The SaaS market will be clocking in revenue worth $123 Billion by 2021. Reports suggest that the growth in revenue in SaaS companies is directly correlated to the measure of marketing efficiency. However, inbound tactics like blogs and eBooks don’t seem to engage users anymore. The need of the hour is interactive content. Hence, we are here with something that works without fail – SaaS calculators.
We are talking about interactive lead-generation calculators that add value by answering your prospect’s most pressing questions. They can help your prospects learn more about your offerings while providing your sales team with a greater understanding of the needs of your potential customers.
Due to their interactivity and personalization, these calculators are highly engaging, have a very high conversion rate, and bring in traffic from new segments.
This is why they have great ROI relative to other marketing initiatives. As a SaaS company, you rely on conversion, and interactive calculators have a conversion rate of over 40% as compared to just 2-12% for the run-of-the-mill landing pages. This considerably reduces your CPA.
Keeping this in view, here are 9 calculators that every SaaS company can build:
1. SaaS ROI Calculator – Let Your Customers Know the ROI on Your Product
Your prospective customers are wondering if they should buy your service. And, most sophisticated buyers will run an internal ROI analysis before buying to ensure there is a chance to increase ROI. So, why not make their life easier and create a calculator that gives them the answer upfront?
Why Do You Need It?
If you can tell customers how much your service/product costs them and what results they can expect, they are more likely to convert. An ROI Calculator helps build trust and makes the customers feel that you empathize with them. This can also be a great resource for selling upgrades to current customers by providing value.
Consider Outgrow’s ROI calculator that tells the potential ROI possible with an increase in leads and conversion rate as a result of using Outgrow’s interactive content builder.
Must Read: How to build an ROI calculator?
2. SaaS Cost Calculator – How Much Does Your Product Or Service Cost?
This simple calculator will input users’ requirements and tell them how much a service or product costs. This calculator can be used to answer more such questions like: “How much will a certain customization cost?”, “How much will the integration cost?”, ”How much will the implementation cost?”, “What will be the overhead of using this service?”
Why Do You Need It?
Customers’ biggest questions are always to do with costs. Google Trends shows that the searches for “how much” i.e. the cost of something, have gone up dramatically over the last 10 years. On the other hand, the searches for content like eBooks have fallen.
So, if you build a cost calculator for your audience, they’ll be happy to share it in their network. Take the VenturePact mobile app cost calculator for instance. It tells customers how much building a mobile app will cost. Within 2 weeks of launching, the calculator boosted traffic by 15% and increased conversion rate by 28%.
3. Timeline Calculator – Define Implementation Timeline Like a Pro
While the client is making a purchase decision, this calculator would estimate the time it would take to implement a software solution (or realize its RoI) on a client site.
Why Do You Need It?
If hosted on the client site, software products usually require anywhere between a few days to a few months for implementation. This implementation duration can be a major deciding factor for the client while comparing tools.
So if you can give an estimated implementation timeline for a certain product to the customers, they can plan their budgets accordingly. This will also speak highly about how transparent your company is and how well-versed you are in terms of preempting the client’s perspective.
Besides, a tool like this answers many questions about the implementation process and the variable on which the implementation time and cost will depend. They can then play with the numbers themselves rather than come to you every time they want to adjust some variable during negotiation.
4. Website Grader – Deliver More Value Upfront with Product/Service Related Diagnosis
These are calculators that diagnose an important aspect related to the product or service you’re providing. For example, a web development company can have a website grader and an SEO firm can have a campaign grader.
Check out Hubspot’s Website Grader that grades any site against key parameters like performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security.
Why Do You Need It?
Not only do such calculators establish you as an authority amongst your competition, but they also bring in new traffic. New traffic comes partly from search but more importantly from referrals made when people share the calculator with their teams and networks.
Consider this: a CEO runs his website through a website grader calculator and immediately shares it with his team, who then obsess over ensuring that their website gets a 100% grade. Besides, this tool converts better than eBooks, which require a lot of commitment.
5. Industry Metrics Calculator – Master the Industry Metrics
Calculators that calculate important industry metrics for your customer can be extremely useful in terms of bringing in highly relevant traffic. For example, an advertising firm can have a Google PPC ROI calculator.
Why Do You Need It?
People who care about PPC ROI are undoubtedly also prospects for an advertising tool. Similarly, users who search for developer productivity, are also buyers of a project management platform. Calculators like these help companies stand out in their industry.
Every company has a product marketing strategy, but something like this delivers value even before the customer signs up for the service. These calculators can build trust in your brand, showing the customers that you sincerely want to help them.
6. Savings Calculator – Surprise Your Customers with Upfront Savings
Customers love savings! This SaaS calculator will show them how your SaaS tool will lead to savings in the future.
Why Do You Need It?
Savings are at the top of the mind of every customer. This is why things like Google Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) have become such a hit! So, if you tell your prospects how much they can save using your SaaS product/service, they are highly likely to invest in it. A calculator like this can get you a lot of traction and qualified leads.
7. Ownership Cost Calculator – Why SaaS Beats In-House Development Hands Down
Tell your customers how much they are saving by using SaaS and not building in-house.
Check this calculator by Software Advice:
Why Do You Need It?
To attract prospects you must make them realize that your product is better than the solution they’re currently using – in this case, in-house development. Using this calculator you can prove how your product fares against an in-house one, built on different parameters like cost and time investment.
For instance, if they build a product in-house, it’ll cost them the salary of 3 developers for 3 months. However, if they opt for a pre-built product, they’ll only need to pay a small monthly fee.
Something like this will help you market your product without having to invest time in creating collateral time and again. Besides, it will help sell the tool internally to the decision-makers. Thus, even marketing freshers can use this data to champion your tool inside the organization.
8. Fun Calculators – Entertain your audience
All customers appreciate a joke. How fat are your servers? What number of trees is your tool saving? Or how many lines of code is your new project going to be?
Why Do You Need It?
Humor helps you sell more! Something humorous enough can go viral in no time. Remember Michael Dublin’s 2012 YouTube video for Dollar Shave Club that got almost 23 Million views?
Taking a cue from this, if you build a fun calculator that tells your prospects to decide whether they should break up with their developer, or how many trees their tool is saving, they’ll certainly share it in their network. It will help you connect with prospects on a human level and add to your brand value.
9. Price Comparison Calculator – Show your prospects why you are better
How much do your services cost in comparison to your competitors’ services? This calculator tells just that!
Why Do You Need It?
Consumers often make the final purchase decision after comparing the pricing of two or more companies. This comparison calculator can help in targeting this psychology and thus drive more sales by helping your customers make informed decisions. Besides, this is a smart way of saying why they should choose you over others.
Have other SaaS calculators idea? Leave them in the comments, and we can co-create some really awesome tools! Alternatively, start creating your first interactive experience now.
Roy is a full-time content marketer at Outgrow. He often travels to the Himalayas in search of his muse to breathe. Being a professional marketer & a passionate traveler, he struggles to keep the balance.