Acquisition
Powered-by badge
Put a small, clickable “Powered by” badge on everything free users publish, so every form, booking page, site or email advertises you.
Impact HighEffort Low14 examples
Read the tacticFull playbook in the list
Free library
SaaS Growth Ideas
37 growth and marketing ideas real SaaS companies ran, each with examples, a playbook and what to measure. Filter by funnel stage, channel, team and budget.
37 growth ideas
Acquisition
Comparison pages
Versus, alternatives and switch pages catch buyers who already know the category and are choosing between tools. The highest-intent pages a SaaS site can own.
Impact HighEffort Medium14 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listGrowth Loop
Free tools
Build a small free tool that does one job your buyers already search for. It ranks, earns links, collects leads and shows off the paid product in seconds.
Impact HighEffort Medium14 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Template library
Publish ready-made examples of your product doing real jobs. Each template ranks for a search, skips the blank page for new users and can be shared.
Impact HighEffort Medium13 examplesRead the tacticRevenue
North star metric
Pick one metric that captures the value customers get, break it into inputs each team owns, and review them every week so every team pulls the same way.
Impact HighEffort Medium11 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
AEO / GEO
Get your product named and your pages cited when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Mode which tool to pick. Built on SEO, measured separately.
Impact HighEffort Medium10 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Branded newsletter
Start a niche newsletter for your buyers that is worth reading without your product. You own the list, it compounds, and it keeps you top of mind.
Impact HighEffort Medium10 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Build in public
Share revenue, decisions and mistakes in public so the founder's audience becomes your first channel. Best for founder-led, self-serve SaaS.
Impact HighEffort Medium10 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Cold outreach
Email and message the companies you want as customers, timed to a buying signal, from domains and inboxes set up so the emails land.
Impact HighEffort Medium10 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
B2B influencer marketing
Pay creators your buyers already follow on LinkedIn, newsletters, YouTube and TikTok to show your product in their own words, then boost the winners as ads.
Impact HighEffort Medium9 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Newsletter sponsorships
Rent the inbox of a newsletter your buyers already trust. Aircall got 2,100+ leads at a $1.96 CPC; the best sponsors buy the same newsletter for months.
Impact HighEffort Medium9 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
AI app directories
Put your product inside ChatGPT, Claude and AI coding tools: an MCP server, listed in their official directories, so the assistant can use your product mid-conversation.
Impact HighEffort Medium8 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Champagne outbound
Send a gift and a handwritten note from your CEO to companies at the moment they need you, then follow up by email. Brex's version turned 300 bottles into ~169 customers.
Impact HighEffort Medium3 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Community-led growth
Build a place where your users teach, help and recruit each other, so growth comes from members instead of ads.
Impact HighEffort High12 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listGrowth Loop
SaaS media company
Build or buy shows, newsletters, data and books your buyers follow for their own sake, so they know you long before they are ready to buy.
Impact HighEffort High12 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Programmatic SEO
One template plus a dataset makes thousands of pages, each answering one search. It works when each page has data nobody else has, and fails when it doesn't.
Impact HighEffort High11 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listRevenue
Add-ons and multiple SKUs
Sell a second, third and eighth product to customers you already have. Filings from Datadog, CrowdStrike and Figma show how product count drives NRR.
Impact HighEffort High9 examplesRead the tacticActivation
Better CTAs
Button copy is the cheapest test you can run. Ask for a small step, say what the click gets, offer a human path that isn't a trap, and remove the last doubt.
Impact MediumEffort Low13 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Discount code sites
Perk portals, deal marketplaces and coupon sites can send startups straight to your checkout. Where to list, what it brings, and how to keep codes from leaking.
Impact MediumEffort Low12 examplesRead the tacticRevenue
Startup program
Give young companies your product cheap or free, so you're the default tool when they grow. The design of the exit matters more than the size of the discount.
Impact MediumEffort Low11 examplesRead the tacticRevenue
Cancellation discount
Ask why before they go, then make the offer that fits: a discount for price, a pause for timing, a downgrade for overbuying. Never make cancelling hard.
Impact MediumEffort Low10 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Startup directories
List your product on the launch platforms, review sites and directories your buyers browse, for traffic, reviews, links and AI-search citations.
Impact MediumEffort Low10 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Feature teasers
Tease a new feature days or weeks before it ships, so launch day lands on an audience that is already waiting for it.
Impact MediumEffort Low8 examplesRead the tacticActivation
Founder messages to new users
The founder or CEO writes to new users in person, on LinkedIn or by email, to welcome them, unblock them or fix a failed upgrade. It wins customers a big team can't win.
Impact MediumEffort Low6 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Branded podcast
Launch a niche podcast your buyers want to be on and listen to, then cut every episode into clips and posts for YouTube and LinkedIn.
Impact MediumEffort Medium14 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Launch videos
Make launch videos people share: a person, a story, humor or a stunt instead of floating UI and swelling music, posted natively where your buyers scroll.
Impact MediumEffort Medium13 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Billboard marketing
Brex, Ramp, Gong and Stytch bought billboards to make a B2B brand feel big. What they paid, how they measured it, and why the photo matters more than the board.
Impact MediumEffort Medium12 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Branded blog
Turn the company blog into a named publication with a point of view and content only your product can teach. It earns trust, search traffic and citations.
Impact MediumEffort Medium12 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Crazy marketing campaigns
Ramp locked Kevin from The Office in a glass box. Drift killed its lead forms. What made these B2B stunts spread, what they cost, and how to measure one.
Impact MediumEffort Medium12 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Embeddable data
Let users embed what they make in your product (videos, boards, charts, tables, forms) on their own pages, so every embed is a live demo with a link back.
Impact MediumEffort Medium12 examplesRead the tacticReferral
In-app referral program
Reward users for bringing friends, inside the product, right after they get value: two-sided rewards, paid on a milestone that proves a real customer.
Impact MediumEffort Medium12 examplesRead the tacticFull playbook in the listAcquisition
Competitor replacement
Make switching cheaper than staying: position as the one tool that replaces several, migrate customers for free, and cover what's left on a rival's contract.
Impact MediumEffort Medium10 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Integration marketplaces
Build an integration with the tools your customers already pay for and list it in their marketplace: buyers find you where they work, and integrated customers stay longer.
Impact MediumEffort Medium3 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Coffee for website visitors
Spot a high-value company on your website, offer them tea or coffee in the chat, have it delivered to their office, and ask for a demo while it's on the way. About $20 a demo at Segment.
Impact MediumEffort Medium2 examplesRead the tacticRetention
Easter eggs
Hide a small surprise in your product or site that users discover, remember and show to colleagues. Cheap brand memory, not a growth engine.
Impact LowEffort Low9 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Product Hunt ads
Pay for reach among the founders and engineers on Product Hunt: feed ads, the homepage billboard or the newsletter. Cheap to test, hard to make pay back.
Impact LowEffort Low7 examplesRead the tacticAcquisition
Feedly ads
A native ad in Feedly readers' feeds. It still exists in 2026, but Feedly's focus has moved to threat intelligence, so test small and ask hard questions.
Impact LowEffort Low6 examplesRead the tactic
200+ more SaaS growth tactics in the full list
This hub writes up 37 of the 208 tactics in LeadWave’s SaaS Growth Tactics list, and a new one is added as each is researched. The list has every one of them, tagged by funnel stage, channel, team, impact and budget. Here’s how they spread across the funnel:
- Acquisition136 · 65%
- Activation9 · 4%
- Retention26 · 13%
- Referral9 · 4%
- Revenue26 · 13%
- Growth Loop21 · 10%
How to choose a SaaS growth idea
Start from the leak, not the list. Look at where your funnel loses the most people: visitors who never sign up, signups who never reach the product’s first useful moment, customers who leave after a few months. Filter by that funnel stage first. A clear north star metric tells you which leak matters most.
Prefer ideas that compound. A paid campaign stops when the budget does. A loop keeps bringing people back: a free tool that ranks, a badge on everything users share, a newsletter people forward. On this hub, the loops are powered-by badge, free tools, template library, branded newsletter and build in public.
Run each idea as an experiment. Write down what you expect to happen and the one number that will tell you, give it a fixed time, then keep, change or drop it. Each tactic page lists the metrics to watch and the mistakes that make a good idea look like a failed one.
Quick wins: if you need something this month, powered-by badge, better CTAs, discount code sites, startup program and cancellation discount take little effort and no budget.
Ideas that need a list of companies to work, such as partnerships, outbound or competitor research, pair well with the SaaS companies database, and every company page in LeadWave’s dossiers links back to the tactics it’s an example of.
Frequently asked questions
Specific things a software company can do to win, activate, keep or expand customers: build a free tool that ranks in search, add a "powered by" badge to what users share, publish comparison pages, offer a discount when someone cancels. Each idea on this hub is written up with real companies that ran it, how to run it yourself and what to measure.
Ideas that are cheap to test and pay back quickly. On this hub, the low-effort ones that need no budget are powered-by badge, better CTAs, discount code sites, startup program, cancellation discount. Content and community loops compound but take months, so start them early and run a quick win alongside.
Most of them cost time rather than money. Here, powered-by badge, comparison pages, free tools, template library, north star metric, AEO / GEO need no spend beyond your team's time. The "Budget" filter shows the rest.
A growth hack usually means a one-off trick that worked once. A tactic is a repeatable play you can run as an experiment: a hypothesis, a change, a metric. This hub writes them up as tactics, with the mechanism behind each, so you can judge whether it fits your product.
200+ tactics in one spreadsheet, each tagged by funnel stage, channel, team, impact and budget, with real examples. It also has the full write-ups of the tactics on this hub, including the parts some pages keep for the list. It costs $49, with lifetime access and free updates.
The LeadWave team, from a list of tactics we've collected from SaaS companies since 2022. Every example names a real company and links to it, and every number links to its source: the company's own post, a founder's talk or a filing.