Running PPC ads can burn through your SaaS marketing budget quickly—if you’re not using the right strategies and tactics.
Many SaaS marketers overlook the tactics that can make the biggest impact on their campaigns. In this article, I’m going to share the six tactics I use to drive results for SaaS clients at Aimers so you can try them yourself to get the cutting edge and outperform the competition.
Contents
- Use lead scoring to prioritize high-value prospects
- Avoid overreliance on a single platform
- Deploy display remarketing and RLSA campaigns strategically
- Use offline conversion tracking
- Conduct regular PPC audits
- Optimize your landing pages for conversions
6 PPC tactics for SaaS marketers to try now
Let’s dive into each of these tactics so you can start optimizing your SaaS PPC campaigns.
1. Use lead scoring to prioritize high-value prospects
Not all leads are created equal. Prioritize prospects based on their likelihood to convert or their potential value to your business.
We all want to attract the biggest clients possible, so why not immediately pass data about lead quality to your advertising platforms? Additionally, at some point, you can try optimizing exclusively for top-tier leads. With sufficient data volume, the algorithms will start identifying the most relevant users for you.
- Scoring metrics: Develop a scoring system based on user behavior (e.g., the information provided when submitting a form on your website, such as the company size, the job title, etc.).
- Sales alignment: Work closely with the sales team to understand which scores correlate with high-qualityleads, and adjust your scoring criteria based on their feedback.
- Dynamic retargeting: Use lead scores to adjust your PPC strategies, directing more resources on high-scoring leads.
If your lead flow is limited, avoid excessive segmentation of leads into multiple categories. Over-segmentation can complicate data analysis and hinder the optimization of your campaigns.
To ensure the effective performance of advertising algorithms, it’s important to meet the recommended conversion thresholds:
- Meta requires at least 200 conversions per month per ad set.
- Google and Microsoft need a minimum of 30 conversions per month per campaign.
- LinkedIn advises at least 60 conversions per month per campaign.
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2. Avoid overreliance on a single platform
One of the common pitfalls I see with our clients is that they use several platforms but don’t regularly evaluate the effectiveness of each channel. For example, they continue to keep a 50/50 budget allocation between two networks, while a 70/30 split could dramatically boost their results.
Another case is when companies “get stuck” on one or two platforms without exploring new ones. If you’re not testing new channels, you could lose out on potential opportunities and leads. It’s all about staying agile and data-driven.
It’s important to constantly analyze your channel performance. Here are some of my recommendations to do this:
- If your sales cycle is short, Google Analytics 4 may be enough.
- For longer and more complex sales cycles with multiple stakeholders and sales calls, a good CRM is essential.
- For businesses with a lot of traffic channels, consider investing in third-party tools with advanced attribution tracking.
Dash by LocaliQ is an AI-powered lead management platform that allows you to track and follow-up with leads.
By consistently using data to evaluate your channels and redistributing your budget, you will see tangible results. In my experience, you can expect around a 20% boost in just a few months!
3. Deploy display remarketing and RLSA campaigns strategically
For SaaS, decision-making cycles are usually long. Display remarketing and RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) can give you a competitive edge by targeting warm leads when they’re ready to act:
- Segmentation and personalization: Tailor your ads based on the user’s previous interaction with your website. For instance, display different messages to users who abandoned the trial period and those who just viewed a pricing page.
- Bid adjustments: Increase or decrease your bids for returning visitors based on their likelihood to convert, optimizing your ad spend for the best possible ROI.
Here’s an extra tip from me: The audience in the SaaS niche is often quite narrow, and the number of website visitors is significantly smaller compared to the B2C segment. So when you’re launching RLSA, I recommend expanding your keyword list to include more generic search terms and using broad match.
4. Use offline conversion tracking
Understand which campaigns drive real revenue by linking your CRM with the ad platforms. With this integration, you can assess lead quality, uncover weak points in your campaigns, and identify which ad groups, audiences, or keywords generate leads but fail to convert into opportunities.
The result? Smarter decisions, optimized ad spend, and a more effective PPC strategy.
To fully capitalize on this integration, focus on three key types of reports that transform raw data into actionable insights:
- Conversion tracking reports: These reports show the path from ad click to sale, helping you pinpoint which ads and campaigns generate revenue. Use this data to optimize spending on what works best.
- Customer segmentation reports: These reports segment your audience using CRM data like demographics, purchases, or behavior. Tailor campaigns to specific groups for better results.
- Customer lifetime value reports: These reports use CRM insights to let you estimate the lifetime value of customers acquired through PPC.
Clients often ask me why exporting customer lists from their CRM doesn’t yield the desired results in ad campaigns. The issue doesn’t lie in incorrect settings or integration errors, but in the specifics of the B2B sector.
In B2B, most leads provide business emails (e.g., @company.com), which are rarely used to register personal accounts on platforms like Meta or Google.
Example of a typical B2B SaaS lead form at demio.com
Since these platforms rely on personal accounts to match customer lists, business emails often fail to find corresponding users. As a result, the potential audience for ad delivery is significantly smaller—or even nonexistent.
Instead of just relying on customer lists, use other data sources like pixels or conversion events to track user actions on your website. This allows you to build audiences based on behavior rather than email addresses.
5. Conduct regular PPC audits for constant optimization
Even the most successful PPC campaigns require ongoing optimization. Regular audits help identify areas for improvement and ensure your campaigns align with your business goals.
- Comprehensive reviews: Regularly assess all aspects of your campaigns, including keyword selection, ad copy, audience targeting, and bidding strategies.
- Growth opportunities: Use audits to spot chances for implementing new ad formats or tactics to boost performance.
- Actionable insights: Turn audit findings into a clear plan of action, prioritizing changes that will have the biggest impact.
If you are not sure where to start your audit, you can use a free Google Ads Optimization Checklist for SaaS that my team has developed. You can also run WordStream’s Free Google Ads Grader to get an instant audit of your account.
6. Optimize your landing pages for conversions
Your ad strategy might be brilliant. But if your landing page does not convert, you won’t see good results. A user’s journey doesn’t end at clicking the ad—it’s only successful when it ends in a conversion.
If you want outstanding PPC results, focus on optimizing your landing pages for conversions:
- Page speed optimization: Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to ensure your landing pages load quickly. Even a second’s delay can significantly reduce conversions.
- A/B testing: Systematically test variations of your landing page elements (like CTA buttons, images, and headlines) to determine what resonates best with your audience.
- User experience: Enhance the user journey by focusing on intuitive design and clear navigation paths that guide visitors towards conversion actions.
We used these best practices to optimize one landing page and were able to get a 148% increase in conversion rate!
Thoughtful design and data-driven landing page optimization will drive measurable outcomes for your PPC, so don’t overlook this aspect.
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Use these tactics for your next SaaS PPC campaign
Mastering the nuances of PPC is essential if you want your campaigns to deliver remarkable ROI for your SaaS business. The six tactics I’ve shared here can serve as a starting point for your journey that you can begin implementing straight away. However, I also advise you not to stop here and explore more cutting-edge PPC advice to keep constantly improving your performance.
About the author
Layla Abilova has been working with PPC since 2016. In her current role as a PPC Growth Leader at Aimers, she delivers expert guidance and innovative strategies for scaling ad campaigns for SaaS and tech companies using her in-depth understanding of market trends and data-driven insights.
