Solved: SaaS Marketing Strategy for a Low Budget

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out.

The situation you described is a story I've heard a dozen times before. The post-launch grind is brutal, especially when you're doing it all yourself and not seeing the results. It's easy to feel like you're shouting into the void. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance, because honestly, the problem probably isn't your work ethic or your SaaS. It's your strategy. You're focusing on the daily tactics without first building the foundation that makes those tactics actually work.

Let's unpack that a bit.

We'll need to look at why 'good ideas' aren't enough...

First off, let's get something straight. The fact that "people have said it is a good idea" means very little. People are generally nice. They don't want to crush your dreams. But their politeness doesn't pay your bills. The market is the only judge that matters, and the market is brutally honest. I've seen technically brilliant products with loads of features, developed over years, fail to get any traction at all. Why? Because they were a solution in search of a problem.

The number one reason businesses fail, and especially why marketing campaigns burn cash with no return, is a flawed offer built on a weak foundation. An offer that doesn't provide enough value, or is aimed at an audience that doesn't feel a burning need for that value. In simple terms: a lack of genuine, painful demand.

Your experience on Product Hunt and Reddit is a classic symptom of this. Product Hunt is mostly a bubble for other tech founders and early adopters. It's great for a quick vanity spike in traffic but rarely translates into sticky, paying B2B customers unless your product is specifically for that audience. Your Reddit strategy is probably hitting the same wall. You're offering help and then a "quick promotion". But a promotion for what? To whom? Unless your comment lands in front of the exact person, with the exact problem your SaaS solves, at the exact moment they're feeling that pain, it's just noise. It's inefficient and, as you've discovered, incredibly draining and un motivating.

To fix this, you have to stop thinking like a builder and start thinking like a problem-solver. It's about a fundamental shift in perspective. I remember one case where a talented firm wasn't just selling a "brand film" service. That's a commodity. They were struggling. We helped them reframe their offer entirely. They started selling a solution to a deep, emotional frustration: the pain of being an ambitious firm that was invisible to their ideal clients. Their new offer wasn't a video; it was a way to "build a customer base" and get the recognition they deserved. That emotional connection is what drives action. They then packaged this into a clear, tangible offer: a "1-Day Filming Process" with a defined name, clear deliverables, and a fixed timeline. It made a complex, scary service feel simple and safe to buy.

Your SaaS needs this same transformation. It's not about what it *is*. It's about what it *does* for a very specific person with a very specific problem.

I'd say you need to define your ICP by their nightmare, not their demographics...

This brings us to the next critical piece of the puzzle: your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). I'm willing to bet that right now, your ICP is something vague like "small businesses" or "marketing teams". This is the kind of sterile, demographic-based profile that leads to generic ads and marketing messages that resonate with precisely no one.

You need to forget demographics and start focusing on psychographics. Specifically, you need to become the world's leading expert on your customer's professional nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, or career-threatening problem that your SaaS solves? Your ICP isn't a job title or a company size; it's a problem state.

Let's make this real.
-> A generic ICP is: "Head of Engineering at a tech company with 50-200 employees." This tells you nothing useful.
-> A nightmare-based ICP is: "A Head of Engineering who is terrified of her best, most expensive developers quitting out of sheer frustration with a broken, inefficient workflow. She's tried to fix it with internal tools that failed, she's under pressure from the CTO to increase velocity, and she knows that every day the problem persists, her team's morale drops and the risk of a key project failing increases."

See the difference? Now you're not selling "workflow management software". You're selling a way to retain top talent. You're selling project security. You're selling the ability for that Head of Engineering to look good to her boss. You're selling her a good night's sleep.

Doing this work is non-negotiable. You have to get out of your own head and into theirs. Where do these people hang out online? What podcasts do they listen to on their commute (e.g., 'Acquired', 'This Week in Startups')? What industry newsletters do they actually read (e.g., 'Stratechery', 'Lenny's Newsletter')? What influencers do they follow on LinkedIn or Twitter (e.g., Jason Lemkin, SaaStr)? What other SaaS tools are already on their company credit card (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira)? This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire marketing strategy. Without it, you're just guessing. And guessing is expensive.

You probably should stop asking for the sale and start offering value...

Once you understand the nightmare, you can craft an offer they can't refuse. And I'm not talking about your paid subscription. I'm talking about your initial Call to Action (CTA). This is the most common point of failure I see in B2B marketing.

The "Request a Demo" or "Book a Call" button is possibly the most arrogant CTA ever invented. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a busy, important person, has nothing better to do than schedule a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to by a company they've never heard of. It is high-friction and offers zero immediate value. It instantly frames you as just another vendor begging for their time.

You have to delete it. At least for your top-of-funnel marketing.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect start selling *themselves* on your solution. For a SaaS founder like you, this is your secret weapon.

The gold standard is a free trial with no credit card required. Let them get their hands on the actual product. Let them experience the transformation firsthand. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a simple next step. You're not generating "Marketing Qualified Leads" (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating "Product Qualified Leads" (PQLs) who are already convinced. We've seen this work time and time again. One of our B2B SaaS clients generated 1,535 trials using this exact method with Meta ads. Another got 5,082 software trials at just $7 a pop. These numbers are impossible with a "Request a Demo" gatekeeper.

If a full free trial isn't feasible, a freemium plan is the next best thing. Give them a core part of your product for free, forever. Let it become an indispensable part of their workflow. The upsell to paid features then becomes a natural progression as their needs grow.

The principle is simple: solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing for money. You have to give value before you can ever hope to capture it. This single change in mindset will have a bigger impact on your growth than any daily marketing grind.

You'll need a message that actually connects...

So you've defined the nightmare and created a value-first offer. Now, and only now, can you think about the message. Your copy, whether it's on a landing page or in an ad, needs to speak directly to the pain you've uncovered.

There are two simple but powerful frameworks we use for this.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS): This is perfect for high-touch services but works brilliantly for SaaS too. You state the problem, you twist the knife to make them feel the pain, and then you present your solution as the relief.

Example for a hypothetical SaaS that automates financial reporting:
Problem: "Are you still manually exporting CSVs and wrestling with spreadsheets every month to build your board report?"
Agitate: "Do you live in fear of finding a formula error at the last minute, making you look unprepared in front of your investors while your competitors are presenting slick, real-time dashboards?"
Solve: "Our platform connects to your data sources in minutes and automatically generates the beautiful, accurate reports you need. Get your weekend back and walk into your next board meeting with total confidence."

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB): This framework paints a picture of their current painful reality and the desired future state, positioning your product as the bridge to get them there.

Example for the same SaaS:
Before: "It’s the end of the quarter. Your stomach churns as you stare at a mountain of raw data. Another 10 hours of tedious, error-prone work stands between you and the insights your CEO is demanding."
After: "Imagine clicking a single button. A perfect, insightful financial dashboard appears on your screen, ready to share. You're not just prepared; you're ahead of the game, spotting trends before anyone else."
Bridge: "Our automated reporting tool is the bridge that takes you from data chaos to strategic clarity. Start your free trial and build your first automated report in under 15 minutes."

Notice that neither of these examples leads with features. They don't say "We have 17 data integrations and AI-powered charting." They lead with the emotional reality of the customer's nightmare. The feature is the proof, not the headline. This is the differance between copy that converts and copy that gets ignored.

We'll need to look at the numbers that unlock growth...

Now, let's address the elephant in the room: "I can’t run ads either as I don’t really have a budget to work with."

I understand. But this is a mindset issue. The goal isn't to avoid spending money; the goal is to invest money intelligently to make more money. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead be?" but rather "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a fantastic, long-term customer?" The answer to that question is found in one of the most important metrics for any SaaS business: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Until you know this number, you are flying blind. You can't make informed decisions about marketing spend because you don't know what a customer is actually worth to you. Let's calculate it. You need three pieces of information:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's your average monthly subscription price?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue (after server costs, support, etc.)? For software, this is often very high, say 80-90%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers cancel their subscription each month?

The calculation is straightforward:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's run a hypothetical example. Say your ARPA is £100, your Gross Margin is 85%, and your monthly churn is 5%.

LTV = (£100 * 0.85) / 0.05
LTV = £85 / 0.05 = £1,700

In this scenario, each customer you acquire is worth £1,700 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. Now we have a number to work with.

A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio for a growing SaaS company is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to acquire a customer. In our example, that's £1,700 / 3 = ~£567. Suddenly, you have a budget. You can now afford to spend up to £567 to get one paying customer.

If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads (or free trials) into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £56.70 per lead/trial. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of "no budget" and allows you to invest in predictable customer acquisition channels, like paid ads.

I'd say you need to use ads to find customers, not just 'awareness'...

Once you have your foundation in place—your nightmare ICP, your value-first offer, your pain-focused messaging, and your LTV-based budget—then, and only then, are you ready for paid ads. And when you do start, you must be strategic.

There's an uncomfortable truth about many ad platforms, especially Meta (Facebook/Instagram). If you run a campaign with the objective set to "Brand Awareness" or "Reach," you're giving the algorithm a very specific, and very wrong, command: "Find me the cheapest possible eyeballs, regardless of their quality." The algorithm, being very good at its job, will find users who are not in demand because they never click, never engage, and certainly never buy anything. You are literally paying to reach the worst possible audience for your product.

For a startup, awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite for it. The best awareness is a competitor's customer switching to you and raving about it. That only happens through conversion.

That's why you must always, always optimise your campaigns for a conversion event that is as close to the money as possible. For you, that would be "Start Trial" or "Sign Up". This tells the algorithm: "Don't just show my ad to anyone. Show it to people within my target audience who have a history of doing this action and are most likely to convert." It's a completely different instruction and leads to a completely different, and far better, outcome.

Which platform should you use?
-> Google Search Ads: This is for capturing existing demand. You target people actively searching for a solution like yours with high-intent keywords like "accounting software for agencies" or "best tool to automate X". They are already problem-aware and solution-aware. This is often the best place to start for B2B SaaS. We ran a campaign for a software client on Google Ads that brought in 3,543 users for just £0.96 each.
-> LinkedIn Ads: This is the most powerful platform for precise B2B targeting. You can target by job title, company size, industry, specific company names, etc. It's more expensive, but the quality of the leads can be unmatched. If your nightmare-based ICP is a "CMO at a Fortune 500 company," LinkedIn is where you'll find them. We've seen CPLs for B2B decision makers as low as $22 on LinkedIn, which is a bargain when your LTV is in the thousands.
-> Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram): This is for creating demand. You use their interest and behavioural targeting to find people who match your ICP's profile, even if they aren't actively searching for a solution. With the right message (using PAS or BAB), you can interrupt their scroll, make them aware of the nightmare you solve, and drive them to your value-first offer. For one B2B software client, we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each. It can and does work, if you have the right foundations.

The key is to start small, test one channel at a time, and measure everything against your allowable CAC. Once you find a channel that works, you have a predictable, scalable engine for growth. That is how you escape the draining, un-motivating daily grind of manual marketing.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in. You thought building the SaaS was the hard part, and now it feels like you have to get a PhD in marketing. The good news is, you don't. You just need to focus on the few things that truly matter. I've detailed my main recommendations for you in the table below as a final actionable summary.

The path you're on right now—manual, untargeted outreach—is a path to burnout. The alternative is to build a proper marketing system. It takes more work upfront to get the foundations right, but once you do, it becomes a predictable engine that brings you customers while you sleep. Or, more importantly, while you get back to doing what you love: building a great product.

Navigating this shift from builder to marketer is tough, and the cost of making mistakes with paid ads can be high. This is where expert help can make a huge differance. We've helped numerous B2B SaaS companies, just like yours, go from struggling for traction to achieving scalable growth. We've reduced a £100 CPA down to just £7 for one client and generated over 45,000 signups for another. We do this by implementing the exact foundational principles I've outlined for you here.

If you'd like to have a chat about your specific situation, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial strategy session. We can take a look at your SaaS, discuss your ideal customer, and give you a tailored plan of attack. It might be the most valuable 30 minutes you spend on your business this year.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh