Most SaaS marketers I know get stuck in a discouraging cycle.
It goes like this:
1. They find a new hack to fix their content
2. They get super excited
3. They work at the new hack but don’t see results
4. In frustration, they give up
5. They stumble across a new hack, they get excited…
If that sounds familiar, read on.
It’s a super-common cycle, but one that can be avoided.
But first, you need to know that despite what the experts say, it spans the whole industry.
Why million-dollar companies are clueless
And after writing hundreds of articles for some of the biggest names across dozens of industries, I’ve seen this pattern over and over.
I realized the biggest names in the industry didn’t know what they were talking about.
We’d jump on a Skype call—before COVID happened and Zoom took over the world—and my client would be bubbling over with excitement.
They’d be freaking out about the newest strategy.
Because I was working as a one-man show at the time, I’d take what they said as law.
You could hear their enthusiasm in their super-fast talking and almost high-pitched voice.
They’d explain this and that while I scratched all the ideas down with my pen on my paper notebook. I was excited, too! This was it!
Their new ideas always came back to one of three ideas:
- Better keyword optimization—”we’ll include 20+ keywords in each piece, including the image filenames!”
- Longer content—”this article will be ⅓ the length of a Steinbeck novel!”
- More content—”we’ll publish five articles a day”
Those were real ideas (even the Steinbeck one), and we did a knock-out job on all of them, if I do say so myself.
But after a few months, we’d fail.
Again, and again, and again.
My clients would beat themselves up about it. You could hear it in their dead voices on calls, telling me they had to pull the plug on the project. They had been so excited, and now their brilliant plan had failed.
It killed me to see them put so much blame on themselves.
And it killed me that I couldn’t deliver the results we both wanted.
I felt helpless.
The worst part?
We were doing everything the SEO experts told us to. We were following the advice to the letter.
But the same techniques that resulted in great results for the authors of amazing blog case studies just never seemed to materialize for us.
And these weren’t nobodies. At this point, I was working with major names—the very people who had put content marketing on the map.
The very people who were writing those insane case studies.
And that’s when I learned the industry’s dirty little secret—basically, nobody knows what they’re doing. But when they succeed once or twice, they promote it like crazy.
All the failed experiments—usually including identical versions of their acclaimed case study that fizzled out for whatever reason—end up in the idea morgue.
What were we doing wrong?
I’m not the type of guy to give up.
And this seemed like a massive problem.
What was happening?
Because the truth is that there are people making a killing with their content and conversions. How do I know?
Because there are a handful of honest players out there who aren’t afraid to show their data. And what they’re doing is very different.
I turned to the answer I’d used so many times before: I started reading.
I began plowing through pages of some of the best books on marketing, psychology, culture, and impact.
I had a shelf full of books I hadn’t fully read yet, so I started digging in.
The classics—Cialdini, Olgilvy; the newcomers—Brunson, Levesque, Walker, Godin; the obscure—Bly, Thull; and even a lot of unrelated genres like industrial design, political history, and practical philosophy.
I wanted to see what I could learn.
Now, one of my favorite times to read is when I’m working out. In between exercises, I’ll furiously study a few pages.
And one day, while I was sweating it out in the blistering shade of my backyard, where I keep a little home gym set up, I suddenly realized…
… all these books were saying the same thing.
It hit me all at once as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy Gatorade over my head.
It wasn’t my client’s fault.
It wasn’t the “expert’s” fault.
It was my fault—for missing what was so painfully obvious.
The problem was that the system as we know it—SEO today—is broken.
Once I learned the difference, I started seeing it in all the effective materials out there.
I realized that most of the “gurus”—many of the people who had hired me—were so caught up in thinking it’s a different strategy, they were failing.
Meanwhile, the successful marketers—the guys and gals making millions, seeing consistent results over and over and over again—were following a completely different playbook.
The marketing 101 principle modern SEOs ignore
Most people, including my clients, were doing this:
- Finding traffic
- Attracting traffic
- Selling to that traffic
For example, a email marketing startup might have previously done this:
- Found top keywords about email marketing
- Created content to rank for those keywords
- Added calls to action to that content
This is what 99% of companies are doing today.
But that system is failing. The successful people, meanwhile, were doing what we already know works in entrepreneurship.
They were taking the Big Ideas that had shaped history, from explorers like Marco Polo to kids in their basements building what’s now Silicon Valley.
They were flipping the traditional SEO script on its head and skipping to the bank with laundry baskets full of cash.
Here’s what they were doing:
- Selling to prospects
- Attracting prospects
- Finding prospects
Here’s how that’d look for our email SaaS company:
- Learn why their best customers buy
- Create content emphasizing these reasons
- Finding keywords to promote these buying triggers
Those steps are the method I now use, Sales-Based Search.
I’d love to say it’s a new philosophy, but it’s not.
It’s based on the same entrepreneurial principles that have held true for centuries, applied to 21st-century technology.
3 simple steps to higher lead conversion
The singest biggest problem with lead conversion in your marketing is that you’re not converting the right people.
I’d say 80-90% of the SaaS blogs I see appeal to window shoppers.
If you’re trying to be an influencer, feel free to get people to consume content, but never act on it.
But for serious, revenue-driven businesses, that’s not enough.
You need to attract people who will become leads, then convert to customers, and so forth.
Right?
So here’s how. Right here, my secret recipe for success.
1. Understand your customer
To move forward, you need an understanding of your customer’s mindset.
You know those strategy games where you start with a dark map? And you have to travel somewhere to see what’s hidden on the landscape?
Understanding that mindset is like an instant power-up that shows you the whole board.
Where the traps are, where the gold mines are.
To succeed, you need to actually talk to customers. Get on the phone, interview them.
Successful entrepreneurs do this… that’s how big companies are built.
But I’ve never heard of a single SaaS marketer (who isn’t also the CEO) conducting customer research like this.
It’s uncomfortable, so most SaaS marketers don’t do it. As a result, they’re relying on the tiny bright spots on the map they can find in their SEO software.
2. Build a comprehensive strategy around key needs
I’m a big believer in focus.
That means putting our effort into what matters most.
That’s why—unlike most agencies—my ideal partner isn’t just someone who puts in dollars for content every month.
I’d rather work with small, defined projects with a deliberate focus and outcome.
So you need to start with building your philosophy. Based on the customer needs, their typical journey, and your conversion goals, where are you headed?
What needs do you need to fulfill? And what’s the fastest way to get there?
What are your best customers dying to understand, learn, and improve—especially those questions and pains that don’t apply to your competitors?
This looks different for every company, but you need to have a playbook of where your focus lies.
3. Obsess over execution
Have you noticed that we’re on the last step, and we still haven’t mentioned keywords, rankings, backlinks, or anything like that?
That’s intentional.
Because again, we’re not focused on getting lots of visitors, but laser-targeted prospects who will eventually buy.
That might be in a few hours or a few months, depending on your sales process. But I don’t pay my host to give server time to window shoppers, and you shouldn’t either.
Now that we have an extremely targeted focus, it’s just execution. And this is where you need to kill.
It’ll be much easier since you have a strategic focus, but the details still matter.
Specifically, you need content that’s remarkably original, persuasive, and directly tied to your marketing goals.
Now, you can do all that yourself.
But I also practice what I preach, and so I’m going to tell you that we’re most likely better at it.
Because after the freelancing days, I started building a team of the best writers and strategists I know.
And we’ve done this before.
If that sounds like something you’d like to check out, talk to us.
Not there yet? No worries.
I also created a mini-package that will give you a taste of the success of our approach by tomorrow afternoon.
Seriously, in about an hour of work you can use our exact method.
You can check it out here.
