RingCentral’s Recipe for Dominating the UCaaS Space

Over the past two decades, RingCentral has transformed from a simple telephony service to a beacon in the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) domain.

This pioneering journey has seen them evolve into a powerhouse and their offering of an integrated Message Video Phone (MVP) solution marked a significant change in cloud communications. 

With a remarkable financial leap to $2.20B in revenue and 10.77% growth year-over-year as of December 31, 2023, RingCentral’s ascent reflects a revolution in how businesses communicate.

Today, we’ll look at how this cloud communications giant uses content marketing to support and sustain their growth as they battle big players and rising stars in the UCaaS space. 

How RingCentral Sustains Their Growth in a Competitive Space

The UCaaS space features a mishmash of major tech brands and newer startups. RingCentral faces stiff competition from longstanding giants like Microsoft, Zoom, and Cisco, as well as emerging contenders like Dialpad, 8X8, and Vonage. 

The tight race for dominance in this space is reflected in the differences in ranking across tastemakers like G2 and Gartner. 

RingCentral is with the rest of the top UCaaS providers in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant: 

While the G2 Grid for UCaaS has RingCentral ranked well outside of the Leaders Quadrant:

Despite the inconsistent rank, there’s one thing that isn’t up for debate: RingCentral’s financial success. 

According to their Q4 ’23 earnings presentation, the company increased their annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $2.3 billion over the past year — an 11% increase from 2022.

In the same presentation, the company set an ambitious goal of adding $100 million in ARR by the end of 2025. It’s a multi-product strategy driven by the integration of AI into their contact center (RingCX), sales intelligence (RingSense), and video conferencing and events (RingCentral Events) solutions. 

The earnings report slide below shows how these products are designed to attract new customers, drive expansion among existing ones, and enhance retention rates.

A key part of RingCentral’s strategy to meet this goal is leveraging content marketing as a competitive edge. 

By producing high-quality, informative content that addresses the needs and challenges of their target audience, RingCentral positions themselves as a thought leader in the UCaaS space. It’s an approach that helps educate the market about the benefits of cloud communications tools but also differentiates RingCentral from their competitors.

RingCentral’s marketing channel distribution further underscores their strategic approach to growth. 

With nearly 80% of their online traffic arriving directly, RingCentral benefits from over two decades of brand building and domain authority development. This direct traffic indicates a strong brand recall and customer loyalty, which are invaluable assets in a crowded market. 

Plus, they still manage to attract around 1 million monthly visitors worldwide through organic search, just under 12% of their total online traffic. That’s a testament to the effectiveness of RingCentral’s content marketing, brand building, and SEO efforts.

As RingCentral navigates the UCaaS space, their main growth levers are centred around:

• Expanding their product portfolio through acquisition
• Building strategic relationships with affiliates and partners
• Creating a multi-media content marketing strategy 

Now, let’s look at how each of these supports customer acquisition, expansion, and retention.

 Growth Lever 1: SaaS Landing Pages

RingCentral’s investment in small business landing pages shows their targeted approach to driving high-intent visitors to their website and down the funnel.  

Well-crafted SaaS landing pages are a key touchpoint in the customer journey, offering a focused narrative that aligns with their specific needs and search intents. Well aware of this, RingCentral created a series of landing pages designed to address the communication needs of small businesses.

Just how valuable are these pages? The five top RingCentral landing pages by traffic value all target small businesses. Together, they generate over $1 million in monthly traffic value.  

These top-performing pages not only attract substantial traffic but also play a critical role in converting visitors into leads and, ultimately, customers.

At the top of this list is RingCentral’s small business VoIP landing page. It underscores the benefits of VoIP systems tailored to small businesses, emphasizing affordability, comprehensive communication solutions (unlimited calling, conferencing, and faxing), and mobility. 

By focusing on the pain points and priorities of small businesses, such as cost savings and avoidance of expensive hardware upgrades, the landing page ensures relevance and resonance with its intended audience.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the key landing page elements:

• Immediate Calls to Action (CTA): With clear CTAs like “Start your free trial” or “Get a quote,” the page efficiently nudges potential customers toward making a decision, facilitating a smooth progression through the sales funnel.

• Targeted Benefit Highlighting: It zeroes in on benefits crucial to small businesses — affordability, ease of use, and the convenience of mobile use — thereby aligning closely with the needs and concerns of potential customers at this scale.

• Embedded YouTube Video:  It provides page visitors with an engaging, visual demonstration of the value that RingCentral VoIP brings to small businesses across industries.

• Solution-Focused Content: Rather than merely listing features, the page illustrates how these features address specific business challenges, such as cost reduction on phone bills, demonstrating value in practical terms.

• Transparent Pricing Module: RingCentral also includes a section outlining the different levels of their SaaS pricing model — showing the monthly fees and included features for their Core, Advanced, and Ultra Business Communications plans. 

The best part about having a successful landing page strategy? Templating. 

By applying the main features of the small business VoIP landing page, RingCentral can efficiently and effectively tailor their messaging and CTAs for other products. 

For instance, RingCentral can use these assets to drive the adoption and expansion of their 2024-2025 priority products: RingCX, RingSense, and RingCentral Events. 

Now, let’s look at how RingCentral supports their content with backlinks. 

Growth Lever 2: High-Quality Backlinks

There are many ways to earn high-quality backlinks that drive traffic and brand equity to a website. 

You can create great content that others cite as a source of authority, like Buffer. You can arrange a link exchange or guest post with another brand. You can even purchase another company’s product and use 301 redirects to funnel their existing links to your own site.  

Or you can do all three. 

Backlinks are a key growth lever for RingCentral, with 17.3 million all-time backlinks and a current count of 3.4 million. This impressive backlink portfolio boosts RingCentral’s search engine visibility and enhances their domain authority. 

High-domain authority brands like Hopin, Zapier, and Trust Radius significantly contribute to this success, directing a vast number of links to RingCentral’s main website.

Hopin Products

In August 2023, RingCentral strategically acquired Hopin Events and Sessions, two products from the renowned virtual event brand. The acquisition improved RingCentral’s capabilities for hosting meetings, webinars, and large-scale virtual events, addressing the needs of businesses in the hybrid work era more effectively. They’ve since turned these products into RingCentral Events. 

But this acquisition also boosted RingCentral’s backlink profile. Since the purchase in mid-2023, they have earned over 9,900 do-follow backlinks thanks to redirects from previously Hopin-owned pages. Since backlinks are built into the Hopin product flywheel — you create an event URL and share it with participants and attendees —  that number will surely increase over time.

Basically, every Hopin Events or Sessions user now contributes to RingCentral’s bottom line and backlink profile. 

Take Mentimeter, for example. This SaaS brand offers an interactive platform that helps users create more engaging, collaborative presentations. The eight-figure company has a strong web presence, with a domain rating of 79, nearly 11k referring domains, and over 1.3M in monthly organic traffic. 

On the Mentimeter homepage, just below the fold, is a list of presentation apps they integrate with, including Hopin…which is now RingCentral Events. 

So, not only does RingCentral get a high-value backlink from a prominent SaaS brand’s home page, but they also get a prime position on a landing page that sees hundreds of thousands of organic visits each month. 

And remember — this is just one tiny example of the SEO impact that the Hopin Sessions and Events acquisition has for RingCentral. 

A Strong Partnership Network

RingCentral has built a multipronged partnership approach that allows them to create and sustain relationships with a number of different groups. In many cases, they are literally building these relationships through links. 

Just take a look at the different partnerships mentioned on the RingCentral site: 

Whether it’s an affiliate URL placed in a Forbes Advisory Council or PCMag article or a link to a third-party integration page, RingCentral’s partnership network is a backlink-building factory. 

RingCentral’s approach to winning backlinks from high-domain authority brands demonstrates a multifaceted strategy that combines product expansion, strategic acquisitions, and integrations. These efforts collectively bolster RingCentral’s SEO, driving traffic and reinforcing their authority in the competitive UCaaS landscape.

Growth Lever 3: Video Content

There’s a reason why more and more SaaS unicorns are investing in video content creation. Not only is it the preferred media format for over 80% of consumers, but it’s also perfect for showcasing SaaS products. What better way to make complex technologies easy to understand than by showing them in action? 

The team at RingCentral recognizes this and has effectively harnessed the power of YouTube to drive significant traffic to their various offerings, with 14.7k subscribers, 399 published videos, and over 6 million total views.

On RingCentral’s YouTube channel, several themes stand out for contributing to its popularity and impact — aside from the conventional advertisements. The channel also features:

• Podcast episodes on all things business communication
• Product overviews and demos that demystify RingCentral’s solutions
• Brand and culture-building videos that show the values driving the company

A recent highlight on the channel is the series of videos dedicated to some of RingCentral’s latest innovations: RingCentral Events and RingCX. These videos range from concise product introductions and customer success stories to in-depth product walkthroughs, offering audiences a comprehensive understanding of the features and benefits of these offerings.

A standout piece of content is a video showcasing how RingCentral is enhancing their RingEX product with the integration of RingSense AI. This video illustrates the multifaceted advantages of RingSense AI, including:

• The efficiency and performance boost users get from AI-assisted features like note-taking, information retrieval, and analysis
• How the deep integration between RingEX and RingSense AI makes the AI universally accessible to users
• The opportunity for personalized communication unlocked by RingSense AI’s co-author and co-pilot features

RingCentral’s strategic use of video content on YouTube exemplifies how SaaS companies can engage their audience, demonstrate the value of their products, and build a stronger brand presence. 

Through carefully crafted videos that showcase product capabilities, share customer experiences, and highlight company culture, RingCentral continues to solidify their position as a leader in the realm of business communication solutions.

Growth Lever 4: Local Numbers

One of the major growth areas for RingCentral on the organic traffic side comes through their targeted approach to local numbers. 

By providing access to over 200 regional US area codes, RingCentral helps businesses around the world establish a recognizable local presence. Businesses with a local number can foster trust, improve call answer rates, and enhance branding through localized marketing. 

This feature is particularly beneficial for small businesses aiming to solidify their professional image within their community, expanding businesses looking to establish a presence in new areas without the overhead of physical offices, and call centers striving to maintain a consistent local image for inbound calls.

To capitalize on this unique offering, RingCentral created landing pages for specific area codes, effectively driving a significant portion of their organic traffic. Across just 14 pages, they bring in nearly 110k in monthly organic traffic — 13.2% of their total organic traffic. 

The top-performing local number pages, targeting regions such as New York (347), Southern California (949), Northern Texas (817), and Ohio (330), are particularly strong traffic drivers. Here’s a breakdown of the traffic and value generated by these pages:

Each page is designed with simplicity in mind, listing key information like: 

• The major urban areas these numbers cover 
• The size of the population in the area
• The strategic importance of the area 

For instance, the 347 area code “serves around 946,029 registered companies in the boroughs, which represent 48.3% of the total number of firms in the State of New York (1,956,733).” 

By guiding visitors toward demo sign-ups, directing them to other relevant product pages, and providing tools like a pricing calculator, these pages serve as a pivotal step in the customer journey. With just one click, readers are taken to a sign-up page where they can get a personalized estimate of the savings and annual total for a local number. 

It’s important to note that this local-number strategy is nothing new in the UCaaS niche. Some of RingCentral’s competitors are following the exact same playbook to even greater success. 

Dialpad is still behind RingCentral in terms of capital and customers, but they are winning some key marketing battles — particularly in terms of content marketing. 

Like RingCentral, Dialpad has a dedicated subfolder targeting local area codes around the US. But they have created four times as many pages — 75 to RingCentral’s 14 — and bring in over 600,000 organic visitors each month across them. 

Taking a closer look at these pages, it’s not hard to see why they are more effective at bringing in organic traffic. While the RingCentral pieces are short and immediately move readers to sign-up and down-funnel landing pages, the Dialpad ones contain more useful content: 

• All the major cities covered by the specific area code
• A complete list of communications features included with Dialpad local numbers
• Screenshots of the platform in action across desktop and mobile
• Answers to high-intent questions like “why you need a [region] area code”

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Dialpad is bringing in more traffic than RingCentral in the key small business demographic. 

So, RingCentral is on the right track, but there’s certainly room for improvement across their local numbers pages. It’s a great example that content marketing is a powerful growth lever, but only to the extent you invest in it.

And considering the impact of the most recent Google SERP updates, it’s also important to consider how you invest in content.

Cautionary Tale — Keep a Close Eye on Traffic

From a high-level view, the last half decade has been very kind to RingCentral on the organic front. The company has added millions of backlinks, secured a top 3 position for nearly 9,000 keywords, and increased monthly organic traffic by over 600,000. Very impressive. 

But if you look at the trends since the most recent Google Core Update addressing spam and low-quality content, things look quite a bit different. In the last 30 days, they’ve lost 

• 409k backlinks
•  11k keywords
• 108k organic visits
• $744k in traffic value

This type of shakeup isn’t uncommon after Google adjusts their algorithm, but it’s definitely something to track over the coming months to see how the company rebounds. 

Keep Up to Date on the Latest B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies

With nearly 25 years in the industry, it’s unsurprising that RingCentral has reached such a position in the UCaaS industry. But the impact of the recent Google update, not to mention the gains made by competitors like Dialpad, serve as important reminders: 

Nothing is permanent in B2B marketing — including success. 

Sure, RingCentral has the resources and brand strength to weather this storm, but smaller companies might not be so lucky. That’s why it’s crucial to keep an ear to the ground, gathering intel on the latest developments in content marketing and SEO strategy.

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