#63 - Write your SaaS Growth

7 advanced CRO tactics.

Oct 07, 2023

Welcome 355 SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and Marketers to the 63rd edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

ICP: 6 ways to validate your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Cold Email: 7 cold email principles to make more sales
CRP: 7 advanced tactics
Copywriting: 7 ways to elevate your copy
SEO: 7 backlink tactics that work

Let’s GO!

Ideal Customer Profile 📈

How to Streamline Ideal Customer Profile Validation without having a dedicated marketing team.

This post is led by our community member Ksenia. Support Intently on Product Hunt to help you turn LinkedIn actions into sales opportunities.

Ksneia says In the dynamic realm of SaaS, identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) efficiently, especially when resources are scarce, can be a challenge.

Here are 6 ways you can do ICP validation:

Product Launch: Launching the product feature, MVP, or just prototype on platforms like BetaList, HackerNews Bot, accelerator communities, and Product Hunt to gain initial user traction.
Product Interviews: Engaging in conversations with early adopters to assess how well the product caters to their needs and whether they are willing to invest in an extended version.
Cold Outreach: Reaching out to potential customers through various channels like emails.
Competitor Analysis: Analyzing competitors to identify potential opportunities and threats in the market.
Social Listening: Monitoring social media channels for mentions of the competitors’ product, queries from prospects, new trends or solutions related to you.
Community Engagement: Actively participating in relevant communities to gain valuable insights and generate leads for interviews.

However, the reality is that these steps demand a considerable amount of time and effort, often a challenge for many early-stage SaaS businesses that lack a dedicated marketing team. You can also utilize a tool to help you with ICP.

Unified tools for ICP validation, lead generation, and engagement are equipped with advanced algorithms and data analytics, and are increasingly accessible. They can assist you in efficiently discovering their ICP, engaging with them effectively, and establishing meaningful relationships.

For example, you can use Intently to define leads on LinkedIn, find look-alike leads, and track accounts from CRM with the most social media relevant activity.

Note: Do you have a PH launch around and want to talk about how your tool can help with marketing for SaaS businesses? Send me a DM on Twitter @rickywrites.

Cold Email

7 cold email principles to live by.

Ben says he signed 6 clients in 1 month using cold emails. How? By using these 7 cold email principles.

Research Begin with clarity. The best cold email experts always research their prospects prior to hitting send. Who's your ideal client? What do they need? Commit to answering these key questions before doing anything else.
Subject Line First impressions matter. Every great response begins with a catchy subject line. What grabs your attention? What stands out in your inbox? Be deliberate with this exercise. Be honest with yourself. The subject line may look different than you expect.
Don't be Selfish "Make it about them, not you." – Zig Ziglar Cold emails need value. Offering a free audit or consultation works well.
Benefits Brian Dean created a neat framework - “The Benefit-Driven Email” - for establishing value:
- Identify the problem
- Offer a solution
- Give a clear call to action. Fill it in and watch your responses soar.
2-2-2 Method Jill Konrath coined the “2-2-2 Method”. First, capture attention in the first 2 seconds. Next, make sure they understand your message in 2 minutes. This framework forces you to keep it short and sweet.
Clear Emails Apple is the master of clean communication. Steve Jobs was famous for simplicity. Take a lesson from the best. Keep your emails concise and clear.
Build Trust Trust is an insanely powerful force. The best cold emails build trust. Emails that showcase testimonials or case studies last forever.

CRO 📈

7 Advanced Strategies to SKYROCKET Your Conversion Rates.

Brian says conversions isn’t just about writing persuasive sentences. It's about understanding human psychology, leveraging data, and constantly evolving with the market:

Here are 7 advanced strategies to exponentially grow your conversion rates:

Harness Behavioral Segmentation Not all customers are created equal. Dive deep into your analytics and segment your audience based on behavior.
1. Are they repeat visitors?
2. Did they abandon a purchase?
3. Or something else? Tailor your copy to address the unique needs and behaviors of different segments.
Employ the Zeigarnik Effect Our brains have a quirk – we remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones. Intrigue your readers with open loops or stories that conclude later on. It keeps them engaged and eager for closure.
Use Retargeting Wisely Ever browsed a product only to see it everywhere on the web later? That’s retargeting. Don’t just bombard your potential customers with the same ad. Customize your copy based on what they looked at, their previous interactions, or even the time since their last visit.
A/B Test Like There’s No Tomorrow Don’t rely on your gut feeling. Test headline variants, CTA buttons, and even story angles. What resonates with one audience might not with another. Use tools and platforms that allow you to A/B test in real time and gain actionable insights.
Leverage Scarcity and Urgency – But Authentically "Only 5 left in stock" or "Offer ends in 2 hours" can push prospects to convert. But be authentic. Customers can sense faux urgency. If you're going to use this tactic, ensure there's a genuine reason behind the scarcity.
Dive into Deep Personalization Beyond just “Hello [First Name],” use data to craft personalized experiences. If a customer bought running shoes, perhaps they're prepping for a marathon. Offer them content or products that align with their journey.
Tap into Social Proof and Authority Incorporate testimonials, reviews, and case studies into your copy. But DON'T stop there. Highlight industry recognitions, certifications, or mentions from authoritative figures. They bolster your credibility immensely.

The Bottom Line Boosting conversion rates is no longer just about a catchy headline and a clear CTA. It's about understanding your customer at a deep, almost intuitive level, and using that knowledge to craft experiences that resonate.

The above strategies, while advanced, can lead to quantum leaps in conversion if executed correctly. Always be learning, always be testing, and always be optimizing.

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

SaaS founders often struggle to keep their customer and lead data organized. Inaccurate or incomplete information can lead to missed sales opportunities and inefficient marketing efforts.

Many businesses also struggle with data management, including lead information, customer interactions, and sales pipelines. Data inconsistency and disorganization hinder efficient decision-making and lead to missed opportunities.

As businesses grow, managing sales processes manually becomes increasingly impractical. Entrepreneurs often find it challenging to scale their sales operations efficiently.

FreshSales provides a 360-degree view of customers, helping businesses personalize interactions and provide better customer service. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Try FreshSales for free.

Copywriting 📈

Just good copy is not enough for copy, emails, SEO, socials, and sales.

Kush says 90% of copywriters focus solely on writing techniques. After a few weeks of learning, I found something different. It's not just about the writing.

6 skills to elevate your copy from okay-ish to unforgettable:

Empathy: To sell, you need to understand people. How do you do that? Talk to them. Find out their pain points, intentions, and desires. Ask questions:
1. What frustrates them
2. What motivates them
3. What are their goals? Empathy is key.
Storytelling: People don't buy your product, they buy the story behind it. The story sets the value of a product before the price does. Why? Because stories are universal. They tap into the emotional, subconscious part of our brains.
Psychology: Buying is an emotional decision, not a logical one. Our brains decide first, and then come up with rational reasons after. And that's okay. Copywriting is 90% psychology. Use it to tap into the audience's emotions and desires directly.
Simplicity: People don't read, they skim. Make your copy easy to understand by using:
1. Short paragraphs
2. Sentence fragments
3. Headings
4. Bullet points
5. White space.
  If your copy is difficult to read, it won't be read.
Specificity: Here's a formula for specificity:
1. State the benefit
2. Prove the benefit
3. Quantify the benefit
4. Add a deadline.
  For example: → Lose 10 pounds in 1 month or your money back. Specificity makes your copy credible and increases its perceived value.
Editing: Great copywriters are great editors. Don't stop at the first draft. Edit until it's the best it can be. Remember, good edits will elevate your ideas to a whole new level.

SEO 📈

The RIGHT backlinks can be a huge game-changer.

Nick shares an 8-step checklist to make sure you’re ALWAYS getting backlinks that matter.

Website topical relevance: Is the site you’re getting a link from relevant to your niche? Ideally, it should be niche-adjacent to you. E.g. if you're in the weight loss niche, you'd want links from sites that cover: - Exercise - Fitness - Diet - Recipes -
Page relevance: The same goes for the page you’re getting a link from. An article about accounting linking to a gambling website won't have impact. Even if a website covers 5 different clusters. The specific post you're getting a link from should be RELEVANT to your niche.
NOT DA/DR: This is an interesting one. DA/DR are third-party metrics and usually, CAN’T be trusted... ONLY if you’re looking at them in a vacuum. Just because a site has high DA, doesn’t mean it’s a good place for a backlink.
They can be super useful for understanding a link’s value at a glance. But you should look at other metrics as well.
For example, this site has a 67(!) DA… But their organic traffic looks like this. Their website probably got penalized. So, you don't want a link from here.
Traffic & ranking: What's a better way to check if a site is in Google's good graces than looking at their rankings? if a site is getting consistent, healthy traffic over time - that’s a green flag. Good traffic, ton of backlinks, high DR… But what about their rankings?
Well, they’re writing about just about everything under the sun. So, the site has good DA, DR, traffic, but it's NOT relevant. DA and DR are pretty easy to boost. But what's the point if it's not satisfying other quality metrics?
Traffic Trends: Traffic trends Is the website growing in traffic or have they been penalized? If a site’s traffic graph looks like this, it might mean that they got penalized and their links are useless.
This, on the other hand, looks like a much healthier traffic growth trend: If they check all the other boxes, a link from a site like this would be great. Healthy site = healthy backlink.
Page metrics: Does the page you’re getting a link from have its own backlinks? Ideally, yes. But this is NOT a deal-breaker. If the rest of the metrics are OK, don’t worry about this too much. If a page has a link profile like this - that's better than a page with 0 links.
Is the site a link farm? A link farm is a type of site specifically created to sell backlinks. Such sites use shady tactics to boost their DA/DR to make themselves look good for backlink prospects. Fortunately, they’re easy to spot…
Run their site through Ahrefs or Semrush, and you realize their existing rankings don't match their DA/DR. Link farms often get caught and penalized. So, make sure to AVOID links from such sites. Few other things you should be on the lookout for:
1. They post low-quality, AI, or paid guest posts
2. Very basic WP theme with minimal changes
3. 6-10+ unrelated niches - e.g. lifestyle, design, CBD, fashion, SEO, etc.
4. No brand identity, no pictures, no “about us” page
5. TON of outgoing links
Do-follow & not sponsored: Typically, Google doesn’t consider no-follow or sponsored links when it comes to evaluating a site’s rankings. So, if a site is only willing to give no-follow or sponsored links, it’s usually not worth paying for.

How can we help each other? 🥅

Let me help you build a creative and unique marketing campaign for your Tech Product. Know more
Subscribe to my Marketing Campaigns Playbook newsletter

Thanks for reading! SaaSwrites is a humble attempt to help SaaS founders and marketers grow their SaaS.

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

SaaSwrites

P.S. If you liked this edition, it would mean the world to us if you share it with your friends. :) Thank you in advance!

Write your SaaS Growth