Anyone have tips for running Google Ads to acquire first users?
I'm prepping to experiment with paid ads for a very early stage saas product. It's a self-serve type product (vs high touch demo). Wondering if anyone has some success in this area and open to chatting!
Be sure to define precise targeting and ad relevance.
When you're using an ad network, try to define your audience as good as possible. You might want to skip gender/age (I never found this useful) but set a list of countries and, if likely, interests/job titles. People are very bothered by ads, so it's your responsibility (and a way to reduce costs) to reach only to those who actually might be interested in your deal. Like, if a person is interested in SEO, why to bother it with sales CRM?
Once you define the targeting, it will become easier to create an ad relevant to that target group. Answer the question, what you can promise to that person that he would benefit if clicking on your commercial or viewing what you offer?
And if you want to reach a broader audience, just create a few campaigns with separate targeting/ads.
Edit: For Google Ads specifically, start with google search only and with exact match keywords (surrounded by []), then see how well it goes. The phrase match might immediately eat all your budget, depending upon the search volume. However, if you still prefer the phrase match, don't forget the negative keywords, they can be really powerful to exclude people with the wrong search intent than you're looking for.
Great tips, thanks! Interesting in starting specifically with Search. I was also leaning towards starting there. Do you have any rationale of starting with Search over Display?
With Search, you know the search intent, while with Display, more or less you only knowledge is demographics.
So if a person is searching for "your_product price", you know that he's willing to buy right now. If a person is searching "alternative to your_competitor", you know that he doesn't like something about your competitor and ready to use a better product. Always have in mind what the person behind the query is looking for. It answers whenever it's worth to invest in that specific ad campaign. Otherwise, you might satisfy the user's need on the wrong part of the funnel. Like, if a person was trying to figure out what he might need in the first place. It's nothing wrong to answer the informational questions, but it costs you $ if they're clicking on ads, versus standard SEO. None of this comes with Display.
Take a look (and read very carefully) at this excellent ahrefs blog post about search intent; it's relevant both for PPC and SEO: https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-intent/
That's a great article on search intent. Thanks!
Google Adwords is generally more expensive in comparison to Facebook Ads, but you should run some tests to find out if it fits for your business.
Facebook Ads is always useful if your potential clients are Facebook users, and if you can target them through their “social characteristics”: interests, age, gender, work, etc.
However, through website retargeting you can create custom audiences of people who visited your website or blog. By doing this, you can reinforce your Google Adwords campaigns and maximize all the other sources of traffic.
Yea, Facebook is definitely the way to go targeting specific demographics. In my case though, I think intent-based marketing will yield better results as a first step. I kinda need them to be researching the pain first.
But then I totally agree, retargeting them after on FB would be a good playbook!
Definitely agree with you . Researching pain point is the way to start