Engineering SaaS Success: No-Code, AI, and Data-Driven SEO Strategies with Glide’s Marketing VP

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Awesome. So I am from Brazil, a mechanical engineer by background. And so the beginning of my career was not, not at all in marketing. I started my career in consulting and private equity, and I lived in San Francisco. Eventually I transitioned into technology. And then my first job was in sales strategy and operations.

And so I did everything in the sales team, but selling, but everything around, like, how do we. Our routing leads from marketing and all that kind of stuff. And then eventually, uh, that startup went through a lot of transitions and I moved to run the growth marketing team. Um, and so there, uh, the growth marketing at that time, we were doing a lot of website experimentation, um, paid advertising and email marketing.

So that was like my three core pillars. Um, and then since then, that was many, many years ago. Um, I ran quite a few marketing teams across the board and have. I’ve now touched every, pretty much every discipline of marketing from brand to content, to SEO, to website optimization, paid marketing, email marketing, community education, all of it.

Um, I’ve run so far. Um, and then why did I join Glide? So I joined Glide two and a half years ago. Um, so just before Glide, I was at GoDaddy, uh, growing the web designer and developer audience. So this is the audience that is, uh, serving small businesses, trying to get online or build their presence online.

Um, and when I, when I, when I got introduced to Glide, what was really exciting to me is they were trying to do similar to what website builders had done with website building that before was just something that like coders could do, and now there’s all of these tools that allow people to build their own websites.

Um, Glide was trying to do that with software and I have a passion for work software. I use, we all use work software every day. And a lot of the work software that we use is really bad. It’s really clunky. It doesn’t work really well. Uh, and so, uh, one of the things that really attracted me to Glide was our CO and our entire team.

They’re very design focused. And so the, the, the software that you get with Glide is just so high quality and it’s exactly what you need and nothing you don’t. Um, that was just really exciting to me to be able to work on that, making that available to more and more people.

Yeah. So it’s, uh, it’s kind of like GoDaddy and Genesys are on two very different spectrums. They’re both very large companies, but very different spectrum. So, uh, on the GoDaddy side, GoDaddy historically, and you know, everyone knows this. It’s really targets like more smaller businesses. So usually the journey starts with like someone buys their domain or a few domains, and then eventually they build a website and then they, they get online, they do more things.

And so I learned a lot of things about, uh, from GoDaddy. Um, so a couple of things is, um, you know, you really need to get the word out. So there’s a very big, important part of like your brand, uh, and how do you build your brand and how do you make yourself, um, you know, People aware of your brand. So that’s something very important.

GoDaddy is really, really good around anything around their website. So I carry that with me, um, here to glide is like your website is your window to the world and like the more you invest in it and you optimize it, both from a search perspective, but [from a conversion flow perspective, it really pays off.

So that’s something very important. And then a really big lesson that I had from GoDaddy was, um, my job at GoDaddy was to grow this audience of. Uh, pros at web designers and developers that were the people that were supporting, uh, people trying to get online. Um, and so I grew that audience and I saw that having really good benefits across the business.

And so that’s also something that I’ve carried to glide, um, on the Genesis side, what’s interesting is like, I was more on the enterprise side of Genesis. So, uh, dealing with very large customers. Um, and we actually do get a few of those here at glide already. And so it’s very interesting that these dynamics of like dealing with SMBs.

And experts, uh, those professionals, agencies, and freelancers. It’s a very different dynamic than dealing with much bigger companies. So I’m kind of like drawing from all my experience here at Glide.

Uh, marketing related. So, yeah, I think one thing that we are paying a lot of attention to is video content, specifically on LinkedIn. That is a trend that we are paying a lot of attention and really focusing on. We have a really good video team. We’ve always had really, really good videos. And last year we decided to be even more intentional with our YouTube channel.

And so since then, we’ve seen a lot of really good results on YouTube. And then this year we’re trying to shift some of that capacity actually to LinkedIn videos, because LinkedIn is really promoting a lot of video content, extending the reach. So that’s a very big priority for us. Um, the other thing that we really tap a lot into with my team is like AI tools, uh, across the board.

Uh, we really use a lot of AI. On helping generate scripts, helping brainstorming, helping generate images, helping generate videos, voiceovers. Um, it, we really use a lot, a lot, a lot of it. And it’s honestly with a lot of experimentation, a lot of it is low quality. Um, and so the balance for us is always to find like the right balance of quality, but, um, we’re big, big fans of AI and all the benefits that it’s been giving us.

We’re very happy so far.

Yeah. So from an acquisition perspective, I think our biggest strategy is around SEO. So we, um, have been fortunate that glide grew very organically in the beginning and picked up a lot of traffic from some heavy hitting keywords. Um, and we capitalize and always try to push the edge on that. So SEO is a really big piece for us.

Um, the other thing is, um, we, we invest quite a bit in like organic social media. Um, LinkedIn and X, um, we, we invest quite a bit in like rising that visibility. And one thing that we’re really focused on right now is user generated content on those platforms. We really believe that it’s way better for people to learn about Glide from other people that are not Glide.

And so we really invest in our, our customers, the people who love us, um, to really empower them to become creators online if they are not already, uh, with tools, with training, with. Resources. There are a lot that we do to empower that. Um, and so I think these are some of the really big pieces, um, that we’re doing right now.

And we get actually a lot of word of mouth. This is pretty big for us in terms of, of just how we get more customers and more people.

Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s something that we honestly have been experimenting with this for a really long time. Uh, we tried a lot of things. I’ll just give you a couple of the, all the different things that we’ve tried so far. So one of the first few things that we did is, uh, we try to launch like an ambassador program, uh, almost two years ago.

Um, and then in that ambassador program, uh, some people were going to create like their own groups and, uh, when we had a campaign or a launch, we would provide them with some assets and we saw a little bit of traction, but it died down. Right. People were just not consistently posting. They weren’t really engaged.

And so we took a little bit of a break. Um, and then about a year ago, one of the things that we did is we did a writing cohort. So we basically help people learn how to better write. And we did a cohort for about four to five weeks. And it was pretty interesting to see the drop off, to see how writing is such like a, a tough skill to master.

Um, and then most recently we’ve been really focusing on, um. Helping people create video. We’ve actually done three video cohorts where we actually engage with a social media expert who is really good at video, uh, has gone viral many times. And then he’s teaching our creators how to create content. Uh, so that’s really awesome.

Um, and more recently we’re now formalizing our creator program, which is actually live already under the hood, uh, but it’s going to go live more openly, uh, in the near future. And we’re really empowering them with like content assets, b roll. But practices, uh, both for written content and video content and a tool as well.

So there’s a lot that we do to really empower that, uh, creator thing. And obviously we engage with a lot of that content. That’s, that’s the thing that we do as a team, as a brand. We really celebrate all these creators.

We serve a really broad audience, but our target audience are really businesses that have anywhere from like 50 to like up to a thousand employees.

Right. That’s, that’s the people that really benefit from having custom software. The reason is glide really works well to like distribute information and collect information. Like we are really focused on your data, right? It, uh, a glide app always starts like from your data. So that’s a very important part of your application.

Um, and so. That these are the types of companies that really benefit from that. And so the types of industries or types of companies that, so real estate companies, they have a lot of agents. They have a lot of clients. They have a lot of properties. They benefit a lot from glide construction companies.

They have a lot of projects, contractors, uh, you know, employees, clients, they benefit a lot from us and you can keep going, honestly. It’s a very wide range. We have anywhere from like. financial institutions to startups to, um, very large companies. Um, it’s a, it’s a pretty wide range, but the use cases that we see very often are like portals, dashboards.

Um, and we do really well when like someone has a fairly large. User base that is going to be using your application on mobile on, on your phone, because a lot of business software tends to be really, really bad on mobile. Uh, some are even unusable and glide has this amazing thing about adaptive design that when you create your software, there’s a desktop version and automatically a mobile version that just works really well.

Um, and so that’s something that really attracts people is like this mobile factor is a really big differentiator that we have.

No, it is. It is applicable. Uh, we have way more ideas of, uh, types of content that we wanted to produce than resources.

So, um, we, we often wrestle, wrestle with this balance of like, how much do we go into like, we, we call them like our content pillars. Right. So we have some content pillars that are very like general around like no code software development, application development. AI, um, AI app development. So these are some of our core pillars.

Um, and then we have some of these, um, that we wish we could have enough bandwidth that are more like specific to like a use case and create the entire content journey for that. Um, right now we are having to make trade offs in terms of like what we can do with the capacity that we have. But yes, we, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a tough balance for us.

Yeah. Thank you. Uh, yeah. So we pay a lot of attention to SEO because as I said, Glide started very organically and picked up a lot of organic traffic in the beginning, um, and some really heavy hitting keywords.

And so we make sure that like we. Take care of that traffic, but also like keep growing in different areas. Um, and so we pay It’s, it’s, it’s a very, it’s, we keep, we keep getting better on SEO. We are not perfect, but you know, we’re all, it’s something that we, it’s always top of mind of how we can improve.

Um, so for us, we really think about like on page SEO for our website. Um, we really capitalize a lot on like, Um, we pay a lot of attention to all of our metadata. Um, you know, we’ve done projects around how you just change your metadata structure, really focus on your keywords. And you see like meaningful lifts in like very short period of time.

Um, we pay a lot of attention in our user generated content and how we can really boost that to be more SEO optimized. So I mentioned before the call, uh, we have a lot of users actually that submit templates of glide apps to our website. Um, and then they can actually put them for free or sell them. Um, and before those.

So these pages were not SEO optimized. They would just have the template and a very brief description. We did a whole project that we now optimize all of these SEO pages. We also redid our blog entirely about a year ago and have really optimized everything. Um, and then now we’re also working on like programmatic SEO.

So, and we focus a lot, as I mentioned as well. In internal link building, um, like a lot. We do a lot of internal linking Um, so there’s a lot of that we do from a paying attention to seo We have actually weekly reviews of seo performance monthly reviews. So we pay a lot of attention to that

Yeah. So we are actually, we recently adopted a new SEO tool called graphite. Uh, so they are actually a, an agency, a high end SEO agency that, uh, we have contact with and they actually created a platform based out of their, um, their, their agency, uh, and we’re having a lot of really good success.

They really help us, um, one define like clusters of keywords that you want to optimize for. Uh, and then they really help, um, our head of content when she’s creating like briefs for. Uh, the blog content that we’re going to create. Um, and we use that as well, actually for quite a lot of our FAQ landing, uh, on our landing pages.

We try to like be very cognizant of SEO in those landing pages. So we tend to use the tool for that as well. So that’s been a favorite of ours.

Uh, our biggest challenge, which is going to sound weird, is really the fact that we have actually a lot of traffic, uh, with Glide. Uh, and then we actually have to find the target audience within that traffic. So that tends to be a really big part of like what we’re trying to do is like, how do we find the signals?

How do we find the right things for that? So that is a really big piece of what we do. For sure, is finding the right people in all of the traffic and all of the signups and all the form fields that we get. Um, we’re actually leveraging more and more AI, um, to help do that. Um, a lot of the heuristics that our sales team used to do of like, Oh, I look at this signal, that signal, this signal, we’re actually leveraging a lot of AI and glide actually itself to do a lot of that heuristics and it’s making our process a lot more efficient.

Well, a lot. Uh, so we look at, we look at our data. Uh, it’s actually funny. We use a mixed panel for a lot of the marketing, um, KPIs and, um, there’s a guy who was, uh, checking our usage and he’s like, Bronca, you’re by far the number one user.

So I. I look at it like a bot daily, very constantly, but we do have like a weekly review that we kind of like, we set up like our, what are our core marketing metrics that are not only output metrics, but we have a lot of leading indicators. And so, for example, when we’re working with our creators on something, we’re like, Oh, did it have an impact in our prospect traffic?

Did it have an impact on LinkedIn? Did it have an impact on YouTube sometimes? So we kind of like see that on a pretty regular basis, like our. I have to say I’ve tried very sophisticated attribution tools in the past and they always fall short of my expectations and I feel like they always give you confusing information.

So we kind of like pay attention to the data and kind of like what we’re seeing and you know, we just make the best out of that. So we look at a lot of data. Uh, to kind of like really understand, okay, this is what we’re doing. This is the impact that it’s having. Uh, you know, also very lucky that we have a data scientist also in house.

So whenever we want to look at like even downstream effects. So for example, a tactic that I’ve used in the past is a newsletter, um, um, sponsorships. Um, and then for example, one time we did a couple of tests of a newsletter sponsorships, and we saw like this massive drop spike in prospect traffic, like one day, boom.

Massive drop, massive spike, and nothing really happened with like our signups and activation. And so we then did another test. And so we really look at like all the other effects, right? I’m very cognizant of like not tasking my team just with like prospect traffic, but really looking at like signups convert and then they activate.

Um, and so we try to look at the entire funnel to see if our marketing activities are working. And so, for example, uh, email newsletters, it’s something that we’re taking a break from now.

Very much. A lot. Uh, all of it. So, um, this is also something that it comes from my previous life at GoDaddy. So we built a community there. Around for web designers and developers. Um, and Glide had already a community before I joined a very active community. We actually have a community forum where people that are very knowledgeable about Glide and newcomers and people who keep building with Glide, they really collaborate on. I want to do this.

I want to do that. And so it’s a very active community. And then one of the things that I’ve done is really take that community to like. Beyond the forum. I always say that, like, let’s take the community beyond the forum and really build a community. And I have two people working on that. Um, so one of them is Andy.

So he focuses on our community overall. And how do we do community events? How do we do whether it’s in person or virtual? And how do we keep the forum active? And, you know, how do we get engaged in other communities as well? So he does a lot of things. Fabulous job at that. And I also have Brett who runs our expert program.

So this is the program specifically for freelancers and agencies who are building with glide for clients. Um, and so we have a specific community for them that is happening on Slack. They have a lot of like really exclusive events with us. So we are very big believers in community and we invest a lot of resources in that.

Yeah. Um, I really believe that your acquisition is the best thing to find.

That’s what I really believe. Like if you attract like a lot of people who are unqualified or are going to have use cases that are very temporary, you’re just going to have them churn a lot, right? And we have a good chunk of our customers that are like that. They come and they play a little bit and then they churn, right.

Um, maybe without even paying us. Um, but what we really focus is like, we have pretty good retention of like the people who are coming for business use cases, because they tend to like create a business application that will be used like in their day to day, that is going to be critical to their business.

And so those people are not going to just churn. Um. Like this. Um, and so our focus is really on like, how do we find more of these people? How do we keep them happy? Right? Um, and so that’s, that’s been our main churn prevention is like finding more of the right people.

Yeah, well, it’s hard to tell because we have a lot of funnels at Glide. Uh, but every, pretty much everyone at Glide starts free, right? Because we have a free account. So everyone is starting free. Um, and so we have about 30 to 40 percent of our signups that are using Glide for work. And then out of those, some activate by building on their own.

Some really work with an expert to have it built for them. So all very different funnels. They look very different.

Um, let’s say key principles. I don’t know if he principle I’ll say key traits. Right. Um, so one of the things that I bring a lot to my team and I try to. You know, give them a lot is that like energy, right? I really believe in what I do and I really believe in what my team is doing. And so really leading with a lot of energy, right?

Um, you know, when you, I, I don’t like a lot of meetings and so, but when you come to a meeting, you got to make it count. People got to go to that meeting and be like, Oh, that was a good meeting. We kind of like felt energized. We learned something or we talked about something. Um, so I really avoid it.

Status progress meetings or, or things like that. We just don’t do a lot of that. So leading with a lot of energy and making sure that people have energy, right, and monitoring energy levels. So that’s very important to me. Um, second thing that is really important to me is speed, right? Um, I, my entire career I’ve been.

You know, I’m addicted to speed. I actually wrote a post about this yesterday. Um, and I, I’m always pushing my team. I’m like, Hey, how can we do this faster? Um, because speed is one thing that like really allows you to like, focus in my opinion, when you are like, okay, I have this project to do. Like, what is the scope if I do it in four weeks?

What is the scope if I have only two weeks to do it? And what I often find is that by focusing on speed, you end up really focusing on what really matters. And then you, you take out some of the nice to haves and you actually end up not missing them that much. Um, so speed is very important to me. And then the final thing is just like, really, um, kind of like connecting that like customer insight back into like your tactics.

Right. And like, how do you like our whole goal is to make people aware of Glide and make them really happy with Glide. But then how do we then adjust our tactics and our, uh, the programs that we’re running to really adjust for that. And so we’re constantly re. Or like I never do planning that is just like, Oh, this is what we’ve been doing forever.

Therefore we’re going to keep doing like every quarter to me is a, is an opportunity to really start from a blank slate. Um, and so I don’t feel like attached to anything we’ve been doing, uh, unless it’s showing like positive results. So I think having that fresh perspective very frequently really helps make sure that like you’re, you’re always focused on the right priorities.

Yeah, it’s organic and inorganic. And sometimes it’s like, I liaise a lot with my peers. So my peers in like, in design and product and engineering and in customer support.

So I’m always like making sure that I’m paying attention to what’s happening in their world and bringing anything that is relevant to my team. We have a couple sinks here and there in the company that are really helpful for. Engineering and customer support and my team to come together and hear what’s happening with customers.

Um, we’re, we’re pretty small company so far, and then we’re able to like, have a lot of these conversations on Slack. Um, and a lot of this is happening async, but it is something that my team is very much aware. And I have different people on my team that are closer to different areas of the company. Um, but it’s, we, we are pretty much integrated.

Like the marketing team is very integrated with other parts of the company.

Awesome, yes.

Emily Kramer.

Send an apology email, uh, when we made a mistake to a list. Uh, but actually using that, uh, as a way to like increase response rate to the research that we wanted to do. All

It was for sure be about glide.

Content marketing.

Ooh, it was, it was actually a, someone asked me to write a post and then I recorded a loom. And then I asked Chad GPT to, to answer the questions that the person has asked me from the transcript of my loom. Now it

Thank you.