How Waalaxy developed a SaaS reaching 10M ARR without fundraising and without sales.

Waalaxy (formerly prospectIn) is a LinkedIn prospecting tool that has distinguished itself with a sales-free growth model based on content marketing. In just four years, without raising funds, the company reached an annual recurring revenue of 10 million euros, with over 150,000 users including 10,000 paying customers. With 2000 reviews and a 4.5 rating on Trustpilot, Waalaxy has attracted a wide audience thanks to effective service and a well-established acquisition strategy. Today, the company, consisting of 50 employees, is however experiencing a plateau, mainly due to difficulties in international expansion.

Waalaxy has managed to make a growth tool accessible to everyone and easy to use, facilitating adoption by their users who are both Growth professionals and more "traditional" salespeople. When comparing Waalaxy to its main competitor Lemlist, Waalaxy offers a much simpler and faster onboarding.

‍

Waalaxy Team Composition

The team consists of:

• 16 marketing and growth
• 12 tech
• 7 product
• 7 customer success
• 3 admin/finance
• 3 recruitment
• 2 AI

‍

Content-Centered Acquisition

From the beginning, Waalaxy focused on a content strategy for customer acquisition. This choice proved successful, as 90% of their acquisition comes from this strategy, based on branding and word-of-mouth. When the company launched its first product, ProspectIn, it focused on two main channels:

1. SEO: The SEO strategy relies on a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. User feedback via support is considered to generate relevant blog content, optimized for search engines. This content can then be easily broken down into "Tutorial" YouTube videos and newsletters.
2. LinkedIn: Waalaxy's CEO, Toinon Georget, was one of the first to adopt an influencer approach on LinkedIn, creating content regularly. This active presence strengthened the company's visibility.

Over time, Waalaxy expanded this strategy by involving more employees in LinkedIn content creation. They boost the CEO's publications and also share their own posts, amplifying the company's organic reach.

In 2023, Waalaxy generated 23 million views on LinkedIn, including 12 million through the CEO's personal account. However, the latter was banned from the platform, which directly impacted the company's acquisition rate over the last six months. It's interesting to note that copywriting represented 20% of the CEO's time, an indicator of the importance given to content creation in Waalaxy's overall strategy.

‍

Waalaxy SEO Study

Visibility and Global Traffic

Monthly traffic: Waalaxy generates an average of 150,000 monthly visits, including 75,000 in France, according to Semrush.

Branding impact: When typing "Waalaxy" in a search engine, results show their website, their pages on recruitment sites, their YouTube channel, and other digital assets. This demonstrates the significant impact of their online branding.

‍

Keyword Positioning

"LinkedIn" query: Waalaxy ranks 6th for the "LinkedIn" query, which generates high traffic (15,000 monthly visits). However, this keyword likely converts little traffic, as it's far from what people want to see when searching for LinkedIn.

Business Keywords: Waalaxy is mainly positioned on informative queries, with few keywords directly related to LinkedIn prospecting. However, they achieve interesting results on certain business keywords:

• Prospecting (5th position): This keyword potentially brings them more qualified leads.
• Automated prospecting tool
• LinkedIn prospecting (1st position)
• LinkedIn prospecting tool: Their homepage ranks for this keyword thanks to advanced optimization of title, meta description, and backlinks.
  ‍

Content Strategy and Traffic Generation

Primarily informative content: Waalaxy attracts mostly informative traffic to its site, through articles on various topics like copywriting, with adapted call-to-actions on each.

Quality content creation: To compensate for their lack of business keywords, Waalaxy stands out through the quality of their informative content. For example, their flagship page on marketing contains:

• Videos
• Images
• Well-structured text
• Bullet points
• Comparison tables
• A unique writing style with emojis to make reading more enjoyable

Progressive conversion strategy: Instead of immediately redirecting to their product, their call-to-actions often lead to other blog content, engaging users in a progressive exploration of their offer.
‍

Backlink Strategy

Backlink purchases: Waalaxy buys numerous links to boost their articles. For example:

• English homepage: 900 backlinks
• French homepage: Over 1200 backlinks

Backlink optimization on strategic pages: Their flagship marketing article has 44 optimized backlinks with anchor texts like "marketing definition", "what is marketing", or "marketing concepts". This allows them to rank on the first page for the keyword "marketing" and establish their authority in this field.
‍

Multilingual SEO

Automatic translations: Waalaxy automatically translates each of its articles into several languages using plugins like Weglot, allowing them to increase their international visibility. Languages covered include:

• English
• Spanish
• Italian
• Dutch
• German
• Polish
• Portuguese
  ‍

The Two-Pronged Content Strategy

Waalaxy has structured its content strategy around two main axes:

1. High-quality content on channels with strong cumulative effect: These channels, such as YouTube, podcasts, and newsletters, struggle to attract new users. However, those who discover the company through these media often become loyal users. These formats benefit from a long lifespan, allowing for maintaining long-term relationships with the audience.
2. Content factory for high-virality channels: Here, the goal is to acquire new users through short, impactful formats, like snackable content on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok. Short storytelling formats, like "shorts", work particularly well on these platforms. These channels are mainly dedicated to acquiring new customers, who are then retained through cumulative effect content to convert them into clients.
   ‍

Self-Serve Growth and Ambition to Develop Inbound Sales

Waalaxy also distinguishes itself with a commercial model without direct sales force. They managed to acquire 10,000 clients with 0 Sales in their team. Each month, between 10,000 and 15,000 new users join the tool in self-serve. However, the company plans to develop an inbound sales team to maximize the conversion of these organic users.

Currently, 10 to 15% of clients are acquired through advertising campaigns, mainly via Google Ads, with minor support from Meta Ads. Waalaxy is also starting to exploit YouTube Ads with promising beginnings according to the CEO, without giving concrete figures.
‍

Waalaxy's Future: Diversification and Video Content on LinkedIn

Waalaxy's CEO anticipates a rise in video format on LinkedIn between 2024 and 2025, with great opportunities to seize. But beyond acquisition strategies, the company also wishes to diversify its product. Currently, the tool relies exclusively on LinkedIn's API, which represents a major risk for Waalaxy's long-term stability. A