Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I watched a brilliant SaaS founder spend $50K on a beautiful rebrand, perfect messaging, and a conversion-optimized website. Three months later? Still zero organic signups. The product was solid, the website looked like a unicorn startup, but something was fundamentally broken.
Here's what nobody talks about in software as a service marketing: most SaaS companies are optimizing the wrong funnel. They're building beautiful stores in empty malls, then wondering why nobody's buying.
After working with dozens of SaaS startups and seeing the same patterns over and over, I've learned that successful software as a service marketing isn't about better landing pages or clever messaging. It's about understanding a fundamental shift that most founders miss completely.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why LinkedIn personal branding beats paid ads for most B2B SaaS
The "empty mall" problem that kills 90% of SaaS websites
How to build distribution before product (the reverse of what everyone teaches)
My framework for treating SaaS like a service, not a product
Why trust-based marketing outperforms feature-based marketing every time
Ready to stop throwing money at the wrong marketing tactics? Let's dive into what actually moves the needle for SaaS growth.
Industry Reality
What every SaaS marketer has been told
Walk into any SaaS marketing conference and you'll hear the same advice repeated like gospel. The conventional wisdom sounds logical, backed by case studies from unicorn companies, and promoted by every growth hacking guru on Twitter.
Here's what the industry typically recommends:
Start with product-market fit, then scale marketing. Build the perfect product first, get some initial traction, then throw money at paid acquisition channels.
Optimize your funnel relentlessly. A/B test landing pages, improve conversion rates, reduce friction in signup flows. Make the website convert better.
Invest heavily in paid acquisition. Facebook ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads - wherever your audience hangs out, buy their attention.
Focus on feature differentiation. Highlight what makes your product unique, showcase advanced capabilities, win on functionality.
Scale through automation and systems. Build repeatable processes, hire specialists, create detailed playbooks for every channel.
This advice exists because it's what worked for the winners we hear about. The success stories get amplified while the failures stay quiet. When Slack talks about their growth strategy, they're sharing what worked after they already had momentum, not what got them there initially.
The problem? This conventional wisdom assumes you already have distribution. It treats software as a service marketing like e-commerce marketing - build it, drive traffic, optimize conversion. But SaaS isn't a one-time purchase. It's asking someone to integrate your solution into their daily workflow and stick around long enough to see value.
That requires something most paid ads can't deliver: trust. And trust isn't built through better landing pages or clever retargeting campaigns.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this lesson the hard way while working with a B2B SaaS client who was burning through their marketing budget faster than a crypto startup in a bear market. Let me tell you about Sarah (not her real name), who founded a project management tool specifically for creative agencies.
Sarah had everything the experts said she needed: A beautifully designed product that solved a real problem, glowing testimonials from early users, and a conversion-optimized website that looked like it belonged in a design awards show. The landing page had all the right elements - social proof, benefit-focused copy, frictionless signup flow.
But here's what was happening: Sarah was spending $8K monthly on Facebook and Google ads, driving decent traffic to the site. People were signing up for trials - the conversion rate wasn't terrible. But then they'd use the product once, maybe twice, and disappear. The trial-to-paid conversion rate was brutal: less than 2%.
When I dug into the data, I found something interesting. The highest-converting users weren't coming from ads at all. They were typing the URL directly, which analytics labeled as "direct traffic." But direct traffic doesn't just appear out of nowhere - these users had discovered Sarah's company somewhere else first.
That's when I discovered Sarah's secret weapon: her LinkedIn content. For months, she'd been sharing behind-the-scenes stories about building the product, honest takes on project management challenges, and helpful tips for agency owners. She wasn't selling - she was teaching and building relationships.
The people coming through "direct" traffic had been following her content, building trust over time, then typing the URL when they were ready to try the solution. They arrived pre-sold, not skeptical.
Meanwhile, the paid traffic was cold. They'd never heard of Sarah or her company. They clicked an ad promising to solve their problems, but had no reason to trust this random tool enough to actually change their workflow.
That's when it clicked: We were treating SaaS like an e-commerce product when it's actually a trust-based service. The entire marketing approach needed to flip.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Once I understood that software as a service marketing is fundamentally about trust-building, not traffic generation, everything changed. Here's the framework I developed and implemented:
Step 1: Shifted from product-first to distribution-first thinking
Instead of perfecting the product and then figuring out marketing, we flipped the script. We treated Sarah's LinkedIn presence as the primary distribution channel and built everything else around that. The website became a supporting tool, not the main event.
This meant Sarah needed to commit to consistent content creation - not promotional posts, but genuinely helpful insights from her experience building and running creative agencies. We documented her process, shared lessons learned, and gave away strategies that other agencies could implement immediately.
Step 2: Created "behind-the-scenes" content that builds expertise
Rather than talking about product features, we focused on the problems Sarah was solving in her own business. When she implemented a new client communication process, she'd share the exact framework. When a project went sideways, she'd write about what went wrong and how they fixed it.
This content served two purposes: it attracted the right audience (agency owners dealing with similar challenges) and it positioned Sarah as someone who actually understood their world, not just another software vendor.
Step 3: Developed the "warm introduction" funnel
Instead of driving cold traffic to a generic landing page, we created a system where people discovered the product through Sarah's content, engaged with her ideas over time, and then came to the website already knowing and trusting her.
We tracked this by creating unique UTM parameters for different types of content and measuring how "warmed up" users were before they hit the trial signup. The correlation was clear: the more touchpoints someone had with Sarah's content, the higher their trial-to-paid conversion rate.
Step 4: Restructured the website for "warm" traffic
Since most high-quality traffic was now coming from people who already knew Sarah, we redesigned the homepage to speak to that audience. Instead of explaining what the product does (they already knew), we focused on social proof and getting them into the trial quickly.
For the remaining cold traffic, we created a separate funnel that focused on education first - blog posts, case studies, and resources that could begin building trust even for first-time visitors.
Step 5: Made content creation scalable and systematic
The biggest challenge was making this approach sustainable. Sarah couldn't spend all day writing LinkedIn posts. So we developed a content system based on her actual work. Every client project became potential content. Every internal process became a case study.
We set up simple workflows: 15 minutes after each client call, Sarah would voice-record 2-3 insights. These became the raw material for posts. We batched content creation into focused sessions rather than trying to post daily on the fly.
Trust Building
Focus on demonstrating expertise through real experiences rather than promoting features. Share actual client situations and solutions.
Warm Audience
Create content that attracts people already dealing with the problems you solve. Let them discover your solution naturally.
Distribution First
Build your content and relationship-building system before perfecting your product. Trust takes time to develop.
Content Systems
Turn your actual work into content. Every client project is potential material for building authority and attracting similar prospects.
The results spoke for themselves. Within 90 days of implementing this trust-first approach, we saw dramatic changes across every metric that mattered:
Trial-to-paid conversion jumped from 2% to 12% - and this wasn't because we improved the product. The same people who were bouncing after one day of usage were now sticking around long enough to experience the value. They came in with different expectations because they trusted the person behind the product.
Customer acquisition cost dropped by 60% once we shifted budget away from paid ads toward supporting Sarah's content creation. Instead of spending $8K monthly on ads that brought in skeptical users, we invested in AI tools for content creation and design support for better visual content.
But here's what really surprised us: the quality of customer improved dramatically. People who came through Sarah's content were more engaged, gave better feedback, and became advocates who referred other agencies. They understood the vision behind the product because they'd been following the journey.
The timeline was crucial too. This wasn't an overnight transformation. Month one was about building systems and creating consistent content. Month two was when we started seeing engagement and follower growth. Month three was when the trial quality really started improving.
By month six, Sarah's LinkedIn following had grown from 800 to 5,200, but more importantly, 45% of new trials were coming from people who had engaged with her content multiple times before signing up.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Looking back, here are the most important lessons from transforming Sarah's software as a service marketing approach:
Trust is your real product differentiator. In a crowded SaaS market, people don't choose tools - they choose people they trust to solve their problems.
"Direct" traffic isn't actually direct. When analytics shows direct traffic converting well, dig deeper. Those users discovered you somewhere else first.
Content creation must be sustainable. The biggest mistake is treating content like a campaign instead of a system. Build processes that turn your regular work into content material.
Distribution beats product quality. A decent product with great distribution will always outperform a great product with poor distribution.
B2B SaaS buyers need multiple touchpoints. Unlike e-commerce, people don't make SaaS decisions impulsively. They need to see you consistently over time.
Your founder's voice IS your brand. Especially in early-stage SaaS, the founder's personal brand and expertise are more powerful than any corporate messaging.
Warm traffic converts differently. People who already know and trust you need different landing pages than cold traffic from ads.
When this approach works best: B2B SaaS with a knowledgeable founder, complex products that require trust, and target audiences active on professional networks.
When to avoid this approach: Consumer SaaS with simple value propositions, markets where buyers make quick decisions, or when founders aren't comfortable with personal branding.
The key insight? Stop treating software as a service marketing like performance marketing. Start treating it like relationship building, because that's what it actually is.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing this trust-first marketing approach:
Founder should commit to 3-5 posts weekly sharing genuine insights from building the product
Create separate landing pages for warm vs. cold traffic with different messaging
Track content engagement before measuring trial conversion rates
Build content systems around actual customer development and product building work
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses adapting these relationship-building principles:
Focus on founder story and brand values rather than just product features
Use behind-the-scenes content about sourcing, quality, and business decisions
Build email lists through educational content rather than just discounts
Leverage ecommerce-specific trust signals like supplier transparency and ethical practices