If you are building a SaaS company, I understand your predicament.
US is your prime market, but competition is already entrenched. Your competition is grossly well-funded. But, you are boot-strapped or better, you raised an initial investment that will barely get your development team up. You are still pondering about marketing – more wondering than pondering. You understand the strategic importance of inbound marketing, but lack the decisiveness to build an internal team or outsourcing it to an expert inbound marketing agency. All in all, it is overwhelming.
After you have exhausted asking your friends, family and acquaintances for referrals, you are still asking yourself the question, “Where do I get my first leads from?”In almost all cases, you will turn to a (supposedly) fair-weather friend – Google Adwords. Though the adwords CPC bids would put your product team salaries to shame, you will still find the heart to take a ‘leap of faith’. And you will soon find out, going down a few thousand dollars that something isn’t ‘feeling’ right. Ironically, the feeling ‘maybe’ right.
You don’t have to look far, to know the reasons. Allow me to present some.
- A dated 2012 econsultancy study put the paid traffic share at 6%, compared to over 94% for organic traffic.
- A Wordstream study followed by a corresponding HubSpot coverage pegged the CTR of Adwords at 2%.
- Compare that to 25%+ CTRs for results that top Google First Page.
So, to really hustle things, it is paramount to top Google First Page, and that too really fast. But, how can SaaS Founders achieve this, when it is common knowledge that ranking high on Google could take a good one year and beyond.
For SaaS there is a way, provided you pay for it. (Not like Adwords though)Capterra could get you on top of Google First Page, in an organic fashion. Being a long-time aggregator of the world’s software companies, Capterra ranks on top of Google First Page for most software products including SaaS.
Once you have listed your SaaS product on Capterra, you will see yourself part of a large directory consisting of other software companies. By participating in Capterra’s CPC bidding program, your SaaS product can rise to the top of the directory list.
And then you top Google First Page. Get going !!!
