How to Write a Landing Page for SaaS: The Definitive Guide 2020

The internet is flooded with millions of articles on how to write a landing page for SaaS. 

Heck, a search for “Landing page for SaaS” shows about 3.3 million results (and that’s only on Google). 

Don’t believe me? Take a look:

With so much information out there on what and what not to do, picking the right one can be frustrating —especially if you are in SaaS.  

But before you decide on going for a landing page, you need to consider “WHY” you need a landing page. 

Gone are the days where you can get away with click-bait headlines, generic stock photos, bad color mixing, and improper design. 

If you do that now, you’ll lose your prospects faster than you can say, “Jack Robinson.” 

Heck some won’t even bother to check twice —like this guy.

So, what should you do? 

There’s no magic for a SaaS landing page, instead, all you have is a proven method — one that works, and converts well enough. 

The two key metrics that determine the success of any SaaS landing page are your: 

• ideal customer profile and;
• buyer persona.

TL;DR – Take a leap…

• Begin by Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile
  • Map out your buyer persona
• Then, Make Your Copy Count
  • 1. Start strong with your headline
  • 2. Communicate, don’t speak to your reader
  • 3. Make your text easy on the eyes
  • 4. Use active not passive voice
  • 5. Speak the same language as your audience
  • 6. Switch features to benefits
  • 7. Close the deal with a strong ending
• Let’s Wrap it Up

Begin by Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile

Right from the copy on your landing page down to its design, everything revolves around your ideal customer profile.

If you are in today’s market, and you still base your ideal customer profile on gut feeling, then you shouldn’t blame your sales team for the current state of your revenue. 

Not everyone is your customer, and as much as you claim your SaaS is for “everyone”, the truth is, it’s not. 

Practically, not everyone can be saved — CM PUNK

But, hey, that aside.

When you run a SaaS company, your biggest assets are your sales, marketing, and customer support team. These three parts represent your company in the face of the public —which is your customer. 

This makes so much sense to identify your ideal customer profile so you don’t have your sales team waste countless hours on pointless calls, emails, or meetings. 

According to Terminus “An ideal customer profile is a description of the company — not the individual buyer or end user — that’s a perfect fit for your solution”. 

A typical ideal customer profile will include: 

• the target industry or industries;
• the average size of the target company; 
• average company revenue;
• company demographic 

…and many more, depending on the type of product or service you provide.

One major reason for having an ideal customer profile is to keep you in check as your business grows so you don’t lose focus. 

The growth of every SaaS business depends on the deals you close, and how it made an impact in your business —both positive and negative. 

If your deals are costing you more resources to close and retain, then you have a problem and it will tell in your next quarterly earnings report. 

With your ideal customer profile, you are able to:

1. create detailed shortlist of companies to focus on;
2. market to companies with the highest possibility of success and; 
3. focus your sales team on closing deals with prospects in those companies.

As soon as you have your ideal customer profile all figured out, insights gained can be useful for your sales and marketing team to increase your success rate. 

Nevertheless, don’t get static with your ideal customer profile. As your company grows, so does your ideal customer profile change. 

At different points in time, your business goals, strategies, and profitability might not be possible with your current Ideal customer profile. 

When this happens, you have to go back, and reevaluate your supposed description of an ideal customer profile.

Pro tip: Reexamine your ideal customer profile every 6 months to avoid getting static.

Map out your Buyer Persona

The line is often blurred when it comes to ideal customer profile and buyer’s persona. 

And no, it is not the same thing. 

HubSpot describes Buyer Persona as a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. 

This breaks down as the type of people who needs —and makes the purchasing decision of your services or products in the company occupied by your ideal customer profile.  

A typical buyer persona for a SaaS business will include: 

• Job title
• Role
• Seniority
• Duration at the company
• Function
• Income 

These criteria are necessary in helping you understand the challenges, and pain points of each individual. 

With that in mind, providing a solution to that challenge becomes easier. 

Now that you have your ideal customer profile and buyer persona, here is how you go about your SaaS landing page.

Then, Make Your Copy Count

Use these tips to craft irresistible copy that entices website visitors to take action.

1. Start strong with your headline

You’ve probably heard the saying “humans have an attention span of a goldfish” — well that’s not true, (lol) but hey no one’s got time to stay around figure out what you do. 

Headlines either make or break you, and this goes for blog posts, emails (subject lines), eBooks, and also landing pages. 

With just a few words, your audience wants to know what you offer and how it can help them. If your headlines don’t contain these two, then bid your conversions goodbye.

capture your audience attention with the type of information that makes them want to know more. 

A typical example is Instapage’s homepage:

I’m a big fan of Instapage’s headline on their homepage, and although they always make changes to it over time, it still conveys a simple, yet straightforward message. 

Deploy unique landing pages for every ad. Convert more.

What makes this headline standout is how it’s:

• Clear, and concise;
• Connects with their supposed customer, and; 
• Relevant to the audience.

Just as instapage, you have to understand that your headline is the most important part of what makes up your landing page. As such, treat it specially and let it speak to your audience, which brings me to my next point. 

2. Communicate, don’t speak to your reader

Let’s be real here, take a trip back to your favorite landing page — probably on a website, or in a swipe file somewhere — how did you feel when reading it? 

Did the brand speak to you or communicate? 

I’m going to guess, communicate. 

A lot of the time, the copy of a landing page for a SaaS business is focused on SEO, and they neglect the reader. 

Whereas, it should include optimizing your content for the reader and search engines. 

Let me break this down: 

If your landing page ranks at the top — first position – of Google for a particular search query, but your copy is poorly written to fit the audience, people will leave. 

When this happens frequently, it results in an increased bounce rate — no bueno! 

What this tells google is “Hey, buddy, that is not what I asked for. Take me somewhere else… somewhere better.”

Google, being the big guy that wants to uphold his household name takes note of this and takes your ranking on a nose dive — you’ll practically sink to the 10^th  position of SERP—if you’re lucky. 

So, how do you avoid that? 

Simple. Perfect copy for a landing page should include these two things;

• Be direct with your headline, call-to-actions, and overall, your sentences. 
• Phrases and words such as “yours”, “you”, and “your”, should be all over your landing page. 

This allows you to position your business as one that cares about customers, which then enables your message to flow easily.

3. Make your text easy on the eyes

How many times have you clicked on a link and landed on a page that had crunchy-looking text? 

I’m talking no formatting, whitespace, bullet points, or paragraphs whatsoever. 

And, in your head, you are like this guy**

Yeah, take it easy!

Good words don’t help your landing page if it’s poorly formatted. 

You need to display your text in a way that makes it easy for readers to skim and find the necessary information in a matter of seconds. 

A good example is Crazy Egg: 

As soon as anyone lands on this page, they already know what Crazy Egg is for, and how it can benefit them. 

Here’s how you can imitate Crazy Egg, and make your SaaS landing page easy to read:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short.
• Make use of bullet points (just like this). 
• Break it up with images, graphics, icons, and whitespaces. 
• Bold only necessary points.
• Keep your headings simple, and relatable to your subheading.

Rule of thumb: Express only one thought in a sentence. 

Recommended Reading: Is Your B2B SaaS Strategy More Like Crazy Egg’s or CoSchedule’s?

4. Use active not passive voice

To make your prospect take any desired action, you need to avoid talking in a passive voice and speak directly to them in an active voice. 

For example, imagine that you want Chief Marketing Officers of enterprise companies to listen to your podcast. 

Which of these sentences is more compelling?  

• Passive: “This podcast was loved by marketing experts” 
• Active: “Marketing experts love this podcast”

The second sentence (active voice) is way more convincing and compelling compared to the first because it is simpler and resonates with your audience. 

5. Speak the same language as your audience

People only buy from people they trust to help them. When you speak the same language your target audience uses, you instantly get their attention. 

Not only will this get them interested, but also create a connection. 

A typical example is the landing page of Baremetrics’ Recover feature. 

Baremetrics here is offering a rather sophisticated tool that helps SaaS and other subscription-based businesses recover their MRR (monthly recurring revenue). 

With little to no jargon, they knew… 

1. …who their audience was — SaaS and subscription-based businesses and; 
2. what language would best establish the connection; hence, MRR for such an audience. 

This approach is laid back and simple. Yet, it directly explains to potential users what they can expect if they either start a free trial or book a demo. 

One other thing that made me like this page is how often they sprinkle “you”, “your”, and “yours” all over the page. 

It shows that you understand that it’s not about the tool you are providing for your audience. Rather, it’s about what your audience can do with the tool. 

Your SaaS landing page shouldn’t just be “something you have to do.” Instead, it should spark a feeling in your audience. It should motivate website traffic to say, “Oh yeah, this is just what I’ve been looking for!”

6. Switch features to benefits

Your SaaS has the power to provide me with great analytics on my consumer’s behavior — yeah I get it, we all get it. 

• But how does it help me? 
• How does it help grow my business? 
• Will it help reduce the cost of my customer acquisition? 
• What exactly are these analytics going to do? 

That’s exactly how potential users think before making a purchase. 

Don’t get it wrong, features are good —without them, you won’t have the benefits it provides in the first place. 

But here’s a breakdown: 

Features are aspects of your product or service —most of which are technical. These aspects are the driving force that makes it work the way it should when being used. 

Benefits on the other hand, explain how the features —of your amazing SaaS product— makes the customer’s life easier. 

Let’s take a trip back down memory lane to Apple’s iPod 1 

Feature = 1GB of storage

Benefit = 1,000 songs right in your pocket

For you to get your target customers interested in your product or customers, explain how certain features can be beneficial to them —not the other way round. 

7. Close the deal with a strong ending

After all is said and done, you have one last chance. 

One last shot to homerun. 

You either take it with you or leave it right there. 

The end of your landing page is your last chance to convince any reader that made it down there to take action. 

You want to infuse as much motivation as you can into the ending of your landing without sounding so pushy or needy. 

Sounds difficult? Here are few strategies: 

1. Make your call to action simple: A single call to action is best. Don’t overwhelm your audience with multiple options. Relax for a bit.
   
2. Add a sense of urgency: Show your audience what they might be missing out on, and if needed, add a deadline. 

Let’s Wrap it Up…

Implement these tips to help your landing pages convert. Make visitors want to take the desired action whether that’s to provide their email address, buy, book a meeting, schedule a demo, or start a free trial. 

The priority of your SaaS landing page should be to resolve your customer’s pain points.

Don’t think too much about where you should start — you can always reach out to me if you need help.