By the problem, before they know the category exists
People search the pain, not the software category. In newer categories this is most of the available demand, and it is the demand competitors chasing category terms are ignoring.
B2B software
SaaS marketing measured on revenue, not signups
On the software accounts seen here, acquisition was optimised to trial signups with no view of which sources produced accounts that converted to paid or stayed past month three. The cheapest signup source usually has the worst retention, so the channel that looks best in the dashboard is the one destroying margin. A signup is not a customer.
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Marketing does not behave the same way here.
SaaS has a longer and stranger path to revenue than almost any other business type. A signup costs the customer nothing, which means acquisition can be optimised to produce a great many of them at a falling cost while the business gets worse, because the sources that produce the cheapest signups frequently produce the worst retention.
The real measure is cost per retained account, and that number cannot be read for months. Buying decisions are made by committees where the person who searched is rarely the person who signs the contract. And a meaningful share of the category demand sits on comparison and alternative searches rather than on the product category itself.
A SaaS marketing programme that does not connect first-touch source to month-twelve revenue is measuring a proxy and calling it a result.
How your customers actually search.
By comparison and alternative
Competitor comparisons and alternatives searches are late-stage and convert far better than category terms. They are also the terms most companies are too polite to compete for.
By integration and use case
Whether it works with the tools they already run. These are low-volume, extremely high-intent, and usually unbuilt.
How an enquiry becomes a customer.
Different intents take different routes. Serving all of them with one page is the most common structural mistake in this industry.
- Problem search, content, then a trial signup or a demo request.
- Trial, activation, then conversion to paid, which is a product question as much as a marketing one.
- A committee decision at renewal or expansion, where the original searcher may no longer be involved.
- Ranking for the category term and nothing else, in a category with a fraction of the demand of the problem terms around it.
- A blog full of general advice that attracts readers who will never buy, because it was written to a keyword volume column.
- No comparison or alternative pages, leaving the highest-intent searches in the category to competitors and review sites.
- Documentation and marketing pages competing for the same queries, so neither ranks properly.
- Bidding on competitor and alternative terms, which is late-stage intent at a fraction of category term cost.
- Separate campaigns for trial and demo intent, because self-serve and sales-led buyers behave and convert differently.
- Offline conversion import so the ad platform optimises toward closed revenue rather than toward signups.
- Integration and use case campaigns, which are low volume and convert several times better than category terms.
- Trial onboarding sequenced against activation milestones rather than against elapsed days.
- Nurture for people who signed up and never activated, who are the largest wasted spend in most SaaS businesses.
- Expansion and renewal sequences, where retained revenue is cheaper than new revenue by a wide margin.
What the report should lead with.
- Trial to paid conversion rate by source
- Cost per retained account, not cost per signup
- Pipeline attributed to original source
- Activation rate within the trial
- Net revenue retention by cohort
Proof
The closest accounts we have published.
Two software companies, neither named: one selling HR software, one selling assessment software to schools.
HR software company, SEOSEO
326Korganic clicks in 16 months
- 9.77Mimpressions
- 3.3%click-through rate
- 19.2average position
Education software company, SEOSEO
859organic clicks in three months
- 11Kimpressions
- 7.8%click-through rate
- 22.3average position
Proof
Numbers from comparable accounts.
SEO
470K
organic clicks in 12 months
21.3M impressions at an average position of 8.8.
Google Ads
6.45x
return on ad spend
787.59 conversions at $4.77 each.
Real accounts, anonymised by client agreement. Currency as recorded in the account. Movement varies by market, budget and starting position.
On camera
Four clients on camera, in their own words.
Four clients, four industries, one thing in common: the number moved and they said so on camera.
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It is the best long-term investment we have made in the company, full stop.
Ahmed · Business owner · SEO
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The cost per lead from organic is a fraction of what we pay on ads, and that math gets better every month.
Sandra · Founder · SEO
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People can book a table without calling during the dinner rush. My host actually thanked me.
Aaliyah · Restaurant owner · Website
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These tech geeks know the Facebook analytics and the data and the pixels and all that stuff that makes a musician’s head explode.
David · The Wankers · Social ads
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Read the postQuestions
Questions from this industry.
01 Should a SaaS company bid on competitor brand terms?
Usually yes, with two caveats. It is legal in most jurisdictions to bid on a competitor name, though using their trademark in your ad copy often is not. And expect them to retaliate on yours, which raises costs for both of you. The searches convert well because the person is already in the market and comparing, which is why almost everyone ends up doing it.
02 Is our SaaS blog worth continuing?
Check which posts have ever produced a signup that converted to paid. In most SaaS blogs the answer is a small handful, and the rest attract readers who were never going to buy. That is an argument against writing to a volume column instead of to buying intent, not an argument against content.
03 How do we attribute a nine-month SaaS sales cycle?
Capture the original source at signup, store it on the account record in the CRM, and read it again when the deal closes or churns. Analytics alone cannot span that gap. Without it you optimise toward cheap signups, which is how the worst-retaining channel ends up with the biggest budget.
04 What should a SaaS marketing report show?
Trial-to-paid rate by source, cost per retained account, and pipeline by original source. If the report opens with signups and traffic, it is reporting the two numbers easiest to move and hardest to bank.