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5 Principles I Learned That Make Marketing Your SaaS Not SUCK!

Hey all,

I posted this on Linkedin a while ago and wanted to share it over here. I've been running campaigns for B2B and B2C SaaS companies and have found that whilst SaaS companies tend to do really good market research they also quite often fail to tie the benefits of that research into their marketing.

So here are 5 things I've learned (mainly from paid ad campaigns) that can help improve your CPA.

  1. Decision Fatigue
    Fewer choices mean it's easier to make a decision. Don't overwhelm your audience with different CTA's. Pick one.

This mainly applies to landing pages, if you have loads of options on one page such as: 'free trial', 'demo', 'whitepaper guide', 'sign up for our mailing list', 'learn more', 'contact us'.

You'll see less success on that page than if you just picked one (or at most two).

  1. The Value Stack
    Have an enticing offer and keep adding more to it. Free guides. Audits. Cheat Sheets. eBooks.

This is best deployed at the point someone needs to fill out the form for their free trial or demo.

Have the form to one side and next to it list all the benefits someone is going to see if they complete the form. Sell the next step (the demo or free trial) rather than the entire solution.

Additionally adding bonuses at this step increases conversions. So add in a free bonus eBook which would be useful to your target audience if they complete the form.

This appears to be in contradiction to the first point but the way it's executed means you're still only pushing one CTA. You just value stack that single CTA where it counts.

  1. You're A Media House
    The three content pillars are:

Inform - 40%

Entertain - 40%

Promote - 20%

Don't just promote. It'll work but it'll result in a higher Cost Per Acquisition.

Most companies when they run an ad campaign make the ads very bland; very features focused and try to offer a demo to a cold audience and it doesn't work.

If your ads are entirely focused on yourself

  1. Less Clicks = More Results
    More steps in your process leads to a higher drop-off.

This is why LinkedIn lead forms that pre-fill data give better results.

For B2B SaaS LinkedIn is the king. A lot of people run ads so that the prospect has to click through to a landing page, then they have to click a button to take them to another page with a form on it, then they have to fill out the form, which itself is sometimes several steps.

We've seen identical ads utilising a LinkedIn lead form instead of sending people to a landing page perform at half the cost per lead.

  1. Limit Yourself
    Cut off dates and limited availability increase demand. Accept the paradox.

This is really strange for SaaS as you won't have a limit to availability, that's the joy of the business model!

But you can limit offers to a certain time period. Or you can limit spaces on webinars, or limit demo slots.

We've found offering whitepaper guides at an early funnel strategy works well and if the whitepapers are only available for a short period of time (and we tell the audience that) the ads can perform at about 1/3 the cost per lead.

Any questions about these just ask

Source: We run ad campaigns for tech and SaaS companies

  1. 2

    Wow! This is a very valuable article.

    Thanks for sharing, John! I'll have to spend some time to consider how can I use these tips for both Price2Spy and my latest project BotMeNot.

    1. 1

      Hey Misha,

      I actually know about Price2Spy already! I sent you guys a video on your LinkedIn ads back in May!

  2. 2

    Thanks for sharing, John 🚀

    1. 1

      Thank you for reading, hope it helped!

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