Conversion Rate Optimization Transforms SaaS Content Into Profitable Advertising Collateral

I've worked in the SaaS market for close to 20 years. This is the best agency I have worked with, hands down. They had very solid strategic recommendations going into our engagement, listened to where we wanted to go (and our concerns), and--above all--executed. We have seen very good results. They built out the level of reporting we asked for (Thanks Patrick and Nechama) and are always testing. They also continue to maintain the level of excitement and insight that they had at the beginning. In particular, Ari and Nechama have been, and continue to be, the professional staff I trust with our SEM, display and retargeting dollars.

- Chris Frank, Director of Demand Generation, TaxJar

Overview

TaxJar is the leading technology solution for busy eCommerce sellers to manage sales tax, and is trusted by more than 20,000 businesses. They automate sales tax calculations, reporting, and filings in minutes, allowing business owners the ability to spend more time doing what they should be doing: running their business. 

Challenges

Existing challenges within the account limited their ability to test new prospecting strategies and limited their growth potential. For example, prior to our involvement, the majority of the budget was dedicated toward branded search campaigns, as many competitors were bidding on their branded terms in hopes to capture away TaxJar's most valuable traffic. Unfortunately, this fierce competition resulted in higher-than-expected costs and required much of the focus, energy and budget.

Even after successfully freeing up budget from the branded search issues, profitably acquiring new business was no easy feat. Tax services are consumed on an as-needed basis. A brand awareness effort would only be effective if the messaging was powerful and the timing was perfect. That is, even if a business owner hears about TaxJar and thinks they should sign up for the services, it’s typically something that is pushed on the back-burner.

More than ever, if would be crucial to meet their potential customers when they are actively in the market for tax services and in the medium in which they would best respond to our messaging.

Strategy

We first tackled the issue of branded search by implementing a unique smart bidding strategy that allowed us to minimize costs and selectively bid on the branded traffic with the highest intent (following the principle that not all branded traffic is created equal). This new strategy helped more than double branded conversions, while bringing down branded CPA by 44%. More importantly, we had freed up more budget to dedicate to new audience acquisition - a strategy that would heavily rely on content distribution.

TaxJar’s marketing team invested in developing comprehensive content that cuts through the confusing topic of sales tax. There are many nuances of sales tax laws and policies, many of which vary by which states you do business in and the size of your business. This is a large headache for many business owners that, when it is time to file a sales tax return, are in-need of accurate, easy-to-understand information.

TaxJar created a hub of resources that help these business owners. The content was so useful that it would quickly make up 20% of overall traffic to the site.

Unfortunately, while the content was effective in bringing in new site traffic and spreading awareness of the TaxJar brand, it did not do much to convert that traffic into customers.

We implemented conversion rate best practices on the pages where this content was hosted, resulting in improvements that naturally created a path from website visitor to TaxJar customer. Once the content was conversion-optimized, we could confidently invest our PPC budget in more top-funnel traffic (informational related search queries, for example), where we could send traffic to these various resources and convert a high percentage of them into customers.

Results

• 95% YOY increase in conversions
• 31% YOY Decrease in CPA
• 168% increase in branded traffic as a result of new TOF efforts
• 40% increase in avg. time on site
• 25% increase in content-related page visitors