One thing I want to clarify before getting into this is that I'm not talking about brand new SaaS companies that have just launched and literally have zero traffic. If you've just built a product, validated it with a handful of early customers, and you're trying to acquire your first 100 users, then yes, traffic should absolutely be one of your priorities.
What I'm talking about are established SaaS companies that already have meaningful traffic coming to their website, but believe that the solution to growing revenue is simply getting more visitors through Google Ads, SEO, paid social, or other acquisition channels.
In my experience, that's usually not where the biggest opportunity is.
Before investing more time, money, and resources into bringing additional people to your website, I think you first need to make sure you're getting the most out of the people who are already visiting it.
Start by Understanding Your Numbers
Whenever I speak with the CEO or founder of a SaaS company that's convinced they simply need more traffic, I always come back to the same starting point. Before you spend another dollar on acquisition, you need to understand your metrics.
You need to know your conversion rates. You need to know your churn rates. You need to understand where people are dropping off and whether your current growth is actually sustainable.
I've seen many SaaS companies that want help running advertising campaigns or increasing lead generation because they believe that more marketing will automatically lead to more revenue. The problem is that many of them aren't being completely honest about what their conversion rates or churn rates actually look like.
If you don't have a clear understanding of those numbers, it's very difficult to know whether traffic is really the bottleneck.
Growth Doesn't Come From Signups Alone
The goal isn't simply to generate more signups. The goal is to consistently add customers faster than you're losing them.
Ideally, your conversion rate is improving over time while your churn rate is moving in the opposite direction. It doesn't need to be exponential hockey stick growth, but it does need to move in the right direction.
For example, if ten new customers sign up this month and only five customers churn, you've added five net paying customers. If that continues next month, you'll have another five. Then another five after that. Your customer base continues growing because you're consistently adding more customers than you're losing.
If you're not at that point yet, I don't think increasing traffic should be your priority.
Instead, you should focus on improving your conversion rate, reducing churn, and making better use of the visitors who are already coming to your website.
Traffic Wasn't the Problem
One example that really stands out was a company I worked with that was receiving roughly 60,000 unique visitors every month. They were investing heavily in advertising, lead generation, and social media marketing, so attracting visitors wasn't the challenge.
The problem was that only a small percentage of those visitors were completing the action that actually mattered.
Rather than immediately recommending more acquisition, I wanted to understand why people weren't converting. We implemented customer heatmaps and on-site surveys that asked visitors what they were actually trying to accomplish while they were on the website.
The results were incredibly useful.
We discovered that many visitors never intended to convert immediately. Some were simply researching and saving opportunities for later. Others didn't feel ready because they believed they needed to improve their resume or interview skills before taking the next step.
That completely changed how we approached the problem.
Instead of assuming there was a technical conversion issue, we realized there was an intent issue. People weren't saying "no." They were saying "not yet."
We responded by making product improvements that made it easier for users to save opportunities and come back later. We also introduced what I call "catch baskets," which were secondary lead capture opportunities designed specifically for visitors who weren't ready to convert during that session.
From there, we educated those users by helping them improve their resumes and interviewing skills. As they became more familiar with our brand and received value from our content, we were able to convert a much higher percentage of those leads when the timing was right.
The lesson wasn't that we needed more traffic.
The lesson was that we needed to better understand the traffic we already had.
Sometimes the Biggest Problem Is Messaging
I saw something similar with another SaaS company.
The homepage free trial conversion rate was extremely low, while customer churn was high. After conducting another round of direct customer research, it became clear that the product's biggest differentiator simply wasn't being communicated on the homepage.
The main reason customers ultimately chose the product wasn't obvious to new visitors.
On top of that, it took users too long to experience their initial value after signing up. As a result, people either weren't starting a free trial in the first place or they weren't reaching the point where they understood why the product was valuable.
Again, this wasn't an acquisition problem.
It was a conversion problem and an activation problem.
Sending more traffic to that homepage would simply have meant sending more people into the exact same experience.
How I Assess a SaaS Website
When I'm evaluating a SaaS website for the first time, I usually don't have access to internal dashboards or backend metrics. That means I have to form an initial opinion using only what's publicly available.
The first thing I look at is an estimate of their monthly traffic. That gives me a rough understanding of whether they're already attracting a healthy number of visitors.
Next, I estimate what their average customer lifetime value is likely to be. That helps me understand roughly how efficiently that traffic needs to convert for the business to grow profitably.
Finally, I review their homepage or primary landing page. I have a comprehensive conversion checklist that I work through, looking at messaging, positioning, design, and overall conversion best practices.
By the end of that process, I usually have a good idea whether the business appears to have a traffic problem or whether it's simply failing to convert the visitors it's already attracting.
Once I have access to their backend metrics, the analysis becomes much deeper because I can evaluate activation, churn, product usage, customer behaviour, and the rest of the funnel.
Figure Out Which Lever Is Actually Broken
One of the biggest mistakes I see is businesses jumping straight to acquisition before identifying which part of their growth engine is actually underperforming.
Instead, I think every SaaS company should first determine where the real bottleneck exists.
Attraction: Do you already have a healthy flow of qualified monthly visitors?
Conversion: Are enough visitors becoming customers, and how do those conversion rates compare with others in your industry?
Activation: Are new users reaching their "aha" moment quickly, or are they dropping off before they experience the value of your product?
Retention: Are customers churning early, and do you understand why they're leaving?
Once you identify which of those areas is lagging the most, you know where your time and resources should be invested first.
Only after you've strengthened that weakest area does it make sense to significantly increase acquisition.
Stop Pouring More Water Into a Leaky Bucket
The analogy I always come back to is pouring more water into a leaky bucket.
There's very little point in pouring more water into the bucket if it's simply leaking out the bottom. The first priority should be patching the holes before you start adding more water.
I think that's exactly how SaaS growth works.
If visitors are reaching your website but aren't converting, if new users aren't reaching their "aha" moment, or if customers are signing up only to churn shortly afterwards, then spending more money on acquisition simply accelerates those existing problems.
The visitors already coming to your website are often your easiest opportunity because they're already interested enough to visit your brand. Optimizing their experience is usually a far more efficient investment than immediately trying to acquire thousands of additional visitors.
Once you've improved your conversion, activation, and retention, every future marketing dollar becomes significantly more valuable because you're sending traffic into a system that's built to convert and retain customers instead of losing them.
If you're running an established SaaS company and you're unsure whether your biggest opportunity is acquisition, conversion, activation, or retention, that's exactly the kind of challenge I help solve through The 90-Day MRR Growth Sprint. A discovery call is often enough to identify where your biggest growth opportunity actually exists before investing heavily in additional marketing.
At the end of the day, this isn't about avoiding marketing or saying traffic doesn't matter. Traffic absolutely matters.
My point is simply that for most established SaaS companies, traffic isn't the first problem they should be solving.
More often than not, the bigger opportunity is improving conversion, activation, and retention first. Once those foundations are strong, every additional visitor becomes far more valuable, and your growth becomes much easier to scale.
Share this post