Positioning done right: Eleken’s SaaS focus leads to growth
Back in 2015, Eleken was your typical full-service app development company. Then, Ilya Dmitruk, a former UI/UX designer and founder, decided to make a big change. He reevaluated the company’s strategy, cut out anything unnecessary, and decided to focus solely on design. He also shifted the target audience to SaaS companies. It was a complete pivot that set the company on a new path.
That's when they met the founder of Zmist & Copy, who at the time was running another agency called Kaiiax. He was looking for a content marketing strategy to help grow his new business.
Three months after launching their redesigned website with the new positioning and content, Eleken started generating over 20 monthly leads and ranked in Google’s top search results for over 30 relevant keywords.
Read the full story.
34% of startups fail because they lack a product/market fit.
Cutting out everyone else who might be interested in UI/UX design services and focusing exclusively on SaaS was a huge gamble. It could pay off, or it might not. At the time, there was no search for "SaaS design agency" — meaning no one was actively looking for this type of company on Google.
But Ilya was committed to making it work. All he needed was a skilled content marketing team to help build the right strategy and connect with SaaS businesses.
Similar to SaaS, Eleken's business model offered a dedicated designer for a fixed monthly price, much like a subscription. This approach was simple and transparent, setting it apart from the traditional Time & Materials (T&M) model used by other design agencies. T&M often concealed slow processes, opaque resourcing, and hidden costs. To highlight this strength, we coined the term "pragmatic" to reflect Eleken's straightforward approach, making it the central message on their homepage.
“At first month we had multiple discovery meetings and brainstorming sessions to structure our new positioning and figure out a new marketing strategy.” – Ilya Dmitruk, founder and CEO of Eleken
We had nailed the positioning, but what about growth? How would leads discover Eleken when the search volume for "SaaS design agency" didn't even exist?
To play it safe, we decided to kill two birds with one stone.
We optimized the homepage for the keyword "SaaS design agency," hoping to capture some low-volume traffic.
At the same time, we created landing pages targeting high-traffic, transactional keywords like "UI/UX design services" and "web app design." This strategy helped us attract a broader range of potential customers to Eleken's website.
Eleken's target audience is SaaS company leaders — the decision-makers in charge of selecting design partners.
To earn their trust, we wrote high-quality, business-driven content that tackled the key pain points and challenges faced by SaaS startups. Here are a few examples:
- 10 Reasons Why Products Fail (So You Can Prevent It)
- Roles in SaaS Company: Who You Need to Start Hiring When Your SaaS is Growing
- How to Price Your SaaS Product? Guess Less, Ask More
We couldn’t ignore the people who might influence the decisions of SaaS leaders, like product designers and managers. To engage this group, we developed technical, design-focused content. Here are a couple of examples:
- Compelling Design Takes More Than “Making It Like Stripe”
- Should Your Productivity Tool Also Look Like Notion?
- How to Сonduct a UX Audit: 5 Essential Steps
Our content strategy delivered impressive results, generating over 30 qualified SaaS monthly leads from Google Search. Within the first three months, we saw more than 20 monthly MQLs. In just two years, website traffic grew to 25K per month, and Eleken's design team expanded threefold compared to when we first met them.
"Our new blog and backlinks strategy helped us to generate 20+ organic leads per month and put about 30+ keywords in Google's top rank. They really dived into our market and business model. It really helped us to define the best solution."
Positioning is a powerful opportunity to focus and succeed. Trying to appeal to everyone often means failing to connect with anyone. Fun fact: Startups that pivot 1-2 times achieve 3.6x better user growth than those that never pivot or pivot too often. Also, high-quality content that addresses your audience's challenges builds trust.
You can team up with us to define your positioning, build a content strategy and operations, or create copy and content. We want your audience to not just notice you but to actively seek you out, waiting to hear what you have to say next.
