Do you feel as though your SaaS marketing strategy isn’t performing as well as you expected? Maybe the cost per conversion is higher than average or your conversion rate has taken a recent hit. Or perhaps you just want a better ROI.
The solution to all of these problems is optimization, something everyone needs to keep on top of. Optimizing an ad campaign ensures that money is being spent efficiently and that you’re targeting the most relevant audiences.
Both of these are important especially when SaaS marketing is concerned. So, in this blog, we’re going to cover the best optimization tactics for SaaS.
SaaS Marketing Optimization Tactics
1. Target the Right Keywords
Keyword research is a crucial component of any successful SaaS marketing strategy. Every so often you should be updating your research to ensure that you target the best keywords that are going to deliver the most conversions for your money.
Our advice is to find keywords with low competition but which get a reasonable amount of traffic. You might end up bidding on a long list of keywords, but they’ll be much cheaper and the clicks will be from genuinely interested people. This directly results in more conversions.
Bid on Competing Brands
In addition, targeting competitors’ brand names is also a good idea. Using Salesforce and Zapier for example…
Hypothetically, Salesforce could bid on the keywords Zapier and Zapier alternatives. In response, Zapier would have to spend a portion of their budget to tackle this tactic and prevent losing customers to a competitor. Not only have Salesforce driven up the bid, but they’ll likely take a few customers away from Zapier as a result.
2. Know When to Cancel an Ad
There are two sides to this part of SaaS marketing: knowing when to stop an unsuccessful ad and knowing when to let it run longer.
When running a newly designed ad, it needs to be running long enough that you gather results to decide how well it performs. At the very least, we suggest letting new ads (or variations) run for 48 hours.
This gives you a nice chunk of data where you can then think, “Is this ad worth continuing to run, should I do split tests with it, or should I scrap it completely?”
Remember to store all of the data you gather from every ad you run. It’s incredibly useful to have this data in a formatted spreadsheet so you can seriously see what works, what doesn’t, and optimize your SaaS ads the best you can.
3. Don’t Rule Out High CPC Bids
Seeing a keyword with a cost-per-click of more than $25 (some even go as high as $50 or even hundreds) is enough of a reason for instant dismissal. For most SaaS marketing strategies this is the right response, but depending on your software and the keyword, it may be worth consideration.
What’s important is that you balance the cost with the reward. Think about it: while a $25 conversion seems hefty, if that turns into a paying customer who pays $30/month for your software, that plays out in your favor.
Obviously, this is something you need to be cautious about doing, especially on a smaller budget. But once you have a little extra to play with, you can experiment with different tactics like this.
4. Take Advantage of Lookalike Audiences
Perhaps you’re already in a good position where sales are coming in at a steady pace. In this case, you should look into targeting a lookalike audience.
Basically, you want to analyze the type of customers you’ve already been selling to. By looking at the data you’ve got by targeting your current audience, you’re able to figure out an audience with similar interests – a lookalike audience.
Because of the audiences being similar it’s possible that targeting the lookalike will provide good results too. At the very least, doing this will give you a new (and different type of) audience to start targeting.
5. Try Different Paid Ad Platforms
Sticking to a single ad platform is a mistake as you can overlook a potentially very rewarding audience.
Let’s say you start by focusing your marketing strategy on Facebook Ads. This is a great place to start, but without going outside of this platform and trying the likes of Google Ads, how do you know Facebook is the best platform for your business?
You don’t – there’s no way of knowing without testing. So, whilst it’s tempting to stick with what you know, it’s always worth checking out the effect that other platforms can have on your SaaS sales.
6. Don’t Forget to Run a Remarketing Campaign
Remarketing enables you to have a second chance to sell your software. Whether it’s on Google or Facebook remarketing, you can reach out to users who have been on your site/page before but who didn’t convert, and try convincing them again.
On Facebook in particular, a SaaS remarketing campaign can target users who didn’t previously convert but also people who did convert.
The reason the latter is so useful in SaaS is that you can persuade existing customers to try your additional services. Remarketing is a great way of increasing your sales since you already know these people are interested in what you have to offer, all you have to do is convince them to step over the finish line.
7. Split Testing Audiences
Unsure on which audience is the perfect one for you to target? Just like we test variations of ads to see which performs best, there’s no shame in targeting different audiences with an ad to see which audience responds better.
This ties in with lookalike audiences because hypothetically, you could discover that a lookalike audience is more responsive than the primary audience you’ve been targeting. In turn, focusing on this better audience would drive up the conversion rate of your SaaS marketing campaign.
So, taking the time to split test different audiences with the same ad and comparing the results is worthwhile and will support your hunt for the highest conversion rate possible.
8. Advertise the Solution to a Problem
It’s one thing to run an ad which catches people’s attention, it’s another to make them think, “Wow, this could genuinely help me out”. The way to encourage this thought is by introducing your software as a solution to certain problems.
Without giving away the solution in the ad itself, present a problem. Then once someone clicks the ad, they should be taken to a landing page which presents the solution – it could be your software or maybe a guide. If your ad’s goal is to expand an email list, offering guides and eBooks that focus on solutions to various problems are a good way of doing so.
But if you’re trying to get more sales, your landing page must explain why your software is the solution. Why does this problem need to be solved? Is your software really the best solution and why? Sell your software as the solution.
SaaS Marketing Agency
Optimizing any online marketing strategy will be rewarding in many ways. But it’s also a challenging task to undertake.
Using the tactics we discussed above will help you along the way. Although, if you truly want an optimized SaaS marketing campaign, the assistance of professionals is required. That’s where the team at KonvertLab come in.
Start by taking a moment to book a meeting with us. After that, we can get to work discussing the specifics of how our experts can optimize your campaigns so that you benefit as much as possible.