How Do We Market Our SaaS? Here’s What Worked And What Didn’t
Published on March 11, 2025 by Laurens Goethals
How Do We Market Our SaaS? Here’s What Worked And What Didn’t
Oh Dear is the underdog in the website monitoring software space. We’re a small player in a market dominated by big, well-funded competitors. And yet, we’ve built a solid user base and created a profitable SaaS business. But how did we do it? And more importantly, what worked, and what didn’t? This is our honest story about marketing Oh Dear, our lessons learned, and the strategies that helped us grow.
Starting from Our Personal Network
When we launched Oh Dear, we had one major advantage: the personal networks of our co-founders, Mattias Geniar and Freek Van Der Herten. Both are well-known in the Laravel community, each running their own successful businesses — Cron.Weekly newsletter (Mattias) and Spatie (Freek). Their developer-focused blogs and community presence helped spread the word about Oh Dear organically. Thanks to word-of-mouth and strong community engagement, we scaled to about 2,000 users without spending much on marketing. But at some point, we knew we had to expand beyond our own network. That’s when we partnered with Brandimpact, a marketing agency from Ghent, Belgium, to experiment with different growth tactics and build a structured digital marketing strategy.
These are the steps we took to set-up and scale our digital marketing strategy.
Phase 1: Digital marketing strategy & first growth phase
With Brandimpact’s help, we conducted:
- Customer interviews to better understand our ideal users
- Competitor analysis & keyword research to refine our positioning
- A strategy workshop to set priorities for the next six months The goal? Increase awareness, improve conversion rates, and find scalable acquisition channels. Here’s what we tried and what we learned.
Side note: We are still a small player in the website monitoring space, so we limited our monthly media budget: Approximately $5.000 monthly on paid advertising platforms.
What Worked
1. Google Search Ads (With Limitations)
Google Ads helped generate some free trial signups, but at a high cost per acquisition. Since many competitors bid on the same keywords (“website monitoring software”, “uptime monitoring software”), we were often outspent. While it brought in leads, it wasn’t sustainable for a bootstrapped SaaS like ours.
2. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
We improved our website and trial experience by:
- Adding a product video on the homepage
- Making our copy more engaging for our target audience and less feature-focused
- Extending the free trial from 7 to 30 days
- Adding customer testimonials Although we couldn’t directly measure the impact, it likely contributed to better conversion rates.
Here's the video we ended up with:
3. Reddit Ads – A Surprising Win
We didn’t expect much from Reddit Ads, but they turned out to be one of the best-performing paid channels for us. With help from the Reddit team, we tested three different campaigns: A feature-based carousel ad A product video featuring Mattias & Freek with a fun hook
4. Memes – because Redditors love memes!
Our best performer? The classic Drake meme:
We actually got free trial signups from these campaigns. With Reddit Ads being increasingly pushed by Google, we see it as a promising channel.
What Didn’t Work
1. LinkedIn Ads – Too Expensive
We targeted CTOs and developers, but the cost per click was too high. LinkedIn might work for enterprise SaaS, but for our niche, it wasn’t worth the investment.
2. Meta & YouTube Ads – No Significant Impact
We briefly tested Facebook (Meta) Ads and YouTube Ads, but they didn’t generate enough quality leads. Developers don’t typically discover technical tools through these platforms.
3. Twitter Ads – Low-Quality Clicks
The quality of traffic from Twitter/X Ads was poor, and we didn’t see meaningful conversions.
Phase 2: A New Growth Strategy
After realizing that awareness ads weren’t driving enough results, we pivoted towards other growth strategies.
1. Affiliate Marketing – Activating Our Community
We already had an affiliate program offering 25% commission per sale, but few affiliates were actively promoting us. To improve this, we:
- Reached out to existing customers
- Created a press kit with ready-to-use content
- Optimized our affiliate onboarding emails
2. SaaS Review Platforms – Leveraging G2 & Capterra
Since developers trust peer reviews, we focused on building a strong presence on platforms like G2 and Capterra.
- We added review badges to our site
- We launched campaigns to encourage users to leave reviews
- We paid for a Capterra CPC campaign (~€40 per free trial)
Results? So far, Capterra (Gartner) has been our best-performing paid channel for free trial signups.
3. SEO & Content Marketing – Playing the Long Game
We invested in SEO-driven content, but competing for high-intent keywords (like “uptime monitoring software”) remains tough.
To improve our rankings, we:
- Published SEO-optimized blog posts (see our blog)
- Focused on getting backlinks from SaaS review sites
- Reached out to tech blogs that review monitoring tools
Example outreach targets:
4. Direct Outreach with Gifting – A Creative Approach
We’re currently planning a gifting campaign targeting CTOs at Belgian digital agencies.
The idea?
- Sending them a custom Oh Dear gift box (coffee mug, stress ball, or beer bottles)
- Including a funny anecdote
- Offering a discount code to try Oh Dear
Final Thoughts: What We Learned About Marketing a SaaS
- Personal networks & word-of-mouth are powerful, especially in the developer community.
- Paid ads (except Reddit & Capterra) weren’t particularly effective.
- SEO & review platforms drive sustainable growth.
- Experimentation is key. We wouldn’t have discovered Reddit’s potential otherwise.
- A mix of strategies works best. There's no one-size-fits-all approach.
Our marketing strategy is always evolving, and we’ll keep refining our approach as we learn.
Have a SaaS marketing tip that worked for you? Let us know—we’re always open to new ideas.
