One quick search of “SaaS marketing statistics” will show you a bunch of statistics about SaaS major markets, industry annual growth rate, adoption rate, market size, churn rates, and other such statistics.
It’s good and all that, but let’s be honest: It doesn’t exactly sell on the intent. You want to know about SaaS marketing and not the SaaS market.
There’s also the other thing. A few statistic listicles deliver on the intent, but are not relevant anymore. Most of them have findings from 2019 or around that year.
SaaS is an ever-evolving industry that’s changed in the past few years. Many companies now use AI-powered tools and have to abide by new search engine policies. This means that findings from older studies may no longer be up to date.
There’s an obvious gap here, and I aim to solve that with the help of this article on top SaaS marketing statistics. In this piece, we’ll be looking at key statistics that can guide marketing strategies in the SaaS space.
[Before we delve any further, just for SEO purposes, since my job description basically calls for it: SaaS marketing refers to the marketing activities SaaS businesses undertake to promote their product.]
Let’s dig into the piece since that’s out of the way!
Top key SaaS marketing statistics
Here are 16 statistics about SaaS marketing from studies that I have found interesting from different types of B2B marketers.
Just a quick FYI before you move forward: All sources are vetted, from credible sites (and surveys), are contextual (aka, they actually focus on SaaS businesses), and are relevant (no study is older than 2022!).
1. Around 50% of SaaS businesses have between 1–5 people in their marketing department.
According to the State of SaaS Marketing report, 48% of all SaaS businesses have between 1–5 people in their marketing department. This includes both full-time employees and contract hires.
What’s even more interesting is that:
- 34% of businesses have 0 people in the marketing department;
- 15% have between 6 to 20 people in the marketing department;
- 2% of businesses have between 21–50 people; and
- Another 2% have more than 50 marketing professionals working in the department.
2. 1 in 2 SaaS marketers believe content is the biggest business growth driver.
When asked which channel they believe has the biggest impact on growing revenue, 53% of all SaaS professionals said content.
The same report stated that only 26% of all SaaS businesses invested in content in the previous year.
3. The annual spend on marketing efforts for SaaS companies has been reduced by 20%.
A 2024 benchmark survey analyzed 1500 SaaS businesses and their annual budgets.
The result? Companies spent 10% of their annual revenue to execute activities listed in their content marketing strategy.
They allotted this percentage of the budget to marketing in 2023 and 2022.
In 2024, the medium spend declined from 10% to 8%. This, in turn, reduced the budget allotted to marketing by 20%.
They also lowered their spending on:
- Customer support
- Customer success
- Sales
- Research and development
- Administrative activities.
Here’s something even more interesting, though.
Insivia reports that this percentage value might not hold true in the first few years of the business lifeline. According to the publication, SaaS businesses spend 80-120% of their revenue on sales and marketing activities in the first three years.
They also agree that this percentage dips as the years go by, falling to 50% by the fifth year.
4. Equity-backed SaaS companies spend 58% more on marketing.
We previously discussed how SaaS companies spend 8% of their annual recurring revenue on marketing.
However, if we look at equity-backed companies, as seen in the screenshot below, we find they spend 58% more on marketing than the median average percentage (8%).
We also find that higher-growth equity-backed companies spend 30% more on marketing than lower-growth equity-backed businesses.
5. Around 4/10 SaaS folks believe content marketing efforts get the best passive links
In our State of Backlinks study (which included several SaaS business professionals), 40.7% of respondents stated that content marketing was the strongest passive link-building avenue.
Additionally, almost 47.5% of them ranked content marketing/SEO as equally important as link building.
6. Almost a third of all SaaS companies hire freelancers. The results are less positive for agencies.
Around 67% of SaaS companies work with at least one contractor or freelancer. We can break down the results into the following:
- 51% of them work with 1–3 freelancers.
- 12% work with 4–9 freelancers.
- 4% work with more than ten freelancers.
Unfortunately, though, the results aren’t as positive for agencies — the same report stated that only 19% of SaaS businesses work with marketing agencies, with only 5% working with more than one agency.
7. 68% of marketers use AI for their day-to-day activities.
A new benchmark survey by The Conference Board, in collaboration with Ragan Communications, found that marketing professionals are quickly experimenting with and embracing artificial intelligence.
The study found that 68% of marketers used AI in 2023 as an assistance tool to complete their daily marketing activities.
For marketers, the top use cases for AI include:
- Summarizing content (44%)
- Doing the legwork/inspiring thinking (41%)
- Personalizing customer/user content (33%)
- Conducting research (30%)
- Producing content faster (30%)
- Improving customer service (17%)
The most (un)surprising part about it all? Of the marketers who use AI, 82% believe productivity will improve with further adoption of AI. Why not work smarter, not harder, to boost conversion rates on your content?
8. SaaS startups spend the lowest on email marketing and the highest on PR.
According to a SaaS ROI (return on investment) report, most businesses spend the lowest on email marketing (approximately between US $1k-3k). They also spend the most on public relations (between US $10k-50k).
Surprisingly, they saw a 201% ROI on email marketing activities and a 62% ROI through PR activities. They also saw the highest ROI through thought-leadership SEO (around 748%), and this activity costs them anywhere between US $7.5k and $15k.
9. They also commit to email marketing campaigns for longer (4+ years) and expect quicker results from SEO, SEM, and PPC ads (3–6 months).
The same report also found that SaaS companies commit the longest to email marketing, the lowest to basic SEO (for around three months), and SEM/PPC activities (between 3–6 months).
10. Most SaaS businesses spend under a thousand dollars annually on marketing tools.
Reports indicate that 35.4% of SaaS businesses spend under a thousand dollars annually on marketing automation tools, mainly because many tools offer freemium business models.
The study also found that 34.5% of them spend between $1000 and $10,000 annually. 25.7% of them spend between $10,000 to $100k and 4.4% of them spend more than $100k.
However, if we look at the spending on content marketing (as an activity specifically), we find the following:
- 24% of SaaS businesses spend between $5k-$10k monthly on marketing;
- 22% of them spend between $3k-$5k monthly;
- 18% of them spend between $1k-$3k monthly; and
- 17% of them spend under a thousand dollars on monthly marketing activities.
11. Most SaaS companies are happy with their marketing success.
Semrush’s 2023 Content Marketing Global Report, which surveyed SaaS and IT companies, found that almost 70% of SaaS businesses had a well-developed or advanced content marketing strategy in place. The remaining 30% had started working on their marketing efforts, too (stating “first steps”).
The report also uncovered that 97% of SaaS companies were relatively happy with their marketing success, stating their efforts to be anywhere between “minimally successful” and “successful.”
12. More SaaS businesses are relying on advertising in newsletters.
Traditional advertising channels like Google and social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, are still popular with SaaS marketers. But what’s surprising is that most marketers are now outpacing YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter and relying on newsletters as a channel.
(In fact, the importance of newsletters is steadily growing among all advertising channels.)
Around 11% of SaaS marketers say they have advertised on newsletters in the past 12 months, and a whopping 65% of SaaS businesses have their own newsletters to promote their business apps to potential customers.
13. Content Marketing Institute expects to see a rise in video and event marketing for B2B companies (including SaaS).
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s survey, which included SaaS marketers among its respondents, found expected investments to increase in the following categories:
- Videos, specifically webinars and SME interviews (69%)
- Events, including virtual and in-person events (61%)
- Media-owned assets (57%)
- Paid media assets (51%)
14. 61% of B2B marketers believe that SEO content can help SaaS businesses generate more leads
Sharing SEO-friendly blog posts is a must for SaaS companies. 61% of B2B marketers state that these can help brands get more leads more than using any other marketing strategy.
Make sure that your content is optimized and of high-quality by:
- Incorporating relevant keywords.
- Using subheadings (H2s and H3s) to make it easier for your target audience and search engines to read.
- Adding a title tag and meta description.
- Linking to other blog posts already posted on your website (known as internal linking)
- Sourcing visual content (images and videos)
- Updating older content.
15. Most SaaS businesses conduct content audits twice yearly.
A 2023 research found that 38% of SaaS companies conduct content audits twice a year, whereas 21% of companies conduct these audits more than three times a year.
Here’s where the remaining percentage goes:
- 21% of SaaS businesses conduct content audits once a year.
- 14% of them never conduct audits.
- 6% of them conduct an audit once every 2-3 years.
16. SaaS, as an industry, is considered super lucrative to affiliate marketers.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, the affiliate commission rate for SaaS, as a product category, is anywhere between 20-70%. This is much higher than other product categories, such as business, fashion, finance, e-learning, fitness, etc.
Wrapping up
In this piece, we uncovered the state of marketing when it comes to SaaS business. We dug deep into SaaS marketing statistics about content marketing budgets, the success rate of marketing strategies, the use of AI in marketing, growth drivers, etc.
On that note, I hope you liked the listicle of SaaS marketing statistics, and if you’d like to gain more insights like these from me, you can opt to subscribe to my SEO Power Plays newsletter, and I’ll be sending insights about SaaS marketing and SEO directly to your inbox.
Alternatively, if you’d like to hear my thoughts on all things marketing and SEO for B2B companies, you can also follow me on LinkedIn, too. I post my insights and have discussions there!