#46 - Write your SaaS Growth 📈

YouTube Ads techniques, Catharsis to craft stories, building a strong community, 15 steps to build links, RAS strategy

Welcome 239 Tech Founders and Marketers to the 46th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

  • YouTube Ads: 6 YouTube Ads Tactics to high ROAS

  • Content Marketing: Use Catharsis to craft stories

  • Community Building: 6 ingredients to build a strong community  

  • SEO: 15 steps to build links for your SaaS

  • Social Media Marketing: RAS Strategy to build 100 loyal fans

Let’s GO!

Growth Tip of the Week! 🚀

You should avoid SEO as a marketing channel overall unless you're ready to commit to long-term work. While it is possible to sometimes get results within 1-3 months of SEO work, those cases are pretty rare.

If you need revenue TOMORROW or you go bankrupt, try content marketing, PPC, direct sales, email marketing, or any other channel.

YouTube Ads 📈

YouTube ads can be as profitable as TikTok ads, if not more for SaaS products.

Jackson shares how to build your SaaS brand and create a high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) with YouTube ads:

  1. Make the First Few Seconds Count: YouTube shorts ads are skippable. Make each second count. Instantly capture your target's attention with: • An attention-grabbing statement • Relevant question • Unique brand feature Think of headlines that make YOU want to click.

  2. Make It On Brand. A great video ad builds your brand equity. Highlight: • Unique features of your brand • What sets your brand apart • Customer testimonials. You'll build curiosity and trust. This triggers the secondary benefits of more brand searches. You'll give all your other campaigns a significant boost.

  3. Get to The Point: People on YouTube shorts have short attention spans. Optimize for retention and engagement by keeping your videos short. Aim for 15-60 seconds.

  4. Show your product/service in action. Take advantage of the format. - Demonstrate the product - Show it in action - Use an exciting visual. Without demonstrating value, not only will your customer leave, they'll skip your video.

  5. Optimize for Sound Off. A lot of people watch videos without sound. Either incorporate subtitles or create a narrative that doesn’t need audio. Make sure your message is still conveyed without sounds.

  6. Provide a clear call to action (CTA). Always have a CTA. Make it easy for viewers to take action. While this can convert some of your viewers…

What are your thoughts on with YouTube Ads? Have you ever used YouTube Ads? Let us know in the comments how it goes or what you think about it.

Content Marketing 📈

Content marketing becomes powerful when it has a relatable story as an attachment for your target audience. That’s maximizing the true potential of your content.

Kuba shares how to use the power of Catharsis to craft stories people can't resist:

Catharsis is the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Think emotional exhale. It's the reason we feel connected when reading a book or watching a movie!

How can you apply this to content writing? There are 3 major rules you need to follow. Let's go:

  1. Create relatable and emotional hooks. Relatable hooks are CRUCIAL. Understand your audience's: • pain points • desires • motivations Create content that speaks directly to them. This builds empathy with your readers. That empathy fuels connection.

  1. Build tension & anticipation. This is where storytelling comes in. It doesn't matter if you're writing a how-to guide or a personal narrative - a sense of tension keeps readers engaged and wanting more.

  2. Offer a satisfying release or resolution. After taking your audience along an emotional journey, give them something to hold onto. Whether it's actionable advice or a heartwarming conclusion. They'll walk away feeling fulfilled and more connected to your content.

Engagement bonus tip: Ask open-ended questions! Use the feedback from your audience to create even more content.

Are you deploying storytelling to craft messages for your SaaS? Remember content is king, however emotions is what actually drives humans to take action.

Community Building 📈

I recently shared a tweet on why SaaS founders who are building communities around their product will win over AI in the future. The reason is simple, you bring humans together on a unified mission.

Ghazzog shares some common ingredients to build a successful community:

Communities are established as a result of shared interests. Communities require the following ingredients:

  • Find the common ground. Have our bags moon and get shit rich and throw naked yacht parties in the ocean. or maybe have that influential power to move markets. A shared idea is required and is essential.

  • Spend Time to build a Community. Communities need time to be built, more time to engage with each other, even more time to unite as one. People will join and leave during that time. Goal is to have more new members than leavers.

  • Have a strong value proposition. The community has to be beneficial to each individual so that they stay. Whether it is the joy of being together, learning from each other, or having financial incentives, there must be at least one.

  • Provide equal opportunities: There may be hierarchies within the community but the opportunities should be as equal as possible between the people belonging to the same group. The rules should apply to all members regardless of their status.

  • Provide transparency. The community needs to be informed about all the actions taken in regards to them. No under the table business should be present, otherwise trust would be broken.

  • Build long-term trust: The community has to trust that all the above mentioned items are present now and will be present in the future. Trust go hand in hand with time. The longer the trust is sustained, the higher the confidence in the community.

What are some of the most successful SaaS communities you have witnessed? Shopify?

SEO 📈

Do you need link-building at your current stage? You should ONLY do link-building once you have:

  1. A solid SEO strategy in place

  2. A decent number of blog posts / resources

Otherwise, you'll be building links on hard mode, and you won't be generating results that are good enough for it to the worth your while.

Nick shares how to write the perfect SEO Title Tag:

  1. Starting from the top: Working on a fresh site? Your best bet to get links is to use HARO or Terkel. Both tools connect journalists with topic experts. These sites are great for building homepage links without any quality blogs on your site.

  2. A big chunk of link-building is having dope resources on your site. No one wants to link to some 500-word mediocre article that's been done to death. They want to link to useful tools, blogs, resources, etc. So, start with content FIRST, build links SECOND

  3. Once you have good content, think of types of articles that would benefit from linking to your post. For example: You create a 50-point bachelor party checklist. Think: which articles could your checklist add value to?

  4. The answer: - Wedding planning blog posts - Blogs about organizing a bachelor party - Blogs about organizing a bachelor party in specific cities - Blogs about bachelor party ideas.

  5. Create a list of keywords that will allow you to find blog posts that fit our previous criteria. In the case of the example, that would be: - Wedding planning tips - Wedding planning checklist - Bachelor party ideas - Organize bachelor party

  6. Google these keywords and extract all websites that rank (or use a VA). Remove: - Low-quality sites - Media sites (they don't do link insertions) - Extremely authoritative websites (they're unlikely to link to you unless you run a large site) - Backlink farm sites

  7. Add these websites to a Google Sheet. Then, for each site, find the decision-maker for the blog. If it's a small site, it's going to be the site owner. If it's a medium-sized site, that's the editor/content lead. For a large site, it's the author of the post.

  8. Use a tool like Hunter to find the email addresses of the blog owners. Add them to your sheet. Then, populate it with other important data: - Point of contact name - Website name - Blog post name

  9. Finally, use an outreach tool to reach out to these blogs with a personalized outreach email. Write a personalized email YOURSELF. Do NOT copy-paste a template from the internet. NO ONE is going to give you their winning outreach email because...

  10. The moment Backlinko publishes an outreach template, it's going to be overused SO HARD that it WILL stop working. That's what happened to the skyscraper technique. Everyone started using the same outreach template, and now it's just noise.

  11. Use a first-line writer to create a personalized introduction for each prospect. You can hire someone on UpWork for relatively cheap, or you can do it yourself. The key here is writing a GENUINE compliment that resonates with the receiver (and gets them reading the email)

  12. Alternatively, you can use ChatGPT to come up with a less-personalized first-line copy. This is pretty hit or miss, sometimes the output is OK, and sometimes it's not.

  13. If your content is not very good, you can opt for something in exchange for that link. This can, for example, be a backlink exchange, ABC link exchange, or straight-up cash.

  14. Send a lot of emails. Link-building is a numbers game. If you send 100 emails, you'll get anything from 3 to 7 backlinks (depending on your targeting and copy). So, focus on sending at least several hundred emails a month.

  15. Finally, don't be afraid to follow up. Most of the time, the reason they don't reply is that they forgot about your email, or missed it entirely. Aim for a maximum of 2 follow-up emails. Anything more than that might be irritating for the receiver.

Also noticed an extremely useful detailed guide for building backlinks on Reddit.

Social Media Marketing

Alex asks “are you tired of struggling to get followers on Twitter?” You have great content, but no one sees it. How frustrating!

He shares an RAC framework to get your first 100 followers. However, I can switch this technique to also get 100 first customers on Twitter. Let’s GO:

So, what is this RAC Framework? It’s simple. Research, Audit and Connect. Let’s dive inside each of them. RAC is the best magnet to attract your Tribe only if your profile is well-optimized with the right branding.

There are some more that are not visible to the other person (Profile Visits, Link Clicks). Now we have the right awareness to dive deeper into the framework, here’s the 100 Super Fans Sniper Strategy using RAC Framework:

  • Research Make a Twitter List of the best Creators in your Niche that you idolize and learn from regularly. Nah, I will not just tell you to engage with them like every other Twitter GURU. That will be a plus and help in other ways for Networking & Exposure.

  • Audit Audit their Recent Tweets & first 20 Comments under them. Find the ones who added the most value with most effort. You can also audit the ones who did QRTs as these will be most valuable fans. Once you have an idea who will be your potential fans, we will start the Screening Process. Go to their Profile, check their Following to Follower Ratio, ideally Following> Follower i.e. they are good consumers And will be happy to give you a follow and even engage with you if you build a relationship with them.

  • Connect Now we will start the Proximity Protocol that means we will start engaging with them and get into their Notifications. So Reply to their Comment where you found them initially by agreeing to their perspective with more value addition like your own Personal Experience, etc. Then go to their Profile, Like their 3 Recent Tweets including Pinned Tweet, another PING in their phone.Now Pick a Tweet/Thread on their timeline which genuinely resonate with you And comment on it with your Personal Experience again but also show them

This Strategy allows you to find the right FANS with intentionality and not rely on Luck. That’s all with the strategy. If you do this right, I bet you can get follow backs for 7/10 Persons.

Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSPONSORED

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RePurpose helps you hook your audience with your videos. It then helps you repurpose your content to prioritize a good writing style. Your content becomes engaging and imaginative!

You make your videos accessible to viewers and improve your Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube SEO rankings by making your content searchable. The tool also helps you as a video creator with transcriptions.

How can I help you further? 🥅

  • Are you providing any marketing services to SaaS and tech companies? We’re vetting marketing experts to help SaaS companies hire specific marketers. You can apply here.

  • Let me help you build a marketing channel strategy for your Tech Product. Book a session.

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

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

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