Discover 9 tips and strategies for SaaS PPC campaign optimization. Understand the unique obstacles SaaS companies face, such as a lengthy sales cycle and difficulty in staying top-of-mind with customers. And learn the importance of providing relevant and trustworthy information to potential customers and using customer insights to improve ad copy.
From a marketing and advertising standpoint, SaaS companies encounter unique obstacles that few other industries face. The sales cycle is lengthy, your team will need multiple touchpoints to conclude deals, and it is challenging to remain top-of-mind with customers.
Every business would adore being firmly positioned at the top of search engine results, ensuring that they remain in front of a greater number of customers throughout each stage of the sales cycle. Unfortunately, change is the only constant in the world of search, and it is extremely difficult to remain at the top of search results.
Google AdWords and other pay-per-click (PPC) platforms make it simple for software providers to remain visible to the most relevant audiences. Today, we'll discuss some strategies for Saas PPC optimization that you can implement immediately to revolutionize your PPC for SaaS campaigns.
When paying for clicks, you must provide the user with an incredibly pertinent landing page that speaks directly to their intent. In the world of SaaS PPC, the worst thing that can happen is for a lead to immediately leave your landing page because it wasn't what they expected or didn't address the purpose of their search.
When creating landing pages for your PPC ads, you should spare no expense. Each element on the page should guide the user toward responding to your call to action, be it filling out a form or downloading a whitepaper.
At this stage of the consumer journey, chatbots can be remarkably effective. They reduce bounce rates and encourage leads to initiate a conversation about their requirements, allowing you to identify their pain points and begin guiding them through the sales cycle.
Imagine someone using a search engine to locate a SaaS provider similar to your company. Most likely, they have no prior knowledge of your company, what you do, or how you can assist them. Given that they don't know you from a cavity in the wall, why should they believe you have the necessary equipment?
The most effective method to overcome this obstacle is to begin demonstrating your credibility and compelling truth as soon as the user lands on your landing page. If you have worked with any standout clients in the past, now is the time to highlight those relationships. Include logos of publications in which you have appeared and corporations with which you have collaborated (provided you have their permission to disclose your relationship.)
Case studies are also a means of establishing credibility and demonstrating proof of concept. Create case studies to emphasize successful relationships with major clients, and ensure that it is clear how these companies have benefited from their partnership with your software.
For many years, the best practice has been to restrict access to your premium content and require a purchase from your leads. After all, your team has spent innumerable hours crafting the most informative and insightful content possible, so requesting a potential lead's contact information shouldn't be a problem, right?
This creates friction between you and your supervisor, which is problematic. In particularly competitive verticals, this friction may be all a potential client needs to shift their attention to a competitor. Additionally, it causes a large number of visitors to leave your landing page.
Nobody enjoys dealing with bounces, but if the traffic is organic, it did not cost you anything for a potential prospect to leave your website. With pay-per-click (PPC) ads, each bounce costs you money, and in highly competitive verticals, these costs will quickly build up, consuming your advertising budget.
When demonstrating your product to prospective customers, you will want to devote a great deal of time to understanding what they do and how their business operates. Pay close attention to the desires, aspirations, anxieties, and annoyances of each prospect. Their responses to these questions not only help you sell more effectively and better meet their needs, but they're also a great method to inform future advertising copy. You'll likely observe that the majority of your prospects have similar concerns and objectives for their businesses, and each unique dread, frustration, desire, or aspiration they have for their businesses is a different angle you can use when writing ad copy.
Focusing your bidding strategy on long-tail keywords is effective for two reasons: it can help you find better leads, and it can provide you with affordable clicks that are still highly qualified, which is the lifeblood of a successful PPC campaign given that SaaS PPC costs tend to be quite high when compared to the lifetime value of a customer. Long-tail keywords are frequently indicative of consumer intent when used in a search.
Long-tail keywords are also a fantastic way to discover keywords with very low CPCs. These keywords provide you with an excellent opportunity to acquire qualified leads at a low cost, which is essential if you're attempting to protect your budget and keep your acquisition expenses low.
Due to the lengthy sales cycle of SaaS businesses, leads frequently conduct multiple identical inquiries prior to deciding on specific software. As these leads continue to encounter the same advertisements, your target audience will begin to disregard them.
This results in reduced click-through rates, a poor quality score, and higher AdWords PPC costs when your ads do receive clicks.
The most effective method for preventing ad fatigue is to rotate advertisements every month or two weeks.
Google controls the overwhelming majority of the search pie, but that doesn't mean you can't find viable opportunities for PPC for SaaS advertising on Bing, for instance. Bing may not have the same search volume as Google, but it has qualified searchers and low CPC costs.
Advertising on Bing allows you to extend your ad budget further, and Microsoft's ad platform enables you to export your Google ads and load them directly into Bing, so there's no need to create ads that are unique to Bing.
Retargeting can be costly, but it is one of the most efficient methods for SaaS businesses to increase their conversion rate. Users only see your ads if they have previously visited your website or used your app.
These consumers are likely further along in the purchasing process than the last time they interacted with your company.
If you're unfamiliar with remarketing campaigns, you'll need to ensure that you know exactly where to position retargeting tags in your website's code. The retargeting identifier and its placement will vary depending on where you purchase ads (Google, LinkedIn, Facebook). You may end up displaying advertisements to the wrong individuals if they are improperly positioned.
A component of the clicks you receive from PPC advertisements will never convert into qualified leads. Perhaps your software does not meet their requirements, or they are not the appropriate type of company to use your product. Whether or not the lead is of high quality, you will still pay for the click.
Using negative keywords and audience exclusion, you can significantly reduce the number of advertisements served to users who are not a strong match.
Negative keywords in search advertising enable you to avoid displaying your ads to individuals who are an obvious mismatch for your product.
If you engage in social media advertising, audience exclusion can help you to more precisely target your advertisements. With audience exclusion, you will be able to exclude certain demographics from your audience network if you believe they are not a good match for your offering.
As a marketer, you'll want to optimize your negative keywords and exclusions at two periods in the lifecycle of your ad. At the outset of ad creation, you should generate negative keywords and exclusions and then incorporate them into your ads. After your ad has been running for a few weeks and has generated actionable data, identify the types of users who are immediately leaving your website and discover ways to exclude them.
PPC for SaaS businesses presents unique challenges and requires specific strategies to be successful. To achieve the desired results, SaaS companies need to optimize their landing pages, establish trust with potential customers, promote their content, listen to their prospects to inform their ad content, highlight long-tail keywords, rotate their ads regularly, and diversify their advertising channels.
These proven tips and strategies can help SaaS businesses drive relevant traffic, generate leads, and increase their conversion rates while keeping their acquisition costs low. By implementing these suggestions, SaaS companies can stay ahead of the competition, remain visible to potential customers, and improve their return on investment from their PPC campaigns.
If you want to take your PPC campaigns to the next level and start generating more leads and conversions, it's time to schedule a strategy call with our PPC experts.
