How to increase signups by fixing messaging, not adding more marketing

Executive overview

Most SaaS founders assume low signups mean a traffic or leads problem. 90% of the time, the real breakdown happens after visitors land — in messaging, positioning, and product fit.

The fix is customer research: survey your best recent customers using Jobs to Be Done questions, identify which customer job represents the biggest opportunity, then lift their exact words directly onto your website.

Optimising messaging for the right customer job is faster and cheaper than any marketing experiment — and the results compound across acquisition, onboarding, and conversion.

Who to learn from

• Target paying customers who have renewed or paid multiple times — they're getting continued value
• Customers must be happy with the product as it is today — those you'd have to "pry out of their cold dead hands"
• Acquired within the last 3–6 months — recent enough to remember the pain before your product
• Avoid customers from 2+ years ago — memory fades and their decision context may no longer be relevant

The Jobs to Be Done survey

• Send to 300–500 customers to get 25–50 open-text responses; run 10–15 interviews if your list is smaller
• All questions use open text — no multiple choice; you need the customer's own words, not your categories
• Key questions to ask:
  1. How were you solving this problem before us? (reveals what they're "firing")
  2. When did you realise you needed something like us? (the trigger moment)
  3. How did you find us?
  4. Why did you choose us over alternatives? (your real differentiators)
  5. What deal-breakers nearly stopped you choosing us? (objections and anxieties)
  6. What made you feel certain this was right for you after signing up? (activation insight)
  7. What can you do now that you couldn't do before? (the desired outcome)

Identifying the best customer job

• Parse responses question by question; look for recurring themes across answers
• You'll typically find 2–3 dominant customer jobs — groups with meaningfully different motivations
• Prioritise the job that scores highest on:
  • Implicit value understanding — customers who get it without hand-holding
  • Willingness to pay — budget already exists for this category
  • Urgency — they have a painkiller problem, not a vitamin problem
  • Long-term potential — recurring need or expansion opportunity
• Also consider: industries where you have an unfair advantage; groups that congregate in reachable channels

Closing the messaging gap

• Compare your current homepage copy against the voice-of-customer language from the survey
• Ask: Are you using your own jargon, or their words? Do you address their biggest anxieties? Do you highlight what they actually care about?
• Lift copy directly from survey responses — word-for-word if possible
• Update positioning to reflect the specific job, not generic product features
• Carry the same messaging through product onboarding to drive trial-to-pay conversion

Results across multiple companies

• LifeLapse: CEO assumed they needed PR and influencer campaigns; survey revealed a messaging problem; 93% increase in signups after updating homepage copy, zero spend on new channels
• MeetEdgar: Three website pages updated with new VOC-based messaging; 40% increase in trial-to-pay conversion — no product changes
• SparkToro: Had signups but low conversion; value themes mapped to specific product features in onboarding; doubled trial-to-pay conversion rate
• Autobooks: Interviews used instead of surveys; increased both signups and product usage