Sending users to your SaaS site using PPC and Google Ads is a great way to get customers in a scalable and repeatable manner.
In this blog post, I’m going to show you the top three ways to send PPC traffic from Google to your SaaS company’s website. These tips are based on my own campaigns and what I found to work best.
3 PPC Tips for Saas
Tip #1 – Bidding on Competitor Brand Names
The first tip, and one of my favorites, is bidding on your competitor’s brand name. This is something that works well in a lot of other industries but I’ve found that it works particularly well for SaaS.
I see this tactic being used by big names all the time, and you probably have too without realising. For example, anytime I search SalesForce or Zapier, I always see one little guy up there with an ad saying something along the lines of looking for SalesForce alternative?
Marketers do this because it works really well. Sure, the traffic is going to be more expensive but it’ll also be more valuable to you. These people are pretty much ready to buy your product if you’re competing directly with one of those bigger brands.
Companies know about this too. Even though they’re already ranking organically for their brand keywords, they have to place bids anyway otherwise they risk competitors leaching from their success.
If they don’t bid on their branded search terms, competitors are going to bid on them instead and that’s valuable traffic being taken away. An added bonus is you’ll be putting a slight strain on their budget therefore narrowing the other keywords they can afford to bid on.
So, as long as you aren’t going up against huge companies, target your competitors’ brand names.
Tip #2 – Start Bidding on Problem Keywords
The second tip is to bid on problem keywords rather than the solution you offer.
Let’s use Zapier again, for example. If you search Google sheets Dropbox integration, you’ll see a Zapier page in there on Google. If you search Airtable Google drive integration, you’ll see a Zapier page on Google.
This shows that their organic plays are working really well, and this can also work well in Google Ads. The reason for that is because the CPC (Cost Per Click) on problem keywords are much cheaper than keywords like automation software. Bidding on a keyword like that will drain your budget and consume a lot of valuable time.
Instead, you can start bidding on problem keywords which have the same audience. This audience is looking for a solution and you can easily put your ad in front of them and pay a lot less.
So, think outside of the box and find the best problem keywords you can target rather than focusing on the solution itself.
Tip #3 – Send Paid Traffic to Free Resources
The third and final tip I suggest is one that I’ve seen work really well in the campaigns we’ve launched. Sending paid traffic to free resources – articles, lead magnets, and how-to guides.
You might think that this isn’t worth the time, but consider how cheap the cost per click is for the keywords you’ll be bidding on. How to do X, Y, and Z or Free guide to do X, Y, and Z are the types of search terms you’re going to be bidding on and regardless of your industry, expect them to be really cheap.
No software company is going to bid on these keywords because to them, the audience seems like it’s a mismatch. Even though these people aren’t trying to buy anything, they are searching for a solution and this is a great chance for you to get a cheap click and then try to make them a customer.
Taking Hubspot for example. I searched something along the lines of How to build a custom CRM and found an article by them explaining exactly what I need to know. The article gave me links to relevant sources and showed me pretty much the exact technique for building a custom CRM.
When I reached the end of the article, after learning what I needed to know, they had a box with “…or instead of doing all that work, you can just use our free CRM“. Of course, I signed up.
This is an example of what great marketing looks like, so you can do it yourself with Google and even Facebook. Create content that will entice people to read and find a way to convert readers into paying customers.
After you’ve got the content you can start sending paid traffic to it. Use this to get email addresses with a lead market, an opt-in content upgrade option, or just get a sign-up form at their end.
Conclusion
So, let’s recap the 3 PPC tips for SaaS companies.
- Bidding on your competitor’s brand name. Yes, it’s going to be more costly and they’re probably going to try to fight you for that space, but it’s highly relevant and highly targeted traffic.
- Biding on problem keywords rather than the solution you offer. For example, bid on something like Google sheets Dropbox integration rather than automation software. You’re gonna get cheaper clicks but you’ll still be getting the same traffic.
- Send paid traffic to things like blogs, how-to articles or other types of free content. Sure, the traffic’s gonna be less relevant and people may not be ready to buy just yet. But this can be a really cheap way to get them to your website. You can retarget them afterwards. You get the lead magnets and you get the email opt-ins. Think longer-term rather than just thinking “Oh, did they convert in the first visit? No? Wasted time.”
To reiterate, these are a few of the things that our team at KonvertLab do to deliver consistently impressive results to our customers. If you want to see these in action then get in touch with us and find out what we can do for your SaaS business.