#48 - Write your SaaS Growth 📈

Scale SaaS with Ads, Content Marketing Myths, First 10 customers, 5 steps to build backlinks, Write Twitter Threads with ChatGPT

Welcome 255 Tech Founders and Marketers to the 48th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

  • Paid Ads: 5 steps to scale your SaaS

  • Content Marketing: 10 myths on Content Marketing for SaaS

  • Growth Marketing: getting to first 10 customers

  • SEO: Build high authority backlinks in 5 easy steps

  • Social Media Marketing: ChatGPT to write Twitter Threads

Let’s GO!

Growth Tip of the Week! 🚀

Boris shares 5 pillars of SaaS retention:

  • Personalization

  • User-centrism

  • Simplicity

  • Friction-awareness

  • Seamless onboarding

Maximize the number of quick wins your users get. Watch the churn disappear.

Paid Ads 📈

Paid Ads is one of the easiest and widely used choice to scale your SaaS. If you’re sitting at 25-100 paid customers, paid ads can be a fast way to take that to a 1000 customers in relatively less time.

Dylan says scaling your SaaS company and getting the most out of your ad spend is an art and a science. Here are 5 practical tips to turn your ad budget into an opportunity-generating machine:

  1.  Set Ultra-Specific Goals. 

You aiming for more signups or more qualified signups? Specific goals ensure your ad spend works harder for you but only as long as you focus on the right metrics. Don't spend all your energy optimizing for cheap trials that never activate.

  1. Pick The Right Platforms 

All ad platforms are not created equal for SaaS. LinkedIn might be perfect for your higher ticket B2B SaaS but IG & Tiktok could be ideal for freemium PLG companies. Choose the right platforms and audiences to maximize the impact of your ad spend.

  1. Use Analytics

Data is your best friend. Use analytics to identify which ads drive activated signups or longer LTV. You need to be deep into Hubspot or CRM data when making decisions. Decisions based on solid data can turn your ad spend into a real opportunity generator.

  1. Test, Test, Test 

Leave no room for guesswork in your ad strategy. Test everything - from ads and landing pages to pricing plans and nurturing flows. Insights gained from testing will allow you to fine-tune your ad spend for maximum opportunity creation.

  1. Maximize your Ad Creative

Test different headlines, images, and calls to action. Find out what clicks with your audience, literally. Remember, the goal isn't just to get attention. It's to attract users who will convert. Every ad is a chance to grow. Make the most of it.

Content Marketing 📈

Content marketing is a serious acquisition and retention channel for SaaS companies. It’s like the Jerry (content) to the Tom (your SaaS) - a really bad example here but who cares as long as you get it to bet it.

Jack shares 10 misconceptions and myths on content marketing :

Myth 1: More content is always better.

Nope! Quality trumps quantity every time. Focus on creating valuable, relevant content, not just a lot of it.

Myth 2: SEO is dead.

Far from it! SEO is constantly evolving, and an effective content strategy should always consider it.

Myth 3: You should only create content for your target audience.

Diversifying your content can help you reach new audiences and expand your brand's influence.

Myth 4: You need to be on every social media platform.

It's better to focus on the platforms where your audience hangs out and engage with them there.

Myth 5: You can set it and forget it.

Content marketing is not a one-and-done thing. You need to constantly evaluate and adjust your strategy based on performance and trends.

Myth 6: Your content needs to be formal and professional.

Sometimes, a conversational tone can be more engaging and relatable. Know your audience and adapt your tone accordingly.

Myth 7: Long-form content doesn't work.

It's not about the length, but the value you provide. Long-form content can be incredibly effective if it's well-researched and engaging.

Myth 8: Content marketing doesn't have immediate ROI.

While it's a long-term game, content marketing can start showing results fairly quickly if done right. It's about building relationships and trust, which leads to conversions.

Myth 9: Images and videos aren't necessary.

Visual content increases engagement and understanding. It's not just about text!

Myth 10: Content marketing is just about creating content.

It's also about distribution, SEO, audience engagement, and analytics. It's a holistic process!

Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

If you’re creating content - repurposing and distributing it also important!

This will help you reach a wider audience and engage with them in multiple ways. And having a tool to do all this for you will make your life super easy! So all your energy just goes into pumping quality content!

With RePurpose, you can create content once on your favorite social media platform and automatically distribute it to all others!

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 content creator with transcriptions.

In my opinion, RePurpose can do wonders for you as a content creator. You can easily streamline your content publishing and maximize your reach across multiple platforms.

Growth Marketing 📈

Mat built 5+ SaaS products and always struggled to get his first 10 users. He didn't know where to start. And wished he had a clear process.

So shares how he would now get to his first 10 customers.

The biggest mistake I made was to build a product before finding early users. Early users will help you:

  • Validate your idea so you don't spend time on something worthless

  • Build your product by giving you feedback

  • Improve your SaaS idea

Use communities!

Example with Facebook groups. This is the method I used for WideBundle 3 years ago.

  1. Observation phase - Search for Facebook groups using keywords from your niche. Join all the groups. Be silent and read every conversation for a few weeks.

  2. Engagement phase - Comment on every post. List the people in categories: the influencers, the successful people, the beginners. Engage and create conversations

  3. The contact phase - Contact people and create relationships by asking about their business, life, etc... (No selling). Contact the admin of the communities for the same purpose (you can contact them on other platforms)

  4. The discovery phase - Now you have a network in this niche and you can start asking for problems. Or You can talk about the problem you're solving to see if they have it. You need to collect information about the problem so you can find the best solution for them.

  5. The "selling" phase - This is not really selling. Your goal here is to get help from potential users to build your product. Create posts about it (people already know you since you engaged). Share mockups and your research phaseExamples: You need to show the creation phase. Without selling. But actually it's marketing.

    1. "I'm looking to build X, do you think I go with Y or Z?"

    2. "Can I get your feedback on that design?"

    3. "I talked to a few people and they told me to do X, what about Y?"

Using this method you should be able to get 10 interested people (if your problem exists and your SaaS idea good enough) And then you can offer discounts when launching.

Here are some variables based on how it goes:

  • You may ask the admin to post directly about your product (if they know you it works better)

  • You may create a group with early users to share feedback

  • You may need to do the engagement phase for a long time

Remember you only need 10 early users! And you can keep doing it, eventually: You'll attract more people, People will start talking about your product and It will improve.

🆘 Community Chat of the Week: 🆘

How many customers do you have for your SaaS currently and what are you doing to 10X your customers?

SEO 📈

Note sure how to approach SEO for your SaaS or tech product? It becomes simple when you follow a structured approach.

Hridoy shares how you can get 11 backlinks from Wikipedia using a very simple SEO method. Here’s how you can build free links:

  1. use this simple search string: site:wikipedia[dot]org [keyword] + “dead link”.for example, if you were building a SaaS tool in the investing space you’d search for something like this: site: wikipedia,org [investing] + “dead link”

  2. visit a page in the search results that’s relevant to your site:

  3. hit ctrl + f and search for “dead link”. Your browser will jump to any dead links in the references section. pro tip: Wikipedia actually has a list of articles with dead links. This makes finding dead links in Wikipedia even easier.

  4. re-create that dead resource on your site and replace the dead link in Wikipedia with a link to your site

  5. reach out to people that link to the dead resource. And let them know about your replacement content.

Seems like a simple and straight-forward method to help your SaaS build high authority and relevant backlinks.

Social Media Marketing

Twitter threads can skyrocket your SaaS Growth and is the best way to gain followers. But 99% suck at writing them.

The AI Solopreneur shares some insights on how to use ChatGPT to write viral Twitter threads:

For our prompts, we're going to be leveraging the famous & proven AIDA copywriting framework.

"Develop a Twitter thread outline using the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) framework on the topic of [insert topic]. Ensure each tweet in the thread aligns with the respective AIDA stages." 

"Now, expand the above outline into a Twitter thread following the "Tweet-Why-How-Snap" framework, all written in a tone that's confident, knowledgeable, and helpful. Don't repeat yourself. The thread should have readability grade 6 or lower.”

For each tweet, remember to follow the "Tweet-Why-How-Snap" framework: "Tweet": The tweet from your previous output in 15 words or less. no hashtags allowed "Why": Logically explains why the "Tweet" is important or true in 7 words or less. Can't begin with "to" or "this".

Some more insights:

  1. Make the name of the thread highly specific Instead of using the thread headline: “newsletter tips” Say: “6 tactics to grow your newsletter by 5000 subscribers a month without spending a dollar” More specific input → More specific the output = More original thread

  2. Turn your notes into threads for more uniqueness When you ask ChatGPT to write threads based on your notes, it improves the output because you already told it what’s relevant about the thread topic. Unique input = unique output.

You're going to do these 3 things to make it sound more "human" so that it's ready-to-post for Twitter...

  1. Select the relevant portions of your output. The prompt gives you 10 tweets, but your thread should be shorter than that. Remove the 3-5 tweets you don’t like, and keep the best ones. This increases the quality of your thread.

  2. Add transitional phrases Transitional phrases bind together thread tweets and make them readable. Enrich your tweets with phrases like: "But..." "Then...", "Next..." etc. This makes your copy flow better, and the thread more natural-looking.

  3. Use questions to engage the reader Nothing captivates your audience more than a question directed towards them. Right? Add 1-2 questions to the reader in your thread, such as: "Right?" “Do you agree? "Don't you agree?" Just don’t overuse them.

You can read the complete post here. It’s so good that I will try implementing it this week.

How can we help each other? 🥅

  • Would you like any of your product or marketing story to be featured in our upcoming newsletters with the community? Send me a DM on Twitter!

  • 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,

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!

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