyze influencer followers.

B2B SaaS lead magnet example.

But the trick is that the analysis is limited. To access a full report prospects have to start a free trial.

Pro tip: In most cases such pages have rather popular relevant keywords, so you get prospects right from the Google SERP. So start with keyword research. 

Create a free course

It’s one of the best SaaS lead generation methods, but also one of the most expensive. Creating a course requires the time of your best experts: product experts, copywriters, designers, frontend (if you decide to create the classroom admin panel), and marketers to distribute it.

The key to product sales here is the topic you choose, how deep you explain it, and the content format: text + screenshots, audio + screenshots, or videos.

One of the most popular ways to deliver the lessons is pre-scheduled messages with links in messenger or on email. 

When everything is done correctly, in addition to quality leads, free courses increase your business reputation among customers.

Example of how it works

In the Academy section on the Asana task management service website you can find a list of free courses. The majority are free like this one:

Example of the B2B SaaS lead magnet to convert customers. 

On the course landing page visitors can find the lessons plan and detailed explanation of the education process. 

Presentation of the course value as a part of the lead generation strategy. 

Since Asana created a dedicated educational space for their academy, there is a classic sign up with Google or email. However, we’d advise to collect more qualification data for your SaaS sales at this step. 

Offer to share pricing in exchange for the contacts

This is a rather popular move among B2B SaaS companies nowadays. They keep up the intrigue and don’t share their prices publicly. So when you visit the Pricing section, instead of prices there you can see only “Contact us” buttons. Clicking them triggers the lead capture popup or brings you to the lead form.

But here you are playing with almost customers, not just TOFU prospects. The result may influence your sales directly. So please argument wisely your decision to hide your prices. 

Example of how it works 

IT cloud services are one of the biggest fans of this approach. Every second B2B SaaS in this industry has the following picture on the sales page: to know the price you submit a demo request.

Prospects generation page example. Image source. 

Due to the high check and difficult pricing model, these services are flexible and consider each case. They want to talk to potential customers.

Co-marketing initiatives, integrations, and referral agreements with partners

It’s when you share a customers base with your partners. Together, you create some valuable offers. Here are some of the recent strategies we found on the web: access to the “bundle of partner tools worth $500+” or “list of top experts email newsletters”. As for the classic, you can perform as a speaker at an industry event organized by another company. 

Example of how it works

When you join co-marketing strategies, in addition to incentive creation, you also participate in its promotion. 

Let’s say, you decided to perform as a speaker at some conference. On top of the presentation, every partner here should work on the event marketing on their channels:

• send relevant emails to their subscribers
• announce it on social media, messengers,
• website, blog, etc.

And only after the event you’ll get access to the base of event visitors. 

Bonus: Use the materials of that conference as lead magnets for your content marketing and sales, like Stripe did👇

Example of lead generation with access to video of the offline conference.

How to make your lead magnet work

Distribute it correctly 😉 

Every lead magnet is a product, so market it accordingly. Use the same approach as for your product launch campaigns. Start with the basic questions like: 

Where can you spread the word about it?

• On social media where your potential customers are. It can be your company LinkedIn, Discord profile, your team experts accounts, and relevant online communities on Slack or Reddit. 
• On Product Hunt and similar platforms. Create the page for your lead magnet link and present it in the same way as your product. 
• On forums.
• In paid ads.
• On your website pages and relevant (by topic) blog posts.
• On business partners media. Ask them to add a link to your lead magnet page with a short description on their email newsletter or social media. In exchange, offer them the same opportunity from your side. 

How?

It depends on the place. 

If it is your website, use a sticky banner or popup or a chatbot leading to a landing page with a lead magnet. But, in the chatbot case, it’s better to collect the audience data right in the chat and schedule automated email with an incentive link. 

The less steps your user journey has, the better conversion you’ll have.

When it comes to your social media like LinkedIn, our advice is to publish 3-4 different posts. A post per 1-2 weeks. The main thing here is how you present its value. Here are some ideas:

• Present a piece of the lead magnet content, some advice, or stats.
• Share the story about the process of how you collected the data.
• Explain the problem it resolves.
• Tell how it already helped other people. 

The visual part can be a video or gif presenting the scale of work done. It can be a scroll of the guide pages or zoom off of the visual Miro board.

To summarize

Effective lead generation strategies are the backbone of SaaS business growth. To maximize results, align your marketing efforts across content marketing and social selling via LinkedIn Sales Navigator or email marketing outreach. Consistent SaaS marketing drives qualified leads, while data-backed lead generation efforts ensure scalability.