The PartnerStack Network, the world’s largest for B2B partnerships, represents solopreneurs and corporate partners that own the most successful digital agencies, website platforms, and SaaS-invested social media accounts in the world. This includes YouTubers, bloggers, review websites, agencies, consultants, and global publications — pretty much anyone with a stake in SaaS today.
How PartnerStack’s Network takes your customers from awareness to signup
Different partner types offer unique value to a SaaS customer throughout their buying journey. Research from Gartner indicates that there are five main types of content that buyers use to make software purchase decisions: customer reviews, product demos, user guides, and information about support capabilities.
With the diversity of partner types in the PartnerStack Network, SaaS brands can leverage all five types of content to drive prospects to sign up. This advantage means SaaS companies can drive engagement and activity at every stage of the customer journey.
In this article, we have gathered the best tips and tricks for conversion from the network pros that are driving a high volume of customer signups to SaaS companies through PartnerStack. Read on for their expert insight.
Pro-tip 1: Get streamlined with one PRM for all your programs
The days of managing a partnership in spreadsheets are over. To ensure that your partnership is converting, seek a single source of truth to transparently and easily manage your relationships with both clients and partnership managers. For partners that provide services to their clients, transparent information about lead statuses centralized in one database is critical for converting those clients into SaaS customers for their partner companies.
Related: Everything you need to know about partner relationships management software.
Robert King CA, the co-founder of Integration Kings, a business consultancy that provides cloud integration solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, is familiar with the importance of straightforward and actionable lead statuses that can become signups.
For a partner like King who runs multiple successful partnerships, a centralized PRM is important for keeping his work manageable and straightforward. That’s why he prefers working with PartnerStack’s PRM, explaining that he enjoys “how it centrally manages the commissions and makes [the partnership] very transparent for all parties”.
With PartnerStack, King can see when a signed-up lead converts to a paying customer. But, before a signup, he works closely with his partner program managers to ensure that his clients are in great hands and ready to convert to a customer.
“What we would normally do with clients, is we’ll submit leads, and then we’ll do a warm introduction email to a partner manager at that software vendor who can then do a demo and see if the client is the right fit [for a] sale,” says King.
While this partnership pro is plenty busy with his current partners, his team will often find time to browse the PartnerStack Marketplace to seek out new opportunities. “Another part [of PartnerStack] that we do like is the Marketplace for finding new tech that we can resell to customers.” He calls it “a straightforward way to refer”, going on to say that, “It’s been a great solution for us as a business in helping to streamline and manage referrals… I recommend it to most software companies that we work with.”
You might also like: The anatomy of a high-performing referral program.
Pro-tip 2: Turn your SaaS partners into lead magnets through your outbound cold calls
For many service-focused businesses, like agency or consultant partners, leads-turned-customers tend to come from their network of clients and business associates. This means that most earning agencies and consultant partners in our network have large and engaged networks that they leverage to create customers for themselves and their SaaS partners.
While most agencies tend to earn their client leads from word-of-mouth referrals (according to the Promethean Research Digital Agency Industry report), others are engaging in outbound marketing — take Benjamin Tilley, Head of Business Development at Serotonin, for example.
Tilley shares their strategy for lead generation: developing a lead magnet, which leads to an offer, all the while being able to enable and educate the prospect on the agency opportunity.
“The offer must be driven by an understanding of your persona's primary needs and educating them on how your services solve their [business] problems. You then offer them a guaranteed approach with a costing exercise that shows the ROI is more significant than any investment involved. From this, you not only generate the lead, but the lead sells themself into the process,” explains Tilley.
Tilley elaborates on how PartnerStack plays a critical role in his lead magnet outreach strategy. “The PartnerStack platform allows us to continue to build partnerships with other organizations in the digital space and help offer our clients leading solutions to different problems they have within their business,” says Tilley.
In other words, to drive signups as a partner and clients as an agency, you have to drive value. For innovative agencies like Serotonin that are engaging in outbound marketing, PartnerStack’s Network is a core part of that value.
Pro-tip 3: Gain buy-in by preemptively solving your audience’s problems
Partners that have a large audience and a successful platform typically earn it through expertise or trust. In either case, with great subject matter expertise comes the great responsibility of aligning your content to solve your audience’s core business problems. With demand for B2B content continuing to grow, it's clear that solving your audience’s problems through expert content will continue to drive customer signups, according to Forbes.
Glenn Eastland, the Internet, New Media and Online Marketing Specialist behind Slick Media, shares his strategy for creating content that converts his audience to signups. “Initially, I identify a problem or need within the Slick Media sphere of influence, typically around SaaS. My experience often highlights a target provider to deliver solutions, and my first point of reference is the provider's website and, more directly, their partner program page. If the provider's program runs under PartnerStack, then this is ideal, as PartnerStack is a proven go-to partnership platform with robust and intuitive systems,” Eastland explains.
For Eastland, the first step towards generating a customer signup happens with a well-researched content plan. However, sometimes the choice of a SaaS solution for his audience’s needs is not always clear. He elaborates, “If there is no apparent provider, I turn to the PartnerStack Marketplace to seek out companies by keyword. PartnerStack has a quality partnership base, so the search [shows me] results of known and previously unknown providers. The latter has been particularly useful in identifying companies working in the same space with a differentiated proposition.”
“The key here is that the choice is always informed and that providers demonstrate that they are exceptional in their field.” -Glenn Eastland
Pro-tip 4: Keep it contextual by going where your audience gathers
Audience activity can be tricky to create and maintain, particularly in the realm of online advertising. That’s when SaaS vendors can benefit from aligning themselves with publishers that share audiences with their end customers. Effectively, these are the places where your audience already goes to find inspiration, community, and guidance. In other words, relevant and contextual placement is critical to generate audience engagement.
This is where expert advertising partners like MVF Global come in. MVF provides its SaaS partners with access to global audiences through placement across its digital channels in the B2B space, most notably, tech.co, Expert Reviews, and WebsiteBuilderExpert.
How does MVF convert prospects to signup for SaaS? “Prospects arrive on one of the websites within our partner network when they are researching the products and services they are interested in. Here, they'll engage with one of our ads, which features a contextual list of products relevant to them, including yours,” MVF states in their promotional video.
“Once they click through, they’ll be redirected to the landing page that you have chosen. Next, they complete the action indicated on the landing page. This could be starting a free trial or filling out an inquiry form,” the video further explains.
From there, it’s about understanding your targets, and your account manager will help you optimize every step of the lead journey to increase your ROI and convert more customers. “This will help you grow your customers, grow your revenues, and grow your company."
Harnessing the power of a network
To deliver signups, partners need two things: credibility and the ability to deliver value to the end customer.
PartnerStack’s Network is uniquely positioned to help B2B SaaS companies win customers since PartnerStack partners tap into both those elements for success across every touchpoint of the B2B customer journey. Thanks to the trust in our ecosystem, partners can generate meaningful activity that leads to countless satisfied paying customers.
