The buying committee is not one person.
The user who finds you is rarely the user who signs the contract. The marketing has to work for the researcher, the technical evaluator, the budget owner, and the procurement reviewer — often on the same site visit.
Long sales cycles compound.
A first touch in Q1 can produce a closed deal in Q3. Attribution has to span quarters. Reporting that does not span the cycle understates SEO and overstates paid.
SEO and paid serve different funnel stages.
Top-of-funnel content and organic catches researchers six months out. Bottom-of-funnel paid catches buyers ready to demo. Treating them as the same channel is a common, expensive mistake.
Differentiation comes from positioning, not budget.
Every SaaS category is crowded. The marketing answer is usually clearer positioning and braver copy, not louder broadcast spend.