2025 SaaS Marketing Benchmarks for Startup Growths
Summary
When it comes to setting up realistic goals, SaaS Marketing Benchmarks are critical.
They can help you get industry insights, and decide where you should focus.
But let’s take one more step and identify the most important SaaS marketing benchmarks. Specifically for your SaaS growth.
Here, we’ll be going over a list of SaaS marketing benchmarks for 2025.
First, based on the stage of your SaaS business. Next, on the marketing channel you prefer.
We have tried to give you an end-to-end picture of where you can focus and how the SaaS industry performs.
Without taking any more time, let’s get started right away.
What SaaS marketing benchmarks should you focus on?
Based on your SaaS journey, you can be at one of these three phases.
- Startup Phase: Initial stage focused on developing a viable product and achieving product-market fit. Here you validate the business model and secure early adopters.
- Growth Phase: Expansion stage where the business scales its customer base, revenue, and operations. Your goal here can be to accelerate growth through customer acquisition and retention.
- Maturity Phase: Stage where the business optimizes operations, maximizes profitability, and sustains growth. Business goal here is to maintain market leadership and drive long-term customer loyalty.
Let’s go over the most important SaaS marketing benchmarks based on these phases.
Startup Phase
Organic Traffic Growth
Organic Traffic Growth is the increase in website visitors coming through unpaid search results over time. This can be the result of referral traffic that you gain through social media, outreach, or community engagement.
Goal is to increase organic traffic growth. And more importantly, targeted organic traffic.
As per recent SaaS Marketing Benchmarks from Ahrefs, SaaS companies are seeing 30% year-over-year growth in their organic traffic.
SmallPDF increased Organic Traffic from 41.1 million to 55.5 million visits, marking a growth of 35%. BuiltWith on the other hand saw a staggering rise of 498% from 526,880 to 3.1 million visits.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses.
As per recent SaaS marketing benchmarks, there has been a 50% increase in the cost of customer acquisition over the last five years. On average, B2B SaaS have a CAC of $273 and for B2C it is $165.
Ideally, your goal should be to keep the cost of acquisition low. Focus on marketing channels with lowest CAC for your industry.
And once you have assessed that, create high-quality content to improve pipeline velocity.
Trial to Paid Users
At this stage you should also optimize to avoid free trial abuse of your SaaS. The first step here is to identify how many trial users actually converted into paid customers.
Recent SaaS marketing benchmarks have suggested a conversion of 15% to 25% conversion rate from free trials to paid subscriptions for B2B SaaS.
For B2C, the average free trial to paid conversion is much higher at 57%.
Growth Phase
Customer Retention Rate (CRR)
CRR or Customer Retention Rate is the percentage of customers you are able to keep over a specific time and period. Goal here is obviously a long time, as higher CRR means higher growth rate.
Simply by growing your CRR by 5%, SaaS companies can boost their profits by 25-90%.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
You can only increase your CRR when your customers are happy with you. And one way to find that is through your NPS score.
Net Promoter Score is a customer satisfaction metric that measures how likely customers are to recommend your company’s products or services. Higher NPS means your user likes you and will like to recommend you to others as well.
On average, as per recent SaaS marketing benchmarks, the NPS score for SaaS companies has been 32 as. If you are close or above it, you are likely on the growth path.
Churn Rate
Churn Rate is the percentage of customers who stop using a service or product during a given period.
Aim is it to keep the churn rate as low as possible by increasing your retention rate. Ideally, the churn rate of business should be less than 1%.
But most SaaS companies targeting small businesses have churn of 3% to 5% each month.
Maturity Phase
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to CAC Ratio
The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to CAC Ratio compares the value a customer brings over their lifetime to the cost of acquiring them, helping assess the efficiency of customer acquisition.
As per recent SaaS marketing benchmarks, LTV to CAC ratio for B2B SaaS is 2.5:1 and for B2C, it is 4:1.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Net Revenue Retention is the percentage of revenue retained from existing customers over a period, accounting for upsells, downgrades, and churn.
The goal is definitely to increase NRR. Since you already have a set of users, increasing revenue from them can help you grow.
In the broader SaaS market, companies have recorded a median NRR of 97% in early 2024, marking an improvement from previous periods.
Email for Marketing for SaaS
Email marketing has continued to be a vital tool for growth in SaaS. As per recent SaaS marketing statistics, 31% marketers are using email marketing.
Moreover, 41% of marketers plan to incorporate email automation into their strategies.
Automated emails have been shown to generate 320% more revenue compared to non-automated campaigns, highlighting the efficiency and effectiveness of this approach.
For SaaS specifically, emails are getting 21.25% open rate with a click rate of 3.22%. Considering the personalization and reach of the email, it is definitely a channel that will help SaaS grow in 2025.
Account Based Marketing for SaaS
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has emerged as a powerful strategy for SaaS companies, particularly in enhancing return on investment (ROI).
As per recent SaaS marketing benchmarks, approximately 81% of B2B marketers report that the ROI from their ABM initiatives is higher than that of other marketing strategies. And that’s because of the personalized sales approach of the medium.
And now with AI and automation in the workforce the use cases will expand even more.
ABM has been linked to a 25% increase in conversion rates from marketing-qualified leads. Making it a desirable channel for Startup and larger deal sizes.
Social Media Marketing for SaaS
As per recent SaaS marketing Benchmarks, Social media marketing has become a pivotal channel for SaaS companies.
In 2023, 60% of B2B marketers identified social media as the leading channel for driving revenue, highlighting its importance in the SaaS sector.
Today, social platforms are being used for various goals such as, Brand Recognition, Community Building, and Trust Establishment.
These help in retaining a customer for even longer duration by building a connection via content.
B2B Marketing for SaaS
Specifically if we talk about B2B SaaS marketing benchmarks, there are numerous trends to speak of.
Biggest one being content centric approach in the growth. Approximately 90% of SaaS companies incorporate blog postings into their marketing strategies.
Reason being the ROI they are able to generate. Effective content marketing can lead to a remarkable 400% growth in lead generation for SaaS firms.
And now with AI at assist, 66% of B2B leaders acknowledge how important the AI tools will be in their growth.
Paids Ads for SaaS marketing
Paid ads are another major investment in SaaS marketing. The average CPC for Google Ads in the B2B SaaS sector is approximately $4.22.
And with a paid traffic that converts at a rate 50% higher than organic traffic, Paid ads become an effective lead generation channel.
The average CPL for Google Ads is about $53.52.
And with the market dominance it has, Google has over 83% share, significantly impacting where SaaS companies allocate their advertising budgets.
Final Words
Understanding and leveraging the right SaaS marketing benchmarks is essential to drive growth at every stage of your business.
Whether you’re in the startup phase focusing on organic traffic or in the maturity phase optimizing profitability, each benchmark offers valuable insights
Additionally, learning about marketing channels such as email automation, ABM, and social media continue to play a crucial role in enhancing ROI for SaaS.
By aligning your strategies with these benchmarks, you can ensure sustainable growth and stay competitive in the ever-evolving SaaS landscape in 2025.