Your guide to quick wins in SaaS marketing
🔥 10 ready-to-deploy tactics to gain positive ROI momentum in 2024
👋 Hi, it’s Kyle Poyar and welcome to Growth Unhinged, my weekly newsletter exploring the hidden playbooks behind the fastest-growing startups.
I love big, meaty strategies as much as the next person. But sometimes we all need a quick win to put points on the board. Thankfully, Tom Orbach is here to help.
Tom writes MarketingIdeas.com, a fantastic newsletter with one powerful marketing idea per week (he has a great recent piece about how to transform ‘boring’ content into viral hits). Tom is the Head of Growth Marketing at Wiz – which notably grew from $0 to $100M ARR in 18 months – and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum.
Keep reading for Tom’s guest post and then check out Marketing Ideas for more.
Quick wins are my secret weapon for building momentum.
They are practical, low-effort tactics that deliver tangible results in a surprisingly short time frame. In my eight years in growth marketing, I’ve helped build $10B+ unicorns, and I’d estimate that quick wins comprise 30% of my success. For marketing leaders, mixing quick wins into the 2024 roadmap is my go-to advice for 2024.
And the best part? Anyone can execute them at any time. No need for epic budgets or endless brainstorms, just smart hacks, proven strategies and a dash of execution magic.
I get asked about my own quick wins all the time, so I’m going to let you in on the top ten quick wins I use most often. The majority of these quick wins take somewhere between 10 minutes to 2 hours to set up — and the ROI of the time spent is definitely positive.
Why quick wins matter
Quick wins are not just about instant gratification (although who can resist that?). They build trust with your leaders and stakeholders, validate your strategies and earn you the right to take bigger risks. They're about showing, not just telling, the value your team brings.
The anatomy of a good quick win:
🎯 High Success Rate: Likely to succeed with minimal risk.
💰 Low Effort & Budget: Requires little resource investment.
🍿 Demonstrable Results: Produces clear, measurable outcomes.
🏃🏻♂️ Short Time to Value: Benefits are realized quickly.
Ready to dive in? Here are the best quick wins for marketing leaders to try:
Win #1: “Apply” over “Register”
What to do: Instead of simply letting people sign up for your event, challenge or webinar, invite them to apply. Make your audience fill out an application form and feel like they need to earn their spot. And my secret? It’s totally fine if you end up accepting every application — no one will know, and everyone will be happy.
Why it matters: It creates a sense of exclusivity. Humans place greater value on the things they cannot achieve. Applying feels more intentional than registering, attracting genuinely interested audiences and fostering a sense of belonging. It also allows you to gather valuable data about your most engaged prospects. True, an application form adds a bit of friction (that people might churn), but the quality of attendees (as well as their engagement levels) is worth it. This tiny change of framing can boost your event/webinar ROI.
Example: There are so many webinars and in-person networking events leveraging this tactic, but my favorite example is what JupiterOne did with “DataHeist”: a cybersecurity riddle you solve to participate in their annual conference. This gamified application process generated significant buzz and attracted highly qualified leads (once you solve the riddle, you get here).
How to measure impact: Track application rates compared to previous registration rates. Analyze the quality of leads generated through the application process.
Win #2: Authentic praise for thought leaders
What to do: Ask in-house employees with similar roles as your target audience to recommend industry thought leaders. Publish a listicle featuring and praising them on your blog.
Why it matters: This quick win positions your brand as an authority without extensive effort invested in content creation (your colleagues do the work). In addition, most “Top X Experts” lists are lacking genuineness — they’re clearly made for buzz generation and promoting the brand writing about them. But with our quick win, the recommendations are coming from the actual people that follow them, which is 10x more authentic.
Example: We did it at Wiz, and the results were phenomenal.
How to measure impact: Track blog post views and social media shares for your listicle. Monitor brand mentions and conversations surrounding the featured thought leaders. Analyze leads generated from the content and its impact on SEO performance.
Win #3: Strategic logo bomb
What to do: Show your customers’ logos in the top of the fold, not buried below. Why? Because social proof works best when people first meet you — the more info they have, the less effective the logos. Most SaaS companies I’ve worked with get this wrong. Next, always mix unknown and known companies (this trick really boosts authenticity).
Finally, add logos to your pricing page. Under each pricing plan, write “Helping teams like...” and then the specific logos of companies that use it. It’s a smart move because it 1) instantly clarifies which plan suits the visitor (“Yeah we’re a bit like SpotHero”), 2) sparks hope that they can achieve the same level of success thanks to your product, and 3) boosts brand credibility with humble name-drops. Boom.
Why it matters: Improves credibility, sparks interest, and clarifies which plan suits potential customers.
Example: Deel and Navan place logos strategically; Zoom and Atlassian do not. The example above is from Prismic’s pricing page.
How to measure impact: Monitor changes in conversion rates to the main CTA on the website and pricing page. Run “brand lift”-like surveys to measure the impact of these logo tweaks on brand perception.
For further insights on this improving your homepage, consider reading Growth Unhinged's article on SaaS homepage building.
Win #4: Review-generation competition
What to do: Start a short-term review-generation competition on platforms like G2, Trustpilot or your chosen platform.
Make it exciting! Talk with power users or incentivize sales and account executives. Pro tip: offer guaranteed rewards per review (not just praise!), and send a short guide (PDF or video) on leaving reviews.
Why it matters: Credible reviews are gold dust for building trust and attracting new customers. A surge of positive reviews in a short timeframe generates instant buzz and social proof, propelling you up the ranking ladders like the G2 grid or quarterly report.
Example: At MineOS, we saw a 700 percent increase in reviews on G2 with this tactic (in just two weeks!), which also crowned us as “momentum leaders.” Our campaign combined guaranteed $50 Amazon gift cards with clear review guidelines, making it easy and rewarding for everyone to participate.
How to measure impact: Track the number of reviews generated during the campaign compared to baseline levels. Monitor changes in review ratings and average scores. Analyze the impact on website traffic and leads sourced from review platforms.
Win #5: Give customers LinkedIn recommendations
What to do: Go the extra mile and write thoughtful LinkedIn recommendations for your customers. Mention real interactions and their successes.
It may sound cringeworthy, but listen — it's a win-win: customers feel appreciated and are more likely to reciprocate (renewals!), and you get an organic placement of your brand with a human touch. By the way, leaving such recommendations is totally encouraged by LinkedIn (there’s even a specific tag for that when you leave a recommendation).
Why it matters: Personalized recommendations add a powerful layer of social proof and credibility. Plus, they leverage LinkedIn's algorithm for organic reach. It’s a great way to highlight a customer without a case study.
Example: Check out this gem of a recommendation that LASSO’s CRO wrote for a customer:
How to measure impact: Monitor customer feedback and engagement post-recommendation. Keep an eye on changes in website traffic and leads sourced from LinkedIn (but it will probably be low, unless your customer is a LinkedIn superstar).
This post is about to get cut off by your email inbox. Click here to keep reading the other five quick wins. And please consider subscribing to my newsletter, MarketingIdeas.com, where I share new and trending quick wins every week.
-Tom
Win #6: Sign-up over blurred UI
What to do: Instead of the usual white background, place your sign-up form over a blurred or dimmed version of your product. Populate the UI with fake data — it’s unclear anyway. Make it feel like the final step.
Why it matters: It creates a "peek behind the curtain" effect, making users want to see what lies beneath. Form-over-UI taps into the curiosity bias, increasing conversion rates.
Example: I ran this experiment at privacy startup MineOS, and it immediately spiked our form completion rate during sign-up by more than 25 percent. The blurred screen is not personalized at all, but nobody knows.
How to measure impact: Track conversion rates for the form before and after implementing the dimmed UI overlay. Monitor bounce rates and time spent on the page to see if users are engaged by the curiosity element.
Win #7: GIPHY for brand visibility
What to do: Upload your existing branded GIFs (that you created in the past) to GIPHY, the world's largest GIF search engine. Clever keyword tagging can land your logos in millions of views (literally!).
Why it matters: It's free brand exposure on a massive scale.
Example: We did it at Wiz, and the "Happy Birthday", “Happy Holidays” and "1 Year Anniversary" GIFs with our logos have around 1M views each. Not bad for 20 minutes of work!
How to measure impact: Track GIPHY views. Since we’re playing with really high numbers here, the chance that it will catch the eye of someone relevant is not that bad.c
For more details on how to upload GIFs to GIPHY properly, see my guide to GIF Engine Optimization.
Win #8: Congratulatory gifts for ICP milestones
What to do: Send handwritten notes and champagne to congratulate key industry players (ICPs) when something big happens (funding rounds, etc.). There's a cool startup called Handwrytten that can robo-write and dispatch those notes for you.
Why it matters: It’s the WOW effect in action. I see it as “prospect experience on steroids.” This personalized quick win really sets you apart from the cold-calling crowds.
Example: Brex calls their champagne deliveries the “best outbound campaign” they ever ran (with a 75 percent demo rate, 75 percent demo to close). Also, check out ServiceNow’s personalized “Go Live” cakes for their customers.
How to measure impact: Track the response rate to your congratulatory notes and monitor social media mentions from the recipients. Specifically, examine the close rate of those ICPs.
Win #9: Steal acquisition ideas from competitors
What to do: Research the hell out of your competitors’ ads and see what they are paying to promote. Unknown to many marketers, it’s very easy: most social media platforms offer public access to all their running ads! When I found out about this, I looked like this: 🤯
These LinkedIn ad libraries are new from a few months ago, and they’re absolute gold mines.
Why it matters: This one is a massive “competitive edge” win. Those ad libraries can help you identify winning ad formats, messaging and targeting strategies.
Example: No concrete examples here, but if you don’t spy on your competitors’ ads right now, know that they’re probably spying on you.
How to measure impact: Track the performance of your own campaigns after incorporating insights from competitor ads. Monitor changes in engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Analyze the impact on your marketing budget and return on investment.
For more details on how to use ad libraries, see my guide to spying on your competitors.
Win #10: Manually showcase product results
What to do: Forget cold emails – this tactic is much better: Proactively use your own product on behalf of specific potential users and send them the results (via email/social DM), as if they had used it themselves. If you sell, say, podcast editing software, manually edit popular podcasts with it and send the results to the hosts.
Why it matters: This personalized demonstration cuts through the marketing noise and directly proves the power of your product. Plus, prospects may appreciate the personal ‘brute force’ style efforts that you did for them.
Example: Lychee and Default.com do this brilliantly (click the links to read the case studies).
How to measure impact: Track the response rate to your personalized emails/messages.
Quick wins have been my personal game-changer, contributing enormously to my marketing career. Simple, swift, and powerful, they might be your secret weapon to outpace the competition and achieve remarkable success (both internally and externally) in 2024.
Hit me up in the comment section if you have any questions! I’ll check it daily.
Big shoutout to Tom for sharing these fantastic quick wins! Give one (or more) of these a try as you kick off 2024. Don’t miss out on Tom’s fantastic newsletter, Marketing Ideas. He’ll send you one hidden marketing idea every Friday plus a three-minute guide on how to apply it. - KP
 | A guest post by
|
It was SO FUN to work on this article. Thanks for the opportunity, Kyle!
I've seen mixed results with apply vs. register - but only because many people make the linguistic switch without genuinely making the event exclusive by nature. So it doesn't come across sincerely.
However, the approaches relating to authentic praise, generating reviews, and giving recommendations on LinkedIn are incredibly smart and worth exploring.