Table of Contents
- What is a B2B SaaS?
- Examples of B2B SaaS products
- What are some B2B SaaS Ideas in the market?
- 1. Micro-SaaS for Monitoring Keywords/Brand Mentions
- 2. Itinerary Planning Tool for Tour Operators
- 3. Micro SaaS for User Onboarding
- 4. Micro SaaS for Membership Management for Business
- 5. Marketplace for Podcast Sponsorships
- 6. SEO tool for an E-Commerce Platform
- 7. Personalized Sales Videos
- 8. Desk and Meeting Rooms Booking for Hybrid Teams
- 9. Automate A/B Testing for Web traffic
- 10. Micro SaaS for Email Signature Design and Management
- How to sell B2B SaaS?
- 1. B2B Marketing
- 2. B2B Sales
- 3. SEO
- How to price B2B products?
What is a B2B SaaS?
B2B (Business-to-Business) SaaS is a software model where you provide a software that caters to the needs of other businesses over the internet, usually on a subscription basis as contrast to the business installing and managing the software as a package. In contrast, B2C (Business-to-Consumer) SaaS products are targeted towards individual consumers such as productivity tools, fitness apps or personal finance management.
The main advantages that businesses are reduced cost without the hassle of maintaining a software as well as scalability. As a business grows, they can simply move to the higher subscription plan.
B2B (Business-to-Business) SaaS is a software distribution model in which a software that is designed to meet the needs of other businesses is provided over the internet. This is typically on a subscription basis, in contrast to businesses installing and managing the software package themselves.
On the other hand, B2C (Business-to-Consumer) SaaS products target individual consumers and range from productivity tools to fitness apps, and personal finance management tools.
The primary advantages for businesses using SaaS are cost reduction and elimination of software maintenance hassles. Additionally, as the business grows, it can easily shift to a higher subscription plan, ensuring scalability.
SkyQuest Technology's recent research shows the global SaaS market was worth $143.77 billion in 2021. It's projected to hit $720.44 billion by 2028. More and more businesses are streamlining their processes and opting for b2b SaaS solutions for their business needs.
Also see the section ‘How can you choose between B2B SaaS vs B2C SaaS? The Pros and Cons’ in SaaS ideas with examples.
Examples of B2B SaaS products
Billing: Chargebee, Stripe
E-Commerce: BigCommerce, Shopify
Email Marketing: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign
Analytics: Heap, Mixpanel
Productivity and Collaboration Tools: Slack, ClickUp
Project Management: Asana, Basecamp
Human Resource Management: BambooHR, HR Partner
SEO: Ahrefs, SEMrush
What are some B2B SaaS Ideas in the market?
1. Micro-SaaS for Monitoring Keywords/Brand Mentions
Simple keyword monitoring Micro SaaS products that monitors most happening websites like Hackernews, Indiehackers, Lobsters, Reddit, Twitter helps users to market their products better at the right time at the right place. The SaaS tool should be able to notify the users via email as and when a discussion happens about a specific topic that was chosen by the customer. A good add-on would be to integrate the notification system with Slack, Telegram, etc. Most users would love to be notified on Slack or Telegram. Keyword monitoring solution gets more users only when the tools monitor more places. So, add as many platforms as you can monitor. For inspiration see Syften and PMAlerts. There is a big problem with the mentions or keyword monitoring. The results are often purely based on the “keyword” text and could sometimes be of no use. For monitoring the Brand names, a simple keyword monitoring tool may work. But for a founder who is looking at certain keywords, receiving a false positive that is not in context of the founder’s saas product. For example, a founder building something related to “Airtable” wouldn’t be interested in questions in Reddit that is directed towards Airtable pricing questions. So, if you could add some kind of intelligence and rank the mention on a scale of 5 that fits the context for the founder, that would be a killer feature. To start with you can start doing this manually as well.
- Mention Tools hit $1.2K in monthly revenue.
- Syften reached €6K MRR in 2022.
- Devi AI crossed $400 MRR. Helps Monitors keywords in Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Twitter & Reddit.
2. Itinerary Planning Tool for Tour Operators
Itinerary planning is crucial for tour operators as it ensures well-organized and efficient travel experiences for their customers. By carefully designing travel schedules, operators can optimize routes, minimize travel time, and manage logistics effectively, leading to seamless and enjoyable tours. The use of itinerary planning tools streamlines the process, saving time and effort for tour operators, who can then focus on delivering memorable travel experiences, building customer loyalty, and enhancing their reputation in the travel industry. Products like Pebblar, Travel Mapper (not for tour operators), Sriggle and Unmapped made some progress in this space. Estimated annual revenue of Unmapped is $2.9M.
3. Micro SaaS for User Onboarding
With more and more SaaS services coming into the market, there is a great need for user onboarding tools. Think of this tool as something like a guided tour inside the web app that tells users about various options. This is specifically useful for complex apps with complex screens. Possible add-ons would be to add guided voice tours inside the web app. If you want to build a Micro-SaaS tool around this, first look at the IntroJS open source module and see how it fits. Make the tool intelligent enough to segment users based on the flow activity. This will help founders to follow up with their users. The process would be like a goal-based system to final a few goals by clicking certain buttons and following certain actions. Based on how far a user made progress in the goal, you can segment them. Tools like these are also often referred as ‘In-app user onboarding tools’ or ‘SaaS User onboarding tools’ or ‘SaaS Guided Tours’ etc. Some commercial players in this space are UserGuiding, Userflow, Trainn etc. Userflow hit $21.1K in revenue in 2022. Trainn received $700K in funding UserGuiding estimated annual revenue is currently $1.3M
4. Micro SaaS for Membership Management for Business
A B2C Membership Management platform is like a super handy software that helps businesses handle their memberships with their customers. It's got all the cool tools to make things easy, like a fancy database to keep track of member info, smooth enrollment processes, different membership levels with sweet perks, and ways to communicate and engage with members. The platform also typically set it up to automatically handle renewals and payments, and it even gives you fancy reports to see how your membership is growing. It’s like having a personal assistant to manage your B2C memberships and make sure everyone's happy. But the beauty of this is that this can be further niches down to different verticals like Gym Management, Dental Care Management, Health Club Management, Wellness Clubs, Church Management etc too. For example, checkout Pushpress that built Gym management software. Another example is BoomCloud that built the solution for dental clinics. Tools like these take care of the nitty-gritty of membership management for businesses, handling all the heavy lifting.
5. Marketplace for Podcast Sponsorships
Obtaining sponsorships for podcasts can be quite challenging, especially if you don't have extensive connections within your podcast's niche market. It can also be a time-consuming process, requiring significant effort and networking. By building a micro platform dedicated to facilitating connections between brands and podcasters, the process becomes much simpler and more efficient. Such a platform streamlines the sponsorship-seeking process, allowing podcasters to find suitable advertisers and vice versa. This eliminates the need for extensive networking and reduces the time investment required to secure sponsorships. Create a Micro Platform that makes it easier for brands and podcasters to connect. Note that building marketplaces takes a lot of time but once it works, you will have an exponential growth.
Podcorn is one of the examples if Influencers marketplaces. Podcorn was founded in 2018, it was acquired in 2021 with an upfront cash payment of $14.6 million.
6. SEO tool for an E-Commerce Platform
To create a successful E-Commerce SEO tool, you'll need to have a good grasp of E-Commerce SEO best practices, like optimizing product pages, handling duplicate content, and speeding up website load times. Your SaaS solution should offer a comprehensive analysis of a website's on-page and off-page SEO, including keyword research, technical issues, content quality, and backlink profile but exclusively for e-commerce platforms.
For example, see SellerApp’s that has built exclusive Amazon SEO product by helping sellers with product intelligence, keyword insights and some analytics. SellerApp’s estimated annual revenue is $4.4M. Another tool in this space is Sale Samurai that is built for Etsy E-commerce platform. The same kind of tools can be niched down further to other E-commerce platforms like Prestashop, Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento etc.
7. Personalized Sales Videos
Personalized sales videos are a highly effective sales tool. Personalized videos have a much higher click-through rate than generic, non-personalized videos. This is because personalized videos are tailored to the recipient and are more engaging and relevant to their needs, increasing the chances of them taking action. The demand for personalized videos is growing rapidly and customers expect a personalized experience. Personalized videos are a brilliant way to deliver that rich experience. Many businesses, especially those in the B2B space, are recognizing the effectiveness of personalized videos and are looking for solutions that can help them create these videos quickly and easily. Many businesses struggle to create personalized videos, either because they don't have the expertise or the resources to do so. By building a Micro SaaS that offers an easy-to-use platform for creating personalized videos, you can provide a solution that solves a real pain point for these businesses.
Sendspark and Pitchlane are two good examples of this niche. In 2022, Sendspark reached $490.7K in revenue. LemList is another example of this niche generating millions of dollars in revenue. Also, see SellScale , Luna, and ReachOut powered with AI in the same space.
8. Desk and Meeting Rooms Booking for Hybrid Teams
With many companies going into Hybrid and cost-cutting mode, there is a greater need to optimize resources both from a planning and cost standpoint. This led to a new niche around SaaS tools for booking desks, meeting rooms, and other related resources in the companies. Tools like these are required by both medium and large-scale companies. The primary benefit of SaaS tools for booking desks and meeting rooms is that it simplifies the process of managing and tracking the usage of these resources. With the help of these tools, companies can easily monitor and manage their resources in real time. It helps reduce the manual effort and time spent managing the resources. Companies can also ensure better utilization of resources, leading to increased efficiency and productivity. The tools also provide detailed analytics that can be used to identify the trends and patterns in the usage of the resources.
Founded in 2020, Tactic received $3.5M in funding. Officely has reached $75K in monthly recurring revenue by tweaking into Slack primarily. A product like Ronspot has received €1.1M in funding and niched down to multiple use cases like booking parking lots too along with desks and meeting rooms.
- B2B eLearning Systems: B2B E-learning systems are growing at a rapid pace. Online learning and training solutions are in high demand these days, especially since so many people are working remotely. Create a Micro SaaS that helps organizations to create their e-learning systems all from one single dashboard. Add features like OAuth etc that are basic needs for enterprises and organizations. You can also add options around white labelling too. Some examples in this space are Academy Of Mine, with an estimated annual revenue is $660k. Another example is Claned which raised $7.2M in funding. You can also further niche down this towards a specific area too. For example, solutions like HighSpot and PaperFlite that are more towards ‘Sales E-Learning Systems’
9. Automate A/B Testing for Web traffic
A/B testing is something when appropriately used, gives a ton of insights. But most people are lazy to try various variants of the same website copy and see the results/metrics. This is because of the efforts this process needs to try with different headline texts, intro texts, etc. Automate this process. Automatically generate various versions of a given website and render those different variations to a diverse audience via A/B traffic splitting. Make sure your tool also carefully captures the required metrics too. For example, if you can capture data like ‘how much time each visitor is spending on one variant vs another” along with metrics like bounce rate, click-through rate, etc for multiple variations, it’s going to be good automation for a lot of users. For inspiration, see ABTesting crossed $2K MRR.
10. Micro SaaS for Email Signature Design and Management
Email Signature Design and Management SaaS is a service where you can make and control slick email signatures for everyone in a company. It makes it super easy to create these consistent, branded signatures for all users. With templates and customization options, it keeps everything looking sharp and on-brand. Plus, it helps stick to brand rules, follows legal stuff, and gives off a pro vibe in all outgoing emails. There are some good players solving this problem. For example, Signature the most recent significant player in this niche, making $8K/month. Other notable player Exclaimer reached $23.5M annual revenue. AdSigner in same space crossed $10K/month revenue while Wise Stamp reached $17.5M annual revenue. Most of these companies offer online tools that generate pro email signatures for Email clients like Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhones and any email platform that handles HTML signatures as well.
Get more software ideas and micro saas ideas for building SaaS startups or get inspiration for building and selling profitable digital products from this post on digital product ideas. If you want to acquire a SaaS/Micro-SaaS instead of building from scratch, this guide on buying a SaaS business will be helpful. If you're exploring rapid market entry, a white-label SaaS solution might be your answer
How to sell B2B SaaS?
Selling B2B SaaS involves a strategic mix of various approaches including SEO, advertising, cold outreach and development of side projects. But the key to is to have a deep understanding of your target market and the problems that your B2B SaaS is solving for these businesses.
1. B2B Marketing
The messaging in B2B SaaS marketing is quite different from that in B2C marketing. Incase of B2B marketing, the emphasis of the messaging is on educating potential customers on the business value and ROI that your software delivers. In contrast, B2C marketing focuses more on story telling and brand awareness.
Side Project Marketing:
This involves creating a free, small tool or resource that generates new leads for your B2B SaaS. Kapwing, a video creation platform offers numerous free tools as side projects such as a PNG maker, video resizer, meme generator and more. Similarly, Shopify, the e-commerce platform, regularly rolls out various side projects like a logo generator, privacy policy generator, invoice generator, etc.
Social Media Advertisements:
B2B SaaS companies often use advertisements - both social media as well as newsletter ads. LinkedIn advertisements are more prevalent for B2B SaaS marketing, thoughTwitter, Facebook and Reddit are also effective channels.
Newsletter Advertisements:
Placing ads in industry-specific newsletters having good engagement can be an effective strategy for increasing sales. It’s important to track ad performance and then optimize both the ads and well as the choice of newsletters accordingly.
Educational Content:
White papers, guides and educational webinars are also common and effective strategies for selling B2B SaaS.
2. B2B Sales
Cold outreach is a widely used and effective strategy for B2B SaaS. It involves initiating contact with an individual or a business without having having any prior contact or relationship. This can be via cold calling, cold emails or social media outreach by sending a private message on LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
The aim of cold outreach isn't to make an immediate sale. Instead, it's to schedule a follow-up discussion or a demo booked. B2B sales cycles are typically long and involve multiple steps. The key to getting positive response from cold outreach is personalization. This involves understanding and tailoring your message to the specific needs and pain points of your recipient instead of just sending a generic message.
3. SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long term but crucial strategy for selling B2B SaaS. It can typically take several months to get results in terms of sales. But the benefit from free and relevant organic traffic make it a worthwhile investment of time.
SEO is a broad topic covering many aspects: On-page SEO involves optimizing your content for targeted keywords. Off-page SEO is concerned with building quality backlinks. Technical SEO includes enhancing your website's speed and making it mobile-responsive. Local SEO focuses on optimizing for local search results, which is particularly important if your B2B SaaS is aimed at customers in a specific geographical area.
How to price B2B products?
There can be multiple ways to price B2B SaaS products. Some of the common pricing models are:
- Per User Pricing: Businesses pay based on the number of their employees who use your B2B SaaS.
- Tiered Pricing: Multiple pricing tiers based on the number of features and/or level of customer support provided.
- Usage-Based Pricing: Pricing based on the usage of the product, such as charging based on the number of videos or the number of AI articles generated etc.
- Freemium: Free set of basic users with optional upgrade to paid plan
All of these pricing models are being used by various B2B SaaS companies. As a SaaS founder, your ultimate choice should depend on a deep understanding of your customers, their specific needs, competitor strategies, your existing SaaS metrics and your product's unique differentiation. Given that B2B contracts are typically long-term, pricing in this context requires thoughtful analysis.
Check out this video for more inspiration:
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