From expensive paid keywords to a full-funnel growth engine for Kaizo

Kaizo is a B2B SaaS product with a clear ambition: get more qualified leads through the pipeline, in a way that also holds up over the long term. We stepped in as a fractional marketing team. That means we reactivate, steer and accelerate the marketing function on and off, without needing a full in-house team. This gives a scale-up senior marketing leadership exactly when it is needed.

The real problem was in the cost per click

The fastest way to get leads seemed to be Google Ads. Except the costs there ran completely out of hand. On the most important keywords the CPCs sat between 50 and 500 euros per click. For a SaaS with a longer sales cycle that means: you pay top price for traffic that is nowhere near ready to buy, and you build nothing that lasts.

Running on paid alone was therefore not a strategy, but a leak. So the question became broader: how do you build a growth engine that also works when the expensive keywords are unaffordable? The answer was not one channel, but the combination of positioning, organic authority and smartly deployed paid.

Positioning first, the engine second

Before you send traffic to a page, that page has to tell the right story. So we started with the homepage: messaging and positioning rebuilt and aligned with the new direction Kaizo is heading in. That foundation has to be fully ready, because every paid euro and every organic visitor eventually lands on that story. Without sharp positioning you are only optimising a leaking bucket.

Topical authority as the engine under the pipeline

To cover the expensive paid keywords organically, we built thematic authority with topical maps and topical pages. Instead of scattered blog posts, we mapped Kaizo’s entire topic world and translated it into coherent pages that reinforce each other.

Then we optimised the blog articles and internal links so the pages climbed the rankings. This way we shift, step by step, the keywords that are simply too expensive through Google Ads toward organic traffic that costs nothing per click and keeps paying off.

Competitor pages and a full on-page refresh

SaaS buyers compare. So we built several competitor pages that honestly focus on the real quality differences with the alternatives, exactly at the moment a prospect is comparing.

Alongside that, we ran a full refresh of every page on the site, including titles and meta descriptions. It looks like detail work, but it is exactly what lifts click-through from the search results: the same ranking, more clicks, without extra ad budget.

Paid and social, now with a foundation underneath

With the positioning and the organic base in order, we deployed paid in a targeted way. We started a Google Ads setup that we keep optimising and that steers on qualitative clicks instead of on as much traffic as possible. On top of that we are building Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, plus retargeting campaigns, so the funnel is fed end to end: from first encounter to the moment a prospect is ready to talk.

What the data showed

When we put the numbers side by side, the gap was large. In September 2025, paid search delivered 38,743 sessions and 48 key events, a conversion rate of 0.12%. Organic search brought 2,292 sessions and 105 key events, or 4.6%. Organic converted about 38 times better, with 6% of the traffic.

The comparison pages performed best, at about 10% conversion on small numbers.

An honest caveat: key events here are buying signals, such as a pricing page visit. They are not demo requests, because those ran through an external calendar the analytics could not see. The difference between the channels is clear, though: the expensive clicks brought volume, the organic pages brought the buyers.

A growth engine, not scattered campaigns

The common thread: no scattered actions, but a coherent system. Positioning as the foundation, topical SEO authority as the motor under the organic pipeline, competitor and on-page optimisation for more clicks, and paid plus social as the accelerator. Exactly how we always do it with growth marketing: building a predictable growth engine instead of burning budget on the most expensive click.