I’m back!

It has been exactly 20 months since I published my last article about SaaS churn on SaaSGrowthHacker. A lot has changed since then.

I left LiveAgent and joined CloudTalk as Head of Marketing, taking on a new mission with a very bold yet familiar goal. And since July 2019, I have re-lived my 5 years with LiveAgent in fast-forward mode. That’s what life at a VC-backed fast-growing startup is really all about.

Achieving an 8x MRR growth in 16 months has been quite a journey, and it’s helped reassure me that the content I publish on this blog (like 99 growth hacks) isn’t total bullshit.

Growing a SaaS is not rocket science. Yes, your team is important. And so is the product. In CloudTalk’s case, the product has helped a lot and I’m 100% sure and confident that CloudTalk is a top cloud phone solution and still has great potential to grow. Marketing a great product makes marketers’ lives so much easier, right? Still, we can’t rely on product lead growth only. Not every SaaS is Slack.

Let’s get back to the headline. You clicked to learn more about SaaS SEO. The reason why I picked SaaS SEO and link exchange linkbuilding as today’s topic is that it is something new I’ve learned and tested only this year. And it has been working quite well!

SaaS SEO

You won’t find any generic posts on SaaS SEO here, and for good reason. My guess is that most of this blog’s audience wouldn’t be interested in reading about on-site SEO, offsite SEO, ideal title length, number of Heading1’s per article, etc. We all already know that. Still, if you want to refresh you memory, here are some useful links. (But please, come back to this article afterwards.😇)

• https://backlinko.com/saas-seo
• https://mikekhorev.com/seo-saas-actionable-tips-grow-traffic-saas-company
• https://www.poweredbysearch.com/ - read their blog, it’s super insightful

Link Exchanges in SaaS for SEO

We are finally getting down to the nitty gritty! First, let me capture your attention with a neat chart.

Not great, not terrible. Obviously, DR growth is not caused solely by link swaps. At CloudTalk, we’ve published a lot of blog posts and new landing pages. We work with a content agency that helps us with content, guest mentions and backlinks, and we’re quite happy (email me if you’d like an intro with them). The only systematic SEO tactic other than that are link exchanges.

Results:

• DR grew from 44 to 67 in 12 months (Ahrefs)
• Referring domains grew from 118 to 563 in 12 months
• Organic traffic has doubled
• Portion of Organic conversions grew from 20% to almost 40%

Tell me link swapping isn’t worth a couple of hours of work every week. The key here is consistency. Keep going every month. The results may not come right away but, most likely, they will show in the long run.

Reciprocal links are not good for SEO, they said

The most common objection for link exchanges is that a 2-way link swap is not good for SEO. Yes, if you rely solely on link swaps, expect Google punishment. So before you start with any link exchanging, make sure you build backlinks from other sources as well.

How to start with Link Swaps - Networking

One of my new year resolutions in the beginning of 2020 was to build 100 links manually (I know, I have a professional deformation 😎). As of now, I’m on #87, so everything seems on track. Link exchanging has played an essential role in this so far and will no doubt continue to do so.

I wanted to create a nice lead form where you would insert your email and download my List of Link Swap Positive websites but was too lazy to do it :) Instead, you can just download it for free here.

If you like the list and think it provides at least a bit of value, please subscribe to my newsletter. If you share it on your social media as well, I will send you an updated list once I’m done with the complete 100!

Where to find link exchange positive marketers

Now that we have the cheat sheet out of the way and are standing on solid ground, let’s extend your network of link swap positive marketers even more. My top 5 sources for finding link exchange opportunities are the following:

Links Exchange Slack channel

Just join the channel, submit your website and requirements and people will reach out to you. Pay attention to good opportunities and you might end up with a great backlink. Cost to join is $0.

Url: Links-exchange.slack.com

Lets swap Backlinks (Facebook Linkbuilding group)

Same principle as the Slack group. Join and submit your website, DR and requirements. You can network and build 2-way, 3-way and multiple way link swaps.

Url: https://www.facebook.com/groups/letsswaplinks

B2B Bloggers Boost Group

Again, same as the others. Network and build links. You can also work on mentions and guest blogs. Great value and costs $0 to join.

Url: https://www.facebook.com/groups/199662247332487

SaaS Growth Hacks (Facebook group)

This is a more generic SaaS Facebook group. However, from time to time, you can find linkbuilding and link exchange opportunities here as well.

Url: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SaaSgrowthhacking

Guest post pitches

I receive a shit ton of guest post pitches, content update requests, backlink requests and similar stuff. When the sender’s website is relevant (DR meets my requirements and niche is OK), I reply with a link swap suggestion instead. Something like this:

Hey XY,

I'll be happy to link back to you - I use THEIRTOOL personally and love the tool.

Would you be interested in a link swap? We link to you - you link to us? Doesn't have to be the same blogpost - this strategy has been working for us like a charm.

Let me know,

In 9 out of 10 cases, the reply is positive and off we go. So don’t ignore your mailbox guest post pitches and turn them into linkbuilding opportunities.

Link Swaps - How to select anchors and backlinks

Now that you have your network set up, let’s take a look at how to pick the right backlinks. My initial decision factor is Ahrefs Domain Rating. Whenever an opportunity pops up, I check the DR first. Our current DR is 67 so, typically, I would look at backlinks that are 60+. If your DR is 40, look for 30+, etc. This is just my rule of thumb; it’s not set in stone. There are multiple other factors at play.

The second factor would be relevancy/backlink opportunity. You should have a list of anchors with backlinks in mind. For example, mine would look something like this:

• Anchors: cloud phone, virtual call center, cloud telephony
  Link: https://www.cloudtalk.io/blog/what-is-a-virtual-call-center-and-why-should-you-have-one
• Anchors; ivr, interactive voice response, call distribution
  Link: https://www.cloudtalk.io/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-interactive-voice-response-ivr
• Etc..

Basically, you should have your money posts list ready so you can look for anchor keywords easily. Your target posts may or may not change based on your SEO and content strategy. If you target a broad audience, you might have a longer list. Try to aim for relevancy; look for keywords that are relevant to one of your money posts and then suggest the backlink.

I usually check the DR first and, when it's high enough, I look for the website's Top pages according to Ahrefs. Then I look for blog posts which get the most traffic and ideally include relevant anchor keywords. Sometimes, you’re going to have to sacrifice the top posts with the highest traffic for lower traffic posts with higher relevancy. Sometimes, your request will be declined by the other side because their money posts can’t be touched and they approach linkbuilding very carefully. But sometimes, you just might score a great backlink!

I typically use Google Chrome's Cmd+F and look for keywords through search. If you have time, you can read and scan through entire articles; chances are, you will score a better anchor.

Once you have your anchor and backlink selected, get back to your prospect and send them your request. It would typically look something like this:

Hey XY,

I found the perfect link placement for us:

Link: https://www.theirlink.com/blog/theirblogpsot
Anchor: your anchor keywords
Link to: https://www.yoursaas.com/blog/yourblog

Feel free to pick a spot on our blog and revert back to me.

You’ve got yourself your first backlink!

Tips to keep in mind

If your DR is low, aim for similar DR link swaps or try to provide additional value—like an extended mention, multiple links or credit for your software.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your prospects won’t typically link to you from their best landing pages. Link swaps usually work only for Blog link swapping. That’s one of the reasons you should build blog posts focused on conversion (posts that bring in traffic for relevant keywords and result in conversions) — a.k.a., your blog money pages.

Selecting keywords for which to build content, selecting titles and writing the actual content can be overwhelming and is a topic for another post. Our strategy for having blog content creation outsourced while collaborating on linkbuilding with link swaps and guest mentions has been working out quite well, and I have every intention of continuing to do it long-term. In fact, I’m currently looking to hire an SEO/Linkbuilder who will do everything I described in this article systematically, long-term (email me if you're intersted).

As a final note: Please don’t rely entirely on link swapping. While it seems like a relatively easy tactic, you should maintain a healthy link profile and try to build links organically as well. Link swapping is definitely not a 100% white hat. I would put it somewhere between... let's call it gray hat SEO tactic 🎩. There are possibilities for doing link swaps in a more Google-friendly way, like 3-way swaps or multiple-way swaps where you don't actually do a direct swap. If you have a dedicated person or team that manages this, go for it!

If you liked this article, please give it a share and subscribe to my newsletter! For further questions, please comment below. I’ll be happy to answer!

If you’re struggling with growth and looking for quick ideas that are relatively easy to implement, this is the place to get inspiration. I personally prefer quick, actionable growth hacks that are easy to try and analyze, ideally with huge potential in increasing your leads and MRR.

Welcome to the Most comprehensive free SaaS growth hacks collection online. For it to become The Best SaaS growth hack collection, I need your help - leave your thoughts in the comments below and let's improve it together!

Onboarding

1. Improve your onboarding experience with In-app help
“But that will involve our programmers to make edits in the app which will take a lot of time!” What if I told you that there are tools like Appcues, InlineManual or Walkme, that are super easy to implement so you can see the results almost immediately. What we’re targeting here is your conversion rate from Trial signup to Paid accounts.

2. Create an “In-app” Upgrade bar
Most of SaaS companies use the “Time limited trial” business model. Remind your trial leads about the remaining time in their trial account with an embedded bar in the app so they can constantly see how much time is remaining.

3. Offer personalized Demo
Getting a customer on a 1on1 demo leads to almost a 100% sale. You get to show them your product, handcrafted to their use case scenario, show them the aha moment and answer questions in real time. If you have the capacity, definitely do it. If you don’t try doing at least a couple demos per month to have a hands on feedback on what your customers need and want.

Social Proof

4. Gather Reviews & Build Social Proof
If you know me, you probably already know that this is my personal favorite. Signup your SaaS to every single SaaS directory and gather reviews. You will get free exposure on well ranked websites and social proof in form of embeddable testimonial widgets that you can use on your landing pages. Learn how to utilize social proof and increase your MRR.

5. Build More Social Proof With “Google Stars”
Utilize Google’s Trusted Seller Ratings extension and get neat “stars” along your Paid search results. Studies show they can increase CTR and conversions up to 50%.

6. Incentivize Customers to Leave a Review
Provide incentives in a high liquidity form (like $10-$30 Amazon coupons) and superboost your profiles on review portals. This will help you rank even higher.

7. Use Social Proof on Your Website
Integrate a tool like Fomo for website popups that advertise whatever’s happening on your website so you can use it as social proof. Typical use case is showing your visitors data on how many other similar visitors are browsing the sites or when they signed up

8. Organic Real Estate Space
Utilize some of the free SERP features that Google offers by simply implementing SearchAction markup on your website. Get more real estate space on Google’s results page by signing up for Google My Business, and let your results show neatly in Carousels, Extended previews or other SERP options.

9. Alternative/Competitor listings
I’ve noticed this strategy is especially popular in the help desk software industry. Zendesk has done a great job protecting their brand by creating www.zendeskalternative.com. Almost all products in this niche have landing pages like Helpscout or Groove They all have very little competitiveness and can rank well and get indexed pretty fast in Google. Also they bring in highly targeted traffic. But be careful and don’t badmouth your competitor! The content must be unbiased.

Lead Generation

10. Try Live Chat for your website
25% Increase in conversions by simply talking to your customers? Yep. Live chat is so easy to embed and it brings tremendous results. “But I can’t wait for chats at my computer all day!” Don’t worry. We are not in 2014. We now have intelligent live chat software options with native iOS or Android apps, autoresponders and lead capturing systems. At $29/month it will pay back with the first deal you make.

11. Initiate conversations with visitors
Talk to your website visitors proactively by chat invitations that are condition based. Personalize invitation messages based on websites they’re browsing.

12. Try Good Old Cold Outreach
Create your user personas based on company type and position and scrape their email addresses with a tool like Hunter.io Reach out via personalized emails and the worst that can happen is you will get feedback about your product. Best case scenario, you can close new deals and hire a new sales person to repeat what you’ve shown as a working sales strategy.

13. See what type of companies use your competitor’s product
Yes, with tools like BuiltWith or Similar Tech, you can see the technology stacks of specific companies. It will help you target your audience better - watch for patterns, if they use product A and product B and your competitor’s product, target more companies that use products A and B and don’t have a solution like yours yet.

If you’re feeling confident, you can also try to onboard customers directly from your competitors. But again, be very careful as such tactic might seem a little aggressive.

14. Attend a targeted conference
If it’s your first conference, purchase the cheapest possible ticket or try to get it for free and hustle your way around. Get 1on1 team with execs at other startups. Let them explain, listen and then pitch your product. Exchange contacts and follow up later. Websummit, Slush, SaaStr

15. Powered by in your widgets
Brand up. Referrals from branded widgets or just seeing your product being used on a website can bring as much as 30% of new leads. Again, very easy to implement and brings tremendous results

16. Add a little incentive for branded widgets
Some companies want to opt out of branded widgets and want to have theirs white labeled. Others don’t mind. Either way, you can incentivize them by providing affiliate commissions for leads coming from branded links on their websites. Analyze customers whose widgets bring in the most traffic and try to create closer relationships and partnerships.

17. Run a crazy One-in-a-Lifetime Deal
Get a spike in your customers count with a crazy one in a lifetime deal. Do heavy promo on social networks as well to get the most out of it!

Content & Community

18. Quora FTW
Quora is one of the best ROI positive growth hacks you can do with very little time invested. Simply create a trusted profile and answer questions relevant to your knowledge and business. At LiveAgent, leads from Quora still make up for about 5% of total MRR. I went into detail on how to promote your SaaS on Quora in my recent post.

19. Reddit, Stackoverflow, ..
Similar to Quora, Reddit is a community based website. They have a pretty active Business and Startups subreddits where you can become a valuable member of the community. Stackoverflow is more focused on development and helping other developers, but similar principles apply.

20. Get Interviewed
Pitch your SaaS to websites like Indiehackers, Failory, or other blogs that do interviews with founders and other fellow growth hackers.

21. Send Physical Gifts for Milestones
Ever seen the silver play YouTube button for 100k subscribers? Copy, Improve, Implement.

22. Write a blog on Medium
If you’re considering content marketing, which everyone else is doing, start as easy as possible. Go with Medium, they have great design, rank well and have a huge audience so distribution of your content will be easier.

23. ProductHunt listing + Community Answers
ProductHunt has changed quite a lot since it was originally started in 2013. You can now get listed even if you “only” publish a bigger upgrade or something new to your product. Join the product hunt community in the “Ask” section and answer topics related to your product.

24. Best of roundups
Create a round up blog post featuring best blog posts about specific topic or niche, reach out to the authors, tell them that you’ve included them in your round up and get exposure from their social media shares and mentions.

25. Offer a useful extra product, tool or resource
Think of something that your audience might find really helpful. Examples: SendX put together the Biggest Collection of Free Responsive Email Templates. Neil Patel runs a free keyword suggestion tool amongst others.

26. Join a Slack group
Create a reputable profile, answer questions with valuable answers and promote your brand “natively” in a Slack community. Here’s a website that gathers 2000 Slack groups

27. Create a Support Portal
Setup a customer support portal to increase customer retention. 9 out of 10 customers prefer to look for an answer online before reaching out to customer service. Provide useful information about your SaaS and save time.

28. Run a community forum and engage with your customers online
Google, Facebook, and most of other tech giants run online communities where customers can help themselves along with a little help from official moderators. Listen to customers’ feedback, watch their suggestions and improvement ideas.

29. Be a Podcast guest in a similar or same industry
Similar to being interviewed on a blog, you can be a guest on a podcast. Describe what you do, how you came up with the idea and who you can help with your SaaS product. Get your brand name in front of a new audience.

30. Monitor brand with Google Alerts and Mention
Listen to who’s talking online about your brand with free tools like Google Alerts or paid tools like Mention.

31. Leave comments on blog posts
Provide your 2 cents in blog post comments and include your brand/domain in your bio. If possible, link your page directly in the comment - but don’t be spammy.

32. Startup submissions: Betalist, HackerNews, Erlibird
Free directories to get traffic in your early stages. Try websites like Betalist, Erlibird or Hackernews.

33. Create SlideShare presentations
SlideShare is owned by LinkedIn which is owned by Microsoft. Get your marketing materials listed to one of the most juicy domains out there, for free. Don’t have content ideas? Simply create a slide out of your website using free website to pdf tools online.

34. Sell a book related to your niche on Amazon for $0
Do you feel confident in writing good content but struggling with getting it in front of a broader audience? Launch your content in form of an official publication on Amazon and “sell” it for $0.

35. Record your blog posts & upload them to SoundCloud
Similar strategy to posting your content on SlideShare, but in voice format.

36. Record in-app videos about features
Open up Camtasia and record an overview of your app or single functionality. Get a professional voiceover on Fiverr, put the recordings together and upload them to YouTube. Valuable content for very little $.

37. Find a YouTuber to review your product
Are you in SEO tools market? Try to look for a YouTube covering affiliate tools - every affiliate needs a seo tool, right? Try to look for complementary niches.

38. Run a Workshop or Speak at a conference
Try to get a gig at a conference with relevant audience. Speak about your expertise and mention your product. Work with a closed group at a workshop.

39. Don’t have time to write blogs? Invite guest bloggers instead
If you already have a high ranking domain, guest bloggers are going to reach out on their own. If you don’t try a reach out campaign and get free outsourced content for your blog.

Integrations & Partnerships

40. Add your SaaS to Google Chrome Store
I haven’t tried this one myself but it’s been on my to-do list. Given the nature of Chrome’s position within Google’s product range, it’s definitely an added value for your seo rankings as well as usability of your app.

41. Create a Zapier Integration
If you don’t have the in-house resources, outsource a Zapier developer to create a Zapier integrator for your app. Not only it adds tremendous value to your product, but you might get featured on Zapier’s blog.

42. Cross-promo with a partner with same target audience
Find a SaaS that might target the same audience as you, reach out and do a cross promo on your products. Explain how the audience can benefit from using your tools

43. Run an affiliate program
Create a simple affiliate program with 20% commissions for all referred sales (this is a recommended and most popular setup for SaaS businesses) with partner software like Partnerstack

Conversions

44. Remove navigation menu from your landing page
Shift focus of your visitors to finish the signup form on your landing page and prevent them from navigating on other websites from the menu. Increase your visitor to signup conversion rate with this easy trick. Make sure your landing page is intuitive and has a good user experience by testing it with your end-users with a website usability testing tool.

45. Delete unnecessary fields in your trial signup page
Delete fields like company size, field or number of users (you can load these with API or services like Fullcontact anyways). Stick to name, email, phone number or the absolute essentials. Alternatively, ask for email first and then get the rest of the contact information later.

46. Redirect your trial signups directly to your app
One of my favorite growth hacks. It may seem as a no brainer but how many of you are doing it? Reduce bounce rate and make the whole signup process smooth like butter. Keep your customers engaged by creating an interesting loading screen while their account is being created and redirect them in the account immediately.

47. Get rid of the confirmation email
Do you know the exact cost in your acquisition funnel phases? How much does it cost to get a customer visit your website and signup for a trial? Putting more barriers in front of them means throwing money out of the window. Try to simplify your signup process and get rid of the unnecessary steps like confirming your email.

48. Localize prices on your website
A study of 50 successful SaaS companies found that those with localized pricing outgrew their competitors by 30% or more. Localize your pricing page/checkout page with the most common currencies your customers use. USD and EUR will be a good start!

49. Localize your website
72% of customers are more likely to buy products or services if the information is in their language. If you have a lot of content, try translating the pages which get 90% of the traffic first. Your whole website doesn’t have to be translated 100%.

50. Create video testimonials
Reach out to your most loyal customers, pay them a visit and record a video testimonial. Make sure your customers are comfortable with you using it in your PPC display ads on Google and Facebook - testimonial ads will get the best CTR.

51. Track your Visitor - Lead - Customer Funnel
Make sure your analytics are on point and you know exactly where your visitors are coming from and which traffic sources convert the best.

52. Send SMS notifications about expiring trials
Have you ever received an SMS from a SaaS company? Me neither, become a pioneer in SMS marketing for SaaS :)

53. Offer free setups - no strings attached
This is the best strategy to get your first customers onboard. Simply do a 1on1 personal setup of your SaaS and get 100% trial to paid conversion ratio. Easy, right?

54. Good old “Money back guarantee”
Another Conversion Rate Optimization strategy for your SaaS. Even if it sounds like a marketing strategy from the 2000s, it still works.

55. Reactivate churned users
So your customer decided to no longer use your SaaS app and you let them go. If they didn’t opt out from your newsletter list, send a reactivation email every now and then. Don’t be too salesy - try to inform them about new features or planned improvements instead.

56. Reactivate suspended trials
If you are in B2B, chances are that the standard “14 day trial” won’t be enough and you might actually suspend trials with potential to upgrade. Try to automatically reactivate inactive trials with free extra days and a notification.

57. Upsell your current customer base
The best way to upsell is to educate your customers about your products capabilities. Teach them “what more they could be achieving” by upgrading to a higher plan.

58. Grab the opportunity when extending trial accounts
When your customer comes asking for a trial extension, try to close them right away. Typically, they would need an “extra 14 day extension” - offer them the extension, or a 10% lifetime discount instead if they upgrade within their current trial period.

PPCs and Paid Ads

59. AdWords optimized for long tail keywords
If you’re running PPCs in the google ad network, chances are that your cost per clicks are astronomical. Try to focus on long tail keywords that include 5+ words and target a specific use case, type of business or type of problem your customers might be looking for. Example: “customer service software for saas”; “how to solve customer queries faster”; “best customer service software in 2018”; ...

60. Pimp AdWords to get more real estate space in paid results
Use all the possible extensions and features that Google AdWords offer like Site links, Callouts, Structure snippets, Call extension, Message or Location

61. Bid on competitor’s Brand
This should not be your main campaign nor should take the majority of budget spend, but bidding on competitor’s branded keywords is much less expensive and brings in quality traffic. Watch for trademarked terms and always follow Google’s guidelines.

62. Try Advertising on Yahoo, Bing & DuckDuckGo
Because Google takes up only 80% of the search engine market share.

Retention

63. Run a Webinar
Webinars are especially helpful when you have a complex SaaS product that is better explained verbally than on a landing page. Help your customers understand your product better and show them added value in features they might not know about. It’s the best, non-invasive way to retain and upsell your current customer base. Go lean and try Google Hangouts, or try an advanced option like Clicktomeeting or Gotowebinar.

64. Offer more payment options
Integrating a payment gateway like Braintree or Stripe is not that difficult. Accepting VISA and MasterCard is a good start but try adding more options like AMEX, PayPal or even cryptocurrency.

65. Lock in customers with Annual plans
Extend your average retention and improve your cashflow by offering annual payments. Customers are going to expect a discount when subscribing for 12 months or more.

66. Try auto-extending expired credit cards
If anyone’s asking if it’s legal, yes it is. All four major credit card companies can give away cc numbers and expiration dates to vendors for recurring charges.

67. Create a reversed getting started for Account Cancellation
You know how much time and effort you put into your onboarding process, especially within the app. And then you let your customers cancel their accounts with a click of a button. Add more steps for account cancellation and gather valuable feedback. Incentivize customers who provide detailed feedback.

68. Localize your SaaS app
Improved user experience means higher retention. Provide localizations in languages your customers use the most. Offer self-translations and manage them with platforms like Localazy

69. Call users by their names
Avoid sounding like a robot and personalize your communication completely. Apply these principles in product development as well.

70. The Welcome Email
Make it personal, creative and attach your picture. There are hundreds of great examples, namely Buffer and Mangools. Here are 9 more great welcome email templates.

GiveAways and Discounts

71. Give away your product to selected 10 companies for free
We did this with LiveAgent and it has proved as on of the best investments ever. One of the companies was a local webhosting leader, within days the remaining top players in web hosting started using LiveAgent as well.

72. Run a contest
Offer bundles in exchange for contact information. No rocket science there, but if you hit the spot, you might actually gather some good quality leads.

73. Do time sensitive discounts
The trick here is to offer a time sensitive discount. Something like “You’ve got only 48 hours to upgrade with a limited 25% lifetime discount” and “We only have 7 slots”. Test the discount value and see how your leads might react.

SEO

74. Run a Quick Website SEO Audit
Small changes on your website can bring great results. Run your website through a simple website audit tool and optimize things like titles, keywords, meta descriptions, images and scripts so they play along well with Google

75. Find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty
Use a free tool like KWFinder to find long tail keywords opportunities that have high SEO rankings and low difficulty. Publish content like blogpost or landing page that includes these keywords. Run ads to get even more traffic.

76. "Best xy software" landing page
If you’re too lazy to do a keyword research, here’s a good example of a long tail keyword that always works great. Try creating a landing page like www.mysaastool.com/best-typeoftool-software. Lot’s of “Ready-to-purchase” leads use terms like “top rated”, or “best”, or “top 10” when researching software.

77. Pitch your product to blogposts “Top 10 tools for xy”
Based on your previous research for the type of SaaS you offer, see the best ranked websites on Google SERP and pitch them your product if they haven’t included you in their “Top 7 list” before.

78. Grey Hat SEO: Donate for a link
Find charities, open source projects or NGOs that rank well and accept donations. Make sure they list their donors online with a do-follow link.

79. Skyscraper method
You’ve probably already heard about this one, but one can never be so sure. There’s 3 steps involved. Firstly, find good quality content. Secondly, publish an extended, more valuable, detailed and data backed content on the same topic. At last, pitch your updated version to everyone, who linked to the old post. Here’s the complete guide to skyscraper technique.

80. Purchase posts on sites like Forbes, Xerox or Inc.com
Ever seen the “Mentioned on” with fancy logos section on a SaaS website? Yep, you can get mentioned organically or simply purchase promoted content. Most of the links are going to be “nofollow” so don’t expect much link juice.

81. Ready for Wikipedia?
If you’re an established company with mentions on reputable news/press websites, your company profile on Wikipedia might get published. To submit a Wikipedia article, I suggest to outsource and hire a writer with previous credibility and experience. After your profile is live, don’t forget to look for list articles or comparison tables on Wikipedia where you could include your company.

82. Create a niche related Glossary on your website
Gather most searched terms and keywords relevant to your topic or niche and create a glossary. Don’t forget to include call to action buttons or links to signup for your product.

83. Broken link building
So much has been written online about broken link building. I think Ahrefs has the most comprehensive guide.

84. Google My Business
Google has been pushing the My Business product quite hard lately and it has been getting a lot of traction. Try to list your SaaS company’s physical location, get some reviews and release updates in statuses. Get free real estate space in Google’s SERPs.

85. Sitemap
XML Sitemaps are important for SEO because they make it a lot easier for Google to crawl your website — this is important because Google ranks specific pages not just whole websites.

86. Robots.txt
Inform web robots about which areas of your website should not be processed or scanned.

87. 404s and 301s
Small technicalities can have big impact on your SEO rankings. Make sure you use 301 redirects properly and that your 404 page is in place.

Social Media

88. Invite Facebook Friends to Your Page
Automatically invite all your facebook friends to Events or Pages with just one click.

89. Start a Community Facebook Group
Try to gather your most active customers in a Facebook group related to your topic. Invite others and share knowledge.

90. Join a Relevant Facebook Community
Over the time I’ve been active on Social networks, I’ve joined and left tens or even hundreds of marketing, job, growth, startup, business and god knows what related groups. I’ve narrowed it down to a couple I really like and where I’m active. My most favorite one is Saas Growth Hacking

91. Facebook Retargeting
Place a facebook pixel and smartly utilize retargeting. B2B SaaS marketing on social media is a tough one to crack, but retargeting is one of the less invasive, more targeted practices. Get creative and segment your retargeted visitors and trial signups with specific messages.

92. Create a lookalike audience
Export your customers’ email addresses and import them into facebook to create a lookalike audience. Run ads for the new lookalikes and get new leads.

93. Try Linkedin Sponsored InMail Ads
Reach your target audiences right in the LinkedIn inbox. Deliver personalized messages that drive more conversions than email.

Extras

94. Double your price
B2B products are not as price sensitive as B2C. Especially in SaaS, when you’re sure about the value your product brings, it’s easily justifiable to bill more. Don’t focus on your competitors, focus on your product instead and try to present its value the best way possible. Try to put it in perspective, something like: “By using MySaaS, which is only $99/month, you can bring in additional $1999 of revenue every month”. Pricing strategies and designing your pricing pages is a whole another topic, but I’ve also read and tested a great hack to better put price in perspective - compare it to things, you buy every day. Example: “Our lowest plan costs as much as your Triple Latte Frappucino Grande that you buy everyday”

Back to the idea of increasing your price. A simple hack, that does not take much time (we’ve changed pricing at least 15 times over the last 3 years) and it can be literally done in less than a couple of hours. Depending on your time to upgrade or trial periods, you will see results almost instantly. Also, the calculations will be exact so you won’t have to guesstimate the results.

Important note: I’m a big advocate of grandfathering your customers with old prices. If you feel like your old clients can handle the price increase, go for it, but I would not recommend it. When increasing your price, do it only for the new customers.

95. Outdoor Billboard
DuckDuckGo’s billboard placed at San Francisco’s SOMA disctrict fulll of techies has become a legend already.

96. App Marketplace
Add new “Extra” features to your app marketplace. If you run a SaaS you probably know that 1000 customers equials 1000 new feature requests. Slowly add these features as extra apps, plugins or extensions in your own marketplace and upsell your current user base.

97. Offer iOS and Android native apps
I know this is not a trivial task and may be irrelevant for robust SaaS apps that can’t deliver their features in limited space but think of your apps as a bonus which your competitors may not offer.

98. Social selling
Ever head of the term social selling? Use tools like Orca to get 30+ qualified weeks every day by “looking at their linkedin profiles” :) It’s actually a well thought strategy best explained by the image below

99. Reward your customer success team
Growth doesn’t have to come from hacking SEO or running super automated campaigns. It can come from simple interactions between your customer success team and customers.

Summary

What did you think? Share your growth hacking tips and I'll be happy to update the guide!

How much churn is OK and how much is not? What are the SaaS churn rate benchmarks? Is my SaaS within the average range? Find the answers below.

There’s two approaches to growing your SaaS. The first one is focusing on customer acquisition and the second is customer retention. Decreasing churn means longer retention and higher Customer Life Time Value (LTV), which, for us marketers, means more money for acquisition, which means more customers and so on.

This post will be solely about churn, the differences between monthly churn, annual churn, user churn or revenue churn and benchmarks. If you’re interested in articles on customer acquisition, check out my 99 Best SaaS Growth Hacks post, Growing SaaS by building social proof or SaaS Marketing on Quora posts.

Calculating Churn

Before we dive into the actual Churn benchmarks, let’s see the most common approaches to calculating churn rate. The easiest calculation would be your annual churn which is measured over a period of 12 months. If you have 1000 customers and 40 leave, you have a 4% annual churn.

1000x0.96 = 960

Monthly Churn Rate

A far more comprehensive and valuable metric is your monthly churn rate. It takes in account changes made during the year as you will have customers leaving continuously (unless you have everyone locked in for an annual contract).

If we use the same example, a 4% annual churn rate would mean a 0.34% monthly churn rate. And I do not know any business with that kind of churn rate, not even below 2%.

Formula for calculating monthly churn rate

Monthly Churn Rate = 1 - (1 - Annual Churn Rate)1/12
0.34% = 1 - (1 - 0.04)1/12

So yes, next time you see someone reporting on their average churn rate, chances are they mean the monthly churn rate.

Average Monthly Churn Rate

Let’s reverse it now, say you have a 4% monthly churn rate, what would your annual churn rate look like?

=(1-.04) ^ 12 = 0.61

By substracting from 100, you will get your annual churn rate = 100 - 0.61 = 39%.

• 4% Annual Churn Rate is only 0.34% Monthly Churn Rate
• 4% Monthly Churn Rate is 39% Annual Churn Rate

4% Monthly churn means that if you start 2019 with 1000 customers, you will have 610 customers left by December 31st. From revenue point of view, it means that if you were doing $10,000 MRR in January, you will only have $6100 MRR by end of the year.

Now that the formula for calculating churn is clear, let’s dive into what your monthly churn rate should be.

According to Bessemer Venture Partners, 5-7% Annual Churn Rate is acceptable, depending on whether you measure customers or revenue.

Did you get a little scared? Yes, me too. The 5-7% annual churn rate range is acceptable, but mostly for businesses focusing on enterprise or large business sales where customers are locked in with annual contracts and acquisition costs are high.

For small businesses, counting with month-to-month billing, fluctuation of customers and churn are much higher. Baremetrics open benchmark reports an average - 8.4% user churn based on an 800 business sample.

Also, they say the following:

A typical “good” churn rate for SaaS companies that target small businesses is 3-5% monthly. The larger the businesses you target, the lower your churn rate has to be as the market is smaller.

That is something less disturbing for me. Still, let’s look at some specific examples of companies like Buffer, Groove or ConnvertKit that share their data publicly.

Buffer
Based on Buffer’s publicly available data, we can see that it reports a 5.6% Monthly Churn (March 2019) which is 50% Annual Churn

Baremetrics
Baremetrics themselves report 5.8% monthly churn which is 51% annually.

Hubstaff
Hubstaff’s 2018 revenue churn rate was the same as Baremetrics’, 5.8% monthly or 51% annually.

ConvertKit
ConvertKit is also a SaaS in the SMB market and their reported 2018’s monthly user churn is 5.4% or 49%.

Launch27
Online booking software Launch27 reports a 6.5% Monthly Churn for 2018 (55% Annual Churn)

BugFender
BugFender is a cloud storage for app logs with 2018’s monthly churn rate 5% which is 46% annual churn rate.

Acceptable Churn rate for SMB SaaS

The data above indicates that a healthy SaaS selling to SMB should have their churn rate in the range of 5-6%. But we can’t assume that based on 6 companies. Multiple other SaaS Churn Rate studies have been conducted which might help to gain better perspective.

In 2013, Groove collected data from 712 SaaS businesses ranging from $1000 to $500,000 in MRR. The companies reported an average monthly churn rate of 3.2% which is 32.3% annual churn rate.

Compared to Baremetric’s open data, it’s slightly lower but still far away from the BVP’s reported 5-7% Annual churn rate.

Key Takeaways

• User/Revenue churn is bad and you should always work on improving it
• There’s a big difference between Monthly churn rate and Annual churn rate
• There’s also a big difference between user churn and revenue churn
• If you’re selling to SMB and your Monthly Churn is in the range of 3-5%, you should be fine. But, is fine enough?

Sooner or later, as a SaaS growth hacker, the idea of attending a SaaS conference will run through your mind. Whether you're looking to attend as a visitor or an exhibitor, attending can be very beneficial.

I've attended some of the conferences listed below so this is not just another list of "Best X of Z", but real, honest reviews. Read through the list below to get first hand experience of attending a SaaS conference.

SaaStr Annual

Place: San Jose, CA, USA
Date: February 5-7, 2019
Cost: $599 - $1799 (full 3-day access, Get tickets here)

I've received a ton of promotional email about discounted tickets, special bundles and similar offers, which is probably the only downside for me (as I was not planning to attend this event). However, for those, who are considering SaaStr Annual, which is probably the most notoriously known conference specifically built for the SaaS audience, I highly suggest to signup to their newsletter, grab a good deal and attend.

The agenda is packed with 300+ sessions, 500+ 1-on-1 meetings, 40+ AMAs with top industry VPs, buddy matching, VC sessions and they are expecting 15,000 attendees.

I do not have direct experience with SaaStr Annual, however, I did attend their European even SaaStr Europe. Judging by the quality of it's European "little brother", I highly recommend to attend!

SaaStr Europa

Place: Paris
Date: June 12-13, 2019
Cost: $249+ (Tickets)

This is THE event for us, SaaS growth hackers, located in Europe. Paris is very well connected to all major cities in the old continent and the tickets are very affordable too.

I attended last year (2018 was the first SaaStr Europa event) and I loved every part of it. Firstly, the venue was just magnificent and don't even get me started on the catering. Well, I could describe the great patisseries and wine but this blog is not about that. Speakers were on spot and networking was available through a neat mobile app which really helps start the conversation.

I loved the event and I'm definitely planning to come back.

SXSW

Place: Austin, TX, USA
Date: March 8-12, 2019
Cost: $800+ (More info)

If you like small, cozy, underground conferences, SXSW might not be the right choice. However, if you want to go big, definitely attend. SXSW's agenda overlaps the SaaS niche, which is indeed a big plus as you can broaden your horizons and get some interesting ideas.

Another great benefit of SXSW is it's location - Austin. Capture the iconic street art, get a taste of some real Tex-Mex cuisine (Juan in a million) annd listen to some live music.

Web Summit

Place: Lisbon, Portugal
Date: November 4-7, 2019
Cost: $450+ (Tickets here)

Named "The best technology conference in the world" by Forbes, Web Summit hosts world-class speakers from Fortune 500 companies and 70,000 attendees from 170 countries. Technology conference probably can't even get bigger.

I attended in 2015 with a Startup booth ad absolutely recommend the experience. Not only Web Summit was able to provide grounds for investor talks but with our 1 meter wide, 1 day booth we were able to talk to 150+ business representatives, got signups and even sales on the spot!

The speakers were very motivational too and the afterparties/networking events were well organized. What happened to me at one of the pubs, just by wearing a "Startup" badge, couple of investors initiated discussions with me! If you're a SaaS startup and wanting to get initial traction, Web Summit is the place to go.

Growth Marketing Stage

Place: Kyiv, Ukraine
Date: April 4, 2019
Price: $200 (Official website)

Another great opportunity for those, located in Europe. Growth Marketing Stage is a relatively young conference hosted in Kyiv, an eastern european city with booming startup scene.

Very affordable tickets and relevant speakers such as growth executives at Google, Hubspot and Uber indicate that attending GMS might be a good bang for the buck.

Hypergrowth

Place:London (June 10), Boston (September 3) and San Francisco (November 18)
Price: $200
Hypergrowth website

Hypergrowth is a conference organized by Drift, a conversational marketing platform aka live chat similar to Intercom. In 2018, Hypergrowth was present in 2 cities at different dates and in 2019 they're adding one more. Get inspired by speakers like Casey Neistat, Rich Roll or Amy Molin during this affordable 1 day event for entrepreneurs and growth focused liked minded people.

SaaStock

Place: Dublin
Date: October 14-16
Tickets not offered yet (Get notified when tickets are on sale)

SaaStock, a conference specialized in SaaS hosts execs from majors SaaS companies like Zendesk, Teamwork and Pipedrive. Take a peek inside what your competitors or niche related companies are doing for growth. Don't miss a chance to network with the rest of 6,000+ attendees.

Growth Hackers Conference

Place: San Francisco + Online
Date & Price: May 7
Price: $495 - Early Bird (Tickets)

If you're a growth hacker, chances are you know www.growthhackers.com. Now, your favorite website organnizes a conference, second year in a row. We're waiting for the information to be annnounced so stay tuned.

Growth Marketing Summit

Place: Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Date: September 3, 2019
Price: $1000 (Tickets)

Modern SaaS Finance Summit

Place: The Dominick, NYC, USA
Date: May 16, 2019
Price: Free

This is a conference for early- and growth-stage SaaS/Subscription finance leaders. They are expecting an attendance of 250 people and the best part - conference is completely free! Some of the panel discussions will include topics like How to Grow to $100M; New Growth Metrics to Prove Your Business Model; Building Financial Forecast and more. If you're in finance SaaS and closeby, Modern SaaS Finance Summit is a must go.

Measuring the ROI of attending a conference

To sum it up, if I were to pick a single conference, I would go with Web Summit. Measuring the ROI of attending is quite hard, but if you're able to close deals on the spot, it's a clear signal that such conference is very valuable.

There's also the educational and inspirational side of things. A single idea obtained from a single conference can be game changing for your SaaS. Same goes for meeting key people like investors, business partners, customers or even employees.

As a B2B SaaS marketer, here are the most important metrics I follow:

• Daily Active Users (DAU) - in this case, it’s the number of active trials. Activity is determined on key actions that we track like number of trial logins, number of interactions in the app, number of users added to the trial account
• Number of Trials - Based on the number of trials, you can plan an expect a certain number of sales. Trial signups are very important in your sales funnel and should be one of the top 3 metrics to follow.
• Trial conversion rate - You want to know your trial conversion rate in order to be able to make educated decisions. This metric is closely connected to the number of trials metric, based on which you can calculate expected number of sales. Also, my suggestion is to calculate trial conversion rate based on the source of the trial e.g. AdWords, Organic, Referral.. At LiveAgent, Google AdWords has a higher conversion rate than Global average and sources like Facebook convert less.
• Retention - You have to keep track of your retention rate in order to be able to calculate your Life Time Value and accordingly estimate maximum Cost Per Acquisition.
• Churn rate - This one is a no brainer, higher churn equals troubles. Also, it’s 7x more difficult to acquire a new customer than to keep one. So focusing on reducing churn might be a better strategy in some cases than focusing on acquisition of new customers
• Average Order Value - To be able to calculate Life Time Value, you need to know what your average order value is. With SaaS, the average order value should increase in time as customers tend to ad more users, features or upgrade to more expensive packages.
• Life Time Value (LTV) - After you know Retention and Average Order Value, you can calculate your LTV by multiplying those two.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) - In SaaS, most companies use the 1/3 rule where they allocate 1/3 of LTV to CPA. Heavy funded startups can allocate as much as 100% - 150% of ARR for CPA
• Monthly Run Rate/Annual Run Rate (MRR/ARR) - One of the most important metrics is your Monthly Recurring Revenue, or Annual Run Rate. This can help you determine growth rates and see a better perspective of your revenue.
• Number of Sales - if a lead upgrades a trial to a paid plan, you can consider it a sale. This one is a no-brainer and is also an essential key metric for your SaaS.

In an ideal world, I would suggest tracking sources of all your trial signups and also the sources of your sales. Based on that, you will not only be able where your trial signups come from, but also where your sales come from.

Are you tracking any other KPIs or metrics that I didn't mention? Comment below and help me and other SaaS marketers improve 🤙

Just a quick thought I wanted to share..

I've seen this mistake made by marketers across all kinds of niches, but especially in SaaS and startups.

Too many marketers and founders think that their product is super awesome and solves everything. The mistake there is that they want to market to everyone. And it makes sense - why should they limit their target market to only a selected few when they can market to masses and get viral?

This is wrong.

They should start with a target audience and change their USP from “we solve everything for everyone” to ..

“Mystartup.io is handcrafted to help SMB businesses do XYZ”

Targeted audience is much easier to market to. Once you dominate your target niche, then expand.

Such strategy also shows, that you know what you’re doing and investors love that.

When I discovered Quora, I fell in love with the website within seconds. My first session lasted for probably more than 2 hours. The Quora Digest I receive in my mailbox every other day is probably the best newsletter in the world. They carefully curate a selection of articles based on what you read and follow on Quora. It’s as accurate as it gets.

Now about numbers, in June 2017, Quora was used by 200 million unique visitors per month. It’s available in multiple languages and is the 91st most popular website in the world with visitors mostly from the US (35%)

How Quora Works

Quora is a website where users can ask questions and get answers from professionals in the field, other marketers, saas founders and experts, celebrities or the common folk. The best answers get upvoted and moved up in positions.

Once you create a profile and follow topics which interest you, you can start answering questions relevant to your expertise and knowledge. The more profound the answer is, the higher the chance for it to get upvoted. After you built up a reputation in specific topics, people will start requesting answers from you as well.

Quora is attracting hundreds of thousands of new users every month and with that comes greater responsibility to deliver better content. Many marketers think that they will get easy backlinks from Quora, but there are no workarounds. If you don’t provide value, either the community or Quora’s algorythm will detect dirty behaviour immediately.

How Can SaaS Growth Hackers Use Quora

So enough of the stats an intro, let’s get to growth hacking! How to promote your brand or SaaS business on Quora? There’s quite a few options and I will list the most interesting ones below:

1. Create a Trusted Profile
   Write a profile description, which includes your brand or link. Every time you’ll answer a question, the description will show along your name.

2. Follow Relevant Topics and Write Profound Answers
   Follow the topics that interest you the most and where you can provide expert answers. Write profound answers, comment on topics, setup notifications, look for answers with lots of upvotes or Pro tip - look for answers relevant to your brand which rank well in Google and try to post answers there.

3. Re-answer Questions You Have Answered on Your Blog
   This is a good one and can even work reversely. Have you recently published a fresh piece of content which you think is better than anything else out there? Look for similar topics on Quora, answer questions and link to your blogpost. If there are particular questions with a lot of answers/upvotes/seens, chances are the topic gets a lot of visits. What you can do is not only answer the question, but also write a detailed blogpost and comment with an excerpt of the blogpost on Quora.

4. Build a Brand Profile, Collect Feedback & Answer Customers’ Questions
   Anyone can create a Topic on Quora so it’s a perfect opportunity to get discussion about your product started. Additional you can collect feedback from your users, answer customers’ questions, create FAQ sections or even gather reviews. Now remember, Quora is #91 website in the world so chances are, some of the answers will rank well in Google

Keep the value. Respect the community.

Quora was built around valuable content provided by its community. Other than reddit, there are almost none public forums where celebrities and well known entrepreneurs (Like Larry Page, Elon Musk) post content and interact with us - common inhabitants. At all costs, respect and follow Quora’s rules. Don’t try to buy upvotes or hack the system, because it will backfire. I’ve seen a lot of profiles get banned forever and trust me, it’s just not worth it.

Who to follow?

Here’re some SaaS and Growth Hacking relevant topics that you might want to follow on Quora.

• https://www.quora.com/profile/Jason-M.-Lemkin
• https://www.quora.com/topic/Software-as-a-Service-2
• https://www.quora.com/topic/SaaS-Marketing
• https://www.quora.com/topic/Growth-Hacking

And yes, I’m on Quora as well, so you can follow me :)

In my previous blogpost, I've mentioned that listing your SaaS product in SaaS directories is one of the most ROI positive growth hacks you can do.

But the real results come after you start boosting your presence at the directories. So don't just list your SaaS and wait. Follow the guide below to get significant lift in leads and trial signups.

With LiveAgent, following the steps below helped us to triple the MRR.

Building Social Proof 101

The following steps will cost you exactly $0.

Step #1
Reach out to your customers and gather reviews (for the directory listings). See, Social proof is super important, especially when your brand is not established yet. Gather as many reviews as possible. Reach out to your most loyal customers first, get 5–10 for each of the review websites and then send out bulk invites. (We noticed that customers were more likely to post reviews on profiles where there already had been reviews.)

Step #2
Get more reviews. Trust me, the more reviews you’ll get, the better. Try reaching out to the end users of your product, e.g. the users, agents, reps. (e.g. for 1 LiveAgent account, there can be 50+ users and each of them daily uses the software. Provide incentives for each reviewer. You can even partner up with some of the directories and they will manage that for you. We did $15 Amazon coupons and it worked perfectly well.

Step #3
Take all the reviews, scores and ratings and promote the hell out of them. Use them on your homepage, landing pages, pricing page, trial signup page.. Use them in your display ads, use them in your email signatures. Simply let customers know that “Yes, there are customers using us, and yes, they rated us 5-stars because our software helps them be more successful”.

Forget about “Best selling software of 2018”. Your new USP should be “Most reviewed software of 2018”

(Trustpilot actually run a research on this and the second named outperformed the former by double digits).

Here’s an extra free tip:

Sign up your product profile to AlternativeTo. They get great search results for kewords like “Alternative to Your Competitor”. Build custom landing pages to send the traffic there. Build comparison websites.

Want another tip? Here you go

Now that you’ve gathered enough reviews and built up credibility, try googling “Best xy software” where XY=your type of software. (with LiveAgent, it would be “Best Help Desk Software”). Most of the first results are going to be the software directories mentioned above. There can also be Comparisons by bloggers or other websites - reach out to them to see if they would include you in these lists. If they do, you have earned yourself a very valuable placement and a backlink :) (This will be hardly achievable without having the social proof built up prior)

Paid growth marketing channels

Most of the software directories offer PPC advertising or Lead purchasing options. Try not to aim for the first positions - these tend to be too pricey (I suggest #3–#4). Try and track the leads from each of the directories. Some may perform better than others. Be smart about your money.

AdWords - “With software, the CPCs can be astronomical” - been there done that. Avoid generic keywords, try to shoot for long tail. Bid for lower positions. Try bidding on your competitors’ brand. See what their customers struggle with and use it in your Ad copy. Think lateral - try to impersonate the decision maker in your niche. What struggles can he have when googling? (e.g. a typical helpdesk manager would google: “how to motivate customer support representatives). These keywords won’t cost much and can bring really high quality leads.

Social proof is one hell of a growth marketing weapon.

Listing your SaaS in Software directories and Review websites can bring tremendous results and the best of all, mostly for free.

When other SaaS marketers ask me:
"What is the most ROI generating marketing thing I can do with my SaaS company or Startup?"
.. I always recommend creating listings in SaaS directories.

Here are some benefits of SaaS directories:

• Free exposure on high ranking websites
• SEO -> You get a profile with do-follow links to your website. Your brand name occurs on the website multiple times
• Build social proof - can be used for further marketing activities
• Some directories offer PPC which can boost your presence even more
• Once you gather enough reviews, you can integrate the "google stars" so your organic and paid google results will show with stars which boosts CTR rapidly
• SaaS directories regularly publish ratings which can provide additiona free exposure

Facts, data & studies

• According to SoftwareAdvice, 75% of B2B Software buyers consult reviews before purchasing business software.
• Pardot conducted a research that discovered that B2B purchasers start their product research using a Google, where these review sites rank very highly. (At LiveAgent, we track the source of customers and also ask our customers manually about the way they found about us. About 2/3 of the customers confirm that they started with google search + software review website)
• Think of Software directories as Tripadvisor or Yelp! - how many of you use them when booking a hotel or looking for a restaurant? I do!

List of best SaaS directories

• G2 - Definitely in the top 3. Genuine reviews (must be original and are verified through LinkedIn). You can get started for $0. The branding package is very affordable as well.
• Capterra - Very well ranked on Google. Some categories may be crowded with advertisers so the average bid is higher. High quality leads with high average purchase value. They offer PPC advertising options - we use their PPC for LiveAgent and some of the campaigns are performing better than AdWords.
• Trustpilot - $0 to get started, the highest Alexa ranking out of all. Gets well along with Google, is a Google Trusted Seller partner (if you gather enough reviews, your rating will show on Google SERP.)
  
• FinancesOnline - ranks well on Google. Comprehensive product overview and profile.
• GetApp - Nice UI, verified reviews, lots of traffic. Is part of the Gartner network (Capterra, GetApp & Software Advice are all owned by Gartner)
• Gartner - One of the major players and a reputable brand
• SoftwarePundit – Comprehensive, detailed software reviews written by the company's analysts. Ranks well on Google, and open to content partnerships.
• Software Advice - Well ranked in Google, verified reviews, offers PPC
• TrustRadius - High quality leads and comprehensive reviews.
• Crozdesk - Focused on SMEs SaaS
• CrowdReviews - They help you with gathering first reviews for free
• ConsumersAdvocate - Review portal which offers special type of promotion via Google Ads PPC (they enter the auction for specific keywords, and you can list on their website)
• DiscoverCloud - list your saas for free here
• Software Suggest - another great, free platform to list your saas
• Serchen - free listing and they also offer Pay per click advertising options
• Pandia - they have been getting a lot of traction lately
• Hotscripts - Great Alexa ranking, ideal for tech decision makers, the website looks old but don't get discouraged
• SaaS Genius - Strictly SaaS!
• SaaS Max - SaaS focused marketplace
• ITCentralStation - still not well known but it's free
• Yes, there's still more SaaS directories below :)
• TechTarget
• The Software Network
• Better Buys - Their title says it all - "Objective software insights"
• Technology Advice - they are growing quickly so create your listing while it's free
• Siftery - share the products you use and see what products other companies are using
• Producthunt - y'all know Producthunt
• ComparaSoftware - the only software directory 100% focused on spanish speaking market

Bonus (This one is really worth it!)

AlternativeTo - Great Google SERP ranking. Especially with keywords “Alternative to YourCompetitor”. Profile is free and you can get very high quality leads!

Bonus 2 (These are not SaaS directories per se, but rank well on Google, and having a profile there won't hurt :))

• Crunchbase - a platform for finding information about businesses
• Glassdoor - job portal/employer review page

2020 Update

Astrogrowth - as they say - Not Your Usual Business Software Reviews. I recommend checking out this one.

Are there any cons?

Even though I'm a big advocate of SaaS directories, there are a few cons. The biggest one is maintenance - once you list your SaaS in 20+ directories, it will take some time to keep track of your listings, update them with the latest screenshots of your UI, your pricing plans and so on.

IMHO, it's still worth the time invested, so go ahead and start listing your SaaS!

Update: A fellow Growth Hacker reached out to me about a service he runs. They specialize in submiting products to directories, gathering reviews and managing these profiles. If you prefer to outsource these activities, check out Mypresences.

In the next post, I will teach you how to Get the most out of your SaaS listings by utilizing social proof.

Hey! Welcome to SaaSGrowthHacker.com, it's great to have you :)

I know that first impressions are important, so I'm putting extra effort into my first publications.

There are a few things that you should know up-front:

1. I'm not a great storyteller. I write straight to the point and I work with a lot of data, facts & analytics.

2. All my posts are backed by real life experience. During the last 5 years working as chief growth marketer, I've tried my growth tips and growth hacks either with LiveAgent or Post Affiliate Pro.

3. I'm not an English native but I try my best :)

Currently, I'm happily working full time for Quality Unit, which is the company behind LiveAgent and Post Affiliate Pro. I was very fortunate to earn trust and almost a free hand when trying marketing growth hacks. There has always been only one rule - profitability. All my moves had to give positive ROI and now, I will be sharing them with you.

The main thing you'll want to read about next is probably: My 1st article.

Once you're done reading, let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe - for each subscriber, I will donate $1 to my Alma mater or a local Charity.