Running performance marketing and paid media for saas brings a set of unique challenges. If you’re working in marketing for saas, then grab yourself a cuppa and take a look through a set of our top learnings.
Everything you see in this post is from our experience running paid media for a range of tech and saas brands. No text book best practice, just pure learnings from the ppc and paid social trenches!
So why do software-as-a-service brands need a unique approach? Unlike traditional B2B or B2C brands, the purchase journey is typically different. This is not just about selling a product but also driving consistent engagement and loyalty to reduce churn and build a long-term customer base.
Without further ado, here’s our top learnings…
Tracking – if we assume that most saas products or services will have a purchase journey that includes a free trial as the initial conversion, we need to be aware that simply tracking a ‘cost per free trial’ does not tell the full picture.
With your analytics and tracking, you need to get to the point where you can measure for AND optimise against free trials, engaged users and ultimately monetized users. Usually this requires custom tracking via Google Tag Manager and potentially using CRM data to feed information back into your ad platform of choice.
Nurturing – given the unique purchase journey, the need for a customer nurture program is vital. What do we mean by this? Well, if your performance marketing is driving free trials, you MUST have a solid program to help nurture those people to become paying customers at the best possible ratio.
Usually the primary weapon of choice is email. And this should very much be the case, but assuming your audience numbers are big enough, a retargeting campaign to backup your email nurture flows should be put in place.
Essentially we need to do everything we can to convert free trials into paying customers. And this needs to be a collective effort across multiple channels.
LTV – read any marketing book or piece of generic best practice advice and you’ll quickly know about the importance of tracking customer lifetime value (LTV).
When it comes to working with a saas business on paid media, LTV becomes a hugely important metric. And this is one the major differences between other sectors; you have to be thinking about churn rates and LTV.
This comes back to the first point on tracking and being able to measure and optimise for what matters, and lifetime value should be at the top of your list. Understand what activity drives higher value customers vs those that churn quickly. Be in a position to optimse towards the former and you’ll be infinitely more successful.
Landing pages – the approach to converting traffic has a massive overlap with more traditional lead generation type activity. When it comes to landing pages, the primary objective is usually to convert someone into a trial.
Obviously this can vary (for example another popular conversion is booking a demo), however let’s stick with the trial as a conversion example.
Your landing page has to be built around guiding people to this point quickly. This means settling objections, creating instant appeal, showing off social proof, and of course making the conversion super easy.
Many brands experiment with taking card details pre vs post trial, and it’s decisions like this that need to be part of your plan. Remember, the big factors are more important than what color your CTA button is.
Channels – take a look at any saas marketing and you’ll see the usual suspects getting the heavy spend. In our experience you should definitely start with the safe bets of Meta Ads and Google Ads. Don’t ignore the basics, however always make sure you’re looking for new opportunities.
The saas space is extremely competitive for the majority of sectors, so finding routes to market that your competitors haven’t taken advantage of is massively important.
We’ve seen some great success making use of channels such as YouTube advertising (still so under-represented!), Quora Ads and more recently advertising on Reddit. Clearly the sector you operate in and whom your target audience is will play a big part in your decisions here. But don’t be afraid to experiment with alternative channels and platforms.
I hope the above provides some useful food for thought. If you have any questions or want some help with your performance marketing, please do get in touch for a chat.
Happy advertising!
