Building successful PPC campaigns for SaaS presents unique challenges even to the most seasoned marketers. First off, sales cycles are lengthy compared to other industries, which makes tracking final conversions tricky. Moreover, the specifics of the SaaS niche requires that PPC campaigns align with the customer’s journey and product/pricing model. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as many more complexities are involved.
At Aimers agency, we work with SaaS and tech companies, especially with startups in the active growth stage. We bring in our PPC expertise to help these businesses with their paid search and paid social campaigns. We sort through complexities, optimize, and run their advertising efforts for maximum efficiency – and, ultimately, profit.
When we onboard new clients and start looking at their ad accounts, we frequently spot the same mistakes over and over. In this blog post, I am going to roundup these pitfalls and offer concrete action points on how you can avoid them.
1. Ignoring Search Intent Segmentation
When it comes to generating data, some SaaS businesses tend to overlook the importance of campaign segmentation by search intent. They often lump branded, non-branded, and competitor search terms into a single campaign. We’ve frequently observed that using only general keywords without excluding brand name or competitor terms leads to a confusing mix of statistics. This makes it challenging to get a clear picture of campaign performance.
It’s crucial to separate branded, non-branded, and competitor keywords and search terms.
Doing so allows you to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of each targeting strategy. Setting relevant target CPA or target ROAS for each segment makes a lot of sense and can significantly enhance your campaign insights. This approach not only clarifies performance metrics but also helps in optimizing your PPC strategies for better results.
Action point: segment your campaigns by search intent.
2. Neglecting Regional Differences
Another common pitfall we see when analyzing PPC campaigns for SaaS projects is failing to segment campaigns by region based on their potential value. In the SaaS landscape, the specifics of your product and target audience can reveal distinct patterns: decision-makers often reside in certain areas, while technical specialists are located elsewhere.
For instance, you might find that decision-makers are primarily in the North America, while the technical teams who actually use the product are concentrated in the APAC region.
Additionally, SaaS projects have unique characteristics related to location, particularly concerning solvency. Different countries host various clusters of niche companies that can significantly impact transaction value.
Understanding these regional differences is crucial because the financial capacity and purchasing behavior of businesses can vary widely from one location to another.
We recommend not mixing different geotargeting strategies within a single campaign. It can complicate your ability to evaluate and manage advertising effectiveness. Separate campaigns by broader geographic regions rather than getting too granular from the start. Focus on key segments like North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and Latin America. Based on accumulated statistics of your campaigns, it can be beneficial to allocate certain regions into separate campaigns, depending on your specific goals and strategy.
Action point: segment campaigns by region and analyze regional performance separately.
Regional Specifics: Our Experience
Based on our accumulated data, we’ve identified some key general patterns that might be of use to you. For our clients, the most effective region for conversions tends to be the US. It remains the most valuable location overall and typically yields the highest conversion value. Regions within EMEA – such as France, Spain, the UK, and Germany – also show strong conversion rates and generally lower CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). So this region can provide some solid cost-effective opportunities with good conversion rates.
3. Undervaluing Brand Awareness
The main objective for SaaS is typically to generate deals. One of the key challenges is that the sales cycle is much longer compared to e-commerce. It can stretch from several weeks to several months, and in some cases, it can even take up to a year. Because of this extended cycle, it’s harder to track the customer journey from awareness to closed deal. Consequently, businesses tend to focus on the middle and bottom of the funnel, since these leads are easier to track.
That said, it’s crucial for SaaS products to also focus on the top of the funnel to boost product awareness and brand recognition. Utilizing tools like Demand Generation in Google Ads or Video Ads can help create associated conversions and view conversions, which in turn increases interest in your product.
By diversifying your approach across all stages of the funnel, you can build a stronger foundation for future conversions and ultimately drive more deals. Here’s the TOFU – MOFU – BOFU approach to PPC we use at Aimers:
To see an example of how it works in real-life practice, you can check out the case study of Orion Labs partnering with Aimers. For this particular client, we’ve set their PPC campaigns across three stages and created advanced conversion tracking for enterprise leads using Orion’s CRM System (HubSpot and Salesforce).
Action point: do not neglect the TOFU stage for your PPC campaigns.
4. Using Uniform Landing Pages
In PPC for SaaS, using the same landing pages across different campaigns means lost opportunities to engage and convert your audience. Your landing pages need to be attuned to the audience segments that they are targeting:
- For users familiar with your brand, a page with a specific offer or call to action works best, especially for branded searches or remarketing.
- For competitive queries, direct users to comparison pages or testimonials to showcase your product’s advantages.
- In contrast, low-intent searches should lead to informative blog pages.
- When targeting colder audiences with longer decision-making cycles, using lead magnets (guides, whitepapers, reports, e-books, case studies) to collect contact information is advisable. While nurturing these leads may take longer than processing “Get a demo” requests, it allows you to gather more data and increases the likelihood of engaging them with your product.
- If you have a high-value audience segment, but lack a page that answers their unique needs, we recommend creating a custom landing page just for this audience.
Action point: tailor your landing pages to the audience’s intent.
5. No CRM System to Track Qualified Leads
For SaaS PPC campaigns, it’s common to focus primarily on tracking the final conversion, but this approach often overlooks the true qualification of leads. For example, while we typically consider the submitted “Get a demo” form as the key conversion point, the sales cycle can actually span from one to several months, or up to a year in some cases. Without insights into the number of qualified leads generated, and how these leads convert into final sales, it’s difficult to optimize the campaigns.
You want to constantly tweak your ads to attract higher-quality users and improve their conversion rates from demo requests to paid subscriptions or deals. Integrating third-party CRM systems (i.e., HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.) with your advertising accounts will allow you to fine-tune your strategy. It provides valuable data on lead qualification, enabling you to see which campaigns are effectively driving quality traffic.
For example, HubSpot allows creating a lifecycle stage ad conversion event using Google’s Enhanced Conversion for Leads. For qualified leads you can choose the most relevant stages to your business cycle, such as MQL, SQL, Opportunity or Customer.
Action point: track qualified leads alongside final conversions.
If Your Marketing Can’t Afford CRM System Yet
On client projects when we don’t have a third-party CRM system for tracking qualified leads, we remove spam or low-quality leads manually.
In Google Ads, you can implement this by offline conversion imports via Google Click ID (GCLID) and then delete it in account after re-qualification:
- Step 1: create a conversion via import from CRMs, files, or other data sources.
- Step 2: set up enhanced conversions for leads.
- Step 3: Enable your site to transfer GCLID (instruction).
- Step 4: Import the data into the conversion from step 1.
Note: You should pass the GCLID to your lead management system on every lead submission form page.
6. Tracking Only Final Conversions
To optimize performance, it’s crucial to track all significant conversions leading up to the final subscription. For instance, a project might offer users a chance to try a free version of a chat service simply by signing up on the website, but the ultimate aim is to convert these users into paying subscribers. Therefore, it’s essential to monitor the entire conversion journey: from “Free Sign Up” to “First Product Connection”, “First Step for Subscription,” and finally, “Subscription Completed”.
By analyzing data across this complete conversion flow, you can pinpoint where users may be facing challenges that could prevent them from completing their purchase. This comprehensive approach enhances your understanding of user behavior but also enables you to make informed adjustments that drive higher conversion rates.
Action point: track and analyze each stage of the conversion flow.
Conclusion
Navigating the complexities of SaaS PPC campaigns is not an easy task, but an understanding of these common pitfalls will set you on the right track. Ultimately, by implementing these actionable insights, you can create a more robust PPC strategy that not only drives higher conversions, but also maximizes your advertising ROI.
