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I analyzed the online searches of thousands of SaaS buyers to uncover exactly what information they want when considering a SaaS purchase. These are the top fi

I analyzed the online searches of thousands of SaaS buyers to uncover exactly what information they want when considering a SaaS purchase. These are the top five highlights from what I learned: 1. The most sought-after (and often 1st) piece of info sought by SaaS buyers is pricing -- by a large margin. Have a pricing page! If you can't share exact pricing for some reason, try one of these alternative approaches (created by an acquaintance of mine): https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/show-pricing-on-website/ https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/show-pricing-on-websit... 2. '[brand] alternatives' is the 2nd most-frequent search pattern. It seems obvious to have a page on your website targeting '[your_brand] alternatives] that positions your offering against your competitors. But only 2 of the 50 biggest SaaS companies do this! Ex: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/comparison https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/comparison 3. SaaS buyers literally search for 'why [brand]'. This is another under-leveraged opportunity. Buyers want someone to spell out for them why they should spend money on your solution. Make it easy for them! Ex: https://www.hubspot.com/why-go-hubspot https://www.hubspot.com/why-go-hubspot 4. Security is a big concern for SaaS buyers. They want to know how you're going to protect them from loss and litigation. They're even checking out your privacy policy and GDPR terms! (Keep those things up-to-date.) 5. Your 'About Us' page matters. Startups fail all the time. It’s not a secret. Buyers want to know that the effort they put forth–convincing management, setting up and integrating your solution, convincing employees to use it–is going to be worth it in the long run. Does your company have meaningful funding? Well-known investors? Is it profitable and self-sustaining? Does it have experienced leadership? In your company’s About Us page, make sure you convey anything that can reassure buyers that the company is robust and set up to thrive.

enumjorge 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. I get that as a business #2 and #3 provide marketing opportunities, but as a consumer this is part of the reason why the usefulness of search is slowly eroding. If I’m looking for something like “why[brand]” most of the time I want an independent review/opinion and not some sales copy by [brand] that has been SEO’d all the way to the top of the results.
- franciscassel 6y ago
  Fair point! But as a business, it'd be negligent not to make your 'why' case, given that your consumers are looking for it. Hopefully the business does it in a way that's transparent and forthright. I'm a big fan of making it really clear that a solution isn't going to be a perfect fit for everyone. No point in wasting anyone's time.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    It was a really excellent post. Thank you!
- jonathanlydall 6y ago
  Your concerns about "gaming" search results are very fair and valid. However, I feel that provided that sleazy SEO aren't being used, I don't think it's intrinsically bad. I work for a small SaaS startup (still very early days) and this suggestion could solve one of the problems we have when it comes to marketing our product which very few people have heard of. For us it's a little harder to get people to understand our product because there are no other well known products that are directly comparable to ours. However, there are well known products that are in the same problem space as ours. The well known competing products tend to primarily focus on appealling to company "execs", but not so much the actual end users of them. The actual end users need to commit themselves and their skillsets into that particular proprietary technology, which smart ones may realize is not great for their long term career if they're planning on being able to move around the industry. So our product is similar to these well known products in that it solves some of the same problems, but we differ greatly in that ours is geared towards end users who don't want any kind of platform lock-in. After reading this website, I'm planning on making a page to compare ourselves to these particular "competing" products, but giving us the opportunity to show why even if you dislike those other products, you'll like ours because of its differences. This will also help people better understand the problem we're solving.
  - franciscassel 6y ago
    Fantastic, I'm glad to hear the insights in the piece were helpful to you, Jonathan.
dazc 6y ago
'#1 .....Have a pricing page! If you can't share exact pricing for some reason, try one of these alternative approaches...' If there is some reason why you're coy about pricing then I assume you are making things up as you go along. I also assume you'll make promises you can not deliver on. If it really is the most sought after info, by a long way, then one would be a fool to omit it.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more, this kind of thing drives me nuts - if I see "call us for pricing" or whatever, I just move on.
  - Drdrdrq 6y ago
    As do I. But we are not the target customers.
    - GordonS 6y ago
      I work in the enterprise space, so often I actually am the target customer. But I still can't stand this behaviour - I don't want to waste my time in a call with a sales bod, I just want the price so I can add it to the spreadsheet of competitors.
- franciscassel 6y ago
  Sometimes there's no good reason to leave pricing off the site. But there are some legit reasons. E.g., every sale is custom-priced based on more than a few different variables.
- gk1 6y ago
  > If it really is the most sought after info, by a long way, then one would be a fool to omit it. And yet most enterprise software companies do omit it. Perhaps there is a good reason to omit it, and you're the one who's not seeing something?
  - 6y ago
jacquesm 6y ago
B2B SaaS. Lots of SaaS is B2C nowadays as well.
- franciscassel 6y ago
  That's a good point. I'll clarify this in the post.
rhizome 6y ago
How did you access search terms used to find the site(s)?
- franciscassel 6y ago
  ahrefs. The full methodology is described in the article.
tootie 6y ago
This is all feels very obvious, but it's great to see it spelled out so clearly and backed by data. It's so perfectly succinct.
- franciscassel 6y ago
  Excellent compliment, thank you.
bobwall 6y ago
Great call on #2. We will be adding that onto our site. Thanks.
ponker 6y ago
Talking about competitors only makes sense in narrow circumstances. The fact is, a lot of people who find you don't know who your competitors are, and it's better to keep things that way! Let them Google for alternatives -- half they time they won't find any, and if they do, when they see that other page, they don't know how legitimate that other company is -- yours is already the "standard" in their mind. The others are implicitly on the defensive and it's better not to legitimize them on your own page.

enumjorge 6y ago

Thanks for sharing. I get that as a business #2 and #3 provide marketing opportunities, but as a consumer this is part of the reason why the usefulness of search is slowly eroding. If I’m looking for something like “why[brand]” most of the time I want an independent review/opinion and not some sales copy by [brand] that has been SEO’d all the way to the top of the results.

franciscassel 6y ago
Fair point! But as a business, it'd be negligent not to make your 'why' case, given that your consumers are looking for it. Hopefully the business does it in a way that's transparent and forthright. I'm a big fan of making it really clear that a solution isn't going to be a perfect fit for everyone. No point in wasting anyone's time.
- dhimes 6y ago
  It was a really excellent post. Thank you!
jonathanlydall 6y ago
Your concerns about "gaming" search results are very fair and valid. However, I feel that provided that sleazy SEO aren't being used, I don't think it's intrinsically bad. I work for a small SaaS startup (still very early days) and this suggestion could solve one of the problems we have when it comes to marketing our product which very few people have heard of. For us it's a little harder to get people to understand our product because there are no other well known products that are directly comparable to ours. However, there are well known products that are in the same problem space as ours. The well known competing products tend to primarily focus on appealling to company "execs", but not so much the actual end users of them. The actual end users need to commit themselves and their skillsets into that particular proprietary technology, which smart ones may realize is not great for their long term career if they're planning on being able to move around the industry. So our product is similar to these well known products in that it solves some of the same problems, but we differ greatly in that ours is geared towards end users who don't want any kind of platform lock-in. After reading this website, I'm planning on making a page to compare ourselves to these particular "competing" products, but giving us the opportunity to show why even if you dislike those other products, you'll like ours because of its differences. This will also help people better understand the problem we're solving.
- franciscassel 6y ago
  Fantastic, I'm glad to hear the insights in the piece were helpful to you, Jonathan.

dazc 6y ago

'#1 .....Have a pricing page! If you can't share exact pricing for some reason, try one of these alternative approaches...' If there is some reason why you're coy about pricing then I assume you are making things up as you go along. I also assume you'll make promises you can not deliver on. If it really is the most sought after info, by a long way, then one would be a fool to omit it.

GordonS 6y ago
Couldn't agree more, this kind of thing drives me nuts - if I see "call us for pricing" or whatever, I just move on.
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  As do I. But we are not the target customers.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    I work in the enterprise space, so often I actually am the target customer. But I still can't stand this behaviour - I don't want to waste my time in a call with a sales bod, I just want the price so I can add it to the spreadsheet of competitors.
franciscassel 6y ago
Sometimes there's no good reason to leave pricing off the site. But there are some legit reasons. E.g., every sale is custom-priced based on more than a few different variables.
gk1 6y ago
> If it really is the most sought after info, by a long way, then one would be a fool to omit it. And yet most enterprise software companies do omit it. Perhaps there is a good reason to omit it, and you're the one who's not seeing something?
- 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

B2B SaaS. Lots of SaaS is B2C nowadays as well.

franciscassel 6y ago
That's a good point. I'll clarify this in the post.

rhizome 6y ago

How did you access search terms used to find the site(s)?

franciscassel 6y ago
ahrefs. The full methodology is described in the article.

tootie 6y ago

This is all feels very obvious, but it's great to see it spelled out so clearly and backed by data. It's so perfectly succinct.

franciscassel 6y ago
Excellent compliment, thank you.

bobwall 6y ago

Great call on #2. We will be adding that onto our site. Thanks.

ponker 6y ago

Talking about competitors only makes sense in narrow circumstances. The fact is, a lot of people who find you don't know who your competitors are, and it's better to keep things that way! Let them Google for alternatives -- half they time they won't find any, and if they do, when they see that other page, they don't know how legitimate that other company is -- yours is already the "standard" in their mind. The others are implicitly on the defensive and it's better not to legitimize them on your own page.