I analyzed the online searches of thousands of SaaS buyers to uncover exactly what information they want when considering a SaaS purchase.<p>These are the top five highlights from what I learned:<p>1. The most sought-after (and often 1st) piece of info sought by SaaS buyers is pricing -- by a large margin.<p>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): <a href="https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/show-pricing-on-website/" rel="nofollow">https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/show-pricing-on-websit...</a><p>2. '[brand] alternatives' is the 2nd most-frequent search pattern.<p>It seems obvious to have a page on your website targeting '[your_brand] alternatives] that positions your offering against your competitors.<p>But only 2 of the 50 biggest SaaS companies do this!<p>Ex: <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/comparison" rel="nofollow">https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/comparison</a><p>3. SaaS buyers literally search for 'why [brand]'.<p>This is another under-leveraged opportunity.<p>Buyers want someone to spell out for them why they should spend money on your solution.<p>Make it easy for them!<p>Ex: <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/why-go-hubspot" rel="nofollow">https://www.hubspot.com/why-go-hubspot</a><p>4. Security is a big concern for SaaS buyers. They want to know how you're going to protect them from loss and litigation.<p>They're even checking out your privacy policy and GDPR terms! (Keep those things up-to-date.)<p>5. Your 'About Us' page matters.<p>Startups fail all the time. It’s not a secret.<p>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.<p>Does your company have meaningful funding? Well-known investors? Is it profitable and self-sustaining? Does it have experienced leadership?<p>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.
I'm a SaaS buyer, and you correctly made Pricing the #1 thing. You don't even need to put the price, just the ballpark helps understand if a solution makes sense, especially for smaller companies with tight budgets.<p>So much time I've wasted on demos and at the end the price is so far apart from expectation we could have saved the time. Even if something is too expensive, knowing the general price tag allows you to keep the project in your back pocket in case there's a cash/budget surplus and you get asked to put those dollars to work quickly.
Really solid article. I enjoyed the examples of known successful companies embracing, instead of ignoring, the comparisons to competition.<p>> <i>...prospective buyers are going to discover your competitors, anyway.</i>
The "X Alternative" is such an effective tactic, even today. I stumbled onto it, tried it myself (successfully), and wrote about it way back in 2015: <a href="https://www.gkogan.co/blog/alternative-pages/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gkogan.co/blog/alternative-pages/</a><p>One of my favorite examples of this is Bitrix24, which made maybe a hundred such pages: <a href="https://www.bitrix24.com/alternatives/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bitrix24.com/alternatives/</a><p>For most startups you don't need to go that far... Just making an "alternative" page for your biggest competitor could start bringing you people who are eager to switch.
Dear SaaS companies. Don’t make me call or dig for pricing. If you do, I’ll go elsewhere even if your product is better.<p>Nothing worse than sitting through some vendor demo in order to answer the simple question of price.<p>If price isn’t simple, then the problem is your ability to communicate.<p>I don’t need to “Contact Us” for a simple price. If you hide the price it makes me feel like you are either ashamed of it, or just make it up as you go along.
"In the SaaS world, the search results for these queries tend to be dominated by listicles from the software comparison sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius."<p>Are these sites actually reliable? They have an A+ SEO game because I find them on Google all the time, I just don't really put much stock in their data.
Great post and fantastic collection. While most of it is obvious, there are some insightful suggestions as well. Love that these are backed up by data.