Software program-as-a-Service (SaaS) entrepreneurs are among the many world’s most proficient. They have to be. The stress to amass and retain customers is excessive—to place it mildly.
And while you’re a funded startup with investor stress, as many are, this have to develop and maintain velocity might be but extra acute.
In any case, SaaS has a distinctive character. As technical infrastructure will get standardized and integrations change into simpler, increasingly instruments are coming into an already crowded market. Advertising and marketing your software program has at all times been a problem, however this overcrowding makes it all of the harder.
Pay-per-click is a transparent and fast path to market and a strong weapon for progress entrepreneurs within the SaaS area. Adverts might be turned on and off in a single day, and attribution might be proven clearly, supplied you arrange targets appropriately. PPC additionally gives superior agility when paired with a landing page tool like Unbounce. And it really works like a dream for anybody who takes an iterative testing strategy.
However must you construct a lead pipeline by focusing on top-of-funnel prospects to nurture? Or must you be in search of direct signups to your product?
What’s the greatest strategy to arrange a compelling supply on your SaaS PPC touchdown pages?
There’s definitely nuance right here. Both strategy can work, relying on your corporation. (You may even use each.) On this article, I’ll spotlight classes realized from real-world expertise and present easy methods to uncover the perfect strategy on your SaaS enterprise.
Utilizing SaaS PPC for Lead Nurturing
What does top-of-funnel lead nurturing for SaaS embody, precisely?
Often, it includes the paid promotion of content material: both immediately selling gated content material through touchdown pages or selling weblog posts with a specified CTA.
Unbounce customers can be aware of this technique, little question. For instance, we are able to spin up touchdown pages with varieties that present entry to an e-book, information, or white paper. These can then be supported by weblog content material printed elsewhere, and you’ll construct the gross sales funnel with nurturing in thoughts.
You may additionally supply a extra interactive lead magnet, equivalent to a web based calculator, quiz, or survey. The trade-off is that individuals should provide their contact particulars to comprehend the worth.
After our top-of-funnel prospect interacts with—or downloads—this gated content material, we push a double opt-in (for GDPR) and feed the person into an automatic nurturing sequence (an e mail advertising journey). Most superior SaaS manufacturers optimize this journey in keeping with pre-planned triggers and actions.
Finally, we wish this prospect to register for a trial or purchase a subscription. However we acknowledge that touchpoints should be created and optimized alongside the best way.
Utilizing SaaS PPC for Direct Signups
So, what does focusing on direct signups appear to be?
Primarily, this implies utilizing PPC ways to drive prospects on to a product signup. Often, this might additionally happen through a touchdown web page, however the CTA is designed to get the prospect by way of the door and actively utilizing the product.
There are just a few fashions appropriate for this function: free trial, freemium, and symbolic pricing.
Free Trial
A free trial is usually for a restricted interval, generally 30 days within the SaaS sphere. Primarily, you grant full entry to the product (barring integration complexities), however individuals might want to improve to the subscription in the event that they wish to proceed past this time.
Freemium
The freemium mannequin opens up a restricted set of functionalities to the consumer. The prospect turns into an energetic consumer of this primary SaaS performance and can improve for extra superior options.
Symbolic Pricing
The symbolic pricing mannequin is unusual, however our buddies over at Ahrefs use it. Their $7/week trial is a robust instance of qualifying the dedication of their prospects whereas monetizing entry to full performance for a restricted interval. There’s likelihood that if somebody isn’t prepared to half with this small sum, they’re not a practical prospect within the first place.
Asking a small sum of money discourages individuals who aren’t severely contemplating the product from signing up on your trial.
Nurturing sequences aren’t redundant with any of those approaches, however the ways differ. Finally, without spending a dime trials and freemium signups, you wish to shift them onto a paid plan. For the paid trial, you wish to lengthen this to a full, long-term subscription.
Lead Nurture vs. Direct Signup: Which Is the Greatest Strategy?
I’m a progress marketer who makes a speciality of SaaS. My shoppers sometimes wish to develop shortly, utilizing a mixture of paid and natural channels to amass customers. As soon as upon a time, I labored with a shopper on this very query: lead nurture versus direct signup. This drawback nonetheless comes up frequently.
If solely there have been only one reply to this query, however a vital a part of SaaS progress advertising is to check completely different methodologies. This scientific strategy is central to optimizing how, the place, and when advertising budgets are spent. Intestine intuition has its place, however information is king when the stress to develop is excessive.
One latest instance reveals this in motion. On this specific state of affairs, the insights have been very telling and allowed us to double-down on essentially the most environment friendly setup. We set out two campaigns with two distinct touchdown pages. One prompted the customer to obtain an e-book, and the opposite inspired a direct signup to the platform’s free trial.
Whereas each PPC campaigns had excessive conversion charges because of related content-audience match, the lead-to-signup price for the e-book downloaders stood at about 10%. Including this additional step into the funnel resulted in a 90% drop-off. Consequently, this value per acquisition (CPA) was 15 instances increased in comparison with the direct signup mannequin:
With a easy product and the low barrier to entry, my shopper’s prospects have been prepared to enroll to expertise the product with out the necessity for additional nurturing.
The lesson right here is that with out testing, you received’t know which is the perfect strategy.
However there’s a rule-of-thumb that we are able to pull from this instance:
- In case your product is easy with tremendous straightforward setup and low vitality dedication, purpose for direct acquisition and use supporting content material for activation and retention.
- In case your product is complicated and calls for extra from the consumer to entry an account, then there’s benefit to utilizing acquisition ways additional down the funnel.
Is there an argument for utilizing each lead nurturing and direct signups concurrently? Effectively, when you have distinct goal personas on your product, or supply completely different hooks for every software program function, possibly a mixed strategy ought to be in your radar.
Fast Suggestions for SaaS PPC entrepreneurs
With the above in thoughts, you wish to apply the very best ways for every strategy throughout your testing section and past. With a half-baked or misguided try at both (or each), the outcomes received’t be sturdy, and also you received’t have the ability to decide to decide on lead nurture or direct signup.
So, listed here are six actionable items of recommendation for higher SaaS PPC that come from my expertise working with SaaS PPC.
Tip 1: Goal competitor model phrases
Entrepreneurs usually miss this low-hanging fruit. You possibly can construct a comparability touchdown web page, or talk about why your product is a greater various. You may additionally wish to be provocative right here, however be ready for the ensuing struggle!
It’s commonplace to see rivals pop up in advertisements for branded queries.
Tip 2: Modify campaigns to match the funnel stage
Completely different key phrases denote completely different shopping for intent. Bear this in thoughts when designing marketing campaign construction and price range allocations. For instance, a comparability search (“device X vs. device Y”) comes earlier within the purchaser journey than a pricing search (“device X pricing”).
Tip 3: Construct audiences primarily based on present customers
Ideally, you’ll phase customers primarily based on their utilization, and create separate lookalike audiences primarily based on every phase. Nonetheless, that is solely actually relevant if you have already got a big consumer base.
Tip 4: Align with the product staff
Work intently to know the advantages of the product and the ache factors that it addresses. You need your SaaS PPC campaigns to replicate the product’s capabilities. Don’t write cheques that your product can’t money, and at all times handle the main ache factors for every persona. You should use this data on touchdown pages and in advert artistic.
Tip 5: Modify campaigns to replicate the general aim
In case your aim is profitability, work in the direction of a CPA that’s decrease than the client’s lifetime worth. In case your aim is most progress, you may purchase customers at a loss for an extended time (assuming you may afford this).
Tip 6: Measure marketing campaign effectiveness down the funnel
Don’t simply give attention to signups. You don’t wish to be buying prospects who aren’t participating together with your product. Activation and retention metrics per marketing campaign present whether or not your campaigns are producing the specified consequence.
As Brian Clark at Copyblogger outlines, you could have five different types of prospects to focus on together with your PPC campaigns: essentially the most conscious, the product-aware, the solution-aware, the problem-aware, and the utterly unaware. You possibly can zone in on these 5, within the context of your viewers and product.
In fact, for any profitable PPC marketing campaign, you will want to sell the benefits of your software in a single page. Take a look at, optimize, and enhance (iteratively) your touchdown web page design, construction, visuals, and replica as you collect extra information.
In Conclusion…
Naturally, after we discuss SaaS progress, there’s so much to contemplate. And, from onboarding journeys to in-product messaging and extra, there’s so much that must be optimized.
Close to PPC for SaaS, an important lesson is to check, check, check.
A few of my shoppers revenue from lead nurturing, and a few obtain nice issues with direct signups. Your positioning, product, and viewers will decide which is most fitted for your corporation. Nonetheless you outline your strategy, give attention to the long-term consumer engagement and attribution metrics to your particular campaigns.
