Bridget Willard

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  • Email Marketing 201 – How to Build Your List and Get Attention

    Email Marketing 201 – How to Build Your List and Get Attention

    This recap has the video from the Webinar given to GreenGeeks subscribers on 4/16/25. Learn how to use a landing page to build your list.

    In this session, I delved into practical strategies for small business owners to effectively grow and engage their email lists. Here’s a breakdown of the key points discussed:

    Watch the Video

    1. Identify Your Audience

    Understanding your target audience is crucial. I emphasized the importance of defining who you’re speaking to, as this clarity informs the content and tone of your emails.

    2. Create a Valuable Lead Magnet

    Offering something of value, like a free tool or resource, can incentivize sign-ups. I discussed how to develop lead magnets that resonate with your audience’s needs.

    3. Design an Effective Landing Page

    Your website’s landing page should clearly communicate the benefits of subscribing. I shared tips on crafting compelling headlines and calls-to-action that convert visitors into subscribers.

    4. Segment Your Email List

    Not all subscribers are the same. I highlighted the benefits of segmenting your list to send more personalized and relevant content, which can lead to higher engagement rates.

    5. Craft Engaging Email Content

    Consistency and value are key. I provided insights into writing emails that not only capture attention but also build trust and encourage ongoing interaction.

    6. Monitor and Adjust Your Strategy

    Finally, I stressed the importance of tracking your email campaigns’ performance and being willing to adjust your approach based on what the data tells you.

    If you have any questions or need further assistance with your email marketing strategy, feel free to reach out!

    Get the Slides

    You can see my slides as a PDF.

    May 2, 2025
  • Why SaaS Founders Should Publish Articles on LinkedIn

    Why SaaS Founders Should Publish Articles on LinkedIn

    B2B SaaS Founders are often overwhelmed with their own workload as CEO, CFO, and CIO. Taking the time to publish on LinkedIn seems frivolous in comparison. But it’s crucial to brand building which is vital for sales. 

    Also, if you’re taking the time to post on LinkedIn about your company, you may as well also publish an article there as well.

    Why should you make time out of your busy schedule to publish on LinkedIn? 

    The short answer is for visibility, thought leadership, brand authority, and off-page SEO.

    Building Visibility On LinkedIn

    If you’re a B2B founder, CEO, or Marketer, you need to be on LinkedIn. It’s not outdated, it’s not becoming Facebook. It’s where people network online. CEOs aren’t typically in Reddit looking for customers and investors. 

    Networking on LinkedIn as an intentional exercise (even before and after conferences) is a great way of making it easier to hold meaningful conversations in person. Over 60% of the audience on LinkedIn depends on it for “event information and company news,” reports Statista. 

    Visibility that makes the sales process easier? Yes, please! Even better, 90% of the decision makers and C-Suite who consistently read your content are obviously more interested in a sales pitch. Warming up leads by publishing articles on LinkedIn seems like a no brainer.

    “9 in 10 decision makers and C-suite executives say they are moderately or very likely to be more receptive to sales or marketing outreach from a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership.”   2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report

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    2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report

    Building Thought Leadership on LinkedIn

    If you knew that over 50% of decision makers and C-Suite members spend over an hour a week reading thought leadership articles, would you change your strategy? It’s important to post consistently in order to break through the noise.

    “Aim for five LinkedIn posts per week, creating a steady rhythm of content.” EverythingDesign

    And while you’re doing that be sure to form new connections and reply to other people’s posts. You can easily fit this into your schedule with my 3-2-1 Method.

    “54% say the piece of thought leadership got them to realise there were other suppliers they could work with that had a better understanding of the challenges their organisation was facing.” Di Mace

    Building Brand Authority on LinkedIn

    Building brand authority on LinkedIn is important for any business; for startup SaaS companies – it’s crucial. You’ve built the Uber for [Industry] or the Google for [Industry]. People have to both want a new solution and know you exist. 

    Writing about problems that customers actually have? That’s the way to get it done. In fact, all of a SaaS founder’s posts on LinkedIn should inform website content, email marketing campaigns, and sales decks. Why? Because it’s the current thinking. Be sure to include as much data as possible, too.

    “Effective thought leadership has three key attributes: it cites strong research and data, helps buyers understand their business challenges, and offers concrete guidance.” Edelman

    Jonathan Kazarian, CEO of Accelevents (former client) is one to watch in the brand authority space.

    He consistently posts insights for the event marketing space as well as insights into their platform adoption. The best part is that he extracts insights for other founders. This kind of vulnerability is compelling for decision makers as well. 

    In this post, for example, he writes:

    “Over the past 12 months, our average deal size has grown by 113% while win rates have increased from 54% to 58%.”

    He goes on to cite learnings and how it has helped their ten-year Event Platform to start custom implementations. He ends with: 

    “The future of enterprise tech is Software & Service. That’s what we are building for.”

    We often talk about Software as a Service (SaaS) and forget about the service. This right here hits decision makers. It’s enough to make them change. And Jonathan (or a marketing exec on his behalf) could easily convert these long-form posts on LinkedIn into LinkedIn Articles. 

    Building Off-Page SEO on LinkedIn

    One of my favorite SEO tools is Google Alerts for my name, “Bridget Willard.” I set them for “as-it-happens” and “all results.” For the last couple of years, even posts on LinkedIn have been ranking and this helps me keep tabs of any mentions as well. 

    A simple “Bridget Willard SaaS” search shows my website first, then my LinkedIn profile, then an article I wrote for BetterCloud – a SaaS Management Platform. Incognito results were similar. The BetterCloud article was number 5 in the SERPS with my X profile (3)  and Instagram profile (4) both ahead of it.

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    Warren Laine-Naida has consistently A/B tested publishing on LinkedIn versus his website. Every single time, these articles are on Page 1 of Google SERPs and his website version is “nowhere to be found,” he told me. Indeed, for the following set of articles, the LinkedIn one shows up as the second entry under videos for the phrase “boost visiblity in search llms.”

    Oh yeah, articles on LinkedIn are indexed within 24 hours, too.

    LinkedIn: Boost Your Visibility in Search and AI Search LLMs

    Blog: Boost Your Visibility in Search and AI Search LLMs

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    You don’t always need people on your website. Especially when 44% of all Google searches are for brand names. When you are a SaaS founder or Freelancer, your brand is your name. You both want and need customers and investors to follow you.

    Get Marketing That Works

    I’ve been helping SaaS companies build a name for themselves in the B2B space since 2015. My company offers the perfect SaaS Marketing Package to help your internal team. And, if you’re ready to have your LinkedIn posts repurposed as articles on LinkedIn, we can certainly make time for you.

    I’m always open for a quick sales call.

    April 28, 2025
  • SEO for Product Companies — You (Still) Need Blog Posts

    SEO for Product Companies — You (Still) Need Blog Posts

    SEO best practices are still best practices. If you have a product company (digital or physical) don’t just rely on your product pages. You need a blog. 

    It’s tempting to think blog posts are so 2013. Although with companies relying upon ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI agents to write quick overviews and summary posts for (virtually) free, it’s surprising that product companies still don’t get it.

    TL;DR: People searching for knowledge are sent to blog posts. People searching for action are sent to product pages.

    Blogs Versus Short Video Dopamine Hits

    Physical products like fashion and beauty heavily rely on influencers and affiliate marketing. Tech companies rely on affiliate marketing, too. Why? Other people market for you which means a lower cost for marketing and lower Customer Aquisiton Cost (CAC). 

    Relying on other people to do the work can be a good thing. Until TikTok shuts down and you have no content on your own website.  

    Snapchat introduced the short vertical video and TikTok capitalized on them – thanks to the pandemic. Short, vertical videos are now the new podcast. My Gen Z niece listens to TikTok videos with her earbuds for hours. 

    “Are you watching them?” I asked. 

    “Sometimes. I mostly listen when I vacuum and clean the apartment. Of course, you have to stop to swipe to see the next video.” (I’m surprised TikTok hasn’t changed that yet.)

    Against biology (our eyes are made to scan right to left, left to right), every platform has this vertical, dopamine-inducing binge watch. Even LinkedIn has vertical video feeds now. (But that’s another rant.) 

    Relying upon third-party platforms for your marketing is a scary place to be.

    If Amazon’s bid to buy TikTok is accepted, it’s going to become the modern Home Shopping Network. How’s that going to change the user experience? Want to binge on commercials? Unlikely. TikTok will become as annoying as over GIF-ed, loud MySpace pages.

    If Amazon's bid to buy TikTok is approved, it's going to become the modern Home Shopping Network.

    — Bridget Willard (@BridgetMWillard) April 2, 2025

    Do Blogs Still Work for Sales?

    Yes. SEO best practices work as a whole to drive sales. Now, if your product pages aren’t optimized for PPC keywords, and you’re not running PPC ads, and you don’t have email marketing, and you don’t have blog posts to explain the why behind your products, then you have bigger problems. 

    This is a good time to say that unless you’re tracking your leads, you really don’t know how to attribute those leads. And, first-click leads? Those don’t exist.

    “Google is still sending the lion’s share of traffic… but even when they — or most of the platforms, for that matter — do, we can’t even see that traffic because of the flaws in attribution.” Amanda Natividad 

    The Internet Runs on Words

    Here’s another thing I say a lot: the internet is blind. Videos may have captions (or craptions if you don’t edit them) and photos may be beautiful, but search works from words. 

    You still need customers. And how do you get customers to find the thing you just built if they don’t even know it exists? There’s no keyword research for terms people aren’t using. Keyword research is mostly for PPC anyway. 

    I say this a lot on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and in videos. No one will search for you if they don’t know you exist. If you built a product no one knows exists yet (like the product by my new client Green Link), no one is searching for a baseboard for a chain-link fence. It just got patented, and the website went live in January 2025.

    Do Blogs Still Work For Tech & SaaS Companies?

    Yes, blogs still work for tech and SaaS companies. Now, if you’re a product company, you may be ignoring your blog in favor of product development, writing their pages and documentation. (I know you’re behind on documentation.) 

    You’re super excited about this new tool or feature you built. That’s awesome. Do you hear us saying, “but why” when we read your tweet? What use case does this apply to? What problem does this solve? Why do I want a project management tool inside of WordPress? But Why?

    Well-written blog posts translate product pages into sales copy that answers the why. You can’t just post on X that you created a new tool with the link to the product page and expect sales (with or without lifetime deals).

    Blog Posts:

    • Establish authority (author bylines matter)
    • Stay fresh with regular updates (keep publishing)
    • Align with search intent (know or do?)
    • Get backlinks and mentions across the web (the hardest part)

    ChatGPT Backs Up Long-Standing SEO Best Practices

    In a (not surprising) recent study analyzing which pages ChatGPT recommends (by AN Digital in German), blogs and editorial content were cited as top choices for informational queries. 

    The study by AN Digital found that if someone is looking for the best running shoes, they’ll be shown blog posts. If they’re looking for the best Nike running shoes, they’ll be shown a product page. What happens with Google also happens with ChatGPT.

    SEO best practices haven’t changed. Modern SEO – being found in an AI search tool like ChatGPT  – means you need to feed the machine. ChatGPT recommends real content by real experts. If you want to show up in AI-generated answers, an expertly-written blog post beats a static brochure site with product pages any day.

    “Because ChatGPT relies both on pre-trained data and real-time web access, SEO becomes critical in ensuring a company’s content is visible and usable by the AI.” AN Digital

    Get Marketing That Works

    I’m a marketing specialist in the SaaS space. That means easy onboarding for you. Let’s translate the features and specs of your product into compelling marketing copy for your blog. 

    There are limited spots for my SaaS Marketing Plan.

    I’m always open for a quick sales call to discuss your goals or get you on the waiting list.

    Sources

    • Thanks to Warren Laine-Naida and Joerg Geissler for bringing this German Study by AN Digital to my attention.
    • AN Digital: Strategies to Optimize the Likelihood of Shops and Products Being Recommended by ChatGPT
    • Special thanks to ChatGPT for the translation.
    April 4, 2025
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