PPC for SaaS: 12 Optimization Tips + Strategies From the Pros

PPC for SaaS brands helps increase brand awareness, drive target traffic, generate MQLs and SQLs, and ultimately increase revenue. Implement these strategies we use every day to help our SaaS clients scale.

12 strategies for effective SaaS PPC marketing:

1. Convey credibility in your messaging
2. Qualify and prioritize leads
3. Calculate CLV
4. Optimize landing pages
5. Study your ideal client and current clients
6. Nurture cross-channel alignment
7. Target long-tail keywords
8. Cycle ads to avoid ad fatigue
9. Look beyond Google Ads
10. Implement retargeting
11. Integrate your CRM
12. Monitor, audit, and optimize

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses face unique challenges: Long sales cycles, crowded markets, and a target audience that researches endlessly before committing to a software solution.

But with effective pay-per-click (PPC) ads, SaaS companies can shorten this lengthy process while increasing the number of qualified leads upfront.

In this guide, SaaS PPC expert Steve Dang shares his top strategies and tips to make PPC work for your SaaS brand.

12 PPC strategies for SaaS

Aside from the basics of building a PPC campaign, there are SaaS-specific strategies to ensure campaign success.

Here are our top tactics:

1. Convey credibility in your messaging

SaaS subscribers are hyper-educated and spend a lot of time researching their options. Use your ad copy and landing pages as an opportunity to demonstrate your credibility.

One effective way of doing this is by aligning your brand with well-known clients.

If you have Fortune 500 clients on your roster, for example, include their logos on your landing page (with permission).

Even better: Create a case study that highlights your partnership with that brand and how they found success through working with you. This establishes credibility and helps people understand your offering on a deeper level.

You can also establish credibility (and increase brand awareness) through:

• Awards
• Press mentions
• Client testimonials
• Seller ratings

2. Qualify and prioritize leads

Tracking and scoring your leads based on their likelihood to convert allows you to target and nurture those with the most potential value.

There are two ways to score leads:

• Quantitative: Scores leads from 1 to 10, zero to 100, or something in between, depending on how granular you want to get.
• Qualitative: Scores with metrics like low, medium, or high probability. (Here’s how to use lead scoring in Salesforce.)

Once you decide how to score your leads, the next step is to optimize your campaigns for qualified leads.

Further reading: How Lead Scoring Benefits Your SEM Program

3. Calculate CLV

Once you understand which leads are most likely to become customers, the next step is to understand how valuable those customers are by calculating customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV).

CLV is the total amount of revenue a SaaS business can expect to earn from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship.

This calculation helps you make smarter decisions about acquisition costs, targeting, and overall PPC budget allocation.

HubSpot explains that you can determine lifetime value by calculating:

• Average purchase value
• Average purchase frequency rate
• Customer value
• Average customer lifespan

Ultimately, multiplying customer value by the average customer lifespan should give you your CLV.

Once you have an accurate number, compare that with your customer acquisition cost (CAC) to make sure you’re getting the ROI you want.

4. Optimize landing pages

Your landing page is the first impression after a potential customer clicks on your PPC ad.

As a guiding principle, make sure your landing page has a clear purpose. Each page element should work together to get the user to convert by filling out a form or performing some other desired call to action (CTA).

You also want to entice visitors to scroll down through the entire page, if applicable, so the page shouldn’t be too long.

Chatbots can help you to engage with your audience to address their questions or concerns immediately — this can reduce your bounce rate and boost conversions.

Further reading: How to Create Landing Pages that Convert: Examples + Pro Tips

5. Study your ideal client and current clients

If your search engine marketing (SEM) strategy is underperforming, you may have misread your target audience’s pain points, behaviors, or needs.

It can be helpful to go back through and make some of the following changes to your ad campaigns:

• Adjust display times
• Switch up keywords
• Refresh your ad copy
• Tailor by language and location
• Add negative keywords to your campaigns

Sometimes all you need is a display campaign targeted to a very narrow audience to start attracting the right kind of clients.

When you choose to go this route, however, pick your placements carefully and make sure they’re on relevant sites.

6. Nurture cross-channel alignment

Another common issue we see when it comes to PPC for SaaS is that various channels are too siloed and separate.

This can result in miscommunication, unnecessary or repetitive efforts, and missed opportunities.

Synchronizing your channels can keep everyone working toward the same goal with a cohesive vision.

When aligning on an element like your copy, you’ll know that you’re speaking to your target audience with a consistent voice and tone, whether it’s a follow-up email or a landing page.

Remedying this issue can be as simple as a weekly video sync or phone call with all the necessary team members to review and discuss current projects.

7. Target long-tail keywords

Going after more relevant long-tail keywords targets those with higher intent and snags those potentially in the “research” stage of the funnel, which can be just as valuable.

Use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner to find ideal long-tail keywords for your market.

In the SaaS space, lowering cost per acquisition (CPA), sticking to budget, and optimizing ad spend are often major concerns.

Focusing on long-tail keywords is a way to achieve desired results with these concerns in mind.

Further reading: How to Do Keyword Research: Tools to Use + Proven Tips

8. Cycle ads to avoid ad fatigue

With the lengthy sales cycle for SaaS brands, it’s common for leads to see the same ads repeatedly as they perform similar searches during their “research” phase.

Eventually, this can cause ad fatigue with your target audience, and they may begin to ignore the ads.

This not only hurts your click-through rates (CTR) and results in higher PPC costs, but it can also reduce the chances of a lead coming back to you when they’re ready to purchase.

The best way to avoid ad fatigue is to cycle out ads regularly. Changing out your ads every month or so will likely result in a better campaign and conversion rate.

9. Look beyond Google Ads

While Google is a major player in the search engine game, others, like Microsoft’s Bing, shouldn’t be ignored.

Microsoft Advertising makes it easy to export your Google Ads campaigns to their platform.

Plus, your PPC advertising could see even better results with a lower average cost per click (CPC) and have your marketing budget go further.

Depending on your target audience, you may find less competition on the Microsoft Ad platform, which includes those searching on the Bing, Yahoo, and AOL platforms.

Further reading: 13 Search Engines (Other Than Google) to Explore

10. Implement retargeting

When it comes to PPC for SaaS, retargeting (AKA remarketing) can be a game-changer.

This type of ad connects your SaaS offering with people who have already visited your site or mobile app.

Google Ads is set up so that the default audience is generally set at 30 days. But this is often not enough time for the SaaS sales cycle, which can end up being three or six months out.

Once you determine a rough estimate for how many days it takes your leads to convert, you can tailor your campaigns accordingly, as long as they follow the platforms’ rules and are within the maximum membership duration.

A lot of education can take place during the buyer’s journey.

If you’re serving white papers or other content campaigns that last longer than 30 days, your retargeting should do the same.

Lastly, don’t just retarget your entire audience. Make sure to segment audiences and A/B test, so audiences are getting differently tailored messages when possible.

Pro tip: Social media platforms like Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads have their own retargeting tags, so make sure you’re placing each retargeting tag properly.

11. Integrate your CRM

Connecting your CRM platform with your PPC ad platforms allows you to connect your marketing spend to real business outcomes.

This integration lets you track which campaigns, keywords, and audiences actually drive qualified leads and revenue.

With this data flowing back into your ad platform, you can optimize bids and targeting based on downstream performance.

It also enables better audience segmentation, more accurate attribution, and smarter automation — ultimately improving efficiency and ROI.

12. Monitor, audit, and optimize

Ensure proper tracking is implemented and perform regular PPC audits to identify what’s working and what’s falling flat.

A quick step-by-step checklist to PPC audits includes:

• Double-check conversion tracking settings
• Assess your PPC account naming structure
• Review keywords and search terms
• Analyze ad copy
• Optimize assets (FKA ad extensions)
• Audit sales landing pages
• Review bid strategy
• Listen to ROI and ROAS
• Inspect targeting settings
• Check for outdated scripts or rules

With that data on hand, make ongoing optimizations to perfect your PPC campaigns.

Further reading: How to Conduct a PPC Audit: 10 Easy Steps (+ Checklist)

Why is PPC important for SaaS brands?

PPC is important for SaaS brands because it drives more qualified traffic quickly — this helps capture demand, increase the number of trials or demos, and scale revenue efficiently in a highly competitive industry.

Key benefits include:

Instant visibility: Appear at the top of search results or on relevant websites instantly, bypassing the time-consuming process of organic SEO (although these two tactics in tandem are the best strategy).

Highly specific targeting: Most platforms also offer sophisticated targeting options, allowing brands to reach highly specific audiences — especially useful for SaaS businesses.

Better ROI: Precise targeting ensures that your PPC ads are shown to folks who are most likely to be interested in the product, thereby maximizing your ROI.

Scalability and control: SaaS PPC campaigns can also be easily scaled up or down based on budget and campaign performance.

Real-time performance tracking: Access detailed metrics that help you monitor and optimize campaigns continuously.

Strong complement to content marketing: PPC supports your content by engaging users at every stage of the funnel and converting qualified leads.

Content such as video assets can be especially useful for SaaS brands.

“Video has become more and more important in this space and in digital marketing overall,” Dang explains.

“Incorporating more video on the site and through ads or promotional materials is always a good idea for any SaaS company.”

The takeaway

PPC for SaaS brands often isn’t a straight-line path from A to B.

Rather, it’s about different campaign types working together, nurturing your audience with education, and serving up various resources that ultimately get them to convert.

As you talk through your digital marketing goals and strategies, you may find that a SaaS marketing agency is what you need to take your program to the next level and leverage ideas you might not have thought of before.

Whether you partner with a PPC agency or keep things in-house, the above best practices will set you up to craft winning paid search campaigns for your SaaS company.

Want even more PPC for SaaS tips? Check out this webinar recording.

This article has been updated and was originally published in April 2020.