Got over 10,000 blog traffic?

(It’s NOT popups!)

Hey, SaaS builder 👋

Invested in content marketing and got (decent) traffic?

That’s great! However…

It didn’t come with the kind of lead, user, and MRR increase you’d expect, eh?

Well, I’ve got a quick fix for that.

*cracks knuckles*

And in this article, I’m going to give it to you.

This secret trick is part of the reason why I’m able to get crazy conversion rates on my articles:

The highlighted articles are mine. Check the column marked with red color.

But first, can you and I speak sincerely?

This isn’t a fix-everything kind of thing…

Because the reason why your content isn’t delivering MRR runs deep.

In fact…

Problem #1: The keywords don’t have high buying intent

SEO/content agencies don’t like going after keywords with high buying intent…

And the reason is simple: they have a low search volume.

When SaaS companies negotiate a content project, it’s on everyone’s mind that, yes, the goal is to get more customers. However, because of the way content projects are typically negotiated, that is NEVER the main objective.

(Strange, right?)

And I believe the problem is in unspecific instructions that leave you vulnerable to getting bait & switched. Here’s how it happens:

The agency then goes and does, in fact, write relevant articles around your software. But no one said the articles don’t have to be high-level, unspecific pieces like:

• 5 reasons why your company needs a CRM.
• What is a CRM?
• Can you eat a CRM?
• How to get more customers in 2023.

If you’re a CRM company, are these pieces relevant? Yes, they are.

Do they get traffic? Yes, they do!

But do they attract sophisticated buyers looking to actually buy a CRM for their company? No. That’s a hard no.

I don’t know anyone with any decent budget to spend on a CRM that would google or read those articles. No one that you want as a customer anyway.

In the end, the content agency did increase your traffic. And it’s relevant traffic too. But high-quality? Well, I’m not sure anyone even knows what that means, and just like lawyers interpreting the law to bend it in their favor, they just explain high-quality traffic in a way that makes them come out on top. For agencies, the explanation might very well be “human visitors, and not bots”.

The bottom line is this:

Keywords high in buying intent are left untouched because it’s not in the agency’s best interest to write them.

And you get traffic, but no users.

Problem #2: The content isn’t engaging

“It’s better not to rank at all than to rank first page with bad content.”
— Miha

Here’s a little story that gave me this realization.

I recently had a call with a CMO of a SaaS making $10M per year.

They had various content agencies write over 320 articles on every imaginable topic in their industry: Augmented Reality for eCommerce stores. A relatively small & complex industry, you could say. The topics here required real thought leadership: lots of original thought from innovative engineers and marketers.

Now I also know that this particular company was paying pennies for the content.

And were even proud of it.

The content agency that they hired is, shockingly, also a business that wants to have as much profit at the end of the month as possible. And at the price point, they weren’t willing to pay high-quality writers or invest more than 2-3 hours into no one article. It would just eat into their margins.

They were incentivized by writing quantity.

And the quality? Pff, who cares as long as they deliver traffic—

And deliver they did.

Because the Augmented Reality industry is in its infancy, no competitor yet wrote articles on the topic at this level of scale. This means that a lot of these fluff articles actually ranked well, and the company was getting well over 50,000 visitors.

And with it came 50 leads every month.

However, out of those 50 leads, one, ONE measly lead was even worth talking to.

The rest were dropshippers with desperate little eCom stores on the verge of bankruptcy. The quality of leads was so low because when sophisticated buyers—like CMOs and marketing managers of huge, well-established stores, with decades of experience under the belt—landed on those articles, saw bland content full of fluff, genericness, lacking originality or insight; and content that was wholly unspecific and unengaging, written with a horrible flow and odd writing style…

These sophisticated prospects bounced the fuck away from their website faster than Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.

And all that was left were low-quality buyers that wanted to pay minimums but expected premiums.

In the case of this company, articles ranking on the first page actually lost them sales, and left a lasting negative impression on the visitors which can be extremely dangerous in such a small market.

~~

Maybe you too have one of these problems.

Maybe both.

Maybe neither.

It doesn’t really matter because in any case, I don’t recommend you re-doing anything at this point: no rewriting the content, no reoptimizing for different keywords. Although it might be a necessity down the line, it’s not something you should do without the supervision of a content marketing expert specialized in high buying intent content (like yours truly).

For now, to get the most out of your articles, the best thing to do is this one little optimization trick.

The Slanted Paragraph CTA is a short, one-paragraph pitch for your software placed right at the bottom of the intro, before the first meaty section of your article.

Here’s an example from Applause vs Rainforest: Crowdtesting Guide

This is something I do with all my articles.

And the reason is simple.

It freaking works: this single CTA has outperformed every blog CRO test me and my colleagues have ever run.

But why is that?