#72 - Write your SaaS Growth

Growth at different MRR levels

Dec 09, 2023

Welcome 387+ SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and Marketers to the 72nd edition of the Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

Google Ads: 7 ways to grow your SaaS with Google Ads
Community: How community can help your SaaS in the next 5 years
Growth Marketing: Growing your SaaS at various MRR levels
Sales: Have more prospects show up to your SaaS demo calls
SEO: 28+ mistakes to avoid generating revenue for your SaaS

Let’s GO!

Google Ads 📈

7 ways to generate more conversions and revenue with Google Ads:

Luke shares 7 growth hacks with Google Ads for your SaaS:

Optimize Quality Score: Your Quality Score impacts your CTR and ad ranking. Google rewards high QS advertisers with lower CPC and higher ad positions. To increase tour QS & ROI, give special attention to:
1. Ad Relevance
2. Click through rate
3. Product Page
Appeal to Emotions Half of all ads are average or below-average performers. They all sound the same. Boring. So how do you achieve high-performing ads? Emotions. If you can’t make them feel something, you can’t get them to click.
Optimize for Mobile: 50% of searches from phones. Mobile typically already has greater intent as people are on the go and need to be fulfilled immediately.
Funnel: Ad -> Click-to-Call -> Lead Captured
Use Competitor’s Keywords: One of the best hack to get you more clicks. But also increase the ROI of your PPC campaign… Is to use competitor’s keywords. It’s proven that there’s purchasing intent through those keywords. Take advantage of it.
Geotargeting: If you don’t optimize ads based on location… You’re losing traffic. Geo-targeting helps you find your ICP by assessing their behavior.
1. Create custom ad content
2. Generate traffic
3. Funnel them
  Use geo-targeting for this.
Negative keywords: Want a boost in your ROAS? Use negative keywords. You only attract potential buyers, which increases the conversion rate. e.g. Running shoes → Use negative keywords such as “dress shoes” or “high heels”
Draft Touch Insane Ads: If you can surprise ad visitors, you’ll stay top of mind. Draft compelling ad copies by adding an emotional touch. Make it irresistible for your viewers to take action. There are various ways to do this, but what’s most important is… Make them click the ad.

Bonus: Formatting Use Title Case in your First Heading. The second heading should support the first one. And add a clear CTA. Show success, reviews, and your USP.

Community 📈

How SaaS businesses will evolve over the next 5 years:

Greg thinks this is what happens over the next 5 years in software (how I think a new AI gold rush plays out).

AI is getting so advanced that anyone with a good idea can create beautiful software. We're talking about social apps so stunning that Steven Paul Jobs himself would stop and smile.

They'll be plenty of bootstrapped founders building software in their bedrooms or home offices. Imagine you find a niche, build some unique software. Things take off, and before you know it, you're raking in $1M run rate, maybe even $10M run rate.

Sounds great, right? But here's the catch... the faster you rise, the quicker you might fall. Imagine this... a teenager in Illinois, just playing around, clones your app.

Suddenly, checking your Stripe account feels like opening a letter from the IRS. Not so fun anymore. This era, my friends, is going to create a lot of wealth. But it's going to be a rollercoaster.

Lots of these businesses won't last. The average software business will last months not years. Software is becoming like grains of sand on a beach – plentiful and, sadly, undervalued. It's a downward race on price.

Today's victory can be tomorrow's loss. But here's the type of software that will survive 5+ years as cash-flowing machines:

Platform discoverability Being visible on places like GPT Store or Shopify is like having a neon sign for your product. The apps that have real estate here will outperform clones.
Real community This is the heart of your product. You can clone features, but you can't clone a community
Organic reach Good old boring techniques like SEO. It's not dead, despite what people say. I've seen use AI to drive insane traffic to apps. So, to wrap up my late night thoughts...
AI 10000x the amount of software out there. If you send a text message, you'll be able to create software 2. In the commoditized world of software, marketing isn't just king – it's the entire kingdom

That's the landscape for the next half-decade. Strap in, 2024 and beyond is going to be a wild ride.

Growth Marketing 📈

Growing your SaaS at various stages.

Luke says each stage of growing a SaaS business is wildly different.

Chapter 1: 0 - $100K
Chapter 2: $100K - $1M
Chapter 3: $1M - $5M
Chapter 4: $5M - $10M

Here are a few areas of focus to hone in throughout the journey:

Scaling from 0 to $100K

Find a problem that’s a “need to have” (revenue generating, churn reduction, compliance) not a “nice to have” (saving time, “cool”, technology, etc.)
If you’re a seller, partner with a builder, if you’re a builder, partner with a seller. If you’re neither, become one of these.
Build an MVP, partner with first few customers who have a problem so significant they are wiling to take the leap with you.
Eat ramen, don't spend money, figure out how to make it work. This phase is NOT raising money, press releases, startup awards, etc.

Scaling from $100k to $1M

Ensure that the problem is a pandemic - it’s wide spread within the industry that you are aiming to serve
Build commercial version v1
Sell your way to $1M.

This phase is NOT branding, Forbes 30 under 30, or hiring a bunch of people.

Scaling from $1M to $5

Raise an institutional round (if you need to or if it makes sense)
Build out a team of key department leaders / VP’s who have already successfully done this stage in their respective role
Obsess over customer retention and product joy
Find your second “need to have” problem and begin going multi-product. This phase is NOT “ I’m a paper millionaire”, let’s ramp burn like mad men prematurely.

Scaling from $5M to $10M

Scale product one
Begin expanding product two into product one base and broader market
Begin on product 3
Maniacal focus on getting sellers efficient, ramped, and achieving a healthy CAC
Maniacal focus on NRR
Fire that one VP that you just screwed up on (wherever your spending way too much time / have little trust in)

This phase is NOT let’s go look for another industry to serve or time to go international.

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

Are you looking to scale your social media content efforts?

RePurpose is one app that repurposes your Twitter posts to video content on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.

You can convert Your Tweets To Videos Automatically and Grow your TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, on autopilot.

Try RePurpose for free.

Sales 📈

Have more prospects show up to your demo calls.

Yassin says people won't show up to your meetings. If you don't use Alex Hormozi's no-show eliminator. He accidentally leaked his internal process of 'Alan' where they book 4,000 appointments A DAY.

And it produces 95% show up rates. Must-Read for SaaS Owners:

The no-show eliminator consist of 4 elements.

Availability Not having enough days & times available causes the BIGGEST drop off. An easy hack is to make it as open as possible. He also said, while painful, it's better to let people book up to 14 days into the future.
Speed of contact Not confirming & responding to emails quick is KILLING your show-up rates. You can also set up an AI to reply to emails and handle objections. I did this and booked 40+ calls a week without any human work (check the link in my bio to learn how)
Volume The more emails you send after someone booked, the higher the probability of them showing up. Given the emails are good. Recommended:
1. Confirmation email
2. Value email
3. What to expect
4. 24 hr Reminder
5. 1 hr Reminder
Personalization He recommends an approach where you hit prospects with different channels. (Twitter/LinkedIN/Cold Email) Some tools allow you to do this. And then have conversations where THEY like to respond. That way you stay on top of mind.

SEO 📈

28+ revenue mistakes to avoid for your SaaS Pages:

Jess shares a checklist of 28+ REVENUE-KILLING mistakes to avoid in SaaS content & SEO strategy: I’ve used 15 years of experience working with 51+ SaaS to develop this playbook:

How can we help each other? 🥅

Let me help you build a creative and unique marketing campaign for your SaaS. 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