A successful SaaS PPC campaign is not just about what happens to achieve a click, but what happens once that potential customer lands on your website.
Whilst your website, blog and social channels might be full of fantastic messaging and information about your product, someone engaging with your brand via PPC needs access to this content in one place. You don’t want them to have to search through your website to find what they need to decide if you are the right provider for them. Similarly, you don’t want them to have to work to find contact or sign up forms, at the risk of losing their interest or distracting them from the job at hand. This is where a PPC landing page comes into play.
Building a PPC specific landing page is one way of optimising the post-click experience by providing only the essential details about your software and streamlining the conversion process. This page can cut through the noise by focusing solely on why your software is the solution to an individual’s problem.
You know your product is great. Now you need to make sure that potential customers understand this too.
Here are 5 top tips for building a successful landing page for your SaaS product.
1. Keep Your Forms Short and Simple
Whilst it’s understandable that your SaaS sales team might want to get as much information as possible into their CRM, a long list of compulsory questions can be a major blocker when it comes to form submissions. PPC campaigns need to convert as many visitors as possible to maximise their ROI and overall success, so you therefore need to make sure the conversion process is quick and as easy as possible.
A long winded form, which requires lots of information which doesn’t feel relevant for your initial engagement with a company, could stop a potential customer from submitting that lead form all together. Not only will some people feel hesitant about providing lots of personal information to a business they are still unfamiliar with, but completing a long list of fields takes time. Forms asking for company turnover, gender, personal mobile number and management category can feel very intrusive. The business has not yet earned the right to demand such information or time from a potential customer, and insisting they do so can put people off your product completely.
Whilst this may mean that the sales team have to get more information during their initial contact with the individual, it can help the landing page to achieve its sole purpose of generating the initial lead.
Example – AWeber (https://www.aweber.com) keeps the form fields for their ‘Get Started for Free’ CTA to an absolute minimum.
2. Trust Indicators - Clearly Demonstrate Your Credibility In SaaS
It’s more than likely that someone coming to your site via a PPC campaign is going to be completely new to your brand and product. For this reason, it is crucial that your landing page helps to build trust and credibility, to reassure them that you are a legitimate and reputable SaaS provider.
Content such as name-dropping high profile existing clients, short snappy quotes from happy users, content regarding relevant awards and accreditations, star ratings and cold hard facts about the performance of your software, can all help to demonstrate your integrity. Typically this type of content is distributed across different pages and blog posts across your website, however for your PPC landing page you need to ensure that these endorsements are quick and easy to find. You’re going to want to pick the top content on your site which demonstrates your authenticity and ensure they are featured on your landing page.
Example – Within the top fold of ClickUp we are introduced to numerous trust indicators. Not only are we presented with their 5 star rating, but we are also given the recurrence that the tool is already being used by over 800,000 teams, including Fortune 500 companies. This name dropping tells potential customers that they will be in very good company.
If you advertise on platforms such as G2 or Capterra, then you will also be able to utilise their highly specific feedback and review features.
Ranorex have included their G2 Grid Report on their free trial landing page, highlighting their position as a leader in the Test Automation Software category. This report is on reviews and ratings of actual users of the product, offering reliable insights into the suitability of the product for its target audience.
3. Call to Action - Clearly Direct Page Visitors to What You Want Them to Do
A compelling Call to Action (CTA) is the key to a successful PPC landing page. What you’re offering needs to be very clear from the moment someone lands on your page, and it needs to be achievable in as little steps as possible.
The easiest way to do this is by including CTA buttons above the fold of your page, taking the visitor directly to the lead form you need them to complete. This way the visitor knows what is expected of them, and you are signposting them on exactly where to go to achieve this. Your CTA button should be in an accent colour, to stand out from the rest of the page, and its messaging should be short and direct. For example: ‘Start Your Free Trial’, ‘Book a Demo’ or ‘Get Started Now’.
You should also avoid adding multiple actions on a single page, especially above the fold. You need to focus the visitor’s attention on completing the one desired action, and seeing lots of different signposts can be confusing.
Example – Conversion Fanatics make it very clear on their landing page that the action they want visitors to take is to claim a free proposal. This is achieved by using bold CTA buttons, which grab your eye as soon as you land on the page. They also only use the one CTA on the whole page, ensuring that visitors do not get distracted by other conversion paths or feel uncertain as to what is expected of them.
Whatsmore, your CTA needs to be appealing. See if you can offer something not usually offered on your main website, and make it accessible only via your PPC landing page. For example, can you offer a slightly longer trial period? Or could your sales team be able to offer a full demonstration of your product to help assist with said trial? If your competitor is offering a 7 days trial, can you offer a 14 day trial?
Example – Kiuwan only offers a Free Code Scan via their PPC campaigns, presenting a unique offer to someone who may have already engaged with the brand before.
Someone who has already engaged with the Kiuwan brand via organic sources would not have seen this offer, presenting them with a new and interesting opportunity to start engaging with the brand and its software.
4. Visuals & Videos - Show People What You Offer
Baymards 2022 SaaS UX research reported that 35% of SaaS sites fail to highlight their service UI sufficiently. Despite participants placing high importance on needing to get a sense of how the product looks “in real life”, many SaaS sites failed to use adequate visuals of their actual interface.
Graphical platform interpretations, auto play gifs and screenshots are all fantastic ways for SaaS sites to give the information that potential customers are looking for when it comes to deciding if a platform is right for them. Don’t leave people guessing what it would look and feel like to use your software, show them!
Example – Riverside FM include visual representation of what their interface looks like on both desktop and mobile. This is a very simple, yet effective way of showing potential customers what it would look like if they were using the software. The ease of use, clarity and features are all clearly identifiable via this single use of imagery.
You may also want to consider using video assets in your landing page, to help give a feel of how your software looks and works in action. Images and text can only go so far when it comes to portraying the full capabilities of your software, but a video can help get more information across in a visually appealing format. A video either introducing your product or providing a demo of the interface can be very impactful asset for your PPC landing page.
Example – As soon as someone visits the Bannerflow website via their Search Ads, they are presented with a sleek introductory video above the fold of the page.
This video walks through the main features of the platform, highlighting its most popular and unique aspects. The video is also visual only, meaning that the page visitor is not overwhelmed by audio as soon as they land on the page. Its use of annotations and in-platform visuals also ensures that the messaging gets across, without the need for audio or narration.
5. Comparison Table - Differentiate Yourself From Your Competitors
You should consider including a feature comparison table, presenting what your product offers compared to your direct competitors. It can sometimes be difficult to comprehend the difference between what one SaaS provider offers from another, and a comparison table can be a quick and concise way of getting this information across. You have paid for that individual to visit your site, you now need to impress them.
Stripping the differences between you and your competitor to its simplest form and providing side-by-side comparisons of facts and figures, is a very persuasive way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. It is hard to ignore feature specific advantages that your software provides when they are presented so clearly.
Example – Instapage uses a comparison table to compare their features to those of Unbounce, their direct competitor. This table makes the differences between the two abundantly clear, and gets straight to the point as to why someone should choose Instapage. This could be what it takes for someone to make the decision to go with Instapage over Unbounce.
If you’re running a PPC campaign for your SaaS product then it is highly recommended that you build a PPC specific landing page. A landing page specifically designed to capture the interest of PPC traffic can really help to ensure that every Click counts, and enable you to experience the full potential of Pay-Per-Click advertising.
Want to know more or simply curious as to whether we could help you with your marketing strategy? Have a chat with our friendly team, we’re always keen to find out more about a Saas business
