What is one SaaS trend that small businesses should embrace?
To help small businesses adopt the best SaaS trends for growth, we asked CTOs and business leaders this question for their best insights. From having live chat on the company website to keeping customers hooked with mobile-first software, there are several SaaS trends that small businesses need to embrace to stay on top of the competition.
Here are 11 SaaS trends your small business should embrace:
- Have Live Chat on The Company Website
- Outsource HR Services
- Short Message Service (SMS) Text Marketing
- Get Yearly Software Subscriptions for Guaranteed Discounts
- Build Company Wiki With Knowledge Management Software
- Retain Customers Through Automated Insights
- Optimize Software Tools With Add-ons and Extensions
- Manage Your Online Presence With Various Digital Platforms
- Use Artificial Intelligence Translation for Better SEO
- Learn Customer Behaviors With Machine Learning Tools
- Keep Customers Hooked With Mobile-First Software
Have Live Chat on The Company Website
Every opportunity in business counts. But too many small businesses are yet to add live chat to their website. The fact is every visitor to your website is essentially an interested party. It’s the equivalent of opening a brick-and-mortar store without any staff!
Live chat enables businesses to engage visitors, offer advice and support, and capture lead details. Most importantly, it allows businesses to build a connection with leads that will play a major role in the leads’ future purchase decisions.
Benjamin Graham, AnswerConnect
Outsource HR Services
If you’re a small business, you should consider the option of outsourcing your human resources department. Companies such as Bambee, Rippling, Paychex Flex and others handle payroll, taxes, benefits packages, recruiting, training and onboarding. Human resources managers have a lot to handle and keeping that job in-house can be a financial burden on a fledgling small business. That’s one SaaS trend that more and more companies are turning to in order to keep their own payroll costs down.
Chris Riley, USA Rx
Short Message Service Text Marketing
Short Message Service (SMS) text marketing should be on every small business owner’s checklist. And when it is integrated with a loyalty program it can deliver a 1 – 2 marketing punch that will allow you to better compete with much larger organizations. Make sure you work with an agency that specializes in this channel to ensure faster ROI and rock-solid compliance.
Barbara Casey, Mobile High 5
Get Yearly Software Subscriptions for Guaranteed Discounts
Small businesses often get caught-up with trying to get that immediate sale on a recurring basis because it’s money. And yes, as a small business owner, this is vital. However, many SaaS companies are clever in their pricing by offering a discount if a user pays for a yearly subscription.
Yes, you’re going to have to offer a discount, but think of all that upfront revenue and the commitment from the user to your service. Whether you valet cars, work in digital marketing, or offer a very bespoke service to a small subset of customers, think about how you can transition to a yearly pricing offering to capture that ‘burst’ of yearly revenue from your return customers in particular.
James Taylor, Gear Gadgets & Gizmos
Build Company Wiki With Knowledge Management Software
One of the most important SaaS trends that small businesses should embrace is the trend toward implementing knowledge management software (KMS). Utilizing a KMS to build their company wiki helps the business maintain a single source of truth in their organization. This makes sure that employees are on the same page, all the time. In turn, it provides employees with the information they need to do their job while fostering an efficient and productive workplace.
Oshen Davidson, Oshen Davidson Photo
Retain Customers Through Automated Insights
SaaS platforms are optimizing their ability to help businesses retain customers. For small businesses, retaining customers and increasing their lifetime value is critical to their success. They require a deep understanding of customer needs to improve their offerings and stand out from the competition, which they can only accomplish through automated insights from SaaS. Small businesses must capitalize on the SaaS trend of improving the customer experience through better mobile viewing, streamlined sign-ups, personalized notifications, and fast customer service.
Alexandra Fennell, Attn: Grace
Optimize Software Tools With Add-ons and Extensions
Micro-SaaS developers provide an add-on to enhance your software rather than selling a whole platform. To enhance or create a new feature, these “micro solutions” might be used. Because of this, they can help you get the most from your SaaS technology. The curation and administration of material is an area where micro-SaaS may be found in abundance. With so few big names in the industry, it’s nearly impossible for smaller developers to make a difference with a new platform.
Extensions, add-ons, browser plugin integrations, and other accessories come into play in this regard The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, for example, aids in the detection of backlinks and search phrases. The Grammarly add-on, on the other hand, helps you write for your target audience. For 2022, mini SaaS is a major SaaS trend because of its low effort. Developers don’t need to look for outside funding because they only require a little upfront investment.
Max Whiteside, Breaking Muscle
Manage Your Online Presence With Various Digital Platforms
As more of the customer journey shifts online, it’s vital for small businesses to have an online presence. This can be something as simple as having listings across the popular platforms that people go to search, such as Google, Google Maps, Facebook, and industry websites like Tripadvisor.
Reputation is also key when it comes to forming an impression online. We make decisions quickly, sometimes in a couple of seconds. And having prominent reviews legitimizes the perception of your business. Doing these things helps small businesses with their local SEO. These are the best practices that help you appear when consumers are searching for your business or category.
Firas Marafie, Yext
Use Artificial Intelligence Translation for Better SEO
Artificial Intelligence (AI) translation is one of the biggest SaaS trends, and small businesses should embrace it. Thanks to AI translation services like DeepL, businesses can reach a wider audience through better SEO. If your website is WordPress-based, TranslatePress integrates well with DeepL, and the whole translation process is cheap and very accurate.
You don’t need to worry that your new clients/customers will be non-English speaking. Often English fluent people use their mother tongue to search through Google. And even if they are not fluent in English, you will hire more support people who speak that language. No matter what business you’re in, AI translation can help you reach more customers and grow your business.
Lukasz Zelezny, SEO Consultant London
Learn Customer Behaviors With Machine Learning Tools
For SaaS platforms, machine learning is doing wonders. As a small business, you can learn about customers’ behavior, and how they engage with you – so you can improve your products/services. Not only that, the massive amount of data evaluation is only possible through machine learning now. Adding more to the applications of machine learning in SaaS, you can automate campaigns, and customer support, and get better data security. Therefore, small businesses must be considering machine learning to simplify their operations.
Scott O’Brien, PPC Ad Lab
Keep Customers Hooked With Mobile-First Software
The vast majority of the world’s internet users – 92.4 percent – use a mobile phone to go online at least some of the time, and mobile phones now account for more than half of our online time. (https://datareportal.com/global-digital-overview). This shows the importance of mobile-first SaaS. A lot of people are relying on their smartphones even for business because of remote work. While it might be a struggle to focus on mobile-first software, it comes with many benefits, including: personalized experiences; the possibility of implementing AR and VR; and enhancing accessibility.
Nicoleta Niculescu, Custify
Brett Farmiloe is the founder of Terkel, a Q&A platform that connects brands with expert insights. Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
