Customer story
How Kubaru 2x'd qualified demos and shifted to organic-led growth
B2B SaaS A B2B SaaS team flipped its acquisition mix from paid-heavy to organic-majority in a single quarter, and broke a pipeline record in the process.
About month #2 we started to see a significant uptick in traffic. In just a few months we've managed to double the number of leads and qualified demo requests coming through. We've gone from the majority of our leads coming from paid search to now seeing the majority coming from organic.
The challenge
Kubaru is product-first by design. R&D and feature work always took priority over marketing and sales, and SEO sat with Tyler and his co-founders as a side task between releases. No strategy, no external collaboration.
That worked until two things forced the issue.
- Paid search concentration risk. The vast majority of leads came through PPC. Pulling the budget meant pulling pipeline.
- AI search timing. Tyler expected paid traffic to soften as buyers shift toward ChatGPT and Claude, where ad inventory is not yet fully built out.
Most SEO agencies they evaluated pitched the same playbook: top-of-funnel content, high keyword volume, generic blog posts. Tyler set a different goal: double demo requests by Q1.
What we changed
We took the engagement in early December with a clear focus: bottom-of-funnel content built to convert, not to inflate traffic numbers.
| Lever | What it looked like |
|---|---|
| Bottom-of-funnel content | Pages aimed at people already in the buying phase, including AI-search users running evaluation queries inside ChatGPT and Claude. |
| Channel diversification | Reduced Kubaru’s dependence on paid search by giving organic enough commercial weight to start carrying real volume. |
| AI-aware content quality | Top-of-funnel content gets scraped by AI with little benefit to the publisher. Bottom-of-funnel content drives qualified leads regardless of whether buyers arrive via Claude, ChatGPT, or Google. |
The first batch of content shipped in mid-December.
The outcome
Kubaru hit the Q1 goal inside a single quarter.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Month 2 | Significant traffic uptick from the first content batch. |
| Mid-February | Demo requests start ticking up. |
| March | Record-breaking month for qualified demos. |
The headline numbers:
- Doubled qualified demo requests by Q1, on target.
- Lead source mix flipped from “vast majority paid search” to roughly 60/40 with organic now leading.
- Traditional six-month SEO timeline compressed to one or two months, helped by AI search picking up the bottom-funnel content quickly.
Tyler is now hiring sales and support to absorb the inbound, with a goal to double demo volume again over the next six months.
His takeaway for other founders: bottom-of-funnel SEO geared for AI is the most effective channel moving forward. PPC is going to get more competitive and more expensive in the window before AI search is fully monetized. Balancing the channel mix now is the move.
