Google Ads for SaaS: User Acquisition 101
It’s a crowded market for SaaS businesses – and unfortunately, that’s not likely to change any time soon. This means that if you’re running Google Ads for SaaS, you need to plan things meticulously.
Whilst holding onto your existing user base and reducing churn is great, ultimately you need to increase your MMR (monthly recurring revenue) to make sure you have the capital to develop your product, build new features, and maintain the level of service that keep your customers subscribed.
But how do you attract users when there are hundreds of other products vying for attention?
Good news: it is possible, with a strong Google Ads strategy that puts your product in front of the eyes of high-intent search traffic with a strong chance of converting – but you’ll need to be smart about it.
Market saturation means ad prices are high for the industry, so it’s easy to spend far too much on a poorly planned campaign for minimal, or even negative, return, particularly if you’re a startup that hasn’t nailed key processes down yet.
Smart, well-planned campaigns get you users. Hasty, badly planned campaigns do not. Here’s how to build a SaaS Google Ads user acquisition pipeline that fires on all levels.
1. Drill down into your key metrics before you start
Google Ads for SaaS is a lean, mean, user acquisition machine. It exists to generate hot leads for your sales team.
This means that you’ll need to see a solid revenue return on your investment for it to have any value at all – unlike other platforms, there are limited brand awareness benefits to console yourself with if the leads don’t come through.
To make this work for you, you need to be super clear on what your target cost per acquisition (CPA) is – otherwise you risk massively overpaying to acquire new customers that will never break even.
You’ll need to know:
- Your payback period (the time it takes for your customers to break even on the cost of acquiring them)
- The average lifetime value of a customer (how much revenue they generate between onboarding and offboarding)
This should give you an idea of the maximum you can afford to pay to acquire a customer whilst remaining profitable, which is essential to understand before thinking about ad spend.
You can use your maximum acquisition cost directly (by using ‘target CPA’ as a way of bidding on keywords) or indirectly, by monitoring and optimizing your CPA over the course of your campaign.
2. Get creative with your keywords
Sure, sitting right at the top of the ‘email marketing CRM’ search feels great. It probably is great, from a lead gen point of view. Equally, it may not be sustainable – that’s a high traffic, high competition keyword, so you’ll need to pay a lot of cash to stay there.
Great Google Ads for SaaS campaigns combine competitive keywords with a range of less expensive keywords that can work just as (or even more) effectively.
If you want your users to take a particular action on your website or in your app, what do you do?Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific keyword phrases that target a niche audience. For example, rather than targeting ‘CRM system’, you might bid on ‘CRM system for small businesses’.
Whilst long-tail keywords attract fewer searches, the search intent behind them is often more refined. This offers SaaS businesses several advantages, despite lower search volume:
- Searchers using long-tail keywords are often much closer to making a purchase decision
- Less search volume equals less competition – and therefore cheaper CPC
- Long-tail keywords are often more relevant to searches, which increases conversion rates
Whilst long-tail keywords attract fewer searches, the search intent behind them is often more refined. This offers SaaS businesses several advantages, despite lower search volume:
- Searchers using long-tail keywords are often much closer to making a purchase decision
- Less search volume equals less competition – and therefore cheaper CPC
- Long-tail keywords are often more relevant to searches, which increases conversion rates
Our tip: start with a broader keyword and use your keyword tool to build a list of long-tail, lower competition keywords that get you clicks and conversions without a premium CPC.
Competitor keywords
Tools like SEMRush and SpyFu can give you useful insight into which keywords your competitors are targeting in their PPC campaigns. Look for high-performing keywords they’re continually spending money on – these are likely to be strong performers for them, and may be worth adding to your own arsenal.
You can also bid on competitor brand name keywords, because hey – if someone’s interested in their product, there’s a strong chance they will be interested in yours. Particularly in crowded markets like B2B and SaaS, this can be a strong play for visibility.
But – be careful! Competitor brand name keywords can be a risky strategy because:
- It invites direct comparison, which is wonderful if your product is clearly stronger but detrimental if it isn’t
- If you bid on theirs, it’s quite likely they will bid on yours – which can cause a bidding war that drains your ad budget and massively increases your CAC (customer acquisition cost)
If you have a limited budget (and you’re targeting cold hard revenue generation, rather than visibility), it might be better spent on your own keywords rather than poaching someone else’s.
Negative keywords
Negative keywords are search terms that you specify aren’t relevant to your business. When you add a negative keyword, you’re telling Google, “Don’t show my ad if someone searches for this term.”
For example, if your product is a CRM for small businesses, you could tell Google to exclude your ads from searches containing the words ‘enterprise’ or ‘large business’ to make sure you’re not wasting budget on searches that won’t give you good leads.
Using negative keywords allows you to avoid paying for clicks that are unlikely to result in a sale, or conversion to free trial. This keeps CAC down and maximizes the return on your ad spend.
3. Use Google Ads’ Assets to encourage conversions
If you want your users to take a particular action on your website or in your app, what do you do?
You remove barriers. You make that action as easy as possible to find and as easy as possible to complete. If you want to encourage users to upgrade their freemium plan to the paid version, for example, you make the ‘upgrade’ easy to find on the dash, and direct them towards it every time they try to access a paid-for feature.
So it is with Google Ads. Google offers a range of Assets (previously known as Extensions) that help your ads drive conversions. Some of the most useful include:
- Sitelink assets: Direct searchers to specific pages of your site (e.g., free trial sign up)
- Pricing assets: Display your pricing info to increase trust and attract higher quality leads
- App assets: Link to your app directly from your search ad to encourage downloads
- Lead form assets: Capture lead contact data from straight your ad, without needing to click through to a landing page
- Contact assets: Make your business contact details visible in-ad to encourage prospects to get in touch
- Image assets: Add an image to your ad for extra visibility
4. Make sure you have enough resources to run a good campaign
Great Google Ad campaigns require thought, planning, and expertise. Many SaaS businesses assume that because Google and other keyword research tools offer handy, automated features, they can pull a high-converting paid search campaign together just like that.
Don’t be like those businesses.
Without putting effort into writing killer ad copy, building high-converting landing pages, and a well thought-out keyword strategy with clear goals, your Google Ads campaign won’t get you the new users you need to sustain growth.
If you’re running a campaign in-house, make sure your team has the time to:
- Conduct thorough keyword opportunity analyses for every campaign you run
- Draft ad copy and design landing pages for maximum conversion
- A/B test ad and landing page variants for insights into what makes audiences convert
- Analyze campaign metrics and make ongoing improvements
- Build fully researched campaign budgets with estimated ROAS and ROI
Attract the right leads with Velocity’s expert PPC services
Making sure you’re hitting the right audiences with the right messaging is fundamental to expanding your user base and hitting those MRR targets.
With years of experience and millions of dollars’ worth of successful campaign spend behind us, our team at Velocity are hyper-focused on optimizing your paid search campaigns for quality leads, maximum conversions, and minimal acquisition costs.