Want to know the most expensive mistake bootstrapped SaaS founders make with marketing?
They try doing everything at once.
Industry data shows early-stage SaaS companies typically spread their limited resources across too many channels, getting mediocre results everywhere instead of exceptional results somewhere.
But, the pattern is clear.
Successful companies break through early revenue plateaus by mastering one channel at a time.
They turn content into a conversion engine, not just a blog.
They make their product do the selling.
They transform customer stories into acquisition machines.
So, let's break down exactly how to execute each strategy, with frameworks and processes you can implement even with a small budget.
Content as Your Growth Engine
Product-Led Growth That Actually Works
Customer Success Stories That Convert
Referral Programs That Drive Growth
SaaS-Specific Paid Advertising
NOTE: This article is only about marketing strategies, not sales. If your acquisition strategy is primarily sales-led, just skip this article and talk to my friend Scott Cowley, or read his article about Building a Sales Pipeline that Converts. Otherwise, the only part of this that covers sales is in the Paid acquisition strategy. Delivering a lead to a sales team can be helpful there, but it’s also not necessary, so edit as you see fit.
Ok. Let’s go. No more fluff, no theory - just what works when you're bootstrapped. 🚀
Choosing Your Primary Growth Channel
EDIT: This article ended up being insanely long.
So, I made a cheat sheet for you. Instead of forcing you to read all of it, I suggest you do this quick little evaluation on your product and choose the strategies that are best for you.
THEN go and read the appropriate strategies.
I mean, do what you want, but I’m all for TLDRs and stuff.
Here ya go….
Let's be practical about this decision. Rather than trying everything at once, here's a framework to help you choose your starting point.
Answer these questions in order:
What's your current MRR?
$0-1k: Start with Content or PLG
$1k-5k: Any strategy except Paid
$5k-20k: Any strategy
What’s your available budget?
$0-500/mo: Content or PLG
$500-2k/mo: Content, PLG, Success Stories, or Referral
$2k+/mo: Any strategy including Paid
What’s your product’s time-to value?
< 1 hour: Product-Led Growth (because you don't need paid)
Same day: Success Stories or PLG (because you don't need paid)
Multiple days: Content or Paid (watch your payback period!)
Weeks+: Success Stories or Paid (watch your payback period!)
What’s your target customer’s research process?
Technical evaluation: Content
Quick solution needed: PLG or Paid
Peer recommendations: Success Stories or Referral
Complex purchase: Success Stories or Content
What’s your team’s core strength?
Technical expertise: Content
Product experience: PLG
Sales/Marketing: Paid
Strong network: Referral
Priority Matrix
Score each channel based on your answers:
Matches 4-5 criteria: Primary channel
Matches 2-3 criteria: Secondary channel
Matches 0-1 criteria: Avoid for now
Example Scoring:
Scenario: $3k MRR, $1k budget, same-day value, technical evaluation, technical expertise
Content: 5/5 (Primary)
PLG: 4/5 (Secondary)
Success stories: 2/5 (Not yet)
Referral: 2/5 (Not yet)
Paid: 1/5 (Avoid)
Remember: This framework is a starting point, not a rule book. Your specific context may require adjustments, but it provides a structured way to make this important decision.
Ok, let’s focus on the Primary? Scroll to your Primary strategy, implement it, and win!
Here’s that table of contents again, to help you get there faster:
Strategies:
Content as Your Growth Engine
Product-Led Growth That Actually Works
Customer Success Stories That Convert
Referral Programs That Drive Growth
SaaS-Specific Paid Advertising
Get in there!
Strategy 1: Content as Your Growth Engine
According to Open Benchmarks from Baremetrics data from bootstrapped SaaS companies, here's what a successful content funnel looks like:
Content Funnel Metrics Standards:
Blog visit → Email signup: 2-5%
Email → Trial signup: 15-20%
Trial → Paid conversion: 8-9%
Here’s the details (where the devil is) for this path…
Stage, Definitions, and Target Metrics:
Blog Visit
Ideally to count a “blog visit” it would mean the visitor spent at least 2 minutes on the page and scrolled at least 50% of the way down the content. You alternatively count it a visit if they clicked or engaged with code samples or demos if they are on the page. In the end, we want them to have read and/or engaged with the content. That’s a visit.
Blog Visit → Email Signup: 2-5%
At this stage we want the user to do something in trade for their email address. They could download something like a technical resource or lead magnet, or just subscribe to your newsletter or a 7-day email course. Whatever the case, we’re looking for 2-5% conversion rate from a blog visit (as defined above) to an email signup, so you should have a call-to-action (CTA) on every blog post.
Email → Trial Signup: 15-20%
The 15-20% conversion rate might seem high at first, but the reason we want this is because anything less means we’re not attracting the right people higher up the funnel (your blog traffic or your promise with the email signup is wrong). So, if you’re not getting this rate, fix your traffic sources or how you’re conveying the value of what you’re delivering when you get their email address.
A trial signup isn’t a trial signup unless they: (1) create an account, (2) verify their email and (3) completes some basic next action like setup their profile or do the first activity in the onboarding sequence. Anything less, and I wouldn’t count it as a trial signup because they aren’t actually using the product at all. If you have to email them to prod them into activation, do it. Then count that as a trial signup.
Also, this is a good place to start keeping an eye on the sources of traffic that brought these trial visitors in. It’ll be more important in the next stage, but without having paid conversion data, if you just launched, use the trial signups to get a hypothesis going.
Trial →Paid Conversion: 8-9%
Again, this might seem relatively high at first glance. But, again, if you’re not getting this rate, something is wrong with your traffic or your offer. Fix those and this metric will grow too.
The definition is straightforward - did you get that nice little alert that means you made that sweet sweet internet money? If so, count it.
Now the trick is to keep them happy. But we’ll talk about churn another day. That’s not what this article is about.
One thing I would say you want to track and improve here, however, is your time to conversion. How long does it take a user to go from trial to paid?
Improving this influences your cash flow, but also your user’s positive experience of your product. Remove everything in the way of this conversion metric. Get them the value as fast as possible and you’ll do well.
NOTE: Look for another article coming soon about “Time-to-Aha” (or what boring people call “time to value”)!
ANOTHER NOTE: These conversion rates are examples from B2B SaaS companies with average customer LTV of $1,100. Your metrics will vary based on factors like pricing tier, sales cycle, and product complexity.
Implementation Steps:
Every week you should write an article, tutorial, or something shareable and valuable. Post it. Don’t forget the CTA!
Week 1-2:
Set up content analytics tracking
Create content calendar mapped to features
Write first 2 tutorials/posts & publish
Define your success metrics for each stage (see above if you need some industry benchmarks to shoot for)
Start building/writing downloadable resources
Week 3-4:
Look at your conversion & engagement metrics
Launch whatever it is they’ll trade their email for and/or email nurture sequence
If you have > 30 (true) visits, consider testing changes based on the early data. Better if you have > 100. Definitely test some changes if you have > 300.
Continue building/writing downloadable resources
Week 5-8:
Add downloadable resources as a potential CTA where it makes sense (don’t add more than 1 CTA per page though)
A/B test formats and CTAs if you have enough traffic (ideally 100+ visits / week). Don’t multi-variate split test unless you can send 300+ visits to each variation per week.
Analyze drop-off points of your funnel. The biggest drop-off percentage is what to focus on. Don’t worry about the rest, just focus on fixing the biggest drop-off step only.
Week 9-12:
Analyze channel / source metrics. Look for which source of traffic is getting the most trials (or ideally conversions). Again, you’re statistically significant (at 65% confidence) when you get > 30 conversions from a source. Better to get 100. Best to get 300. But you can start make new hypotheses and/or decisions starting at 30 if you find huge disparities between sources.
Optimize the conversion path again. Same as the last couple weeks. Look for the step with the biggest drop-off percent. That’s your focus until it’s not the biggest drop-off step anymore.
Plan content expansion. Consider using the Content Pillar strategy here.
Document successful formats, and keep writing them.
Critical Metrics to Watch:
Time to first conversion. This is from the moment the user hit your first page till the moment they converted. The goal is to lower this time down as much as possible (by focusing on the biggest bottleneck, as described above).
Email sequence performance. If you track opens (not always good to do as some email clients consider the tracking pixel an indicator of spam), this will tell you how good your subject line is. Nothing more. Nothing less. If you track clicks, which you definitely should, it’ll tell you how good your body copy is. The conversion from your email will tell you how consistent your copy is from subject to body to landing page, all the way through. It’ll also tell you whether or not your offer is compelling.
Strategy 2: Product-Led Growth That Actually Works
Here’s what successful PLG funnels average out at - so, some targets for you.
User Journey Conversion Rates:
Signup → First value: 60%
First value → Core features: 45%
Core feature → Success milestone: 25%
Success milestone → Paid conversion: 4-8%
Here are the stages and some definitions to work from too:
Signup → First value: 60%
How many of the people who create an account actually get some value out of the product? This is what you’re tracking here.
Set the primary objective/goal where you know the user is getting something of value. Track how many people actually reach that goal. Shoot for 60% or better.
And, try to get them that value well within a 48 hour window. That would be considered “best in class” by ProfitWell/Paddle’s benchmarks.
If they haven’t activated in 4 days, you can likely consider them a lost cause. They’ve already moved on or the pain wasn’t deep enough for them to move quickly.
For example, a social media scheduling tool should aim to have get 60% or more of their users to schedule their first post within 48 hours.
First value → Core feature adoption: 45%
You should already know the core features you have that will provide the most value to the most of your users. It’s not a list of every feature.
Aim to get 45% of your trial users to tick the boxes of having experienced the product’s main features within 3-7 days. They should be integrating it into their workflow and coming back regularly.
This is where DAU (daily active users) metrics come in handy. Just be sure you define “active” according to your product.
If you had an analytics tool, you’d want 40% of your trial users to have setup custom dashboards within 3-7 days that they’d be coming back to check often.
Core feature adoption → Success milestone: 25%
25% of your users should have a meaningful outcome and established usage patterns within 7-14 days.
For example, perhaps the usage pattern is inviting a team member or expanding their usage. These can be leading or lagging indicators. For a CRM, you might consider the user importing and organizing their first 100 contacts a success milestone because it indicates your product is solving their pain. They’ve expanded beyond the first few contacts they’d add to test the product.
Success milestone → Paid conversion: 4-8%
Calendly had a Free-to-paid conversion rate of about 5% at their IPO. Datadog was at about 4%. So, that should be your target. If you get better than that, and keep them, you’re crushing it.
Most of your conversions will likely happen around 2 weeks out. That’s the middle of the bell curve for trial to paid timing.
Ideally once they’ve converted to a paid plan, if your pricing is value-based, you’ll start to find power users expanding their usage into higher tiered plans. Importantly, they should be getting more and more value out of expanded usage.
They’re baked in.
NOTE: These metrics represent boostrapped B2B SaaS companies with monthly pricing between $50-200. Companies with higher price points typically see lower conversion rates but higher LTV (lifetime value), while those with lower price points often see higher conversion rates but need greater volume.
Implementation Steps:
Week 1-2: Onboarding Setup and Tracking
Setup product analytics for tracking the user journey (I prefer Posthog for this)
Map critical features to success outcomes
Understand and document the “aha moment” and when you can say a user has had it.
Create the onboarding checklist to get the user to that “aha moment”. Remove as many steps as you can to get the timing as low as possible, but without sacrificing the necessary steps to get a user to that moment.
Document the conversion points and start tracking the drop-off rates
Week 3-4: Activation Path Development
Build the streamlined first-user experience
Add progress indicators for the user to do key actions that lead to adoption and getting that “aha moment”
Add automated onboarding emails based on these key actions, if they didn’t complete them, to nudge them along the path.
Create in-app guides for core features that can be sent to users who are struggling with a step.
Setup reactivation triggers to deliver these guides and insights. Keep delivering value to them - how to get what you promised they could get by giving you their email.
Week 5-8: Optimization and Testing
A/B test onboarding variations.
Analyze the drop-off points. Focus your energy on testing and fixing the worst performing step in the funnel until it’s no longer the worst step.
Add contextual help content to the user’s process, if needed.
Implement user behavior tracking (again, Posthog has this)
Create segment-specific paths. Look for what problem they are there to solve as to how to segment.
Week 9-12: Scale and Adjust
Review all steps of all conversion metrics and funnels.
Look to remove all friction points along the user’s journey.
Scale up when you find a flow is successful. Send more people through that path when and where relevant.
Plan expansion features. When you’ve solved someone’s problem, you’ve likely created a new problem. Solve that for them too.
Document best practices and systematize. Automate where you can. Administrate where you can’t automate.
Strategy 3: Customer Success Stories That Convert
According to MicroConf's State of Independent SaaS data, word-of-mouth and customer references drive 22% of bootstrapped SaaS growth. Here's how successful companies structure this channel:
Customer Success Story Funnel:
Success story published → Prospect engagement: 5-10%
Prospect engagement → Sales conversation: 40-50%
Sales conversation → Trial: 25-30%
Trial → Paid: 15%
Note: These conversion rates come from bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies. Unlike content marketing or PLG, success stories typically drive lower volume but higher quality leads, resulting in better conversion rates.
Success story published → Prospect engagement: 5-10%
With this strategy, you’ll be creating case studies. So, when a case study goes live and is distributed across all your channels you should be tracking views, time on page, and scroll depth.
Target 5-10% of the visitors to your case study turning into engaged prospects.
An engaged prospect is one that downloads/reads the entire case study and requests more information. They might sign up for related webinars or demos.
You’ll want to know the download rate, email open rate, and/or response rate to understand where how to increase this prospect engagement rate.
Prospect engagement → Sales conversation: 40-50%
When we have an engaged prospect, we want to get them into a sales call. You should aim to get 40-50% of your engaged prospects into those calls.
This means they’ll book a discovery call and/or attend a demo.
To know where the process is working or not, track your show-up rate, call duration, and follow-up rate.
Sales conversation → Trial signup: 15-20%
After the sales conversation, if you have a trial period, you’ll want 15-20% of those sales conversations to convert to trials. I’ve seen as high as 50%, but this is a good starting point as you grow.
What you’re looking for here is not just them to trial it, but similar to other user activation steps described in other strategies, you actually want to count those who have started the trial AND completed initial setup. You may even want to count them only if they’ve experienced the first step of the “time to aha” process.
To get better at this step, track implementation progress, feature usage, and engagement with however your product is setup.
Trial signup → Paid conversion: 4-8%
If the previous steps are coherent and connected, and the offer is on point, hitting a pain and solving it the way they want it solved, you should see a trial-to-paid conversion of 4-8%.
Often times, if they get to that “aha moment” super quickly, users will skip lower tiers entirely and jump straight to higher tiered plans.
To see how well you’re doing in this stage, track which plans your customers are choosing immediately after trial, time to conversion, and initial contract value.
Implementation Steps
Week 1-2:
Identify top 5 successful customers
Create a case study template
Conduct the customer interviews
Document the implementation journey you’ll be building
Week 3-4:
Write the initial case studies
Create the distribution plan of where and how you’ll promote them
Setup tracking systems for the funnel
Build up any sales enablement materials you’ll need
Week 5-8:
Launch the first 2-3 case studies (with CTAs on them!)
Track the engagement metrics
Create the follow-up sequences
Create and launch tests of different formats if you have enough traffic to do so with statistical significance (ideally 100+ visitors per case study per week at least)
Week 9-12:
Analyze the conversion data & focus on the worst performing part of the funnel.
Use the best performing format (if you’ve tested them)
Note: These metrics represent typical results for B2B SaaS products priced between $50-500 monthly. Enterprise products often see longer sales cycles but higher conversion rates, while lower-priced products typically need higher volume at each stage.
Strategy 4: Referral Programs That Drive Growth
Well-structured referral programs can generate 15-25% of new customers for bootstrapped SaaS companies. Here's how successful referral funnels work:
Referral Program Funnel:
Customer base → Active referrers: 10-15%
Active referrers → Referred leads: 30-40%
Referred leads → Trial: 20-25%
Trial → Paid: 12-15%
Note: These conversion rates reflect bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies. Referral programs typically produce higher quality leads than cold acquisition channels, resulting in better conversion rates and longer customer retention.
Customer base → Active referrers: 10-15%
These should be active, paying customers. They should have at least 60 days of usage, and should be defined, to you, as your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and receiving value regularly from your product.
Check your customer satisfaction scores, product usage, and engagement levels to see who would be a good referrer. Use the top 10-15% of your customer base.
Hopefully 10-15% of your customer base will opt into your referral program and share a unique referral link.
Check your participation rate, sharing frequency, and referral quality to see what’s working and what’s not.
Active referrers → Referred leads: 30-40%
Finding who you think would be an active referrer and who actually brings in leads are usually drastically different. Aim for 30-40% of those willing who will actually send in leads.
Note that you very will could find the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) here as well, where 20% of your “referrers” are driving 80% of your referred leads.
A referred lead should be someone who clicked the referral link and engages with the product info. They might not have signed up for a trial or become a paid member yet. That definition is used for payouts, but for internal use, let’s say they are just engaged.
To see where the process is working or not, keep an eye on click-through rate, page engagement, and qualification rates.
Referred leads → Trial signup: 20-25%
If your active referrers are talking about the product in a way that resonates with the lead, you should find a 20-25% trial signup rate challenging, but doable.
These people will start the product trial, complete the onboarding, and use the first core feature that leads to their “aha moment".
Double check time-to-activation, feature adoption rates, and engagement depth to make sure you’re not leaving anything on the table with leads you want to become trial users, using our definition here.
Trial signup → Paid conversion: 12-15%
If everything has gone well so far, and you’re helping trial users get to that “aha moment” quickly, you should get a 12-15% conversion rate from trial to paid.
Many times you’ll find the converted user will match the referrer’s tier here. This is another reason you want your best customers referring you in the beginning of this funnel.
Keep an eye on conversion rate, initial plan choices, and time to conversion to see where any issues might exist in the process from trial to paid conversion.
Implementation Steps:
Week 1-2:
Define the referral program and reward structure. What’s the commission amount? When will you pay out? What is considered a conversion that counts for a referral trigger?
Set up tracking systems. (I have used Rewardful successfully in the past, but there are plenty of other options out there too. Some are industry specific, which can be helpful.)
Create referral materials. A critical mistake many founders make with referral programs is not creating material for their affiliates. Don’t make this mistake. Give them things that are shareable, something that makes them look good, not sleazy. Don’t overdo it, but do something.
Select your potential ICP from within your current customer base.
Week 3-4:
Launch to a test group of your potential referrers. Get basic metrics and feedback about your referral materials and what they think is compelling to share. Help them help you and gather that feedback into one place.
Adjust incentives and structure as needed.
Week 5-8:
Roll out to full customer base, or the ICP inside your customer base.
Implement automated rewards whenever possible (tip: Rewardful does not do automated payouts, which is the downside to going with them even though they do other things really well).
Track program metrics and iterate on referral materials as needed.
Week 9-12:
Analyze performance data. Adjust user journeys as necessary.
Optimize reward structure to incentivize based on the best referrers, how they market you, what they say, and how the leads they referred in are converting.
Note: These metrics are typical for B2B SaaS products with average customer LTV between $500-2000. Products with higher price points might see lower participation rates but higher-value referrals, while lower-priced products typically need higher volume of referrals to achieve meaningful impact.
Strategy 5: SaaS-Specific Paid Advertising
Stripe's report on early-stage SaaS companies (<$1M ARR), as bootstrapped-specific advertising data is limited, but these metrics represent companies spending $1000-5000 monthly on ads. I thought it was good enough data to include and use in this strategy.
Paid Acquisition Funnel:
Ad impression → Click (landing page visit): 1-2%
Landing page visit → Trial conversion: 20-25%
Trial → Paid: 8-10%
Ad impression → Click (landing page visit): 1-2%
If you’re able to target the right person with a proper audience match and a clear and compelling offer, you can expect 1-2% conversion on ads over time. It could be higher at first and drop off thanks to banner blindness and ad fatigue, but 1-2% is a good average target over the course of a campaign.
Make sure you’re tracking CTR (click-through-ratio), frequency, and audience overlap to start. But also, to make sure you’re getting quality traffic, make sure you’re getting > 30 seconds time on page from that traffic and they’re coming from geographically relevant locations.
Track the bounce rate, engagement, and scroll depth if you want to go deeper into the quality of a traffic source.
Landing page visit → Trial conversion: 20-25%
A good conversion rate with ads is 20-25%. Less than that and you have some work to do.
Consider refining what a “trial conversion” really is beyond just a user signing up.
Trial → Paid: 8-10%
As with other strategies, you want those who are in a trial to get to that “aha moment” as fast as possible. The best trial accounts will not only sign up, but complete the initial setup and experience the first core feature or step along the “aha moment” path.
If your activation rates, feature usage, and support requests are on target, you should see an 8-10% conversion rate from trial to paid.
Additionally, as always, watch your CAC (customer acquisition cost), time to conversion, and initial plan value to make sure you’re getting the right people in the door.
Implementation Steps:
Week 1-2:
Create initial ad sets based on verbiage your ideal customer profiles use. How do they speak about your product? If you don’t know, don’t run ads right now. Do some customer interviews first and/or choose a different strategy.
Build landing pages using your customer’s own words. Highlight the pain and the solution. Use testimonials, logos, and remember people buy with their emotion and justify their purchase with “logic”. So, use emotional conversion words (something I will likely write about another day as this is so important to get right).
Define your success metrics. I mean, I gave a bunch throughout this article, so there’s a starting point for you. But your mileage may vary. Adjust according to your industry and what you know about your customer.
Set up conversion tracking inside all the ad platforms and on your site in the appropriate places. Test this thoroughly before turning on the spend.
Week 3-4:
Launch test campaigns (please, for the love of all that is good in the world, start slow and small)
Monitor key metrics. Look for where you’re not seeing conversions and test the pixels or tracking tools. Pause the campaign if needed. Get them fixed.
Adjust targeting if needed. Split your campaigns into smaller groups to get a tighter target.
Optimize landing pages. Use Posthog or another screen recorder to see where people get confused, what they click on, and how long they stay on the page.
Week 5-8:
Scale working campaigns. This is the fun part. Cut the stuff that isn’t working and double down on what is working well.
A/B test messaging to get even better. Always Be Testing!
Refine audience targeting even more. Again, chop up ad groups into smaller groups to understand the best converting audience and get hyper targeted on them.
Track CAC (customer acquisition cost) by channel. Aim to reduce that cost without losing high quality leads.
Week 9-12:
Analyze channel performance. Again, double down on what’s working. Cut what’s not working. Target smaller segments.
Keep A/B testing everything you can.
Note: These metrics assume a product priced between $50-200 monthly. Higher-priced products typically see higher CAC but better ROAS, while lower-priced products need significantly better conversion rates to maintain profitability.
Warning Signs of a Bad Campaign:
CAC exceeding 4 months of customer revenue. This is arguable, but remember that your business runs off of cash flow. The best thing is to have more revenue than it costs to acquire the customer. Second best thing is for your LTV (lifetime value) to be greater than your CAC. But LTV > CAC (without cash coming in the door first) means you’ll need someone else’s cash to scale up. And that’s a different discussion for a different day. This article is already too long.
Conversion rates below 5%. I mean, it can be done. I’ve seen it. But a conversion rate this low means something is wrong and you’re likely burning money. Try to figure out what discontinuities you have in the ad to conversion messaging before you continue. Or, check that your offer is actually compelling (read up on Hermozi’s “Grand Slam Offer” if you need to fix your offer)
Ad fatigue within first week. This usually means your source isn’t going to be sustainable. You could likely spend your time somewhere else and have a better chance of having a more evergreen campaign running. You’d be optimizing your time better if you spent it elsewhere if you’re getting ad fatigue (a drop-off of your click-through rates) in the first week. Something is wrong here.
Putting It All Together…
The data is clear: successful bootstrapped SaaS companies don't win by being everywhere - they win by being exceptional somewhere.
Your path forward should look like this:
Choose your primary channel using the decision framework
Execute that single channel for 90 days.
Only add a second channel when you have:
Predictable acquisition metrics
Automated tracking systems
Resources to expand without diluting focus
Clear evidence of channel saturation
Remember: Your goal isn't to follow every trend or be on every platform. It's to acquire customers profitably and sustainably.
Start with one channel.
Master it.
Then expand methodically.
Next Steps
If you're generating consistent revenue but haven't scaled your marketing spend, you might be leaving money on the table too.
Want help figuring out your scaling potential?
I'll help you identify which marketing initiatives you should scale, help your marketing lead understand the models, and give them a system to scale up too.
If you're a $1-5M/year founder who needs help getting to the next level, get in touch today.