A Beginner’s Guide to Paid Social For SaaS

Paid Social For SaaS

Have you been tasked with looking into paid social for your SaaS brand but you’re unsure where to start? Due to mounting lead pressure, it can be tempting to serve “Free Trial” or “Demo” to that freezing cold audience right from the get-go but the nature of SaaS is that your customers are not buying your software on impulse. They need to be taken through the full funnel, giving them all the information (and time) they need to make their decision.

In this blog, we’re going to help you get started with paid social for your SaaS brand, showing you ad concepts for each of the stages:

These people may not even realise they have a problem that needs solving or are at the early stages of becoming aware of the problem. 

These people are starting to understand they have a problem and have begun researching a solution by weighing up several different options next to each other. 

These people are ready to invest. 

The key to running successful paid social ads is to align them with different stages of the funnel, offering them value based on the needs of the customer no matter where they are in their buyer’s journey.

Assembla Conversion Social Ad

Awareness Ads for SaaS Paid Social

Prospects at this stage may be completely unaware or are just wising up to the fact they need a solution to a problem. The ads served at this stage should focus on identifying these problems and showing the solutions that your product solves.

Awareness Ad Targeting

Audiences for paid social can be identified in two categories: prospects and remarketing. At the Awareness stage, targeting will fall solely into the prospecting category, because you want to reach people who are brand-new to you and your product. There are two main ways to do this. 

1. Customer profiling 

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, and hopefully some documented customer profiles, you can create audiences based on the demographic information you’ve identified. B2B marketers can align their targeting on LinkedIn, using the platform’s employment information, including levels of seniority and member interests. Facebook on the other hand, is populated by consumers and is therefore often a better place for B2C SaaS brands to advertise and reach their customers through the platforms Interest based targeting options. By figuring out where your audience spends most of their time, you can identify the right platform for SaaS and target for your paid social campaigns. 

2. Brand Awareness ‘Lookalike’ Audiences

If you already hold customer data in your CRM system, you can use this information to target similar people. This may involve uploading either an email list or making a list of website visitors tracked via an Insight Tag (LinkedIn) or Pixel (Meta). With a customer list of over 300, you can get started creating a lookalike audience, by getting the platform to generate people based on their demographic similarities to your current customer base. 

Brand Awareness Creative Concept Ideas

At the Awareness stage, the main focus should be to introduce your solution and provide content that is easy to consume, interesting and relevant to the cold audience. The best creatives for this stage of the SaaS funnel are videos which introduce the brand in a fun and engaging way, or image ads with an eye-catching solution to the pain point they are addressing. 

Paid social video ad for Ranorex

At this stage (and every stage) you should test different creative formats and messaging to work out the most effective ad concepts for your audience.

Consideration Ads for SaaS Paid Social

At this point, your target audience knows they have a problem that needs solving. It’s your aim  to get them to move down to the conversion stage, through a series of helpful, engaging ads. It’s important to put the audience first – how can YOU help THEM with their problem. 

Consideration Ad Targeting

Both Facebook and LinkedIn offer options to reach people who have previously interacted with your content. This is a great way to identify people who are already considering you and therefore make their process a little easier with content which answers their questions.  

Using your website data to remarket to people who have visited certain pages on your site using the Pixel or Insight data is also a great way to continue to warm up the prospect.

Consideration Ad Creative Concepts

We know that customers shop around for the best solution, and so whilst they’re considering how you weigh up next to your competition, why not make the research easy for them?

Content at this stage which either shows off customer testimonials and how you’ve helped them succeed, or a comparison of your product next to one of your competitors, is a way to show how you stack up and why you’re obviously the best option. This may be done through a landing page, video, or helpful downloadable pdf. 

Travis CI Consideration Creative Social Ad

Conversion Ads for SaaS Paid Social

This is the time to focus on warm leads. People who have interacted with your SaaS brand  and are aware of what you can offer them. You may use remarketing based on consideration ads or website traffic, or by uploading a list of MQLs from Ebook downloads or webinar visits.

Conversion Ad Creative Concepts

At this stage, your adverts need to focus on driving them to take action. Either sending them to a product page, pricing page, or dedicated sign-up landing page. LinkedIn and Facebook also offer ‘Native Lead Form Ads’ which allow users to sign-up without leaving the platform.

Example of a paid social ad for Kiuwan displaying a pink background with a CTA to start a free trial

 

It is important to test creative concepts to ensure your conversion journey is as optimised as possible If you want people to sign-up to a demo, make sure the process to do so is simple.We don’t want to trick the audience to convert, ensuring the converted person has a good understanding of the brand, the offering and why they’ve signed up, making them a very sales-ready lead.

Paid Ads for SaaS Summary

Warming up a lead takes time, and whilst paid social advertising can help you get to your target audience much faster,it’s crucial that prospects are nurtured right through the funnel. 

When running a SaaS paid social campaign, it is important to remember that those at the start of their buyer’s journey (and those who might not even know they need you) take time to convince. And when they’re finally ready to make their decision, thanks to your clever three stage strategy, choosing your brand will be an absolute no-brainer.

Talk to Victress About Paid Social For SaaS

If you’re looking to launch a paid social campaign for your SaaS brand and need an extra pair of hands, book your free 30 minute consultation to see how we can help. 

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