#65 - Write your SaaS Growth

[AARRR + The Buyers Journey]

Oct 21, 2023

Welcome 358 SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and Marketers to the 65th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

Ads: 4 dead-simple steps you can’t miss if you run ads
Marketing Strategy: 2 key inputs for an effective SaaS marketing strategy
Email Marketing: How to build and grow your SaaS email list?
Growth Marketing: Building trust for your SaaS customers
SEO: 10-step guide to build links for your SaaS

Let’s GO!

Ads 📈

4 dead-simple steps you can’t miss if you run ads:

Brian shares 4 steps to keep in mind when you run your next ad campaign.

Find your customer's pains & dreams: You can’t persuade them to buy if you don’t speak to them directly.
• Startup founders?
• Marketing agencies?
• B2C SaaS companies?
Find their pains & dreams. We'll need this to get them to buy in the next step.
Make custom sales pages: If your sales page doesn’t convince them to buy, there’s no point in running the ad. Make a different sales page for each type of customer you have. Speak to how your solution helps them achieve their pains & dreams. Use their words (not yours).
Run the ads: Now we drive people to your site. Use one of the 6 best digital ad types:
• Paid Search
• Newsletter
• Podcast
• Display
• Socials
• Native
If you’ve never run ads, you can’t go wrong with Facebook or Google ads.
Track to see who’s buying: We need to know what's working and what's not. Just focus on the few most important metrics:
• Did they convert?
• How did they find out about you?
• Who are they?
Keep it simple. I like Microsoft Clarity or Fathom for analytics. Master running ads and you’ll have more people seeing your business than you know what to do with.

Marketing Strategy

2 ideas that are key to developing a strong SaaS marketing strategy.

Ross says SaaS has a few key concepts that can help any marketing team better think about the way they grow.

These two ideas [AARRR + The Buyers Journey] are two ideas that are key to developing a strong SaaS marketing strategy (even though AARRR is many years old)

These are two concepts that should be studied in Universities around the world. It would reduce the likelihood of people graduating with little understanding of how to apply their degree in this new world of marketing.

IDEA 1: AARRR (Pirate Metrics):

Acquisition: This stage focuses on acquiring new users or customers. SaaS marketers should employ strategies like content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, social media marketing, and partnerships to drive user acquisition.
Activation: Activation involves getting users to have a positive initial experience with your SaaS product. It may include onboarding processes, tutorials, and email campaigns to guide users toward their first "aha" moment.
Retention: Retention is crucial for SaaS businesses. It's about keeping users engaged and preventing churn. Email marketing, in-app messaging, customer support, and product improvements can help retain customers.
Referral: Encouraging satisfied customers to refer others can be a cost-effective way to acquire new users. Implement referral programs, incentivize sharing, and make it easy for customers to advocate for your product.
Revenue: Ultimately, revenue is the goal. SaaS marketers can employ pricing optimization, upselling, cross-selling, and targeting high-value customer segments to increase revenue.

IDEA 2: The B2B SaaS Buyer's Journey:

Awareness: In this stage, potential customers become aware of a problem or need. SaaS marketers should create educational content, blog posts, and social media campaigns to attract and inform prospects.
Consideration: During consideration, prospects evaluate possible solutions. Content like whitepapers, case studies, and webinars can help position your SaaS product as a viable solution.
Close: In the close stage, prospects are ready to make a choice. SaaS marketers can use product demos, free trials, testimonials, and personalized messaging to convince prospects to choose their product.
Retain: Create content that keeps customers loving your brand. Help them get a promotion. Help them get a win internally. Help them look like a genius. Create stories that make them WANT to talk about you.
Delight: These are the small yet impactful pieces of content and marketing activities you do to keep your customers happy. It could be events. It could be sponsorship. It could be launching great features and ensuring that they're aligned with their needs.

Email Marketing 📈

6 reasons to build an email list.

Victor shares 6 reasons why building an email list is the best thing you could do for your business:

It’s easy: To write emails you need to know 2 things: - how to write - how to use Convertkit. As long as you can type on a laptop and press the send button, you can make a full-time income with email.
High ROI (return on investment) Studies show that email averages a 3,800 to 4,400 percent ROI on average (NOT a typo). That means for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect to make back $38-$44. Think about how insane that is.
High conversion rates Despite the existence of social media, it still converts higher than any other marketing channel. If your tweets convert 1 out of 20, your emails will convert at 3 out of 20. That’s 3x the amount of sales and money.
Recession proof skill Every single type of business on the planet can benefit from email. Email will never die.
You don’t need a massive following to start You need thousands of followers to monetize your social media account. But to monetize an email list you only need a few hundred subscribers (or less). Plus you can’t be banned or suspended because you own your email list.
Massively overlooked Despite the fact that email: - is way older than social media - makes more money than social media People STILL overlook email marketing. This means the few people who take email seriously (like you) will have an enormous advantage over everyone else in online business.

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

Are you looking to have a better customer experience across support, marketing, and sales?

Here’s a CRM platform that connects with customers through personalised conversations to build trust and grow revenue.

Gist is a an easy to use all-in-one software for live chat, email marketing automation, forms, knowledge base, and more for a complete 360° view of your contacts.

Try Gist.

Growth Marketing 📈

How to build trust for your buyers?

Dejan shares what he has learned about trust through 1+ year of copywriting:

First, you need to categorize potential buyers into two sections:

Those who are buying for the first time.
Those who have bought from you before. The second is ALWAYS better.

Once someone has bought from you and you've over-delivered, there will be trust 100%. But what if they're buying from you for the first time?

Here are a few options:

Show testimonials.
Show your previous work.
Show results.

All three are meant to reduce risk, and that's what should be your goal. Building trust will come naturally over time.

Now, it's time to minimize risk and make a sale. If you have previous work to show, especially great ones, it can work even better than testimonials in some situations.

However, this can depend a lot on the potential buyers. Keep in mind that most people won't ask whether your work was done for free or paid client. What matters is performance and was the goal was achieved.

Now, start writing and gain some proof. Then, solve their problems and make money.

It's simple, but it's not easy.

SEO 📈

Step-by-step guide on how to build high quality, relevant links affordably.

Charles says most people in SEO think that link building is the most difficult activity, but I'm here to tell you it's actually one of the easiest.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to build high quality, relevant links affordably:

Step 1 - Use Google search operators to find relevant websites, you can use MozBar or AhrefsBar to get metrics like DR or DA in the SERP.

Step 2 - Add each site to your sheet and manually analyze them to make sure they aren't guest post farms, inactive, hacked, spammy or not relevant enough to your site/niche.

Step 3 - Use the MailDump Email Finder (FREE) via the website or browser extension to find emails for your target domains - You can use Hunterio ($34+/mo) for better data.

Step 4 - Create a PVA Gmail account.

Step 5 - Create a template to send to the site owners or editors asking how much it costs for a post or link on the site. I build more niche edits than guest posts, so try to specify the page you want a link on first, if possible.

Step 6 - Use GMass to send your outreach emails to the entire list and use a catchy subject line with an emoji to get maximum CTR. Always ask for the site's price, never offer money upfront as they could be offering it cheaper than what you're willing to pay for - You can use PitchBox ($495/mo+) for a LOT more features, multiple email addresses and way better UI.

Step 7 - Negotiate link type (guest post or niche edit) and pricing with the site owner. I always try to get links for under $100, and even if you don't buy a link, still add it to your database to track, as it could be valuable in the future.

Step 8 - Some people like to use Escrow to guarantee their links go live, but I think it's a bit too much hassle... I just try to have them send me a PayPal link or pay via wise.

Step 9 - Choose your anchor text, target page and link type wisely.

Step 10 - Monitor your links (Use ScrapeBox or LinkValidator) to make sure site owners don't tamper with them (like changing to NoFollow or deleting the guest post) Now you can run link building campaigns, and it's really not all that difficult or expensive!

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
I’m building a new product MarkaTick - a marketing planner and tracker tool for businesses. Check it out here!

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