Many SaaS companies put most of their marketing budget into reaching the small group of buyers who are ready to purchase right now. This can work in the short term, but it limits long-term growth. Around 95 percent of potential buyers are not actively shopping for a solution at any given time.
If your strategy ignores them, you miss the chance to be front of mind when they do decide to buy.
A strong SaaS marketing strategy must address both the 5 percent of buyers in market today and the 95 percent who will be in market in the future.
Understanding the 5 Percent and the 95 Percent
In the early stages of a SaaS business, it makes sense to focus on the 5 percent who are actively looking for a solution. Paid search, targeted social ads, and bottom-of-funnel offers are effective for winning those customers and proving product-market fit.
Over time, these channels can plateau. If you continue to increase budget without seeing meaningful gains in leads or pipeline, you may have saturated your in-market audience. This is the moment to expand your strategy to the 95 percent who are not actively buying today.
Marketing to the 95 percent means investing in brand, community, and awareness-building activities that nurture familiarity and trust over time. When these potential buyers encounter a trigger event that creates demand, your brand will already be in their consideration set.
Use Buyer Research to Guide Your Strategy
Marketing to the 95 percent successfully starts with a deep understanding of your audience. This means identifying the catalysts that move someone from not considering your product to actively searching for a solution. These triggers might include regulatory changes, internal process reviews, budget cycles, or changes in leadership.
You do not need a big budget to uncover these insights. Start with what you already have. Review notes from initial sales calls to spot patterns in challenges, priorities, and events that lead to engagement. Listen to sales call recordings to hear pain points in the customer’s own words.
Surveys are another low-cost option. Ask your audience where they get industry news, which events they attend, and which online channels they use most. Offer to share the results to boost response rates. The data you gather will help you focus on the platforms, content formats, and topics most likely to reach and resonate with your market.
Build a Content Flywheel
A common mistake is treating each marketing channel in isolation. A more effective approach is to create a “content flywheel” using anchors and distribution.
Anchors are core content assets such as podcasts, video series, or research reports. These become the source material for multiple distribution channels. A single podcast episode, for example, can be repurposed into a blog post, a newsletter feature, short social media videos, and snippets for sales outreach.
This approach streamlines production, maintains consistent messaging, and makes it easier to align content with your buyer research. If compliance changes are a known buying trigger, you can develop an anchor piece around that theme and adapt it for all your channels.
Focus on the Right Channels
No company can be everywhere at once, so choose your channels based on where your audience already spends time. This is where survey data and buyer insights become essential. For a technical audience, that might mean LinkedIn, YouTube, and relevant online communities. For other markets, it could be a mix of search, industry newsletters, and events.
By narrowing your focus, you can dedicate more resources to making an impact on each platform rather than spreading your efforts too thin.
Create Opinionated Content
Generic, purely informational content is easy to replicate, especially with the rise of AI tools. What stands out is content with a point of view. This does not mean being controversial for the sake of it. Instead, develop perspectives that are rooted in your experience, approach, and product philosophy.
Start by identifying the principles that guide your product or service. Ask questions like:
- What common industry practices do you disagree with?
- What do you believe is the most efficient way to solve a recurring problem?
- What trends are overrated or overlooked?
The answers can be turned into content themes that differentiate your brand.
Measure Progress in Phases
Measuring the impact of a long-term brand and awareness strategy can be challenging. Avoid trying to link every activity directly to short-term revenue. Instead, track leading indicators first.
For early-stage measurement, impressions and engagement can show whether your reach is growing. Over time, layer in additional signals. Monitor sales call recordings to see if prospects mention your content, events, or campaigns. Add a simple “How did you hear about us?” question to forms to capture self-reported attribution.
Think in phases. First, establish reach and awareness. Next, track whether awareness translates into engagement and brand recall. Finally, measure whether engagement influences pipeline and revenue.
Make It Easier for Your Marketing Team to Execute
Clear ownership of content anchors and distribution channels helps keep production consistent. Assign someone to be responsible for each anchor and someone else for each distribution channel. The person managing a podcast does not also have to own every social platform, but there should be clarity about who is responsible for each output.
Maintain flexibility so team members can contribute to projects outside their core responsibilities. The goal is to keep the strategy consistent while giving space for creativity and collaboration.
Adapt to the Changing Landscape
The marketing environment changes quickly, especially in SaaS. Search algorithms, AI tools, and audience behaviour can shift in a matter of months. The good news is that a 95 percent-focused strategy naturally adapts to these changes because it is built on relationships, brand equity, and trusted content rather than any single platform or tactic.
When you understand your buyers, create content that reflects their needs and challenges, and maintain consistent visibility across the right channels, you are well-positioned to capture demand whenever it emerges.
Putting It All Together - An Effective SaaS Marketing Strategy
A successful SaaS marketing strategy blends short-term demand capture with long-term brand building. Start with targeted campaigns for the 5 percent who are in market today, but recognise when that audience is tapped out. Use buyer research to uncover triggers and preferred channels. Build a content flywheel to keep your messaging consistent and efficient. Share opinions that differentiate your brand. Measure in phases to track progress over time.
The companies that win in SaaS are the ones that earn trust before the buying moment arrives. By balancing the needs of the 5 percent and the 95 percent, you set your business up for sustainable growth.
