Lucas TeixeiraA B2B SaaS company signs 15 new contracts in the quarter. The marketing team reports a rise in lead volume, the sales team hits its target, and the executive team celebrates. Six months later, recurring revenue has barely budged. Some of the customers canceled before the one-year mark, and the money invested to acquire them never made it back into the company’s coffers.
This scenario is common in subscription-based software companies, and it’s almost never just a sales problem. It’s a problem with how the marketing strategy was designed. When revenue is recurring, closing the deal is just the beginning of the process—not the end of it.
In this article, you’ll learn what’s different about SaaS marketing, which metrics indicate whether a company is truly growing, how a B2B SaaS sales funnel works, and which channels and lead generation models help generate qualified demand.
What is SaaS marketing, and how does it differ from other businesses?
SaaS marketing is the set of strategies used to attract, convert, activate, and retain customers for subscription-based software. The difference from other businesses lies in the goal: it’s not enough to simply generate a sale. You need to attract customers who will stay long enough to cover the cost of acquiring them and who, ideally, will make additional purchases over time.
And the competition for these customers is only intensifying. According to data from the Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence Institute released by EBANX, the SaaS market in Latin America is expected to grow from $22 billion in 2023 to $46 billion in 2027, with Brazil alone projected to reach $22 billion. More money in the sector means more competitors vying for the same buyer’s attention.
Recurring revenue changes the bill
In a one-time sale, almost all revenue is recognized at the time of the transaction. In SaaS, revenue is recognized in installments, month by month or year by year. The cost of acquiring the customer, however, is paid up front: media, content, tools, and the sales team’s time.
Here’s a simple example: if a company spends R$ 6,000 to acquire a customer who pays R$ 500 per month, it takes at least 12 months just to recoup that investment—and even longer when you factor in the margin. If that customer cancels in the eighth month, the sale resulted in a loss, even though it met the quarterly target.
For this reason, SaaS marketing strategies cannot be evaluated solely based on the number of leads or contracts. They must be evaluated based on the quality of the customers they bring in.
The customer makes multiple purchases
In a SaaS model, each renewal is a new purchasing decision. The customer reassesses whether the software is still worth the cost, compares it with alternatives, and decides whether to continue. In addition to renewal, there’s also expansion: more users, new modules, or an upgraded plan.
This growth driver carries a lot of weight. In Benchmarkit’s 2025 benchmarks, growth already accounts for 40% of all new annual recurring revenue (or ARR) for B2B SaaS companies, rising to 50% among those with revenue exceeding $50 million.
In practice, marketing work continues after the sale: onboarding, content for the customer base, communications about new developments, and expansion campaigns carried out in collaboration with the customer success team.
B2B SaaS and B2C SaaS also don’t work the same way. In B2C, the decision is usually made by an individual, is quick, and involves a low-value purchase, which favors volume-based tactics such as virality, mass freemium models, and promotions. In B2B, the purchase goes through a committee, the cycle is longer, the person who uses the software isn’t always the one who signs the contract, and switching systems involves high migration and training costs. For this reason, tactics that work well for a consumer app may only generate worthless sign-ups in a B2B SaaS model.
Marketing B2B: guia completo para empresas de tecnologia
Review the basics before diving deeper into SaaS: positioning, channels, metrics, and how it differs from B2C.
Read the B2B marketing guide →The Metrics That Guide SaaS Marketing
Cost per lead and conversion rate remain important, but they aren’t enough. Kyle Poyar, who analyzed data from approximately 5,000 software companies over nine years, points to CAC payback and NRR as the two metrics that best predict sustainable and profitable growth (High Alpha and Kyle Poyar, 2025 SaaS Benchmarks). Below are the metrics that SaaS marketing needs to track.
CAC and Payback
CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the average amount a company spends to acquire a new customer. The calculation adds up all marketing and sales investments for the period (media, tools, salaries, agency fees) and divides that total by the number of new customers.
A common mistake is to calculate the CAC based solely on media spending. This makes the number seem lower than it actually is and hides the true cost of the sales team.
CAC payback shows how many months it takes for the company to recoup that investment. It is calculated by dividing CAC by each customer’s monthly revenue, after deducting the gross margin. The shorter the payback period, the faster the money returns to the company’s cash flow and can be reinvested in growth.
LTV and the LTV/CAC ratio
LTV (lifetime value) estimates how much revenue a customer generates over the entire period they remain with the company. A common way to calculate it is to multiply the average monthly revenue by the gross margin and divide by the monthly churn rate.
The LTV/CAC ratio compares the customer's lifetime value to the cost of acquiring them. A benchmark frequently used by investors is that LTV should be at least three times greater than CAC. This is a market convention, not a rule.
One thing to keep in mind: LTV depends on a churn estimate, and startups don’t yet have enough historical data to estimate it accurately. For this reason, Poyar suggests putting LTV/CAC on the back burner and looking instead at the combination of CAC payback and NRR, which appears in the matrix below.
Churn and NRR
Churn is the cancellation rate. It can be measured in terms of customers (how many left) or revenue (how much revenue was lost). The two tell different stories: losing ten small customers carries less weight than losing one large account. In Lighter Capital ’s survey of 155 B2B SaaS startups, the median revenue churn rate rose from 11.34% to 12.50% in 2025.
The NRR (net revenue retention) shows how much of the revenue from the customer base remained after a certain period—typically 12 months—taking into account new customer additions while accounting for cancellations and plan downgrades. An NRR above 100% means that the customer base is growing on its own, even without new customers. The median in Benchmarkit’s benchmarks is 101%, a sign that retaining revenue is proving difficult for much of the market.
| Metric | How to calculate | What it reveals |
| CAC | Total investment in marketing and sales ÷ new customers during the period | How much does it cost to acquire each customer? |
| CAC payback | CAC ÷ (monthly revenue per customer × gross margin) | How many months does it take for the investment to pay off? |
| LTV | (Average monthly revenue × gross margin) ÷ monthly churn | How much revenue a customer generates over the course of the relationship |
| LTV/CAC | LTV ÷ CAC | If the customer's value offsets the acquisition cost |
| Revenue Churn | Revenue lost during the period ÷ revenue at the beginning of the period | How much revenue is being lost? |
| NRR | (Initial revenue + expansion – cancellations – reductions) ÷ initial revenue | If the base expands or contracts on its own |
When you look at the intersection of CAC payback and NRR, the picture becomes clearer. In High Alpha’s study, 13% of companies had a high NRR and low payback and grew, on average, by 71%. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 12% had a low NRR and high payback and grew by only 10% on average—what the author calls the “danger zone” of B2B SaaS.
Efficient Growth Matrix: CAC Payback vs. NRR
13% of companies
Average growth of 71%
15% of companies
Average growth of 40%
15% of companies
Average growth of 30%
: 12% of companies
: Average growth of 10%
Source: High Alpha and Kyle Poyar, 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report, featuring more than 800 B2B software companies.
The Sales Funnel for a B2B SaaS Company
In many businesses, the sales funnel ends with a signed contract. In SaaS, it continues. A customer who doesn’t use the product cancels. A customer who uses it well tends to renew, buy more, and refer others.
Acquisition
This is the stage of attracting the right accounts and turning them into sales opportunities. This involves paid media, content, search, events, and active prospecting. The metric that matters isn’t the volume of leads, but how many become real opportunities in the pipeline and, ultimately, loyal customers.
Activation (trial, demo, and onboarding)
Activation is the moment when the customer first recognizes the product’s value: the first invoice issued, the first report generated, the first integration up and running. It can occur during a free trial, after a demo, or during onboarding.
Many cancellations start here. The customer made a purchase but never actually used the software. Marketing helps with onboarding emails, tutorials, best-practice content, and communication that guides the user toward that first result.
Retention and Expansion
Once activated, the challenge is to keep the customer engaged and showcase new ways to create value. Content for the customer base, communications about new features, use cases, and upgrade campaigns conducted in collaboration with customer success teams help drive renewal and pave the way for expansion.
Satisfied customers also feed the top of the funnel with referrals and testimonials. That’s why a SaaS funnel looks more like a cycle than a straight line.
The Sales Funnel for a B2B SaaS Company
How to Generate Demand for B2B SaaS
ICP before the canal
ICP (ideal customer profile) is a description of the companies that benefit most from your product. In a SaaS business, the ICP shouldn’t be defined solely by who buys the product, but by who stays and grows. Looking at the customer base and identifying the customers with the highest retention and usage rates often reveals a profile different from what the team had imagined.
With a clear ICP, choosing a channel becomes simpler, because you know where that buyer is and what they need to hear. Without it, any channel becomes an expensive experiment.
Data from Latin America shows how the chosen customer profile impacts retention. In a Riverwood Capital survey of nearly 150 SaaS companies in the region, the median NRR was around 107% among those selling to large enterprises and 96% among those focused on small and medium-sized businesses. In practice, the same product can either retain and grow revenue or lose a portion of it each year, depending on who it is sold to.
Paid media (Google, LinkedIn, and Meta)
Each platform plays a different role in the B2B SaaS sales funnel:
- Google Ads targets people who are already looking for a solution, with searches such as “clinic management system” or “alternative to [competitor].” It’s the channel with the highest purchase intent.
- LinkedIn Ads allows you to target by job title, industry, and company size. It works well for reaching the buying committee and working through lists of target accounts.
- Meta Ads are typically less expensive and work well for remarketing and for niches where the decision-maker is also active on these platforms.
More important than the platform is what you measure. A SaaS campaign optimized for cost per lead tends to generate low-cost leads that never become customers. The key is to connect your tracking to your CRM and monitor opportunities and revenue by campaign. It’s also worth reading about why your Google Ads account might be generating clicks but not customers.
Content and Search (SEO, AEO, and GEO)
B2B decision-makers do a lot of research before speaking with the sales team. Content that addresses the questions they have at this stage—such as product comparisons, integrations, pricing, implementation, and use cases by industry—attracts those who are already evaluating options and ensures that leads reach the sales team better prepared.
This work takes place on three fronts. SEO is optimization to appear in Google search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) is optimization to appear in direct answers, such as featured snippets. GEO (generative engine optimization) is optimization to be cited by AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. If this last topic is new to you, learn what GEO is and why it already matters to software companies.
The focus is on content that resonates with the ICP, not traffic for traffic’s sake. An article that attracts 1,000 visitors who don’t fit the profile is worth less than one that attracts 100 decision-makers from the right industry.
Trial, freemium, or demo: Which entry model?
The onboarding model is how the customer experiences the product before paying. The three most common ones are:
- Free trial: full access for a limited period, such as 14 or 30 days.
- Freemium: a free, permanent version with limited features. Customers pay to get more.
- Demo: a demonstration led by the sales team, without open access to the product.
With freemium models, conversion rates are naturally low. According to a survey by Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar, a conversion rate of 3% to 5% is already considered good for a self-service freemium product, and 6% to 8% is considered excellent (Lenny’s Newsletter).
In B2B, a free trial rarely works on its own. The same study showed that 44% of companies offering a free trial have their sales team reach out directly to more than half of the registered users—twice as many as in the freemium model. The choice of model depends on the product’s complexity, the contract value, and who makes the decision.
| Model | When to use | Advantage | Risk |
| Free trial | A product that delivers value within a few days, average purchase amount | It creates a sense of urgency and lets you try it before you buy | The test ends without activation; it requires a robust onboarding process |
| Freemium | A simple product, intended for individual use, with high-volume potential | Many sign-ups and low sign-up friction | Low conversion rate and the cost of retaining non-paying users |
| Demo | Complex product, high price point, purchasing committee | Skilled Conversation and Consultative Selling | Longer cycle and dependence on the sales team's capacity |
Common Mistakes in SaaS Marketing
Volume of low-quality leads
Generating a lot of leads is easy. Generating leads that turn into customers and stick around is another story. When marketing is judged by volume, campaigns end up optimizing for what’s cheap, not for what delivers results. We explore this issue in more depth in the article “MQLs Are Not a Pipeline: Why Your Paid Media Might Be Optimizing for the Wrong Metric.”
CAC without tracking
Without knowing which channel each customer who stayed and grew came from, it’s impossible to know where to invest more. The most common mistake is tracking the lead only up to the form, but not all the way to the signed contract and renewal. With tracking connected to the CRM, CAC is no longer a general average but is calculated by channel, which changes budgeting decisions. If you’re setting this up, here’s how to create a paid media plan that actually converts.
Marketing that is disconnected from sales and customer success
Em um SaaS, o marketing precisa de informação dos dois lados: vendas sabe quais leads fecham, e customer success sabe quais clientes cancelam e por quê. Sem esse retorno, o marketing continua trazendo o mesmo perfil de cliente que sai em poucos meses. Reuniões recorrentes entre as áreas, critérios claros de qualificação e um CRM compartilhado resolvem boa parte do problema. Falamos mais sobre isso no guia de pipeline de vendas B2B.
Frequently Asked Questions
Traditional digital marketing usually ends with the sale. SaaS marketing continues after the sale, because revenue depends on the customer renewing and expanding their use. That’s why it tracks metrics such as CAC payback, churn, and NRR, and focuses on activation and retention—not just acquisition.
It depends on the contract value and the market segment. Companies that sell to large accounts typically accept longer payment terms because customers stay longer and spend more. Companies that sell to small and medium-sized businesses need to recoup their investment more quickly because churn tends to be higher. The most useful approach is to track the payback trend over the course of several quarters.
Segundo a Benchmarkit, empresas SaaS B2B com investimento de venture capital destinam, em média, 47% da receita a vendas e marketing, contra 33% nas controladas por private equity. Esses números vêm, em sua maioria, de empresas dos Estados Unidos com investimento externo. Para um SaaS brasileiro que cresce com receita própria, a referência mais útil é o próprio CAC payback.
It works when the product is easy to adopt, the user can see the value on their own, and there is enough market volume to offset the low conversion rate. For complex, high-priced products that require a purchasing committee, a free trial with follow-up support or a demo usually works best.
MQL (marketing-qualified lead) is a lead qualified by marketing based on profile and interest, such as downloading a whitepaper or visiting the pricing page. PQL (product-qualified lead) is a lead qualified based on product usage, such as a free trial user who has invited colleagues or enabled a key feature. In SaaS models with trials or freemium plans, PQLs typically indicate purchase intent more accurately.
Conclusion
SaaS marketing isn’t just standard marketing applied to software. Recurring revenue changes what’s measured, changes the sales funnel, and changes the role of marketing, which now also includes activation, retention, and expansion. Generating demand remains essential, but it only makes sense when new customers stay long enough to pay for what they cost.
The starting point is to look at the right metrics: CAC payback, churn, and NRR. Based on these, it becomes clear whether the problem lies in the channel, the customer profile, the onboarding model, or the alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success.
If you want to find out where your SaaS marketing is losing efficiency—from acquisition to expansion—Montre will conduct an assessment of your marketing and sales operations. Schedule your assessment and see how other B2B tech companies have improved their results with us.
