Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Three months into working with a B2B SaaS client, I was staring at a dashboard full of green arrows pointing up. Traffic was climbing, social media followers were growing, and the founder was posting about "brand awareness" wins on LinkedIn. Everything looked perfect.
Until we looked at the revenue dashboard. Flat. Dead flat.
The harsh reality hit me: we were measuring everything except what actually mattered for SaaS visibility. While we celebrated vanity metrics, our actual visibility to people who could buy our product was practically zero. This experience completely changed how I approach SaaS growth measurement and forced me to develop a completely different framework.
The problem? Most SaaS teams are drowning in metrics that feel important but don't connect to revenue. They're tracking brand awareness when they should be tracking buyer awareness. They're measuring reach when they should be measuring relevance.
Here's what you'll learn from my framework:
Why traditional visibility metrics mislead SaaS teams
The 4-layer visibility measurement system I developed
How to identify your true visibility gaps vs. vanity wins
Real metrics that correlate with SaaS revenue growth
The counterintuitive approach that saved my client's growth trajectory
Industry Reality
What every SaaS dashboard shows you
Walk into any SaaS company and you'll see the same visibility metrics on every dashboard. It's like everyone copied the same playbook without questioning whether it actually works.
The Standard Visibility Metrics Everyone Tracks:
Website Traffic: Monthly visitors, page views, session duration
Social Media Metrics: Followers, likes, shares, engagement rates
Brand Awareness Surveys: Aided and unaided brand recognition
Search Volume: Brand search queries and impressions
PR Metrics: Media mentions, share of voice, sentiment
These metrics exist because they're easy to measure and they make everyone feel good. Marketing teams love showing growth curves. Leadership loves big numbers. Investors love "market presence" stories.
But here's where this conventional wisdom breaks down: visibility doesn't equal viability. You can have massive brand awareness among people who will never buy your product. You can have millions of website visitors who bounce immediately because they're not your target market.
The real issue is that traditional visibility metrics measure breadth, not depth. They tell you how many people know you exist, but not whether the right people know you exist for the right reasons. In B2B SaaS, you need 100 qualified prospects to know you deeply, not 100,000 random people to know you superficially.
That's exactly what happened with my client - and it took a complete measurement overhaul to fix it.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client was a B2B SaaS platform targeting HR teams at mid-market companies. When I started working with them, they had what looked like a successful visibility strategy on paper.
Their metrics dashboard was impressive: 50K monthly website visitors, 5K LinkedIn followers, consistent media coverage, and strong search rankings for broad HR-related keywords. The founder was regularly featured in HR publications and speaking at industry events.
But when we dug into the actual business metrics, a different story emerged:
Trial signups were flat despite traffic growth
Most demos were with the wrong buyer personas
Sales cycles were getting longer, not shorter
Revenue growth had stalled for three consecutive quarters
The breakthrough came when I analyzed where their visibility was actually concentrated. The wrong people knew about them very well, and the right people didn't know about them at all.
Their content was attracting individual contributors and junior HR managers - people who could appreciate the solution but couldn't buy it. Meanwhile, HR directors and VPs (their actual buyers) had never heard of them because they weren't visible in the channels, content topics, or communities where decision-makers actually spent their time.
My first attempt at fixing this was standard: adjust targeting, refine content strategy, optimize ad spend. But we were still thinking about visibility wrong. We were trying to fix the who and the where, but not addressing the fundamental what and why of our visibility approach.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of trying to optimize our existing visibility metrics, I completely reconstructed how we measured and thought about SaaS visibility. I developed what I call the "Visibility Value Stack" - a 4-layer measurement system that connects every visibility metric to revenue potential.
Layer 1: Reach Relevance (Who Sees You)
Rather than tracking total traffic or followers, we measured visibility within our specific buyer segments:
ICP Traffic Percentage: What percentage of website visitors match our ideal customer profile
Decision-Maker Engagement: How many VPs and directors interact with our content vs. total engagement
Qualified Visibility Score: Reach weighted by buyer authority and company size
Layer 2: Problem Proximity (Why They Care)
We tracked whether people discovered us when they actually had the problem we solve:
Intent-Based Discovery: Percentage of visitors who found us through problem-solving searches vs. brand searches
Solution-Moment Visibility: Are we visible when prospects are actively evaluating solutions
Competition Context: Do we appear alongside competitors in prospect research
Layer 3: Trust Acceleration (How Fast They Believe)
This measured how quickly visibility converts to consideration:
Trust Velocity: Time from first touch to demo request for qualified prospects
Social Proof Exposure: Percentage of prospects who see relevant customer stories before converting
Authority Recognition: How often prospects reference our content or insights in initial calls
Layer 4: Revenue Correlation (What It Actually Drives)
The final layer connected visibility directly to pipeline and revenue:
Visibility-to-Pipeline Ratio: Revenue pipeline generated per qualified impression
Awareness-Assisted Deals: Percentage of closed deals where prospects had prior brand exposure
Visibility ROI: Revenue attributable to visibility activities vs. cost
The implementation was methodical. We used growth loop frameworks to map every visibility touchpoint to business outcomes. We integrated HubSpot with our content analytics to track the complete journey from awareness to revenue.
Measurement Stack
Our 4-layer system revealed visibility gaps that traditional metrics completely missed, showing exactly where our qualified prospects were invisible to us.
Attribution Mapping
We connected every piece of content and channel to actual pipeline generation, eliminating guesswork about what visibility activities actually drove revenue.
Buyer Journey Tracking
By mapping visibility touchpoints to the actual buyer journey, we discovered that decision-makers needed 3-4 qualified touches before taking any action.
Reality Check Metrics
The framework forced us to measure visibility quality over quantity, revealing that 10% of our traffic generated 80% of our qualified pipeline.
The transformation was dramatic and measurable:
Within 90 days of implementing the new measurement framework:
ICP traffic percentage increased from 23% to 67%
Decision-maker engagement rate improved 3x
Demo request quality score doubled (fewer unqualified demos)
Sales cycle shortened by 18 days on average
More importantly, we discovered that visibility among 500 highly qualified prospects was generating more pipeline than visibility among 50,000 random visitors. This insight completely changed our content strategy, budget allocation, and channel focus.
The measurement framework also revealed unexpected visibility gaps. We found that prospects were heavily researching solutions on industry forums and Slack communities where we had zero presence. Traditional metrics would never have caught this.
By quarter-end, the client achieved their highest quarter of qualified pipeline in company history - not because we increased visibility, but because we made visibility more precise and measurable.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
1. Traditional Metrics Mislead More Than They Help
Traffic, followers, and brand awareness can grow while your business stagnates. If you're not measuring visibility among your actual buyers, you're optimizing for vanity.
2. Visibility Quality Beats Visibility Quantity Every Time
1,000 qualified prospects who know you well will generate more revenue than 100,000 random people who barely recognize your name.
3. Context Is Everything in B2B Visibility
Being visible when prospects are actively problem-solving or solution-shopping is worth 10x more than being visible during casual browsing.
4. Attribution Is Complex But Critical
Most SaaS visibility happens across multiple touchpoints over weeks or months. If you can't track the full journey, you can't optimize it.
5. Measurement Drives Behavior
Whatever visibility metrics you track will become what your team optimizes for. Choose metrics that actually correlate with revenue growth.
6. Speed of Trust Matters More Than Speed of Awareness
How quickly prospects move from awareness to consideration is often more important than how quickly you can generate awareness.
7. Different Buyer Roles Need Different Visibility Strategies
The metrics that matter for reaching end-users are completely different from those for reaching decision-makers.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing this visibility measurement approach:
Track ICP traffic percentage alongside total traffic from day one
Measure qualified demo requests, not total demo requests
Connect every marketing activity to pipeline generation
Focus on visibility during solution research phases
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores applying these visibility principles:
Track repeat purchase rates from different traffic sources
Measure customer lifetime value by acquisition channel
Focus on visibility during purchase-intent moments
Track brand recognition among your specific target demographics