Advanced SEO Tactics for SaaS: AI, Compliance, and Growth Strategies Unpacked

Thank you. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here as well Harshit. Thank you.

It’s been a long journey for sure and it might surprise you but it’s a journey that was purely by accident. I never thought I’d be in marketing to begin with. I studied IT. I even did my post graduation in IT but a lot of things changed in that process and fortunately for me I landed in the digital marketing space. So I began my journey working with agencies. I worked with big retail clients like Gillette, Standard Chartered.

I also worked in a sports agency, in an entertainment TV channel. And those were really defining experiences. Because through those experiences, I noticed the big shift that digital was starting to make in the marketing world. I really noticed how digital had surpassed channels like TV and traditional media, not just in connecting with the audiences, but also creating the sense of community.

So it really. showcase the strength that digital has after which I decided to move to Canada. And this was a big daunting move. And, but the thing is with marketing and digital, the beauty of it, it’s global in nature. There are a lot of transferable. Aspects of it, whether you’re in India, whether you’re in Canada.

So that’s the beauty of it. And I started my first role here with a retail kitchenware startup called Hutch Kitchen.

It was an absolute leap of faith. It’s a funny story.
We visited my brother in law who’s been in Canada for 20 years. And we just came here to see how exactly life is in this country, in the city of Calgary. And we absolutely fell in love. We, and we took this I even as a backup, I made sure that I was bell burst with some of the IT spaces like business analyst, and I started downloading courses because I was not sure whether I’m going to get employment in marketing once I move here.

But to whether you call it luck or whether it’s transferable skills, as I mentioned, in the, within the first month itself my wife and I managed to secure our jobs in our space, which is marketing. So we’ve been incredibly fortunate and we got. Like right to the ground running.

And as I mentioned, my first gig was with this kitchenware company called Hodge kitchen. And it was a really defining experience because I was handling everything in from right from content. To customer analysis, to email marketing, and even managing events. And what was, what made that such an important experience was I had to get hands on with every aspect of the marketing funnel.

And I built like an email marketing funnel from scratch used automation to my advantage. It was truly a learning experience of using how do you use creative, how you use data, how you use tech. It was the full package. So I’m incredibly grateful to that experience and post that I took that Learning to the financial industry.

I had stints with connect first credit union with neo financial and they brought separate challenges which Included how do you get creative and innovative? in such a sort of dry space like banking and how do you make that exciting? That was another interesting, like a very defining and learning experience, if I might say.

And I had, I dived into a lot of data, a lot of creative campaigns worked with some amazing individuals and which I’m really thankful for. And yeah, some of those campaigns are really close to my heart. And yeah, I think all those experiences brought me to my role at makeshift currently. And as, as you can sense I didn’t really set out to become this full stack marketer, if you might call it.

But I realized that at this day and age, it’s an essential skill for marketers to wear multiple hats and really, balance every aspect of marketing. So yeah at makeshift. I’m doing almost everything in terms of crafting strategies, leading projects, collaborating across teams, and just taking a holistic approach to marketing so that we’re achieving our company’s company-wide goals.

I think the one campaign that really is close to my heart is something that we did around SAP success connect. So makeshift as an SAP partner where our app is available on the SAP store.

And success connect is the big event for makeshift for SAP. It’s a big annual event. And partners often do their own events to create excitement and to create some sort of curiosity towards their brand. And it’s always challenging how exactly do you stand out from other partners?

So the CEO had this incredible idea that we can book out a racing track. in Vegas. So it’s the place is called Speed Vegas. And yeah we created this event where we combined our presentation, which was our launch of our AI platform, which was ship made AI. And combining that with an unforgettable experience of Our clients to come and race cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

So just creating that event was like incredibly exciting. And I had to really hone into my project management skills in terms of making sure that every moving part. In this campaign is covered. It also included the digital side of it included, obviously pushing out a lot of content on LinkedIn creating an email campaign and yeah.
And we saw such a positive uptick on each of these channels. Thanks to this event got some really big eyeballs on shipmate AI, which is our AI solution. And at the end of it, all the clients that attended us really appreciated this kind of this unique experience that they’ve been, that they were served.

And yeah, it helped a lot in terms of amplifying our traffic on LinkedIn. We got some stellar open rates and click rates on our email marketing campaigns as well, and we also built a lot of pipeline thanks to this particular event. So yeah, I think I would consider that incredibly exciting.

Also for the fact that it also covers something that I’m really passionate about, which is cars.

Yeah. When it comes to SEO, it’s with regulated industries like healthcare it just requires that nuanced understanding of the content as well as the regulations in place. Makeshift we serve healthcare, we serve government, we serve such complex industries that we have to be really careful with the terms we use.

Each of these industries have their own nuance terms. So we need to make sure that whatever content we’re putting out. includes those kind of terms and terminologies. And also that the fact that we’re adhering to any kind of compliance regulations. It also adds to the fact that we really need to make sure that whatever claims we are making, They’re backed up with credible information, credible data as well.

So it often involves an exercise with the SEO contractors in terms of a deep dive of the search terms of the keyword research that we’re doing and yeah, you can get really granular with this, a method that not is I’m not sure with if a lot of people know this but if you Say a really simple method is google answers so if you go to if you google search say scheduling for healthcare you will be prompted multiple Google questions about how do you schedule for healthcare?

How do you do scheduling for line nurses and things like that. A lot of people don’t know the fact that if you click on one of those questions, there’s automatically another question that pops up at the bottom and you can keep repeating this cycle. With that, you can, there’s an endless source of sort of information gathering that you can do, and you can really hone into what exactly the audience that you’re catering to, what exactly are they searching, what exactly are their pain points and how exactly can our content.

Provide value to them. So I think on a holistic basis for me That’s how I get granular with my SEO Keyword research contribution and obviously relying on the experts that I work with For the executional bit of things. So that’s my approach towards SEO.

Content. So I think it was Bill Gates who said content is king. But I would beg to differ. I would say relevant content is king. And it comes down to the fact that there’s so much noise out there right now, because there are so many people creating content at the same time. So the I think there was a stat that I read from Neil Patel himself And he shared that in the last 30 days 95 percent of content pages got 0 percent traffic.

And also social media, there was apparently 50 odd percent of social pieces got 0 percent engagement. And I feel this will only get worse with things like AI people don’t realize that AI is. A fantastic source of getting content. But how do you make that content? How do you tailor that content so that it’s relevant to your target audience?

That’s the challenge. So I would say relevant content is the King, the Emperor, the everything. And this comes back to again, the basics that is. Who are you talking to? Where exactly are these people based? Are they a decision maker? Are they a decision influencer? And what will they find value in? And coming back to your piece of content, how can your piece of content improve their situation in life at this point?

So having a really empathic approach to content creation, really putting yourself in the shoes of the person you’ve defined as a consumer. And after that, it doesn’t only stop there. It also, once the content has been published, once the content has been consumed, how exactly was it consumed? So really analyzing what pieces resonated with the audience, what pieces did not, and just rinse and repeat that process so that you have perfected your content strategy.
So I would say that’s how ideally content creation should be approached.

I think scheduling is such a the number one challenge I would say with the scheduling industry is again, a very complex A consumer profile, like defining your ICP can get very complicated. It’s not just because scheduling is such a tricky space, but because we serve so many diverse industries.

So the piece of content that would resonate with a healthcare professional, a line nurse per se, it won’t make sense to someone who’s in retail, who’s working at a restaurant. So I think that sort of creating those kind of volumes of content that resonate with different consumer sets.
I think that has been the biggest challenge with the scheduling sort of industry. I think what adds to the mix of complexity is that we work closely with partners like SAP and ADP. As I mentioned, that scheduling is an essential cog of the workforce management landscape. And we, thanks to a really flexible open API, we integrate flawlessly with solutions like SAP with ADP with Bamboo.

But then again, to generate awareness for an SAP exec to go ahead and pitch makeshift to a potential client. It also adds another consumer profile, which is. An SAP executive. So just having so many different people to cater to adds to that particular challenge.

That’s what I would say. And another challenge I would say is scheduling is not per se a sexy industry, if I might say, right? So how do you create pieces of content that, are visually appealing, are something that when people are on their LinkedIn feed, they’re makes them stop and go, I should read this, right?

Because there’s so much out there and you like, you got to be cognizant of people’s time. So how do you incorporate elements like humor, even in this kind of industry? So those are challenges, I would say, but I think they are healthy challenges and they’re pushing us as marketers to truly think outside the box.

It’s such a cliche term to say, okay, but. But it is the fact that’s how you need to operate, and that’s how you need to bridge challenges at hand.

Yeah, I think it comes down to a lot of communication. I, we need to make sure that we are attending the most relevant events where the right kind of partner base or the right kind of client base is available as well. There’s another challenge I would say is in the workforce management cycle, a lot of people overlook scheduling as A component till tools like makeshift came on board.

Scheduling was part of a lot of other components, like your time and attendance and payroll and things like that. But scheduling it’s is its own beast. And I think even before the challenge of communicating this to your partners is how exactly do you amplify this particular word that scheduling needs to be taken seriously?

There’s a direct impact. Of efficient workforce scheduling on your ROI and your bottom line. And this is proven. And it comes down to how exactly, how exactly will your employees feel when they’re on, efficient schedules versus broken schedules? So you’re not just generating organizational goals with through efficient scheduling, but you’re keeping your workforce happier.

You’re everyone’s more satisfied with the balance that they have in with their professional life and their personal life. So just making sure That word has been conveyed to the right audience set. And then in terms of your question for partnerships, just making sure that we’re available at the right places, like events are one of the biggest drivers for us events with in partnership with ADP, that’s where you meet individuals.

That’s where you meet people that are passionate about the industry and truly see the gaps. That these challenges pose and how exactly can we work collaboratively to bridge those gaps. So I feel that’s step one. And obviously there’s a digital side of it too.

Once you have your event marketing set up, you also have your drip campaigns on email set up, you have your LinkedIn advertising set up. So it’s all multiple moving parts working together to create that strong relationship. That lasting sort of relationship. We’ve even done a couple of podcasts and video interviews be it with clients, be it with partners.

And those have also driven that sort of awareness about scheduling being such an essential component of the workforce cycle. So yeah that’s how I would say partnership should be approached.

I think and this, I would refer to my experience with the banking industry because I feel that’s where I faced the gravity of compliance the most. And I think it’s all about just being working closely together with people responsible for compliance. So working closely with your legal team.

Working closely with the experts who are aware of what can be said, what can be shown, what cannot be shown, and just making sure that those are set as baselines for any of your strategies, be it a content strategy, be it any visual design strategies that you have in place, just making sure those are just laid as baselines.

And you work on top of those so that you never that is something I would be extremely cognizant about because a successful campaign is successful only when it sees the light of day. And if any compliance hurdles prevent that, all your efforts are wasted, right? So I would say it comes down to just working really closely with the stakeholders who are the experts in those areas.

Yeah. I and this, I think this has been thanks to my. Sort of variety of gigs with different industries and different kind of organizations.
I’ve been lucky to be exposed to a lot of different tools and technologies. So I think I would break down that answer into three parts. I think I would say my tech stack would firstly, First and foremost, before I get into that, I feel a lot of people overcomplicate their lives. A lot of marketers overcomplicate their lives with a very complex tech stack.

I personally believe that you need to just keep it simple. Just focus on KPIs that you value and how exactly, what exactly are those tools that can supplement You know, those kinds of KPIs to just keep it simple so that there’s not too much confusion. And I would say that my tech stack would usually involve research tools that are related to execution.

And I think more importantly, currently project management tools. So with research tools that can lead to, it can include social listening tools like your hoot suite. To even google analytics in general or any kind of analytical wing to You know a software so just to make sure that you have the right data points in place To define things like your customer profile to measure successes of your campaigns So that’s what I would classify as your research tools in terms of execution, anything that will make your life simpler to push out your campaigns and your content per se.

So I would say I’ve worked. I think Klaviyo is something that I worked extensively at my time with Hutch kitchen for email marketing and automation. I’ve been exposed to it. Sorry.

Yeah. And I’m not sure how exactly it has improved that currently, but at the point when I used it, it was something that was extremely powerful and really supplemented really was my workhorse, if I might say.

And I worked with teams that use iterable as well in the financial industry. Another complex automation tool that involves email marketing, push notifications, app notifications and things like that. And yeah, I think I dabble a lot into the creative side of content too. So Canva is something that is indispensable for me.

I think I’ve started using Canva not just for social imagery, but also for. Presentations and brochures and things like that because it’s although it’s so powerful It’s incredibly simple and it’s Easy to use a really flat learning curve, if I might say. And yeah, and coming down to project management.

I feel with so many moving parts as marketers, we really need to make sure that nothing slips. We’re within deadlines and any kind of supporting bodies or supporting individuals are doing their parts too. So I really dive into a team a tool like Asana currently. And that combined with my own sort of manual documentation that I use on Excel too.

So I, as I said, keep it simple, just make sure all the information is covered. And everything should be on point. Yeah, that’s pretty much how I would say would be my tech stack.

I think ever since AI came out, I’ve been guilty initially of using and abusing AI chat GPT when it initially came out. And that comes from space of curiosity more than anything, because it was a new shiny object. But then again, back to your previous question, I think AI.

And be a huge contributing factor, but there needs to be a certain legitimacy. And there needs to be a certain you need to be cognizant of what exactly you’re feeding AI and what exactly you’re using through AI. So I feel as I think there was another stat that I came across that AI generated articles got I think 55 percent lesser reach than Articles with Google hates ai, AI generated, like it’s, if it is

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I think yeah, the stat was human written articles generated five x more traffic than AI generated. Articles and that just shows that how a human voice is always gonna power gonna overpower like an AI generated voice and that’s why things like Podcasts are such a big thing right now because you cannot Fudge this.

This is not AI. This is two humans having a conversation, right? I feel AI needs to be, AI should definitely be leveraged. I think AI can make your life a lot more easier in honing things like your guidelines. And your best practices and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, whatever AI prompts should really be vetted by a human and given that human kind of voice.

And we’ve experimented this like I’ve experimented this personally as well. And if anything is. In any language has even a semblance of AI sounding terms. It’s something that would not even be regarded on social media, but then again, if you start with a really human voice, if you start in a conversational voice, that is something that’s being picked up immediately.
So it just shows that AI needs to be, it definitely needs to be used and it needs to be used responsibly, in my opinion.

Yeah. And Harshit, I would say Another thing I would say is we’re talking about AI as it stands currently. Okay. Everyone’s learning prompt engineering, everyone’s going to prompting school, but that’s the current landscape of AI. The way things are going, I feel even in the next year, the way we interact with AI is going to significantly change.

So a lot of these things will be redundant. A lot of how we’re interacting with chat GPT or cloud right now will be absolutely redundant. It will be much more easier. So I think, and yeah and the reason I say this is because there’s two parts of it for myself, with AI, it’s not just using AI for marketing.

But I’ve also been marketing for AI. So as I mentioned shift mate AI is our own scheduling AI solution, and it’s something that just simplifies the scheduling process drastically. We have not just an AI powered bot that you can feed information and ask them to build your schedules, but it can take into account so many advanced rules, regulations compliance information.
And a lot of industries we serve have union regulations too.

So what AI can do is really. trans, those kind of heavy sets of data that would ideally take an individual or a professional to do it manually themselves.

So it’s just reduced the output time, right? So I would say these are fantastic advancements.
These are something that gives companies a big edge. But at the end of the day, as you mentioned it needs to be responsibly used and we as AI and we as AI users need to be cognizant of the fact that this is not how it’s always going to be. We need to be on our toes. We need to adapt our approach to AI with every passing day.

Yeah. And I think this comes back to my, I, the privilege I have as a full stack marketer and working in a lead team that you end up working so closely with other teams. So for this, I do work very closely with the customer experience team. Not just for formulating how can we communicate with existing clients, how can we improve that communication cycle and to reduce churn, to make sure that people are satisfied with the product, but also in the data gathering aspect of it in terms of really understanding what features are clients positively responding to.

What are they not liking? What needs improvement? So working closely, not just working closely with that team, but we also do a lot of campaigns, like a lot of review campaigns on sites like G2 on sites like the Gartner market as well. And it involves a real deep dive. So I personally have an exercise that I do on a monthly or a quarterly basis as well, where I really go into the reviews that we’ve received on a G2, on a Captera and not just for makeshift, but also for competitors too.

So that you’re really, visualizing those kinds of feedback. And those kinds of gaps that are, that exist and how exactly are competitors solving those gaps? Can we leverage those kinds of strategies, really digging deep into those kinds of datas and running review campaigns on a quarterly basis as well with G2, with Captera.
So having those kinds of campaigns in place, And connecting really closely with a customer experience too. So we do have a knowledge base in place too. And I work closely with how exactly can those pieces of information be better, be easily digestible for customers.

And yeah, as it comes back to that complex consumer profile, because we’re not only talking to your decision makers, which are your C suite people who make the decision that we should adopt makeshift, but it’s also the person, the shift manager, At their terminal interacting with the scheduling solution itself, whether they’re enjoying their experience with the tool, right?

So we got to look at it in that 360 degree. Aspect and really collect as much information as you can really honing into customer data as such. And yeah, I think that’s how I treat, answering those kinds of questions that customers or, or concerns that customers have and how exactly can we bridge those?

It definitely requires a lot of organization if you’ve yeah, if you’ve gone through like a site like g2 and captera You do have information in terms of what industry is the person you know representing What kind of role do they possess?

So just making sure that all of that information is noted down And being considered. With your future strategies. I think that’s very important All

I think for makeshift is just about right now it’s about scaling up. So we’ve been successful among the mid market space. I think right now it’s all about amplifying our presence in the enterprise level among enterprise level clients really honing into the fact that scheduling as, as a solution is a key cog. in improving things like your bottom line and your revenue. So just making sure that that word is out there and yeah, just honing into our partners like SAP and ADP, making sure that we have, we collaboratively have exciting campaigns. And yeah, I think it’s about just scaling that up in that sense.

No I appreciate being on wytlabs as well. It’s this was a fantastic experience.
And as I said, I think the information that you’ve shared with me has been supremely helpful too. And it was an absolute pleasure meeting you as well. So thank you for this opportunity.