#68 - Write your SaaS Growth

Automated SaaS Sales System?

Welcome 367 SaaS Founders, Tech Entrepreneurs, and  Marketers to the 68th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

  • Google Ads: Pin your Google Ad Headlines

  • Cold Email: Psychology to win with cold email for your SaaS

  • Content Marketing: TFL approach to content distribution

  • Sales: A fully automated sales system for SaaS

  • SEO: When is the right time for SEO for your SaaS?

Let’s GO!

Google Ads 📈

How to optimize your SaaS Google Ads Headline to make more sales:

Virginia says start pinning Google Ad headlines. Yes, you should pin your Google Ad Headlines. 

One of my top tips for managing your own Google Ads for a SaaS, or work in the corporate world of ad management, these are some simple things I do regularly for my search campaigns.

  • Duplicate Your Ads & Pin All Your Headlines 

When you have a campaign that is a cornerstone of your marketing strategy, you should regularly test new ad headlines. I like to take my best-performing Responsive Search Ads and duplicate them and test headline positions.

  • Duplicate your ad Pin 3–4 headlines at #1 position

  • Pin 3–4 headlines at #2 position

  • Pin 3–4 headlines at #3 position

Every headline should be pinned to a position But Virginia, Google said that’s not the way to do it! Right.

That’s because Google wants to control every aspect of your campaign — don’t you see recommendations like the one below all the time?

Please don’t ever click “apply”. Remember, it’s your money, not Google’s. 

Google recommends the exact strategies to all accounts to match their standards on how their product should be used. While some of the recommendations are good general practices, Google doesn’t know your business as well as you do.

Ok, but how do I choose where to pin the headlines? This is the fun part.

Your creativity as a marketer comes into play. I use a standard template for this, and I keep it on my desktop for regular reference.

  • Position 1: Headline for Ad Group — This should be the main focus of your campaign/ad group. i.e. Washington County Plumber

  • Position 2: CTA — What are you prompting your prospect to do? i.e. Call Today To Fix The Leak

  • Position 3: Unique Selling Proposition — What sets you apart from the next company? i.e. 24/7 Services Available *Keep in mind sometimes; Google does not show the #3 position in search ads. 

  • Final Ad Headline: Washington County Plumber | Call Today To Fix The Leak | 24/7 Services Available This strategy has helped my ads deliver a clear message to my potential customers while aligning with my business goals.

When I test this pinned headline ad, I will label it to compare it to the original that Google changed on its own. This is essential for measuring how the new ads perform over time.

In general, I will test new ads for 30 days. You may want to wait longer or shorter, depending on budget and ad impression volume.

I have found that these new pinned ads work about 50% of the time to outperform the previous better-performing ads.

Cold Email 📈

The real psychology of a cold email:

Christian says Cold email may be the rawest way to get direct market feedback from your ICP. If prospects don’t like what you offer or what you say, they WILL let you know.

When it comes to outbound sales, we are dealing with the primitive brain of the prospects we reach out to, nothing held back since they are faceless & have nothing to lose by calling you a *******. This, to many, is why outbound is scary to them & brings them to conclude it “doesn’t work”. This couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Because we are dealing with the primitive, subconscious brain of the prospects here - we can actually find predictability. At the subconscious level, humans are 99% the same. We all have hardwired response mechanisms to certain social & environmental cues we encounter on a daily basis, and the subconscious is trained by consistent patterns within these daily occurrences.

Why does this matter or have anything to do with cold email? Let’s say you run a successful Ecommerce store and receive 50 cold emails from marketing agencies in your inbox everyday.

In your inbox, you see a plethora of:

  • “quick question {Name}”

  • “question {Name}”

  • “thoughts?”

  • “Hey {Name}” etc etc.

When you open these emails, you see the same 75-150 word email giving the life story of how their agency is somehow “different” from the rest. At the end of their long winded story (which you probably didn’t read) they ask for 30 minutes of your precious time on a Zoom meeting you didn’t have any intention of ever wanting to attend.

Now imagine for YEARS on end this is what you see in your inbox everyday. What do you think your immediate, subconscious response will be to these emails? “SPAM” “UNSUBSRIBE” “WHY DO I KEEP RECEIVING THESE EMAILS??” “WHERE DID YOU FIND MY EMAIL?!” “HOW DO I MALKE IT STOP FAUCKKKKKKK” 

Do you get it now? Imagine everyday for YEARS you receive the same bullshit emails in your inbox with no end. I’d be pissed off too! You might think: “Well if this is the case, then isn’t cold email dead? Why even send cold emails if everyone is already being spammed and tired of it?” 

This is true, IF you send the same shitty ass emails that 97% of other cold emailers are sending. When a prospect opens an email that looks just like the 100 other emails in their inbox, no matter how great of a service you run or how “well written” your email is, their subconscious brain immediately classifies you as SPAM.

If we really want to get their attention and NOT be classified by their subconscious as spam, we must be a PATTERN DISRUPT 

Definition: “Recognizing an unwanted pattern, disrupting it, and leading someone to the desired behavior.” This is EXACTLY what we are trying to achieve with our cold emails: - Unwanted pattern: Being classified as spam -Disrupt: Our well written, unique cold email - Desired behavior: Meeting booked

So how do we write a cold email prospects actually want to read? BE RELEVANT & PROVIDE VALUE Write about what the prospect wants to hear, not what YOU want to tell them. They don’t give a fuck about you G!

They only care about 4 things:

  • How will you make more money enter my bank account?

  • Have you successfully helped others just like me before?

  • Did this person do any research on our company?

  • Are you a real person or a scammer?

  • Is this a waste of my time?

You must address each one of these in your email, and do it in less than 50 words. You have a solid 5 seconds to catch your prospects' attention & keep them engaged, they don’t have time or want to read a whole ass essay. Get straight to the point.

Here’s an example of a TikTok organic offer to clothing brands:

”Real quick , created a deck outlining the TikTok organic strategy we used to help Nike generate 10,000,000 views on TikTok in 30 days. May I share with you?” 

In 31 words, we addressed EVERY objection the prospect had in their mind opening your cold email, I’ll outline it here:

  • How will you make more money enter my bank account? - TikTok organic

  • Have you successfully helped others just like me before? - Helped Nike generate 10,000,000 views in 30 days

  • Did this person do any research on our company? - Relevant clothing brand case study for their clothing brand

  • Are you a real person or a scammer? - Website w/ social proof & LinkedIn

  • Is this a waste of my time? - Only 30 words long & offer valuable strategy deck covering great result Get it?

No bullshit personalization, no long essay, not asking for anything in return - just straight leading with value. THIS is a pattern disrupt. THIS is something prospects actually don’t mind receiving in their inbox.

Because you are presenting them value first, not trying to blatantly take their time away from them and sell them right out the gates. We are also taking advantage of reciprocity since when you give to someone without asking for return, they naturally feel obliged to give something back.

So next time you’re writing your cold email, keep this in mind: - Be a pattern disrupt, don’t blend in - Write about them, not you - Lead with value first - Cut ALL bullshit.

Content Marketing 📈

TFL Approach to Content Distribution Strategy .

Dave built a content distribution strategy that helped build and monetize 3 brands from scratch. The simple battle tested TFL approach. Entirely crafted off the core of content marketing.

First, the TFL approach seeks content optimization for;

  • Traffic

  • Fans

  • Leads

Traffic & engagement Top of the Funnel content at its finest. So we need to share;

  • platitudes

  • memes and media

  • motivation and entertainment

This is what they call growth content. I prefer to post this in the morning to bump up my engagement for my other content later in the day. Not a big deal.

Fans and followers We need a distribution system for our content. Middle of the Funnel content does the job. So you need to be relatable through

  • stories

  • experiences

  • mistakes and lessons

Tie these to some value. Don't be obvious or boring. Most of the content in this bracket is personable. Nurture your audience with a slice of your personality every once in a while. Post in the afternoon - or whenever! Literally. Then

Leads and clients We're in business. We want people to buy our stuff. So we create and distribute content that shows our position in the game.. Base content around;

  • Case studies

  • Testimonials and client wins

  • ICP pain points and practical solutions

This type of content is authority based. Make them come to you. So you'll post in the evening or whenever.

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

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Sales 📈

A fully automated sales system for a SaaS.

Ed built a built a fully automated Sales System for a SaaS Startup that resulted in a 30% increase in new sales growth.

This software company is now able to contact leads 10x faster without falling behind. And their sales team is working 5x less on manual labor.

Here's a breakdown on how we did it:

Problems they were facing Before working with our team, all of their operations were done manually. Their sales team was spending 10+ hours per week engaging leads and sending manual messages. But they didn't know their sales process could be entirely automated. Tasks like: • CRM Management • Following up with leads • Doing multi-channel outreach

Here is the simple 5-step process we used to take them from struggling to operate... To everything being fully automated and extremely efficient:

Step #1: Full Operation Audit The first thing we did was conduct a full audit of their operations. We needed to know exactly where they were wasting time. And we needed to identify all inefficiencies in their sales process. So our team went in and conducted an audit.

Step #2: Pinpointed the Exact Problems After we finished the audit, we were able to pinpoint the exact problems in their sales process. We now knew was what slowing them down and why they weren't growing. We recorded every part of the sales process that was causing issues.

Step #3: Built a Step-by-Step Flowchart Once we knew what was causing the issues, we knew what needed to be automated and fixed. But before we could do that, we needed to map out each step we were going to automate. We used a flowchart to map out each step.

Step #4: Built the Automations Finally, we were ready to build the automations. We built automations that helped their sales team: > Track their numbers better > Follow up and engage with leads > Spend less time organizing the leads.

Step #5: Tested and Optimized Once we built the automations, we tested and optimized them to make sure they were running smoothly. Automation is an ongoing process. So we wanted to make sure everything was perfected before we launched it.

Everything in their sales process was now fixed.

SEO 📈

How to know if SEO is worthwhile for you at this stage of your SaaS?

Seren added her take and insights from SEO and SaaS from indiehackers post about:

  • how to know if SEO is worthwhile for you

  • when should indie hackers start SEO

  • what to focus on and when (Because no female voices were included in this article, I'm gonna go ahead and add my takes!)

1. So, is SEO worthwhile?

@coreyhainesco said: "Yes, there are plenty of keywords attracting the right type of visitor, at a reasonable keyword difficulty range, with decent search volume, and where the type of content that seems to be rewarded includes a simple landing page, blog post, or free tool.

@viperchill said: "It absolutely depends on the niche you're in, the terms you're targeting, and the "authority" of your website, but it is possible for bootstrapped businesses to rank."

@thecoolestcool said: "Setting the foundation early on for your website to rank on Google for high-value keywords can be a very lucrative approach in the long term. I would say for an indie hacker, once you have product-market fit and you have developed a product that people actually want, investing in SEO can be a great strategic decision if you are capable of investing in this growth strategy."

My take: "Big yes, with ~8.5 billion Google searches per day and Google's search market share at 90.68% as of June 2023 (source: SimilarWeb), search engine optimization is definitely still worth it. Aside from YouTube, Pinterest, and increasingly TikTok, Google is the #1 place people go to learn, check things out, and make purchases. It's one of the only marketing channels where a high volume of ideal, ready-to-buy clients/customers can find your business 24/7." 2. When should indie hackers start SEO?

@thecoolestcool said: "My recommendation would be for a founder to invest in SEO after validation, acquiring their first few customers, and doing a bit of research to understand whether or not there is search demand for the offering that they've created."

@seo_notebook said: "It’s never too early or too late to lay the groundwork. Pre-launch is a viable option if you have some money in the bank, but make no mistake: It’s a bet."

@coreyhainesco said: "Creating content purposed to drive traffic from Google is planting trees. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with founders who waited years to start creating SEO-focused content only to realize that they should have been doing it from the start, and wonder how much more they would have grown their MRRs by now had they done so. Traffic is also validation.

I'm currently incubating a new SaaS idea by first creating public templates as content so that when the product is ready, I already have an engaged audience to sell to." My take: "If your business is pre-validated (i.e. there are 7-figure businesses already in the market), then definitely start your SEO in the early days. Set up solid foundations and then go after zero-to-low volume keywords that your specific ideal clients/customers are looking for.

And, if you're in it for the long-haul or want to eventually sell your biz for as much money as possible, take the time to create content that genuinely and comprehensively answers the search query, establishes credibility, builds your brand, and adds something new. But if your idea/business needs to be validated, then I agree with others that it's better to validate before pouring gasoline on the fire so you can be a lot more confident you're not wasting valuable time." 3. What should indie hackers focus on and when?

@thecoolestcool said: "Early on in an indie hacker's SEO journey, the only thing that matters is ensuring that their website can rank for their brand terms so if someone is looking for their name, they are able to show up in Google. Once that is complete, you have demonstrated product-market fit, and you have validated that this is something that people want, my recommendation would be to create specific landing pages that speak about the solution that you offer.

The goal here is to optimize for keywords that are likely being searched for when your audience is trying to make a buying decision around your product.

Then create these landing pages and write blog posts that link to these landing pages throughout your site to increase your ability to show up in the SERP." My take (Ross actually summed it up really well, so here's the only thing I'd add):

"Don't be afraid to try different strategies, like buying and redirecting expired domains with gorgeous backlinks, creating free tools to rank high and collect emails to then upsell to, guest blogging on others' sites and inviting high-quality guest blogs on your site, creating round-up blog posts like this Indie Hackers article, etc."

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,

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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