SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) marketers are expected to be on their toes always as they face tremendous pressure to bring in and retain users. If you work in a SaaS startup, you are already under pressure with respect to investment, product success, and many more to make you sustain and grow in your career.
If you are on the lookout for a sustaining marketing channel, pay-per-click should be your best pick. Pay-per-click is considered a powerful weapon for growth marketers and also a direct and transparent route to a market in the SaaS arena. The attribution can be clearly shown by turning on and off the ads overnight, and this helps in setting up your goals correctly. When PPC is paired with any landing page tool, you are offered superior agility, and also this works perfectly for marketers who are ready to take an iterative testing approach.
How to come up with a compelling offer for your SaaS PPC landing pages?
Lead nurturing with SaaS PPC
Top of funnel lead nurturing for SaaS PPC mostly involves paid content promotions, it can be done in two ways — through the promotion of blog posts using a particular CTA or by promoting gated content through landing pages. Spin up landing pages with a form that offers access to the white paper, guide, or an eBook to get started with nurturing your leads. This is a good way to generate MQLs and start building your sales funnel. You can also promote an online calculator, survey, quiz, and other interactive lead magnets to acquire MQLs and nurture them.
Direct sign-ups with SaaS PPC
When it comes to direct sign-up, you can make use of PPC tactics to attract your prospects and make them sign up. It’s usually possible through your landing page, but your CTA should have an undeniable offer to make prospects use your product actively. Free trial, freemium, and symbolic pricing are three CTA models that will work well to acquire direct signups.
Free trial
You can offer 1-day free trials to even 30-day free trials to make prospects get a first-hand look at your product. In this way, you offer complete access to the product but to enjoy the exclusive benefits, your prospects need to upgrade and subscribe to premium plans.
Freemium
This model provides free functionalities with certain limitations to the users for a lifetime. Same as the free trial model, the prospects have to upgrade to an advanced plan to enjoy the full features of the product.
Symbolic pricing
In this model, you need to pay for a free trial to start using the product. This is a tactic employed by many SaaS products to qualify the prospect’s commitment while making use of the features for a specific time period. Sometimes people do not prefer choosing the models that ask for money, but people who know the real value of the model go for it as they know how useful and what impact they can have when using this model for their business.
The tactics are wholly different, and nurturing sequences are not redundant with any of the above approaches. For both freemium and free trial, you can enjoy the free trial period and then pay to continue enjoying the benefits. In the case of a paid trial, you can extend them for long-term subscriptions.
Which is the best approach?
Considering both direct sign-ups and lead nurture, both of them have their merits and demerits. Every SaaS company wishes to grow its business rapidly by using both organic and paid channels to attract prospects. You need to test both of the methodologies (lead nurture and direct signups) and identify which will suit your Go-to-market strategy.
Predicting which tactic will work is extremely difficult and results might not be precise. Few prospects may be ready to sign up or buy the product without the need for extra nurturing. Everything boils down to the needs of the prospects. That is why it’s important to test each methodology.
When your product is simple to use with low energy commitment with a super-easy setup, then your leads can be activated with direct acquisition tactics for activation and retention. When you have a complex product, and there are more demands to access the account, then here is where you need to put your acquisition tactics to use.
Hope you are now clear about picking the right PPC tactic based on your product. There are also other tips that SaaS PPC marketers need to have in their minds for better lead acquisition and lead nurturing.
- Target the brand terms of the competitors
- Match the funnel stage by adjusting the campaigns
- Check out your existing users and then build your audiences
- Discuss with the product team about the goals of your campaign to see success
- Make sure your campaigns can reflect the overall goal of your business
- Monitor, track, and optimize your PPC campaign consistently for the best results
Iterative testing is the only ideal solution when it comes to SaaS PPC growth. Your audience, product, and position can only decide which suits your business. Do try out the tactics discussed in this blog and let us know how it helped your business.
