Why I’m testing paid ads before building my SaaS product
I recently launched a landing page to validate my new SaaS idea.
Instead of just posting on Twitter and waiting — I decided to test paid acquisition on day one.
Here’s the logic:
Building a product takes time
If no one wants it, that’s wasted time
So I need to validate demand before I build
My goal:
Find out if people search for this kind of product
→ and if they’re willing to sign up
What I did:
Spent €20 on Google Ads
First try: accidentally created a Smart Campaign 😅
→ It burned €10 on mobile app banner clicks with 0 valueSecond try: Search-only campaign with high-intent keywords
→ Now getting fewer but more relevant clicks
Why this matters:
I want to know:
Is there intent in search?
What’s my cost per lead?
Will I be able to price this sustainably?
You don’t need to be an expert. Even €10–20 is enough to get signal.
Next step:
Some users already signed up via the form — even though the product isn’t ready.
In my next post I’ll share what I do with those early leads. (Hint: it’s not "wait until launch")
Let me know if you're doing the same — would love to compare notes.
Love this approach — it's lean, smart, and actionable
I followed a similar path with my own SaaS: instead of building blindly, I validated with Google Ads and a one-pager. A few thoughts from my side:
Intent beats impressions: like you, I noticed search ads with strong keywords performed way better than social or display — even with a tiny budget.
The first €10 is tuition: those accidental clicks? Consider it paying for experience. Happens to all of us!
Signups before product = gold: you're building a list of people who already care. That’s leverage — not just for launch, but for shaping the product roadmap.
Curious: how are you planning to engage those early leads? I ran a short survey + 1:1 calls and got amazing insights.
Would love to swap learnings as we both move forward
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment — really appreciate it!
Totally agree with you: search ads with strong intent perform much better than display or social — even with a small budget. The volume is lower, but the clicks are way more relevant. Most of my accidental traffic came from a mobile game app (likely misclicks in India), and those users didn’t even wait for the site to load. Lesson learned 😅
As for early leads — yes! I’m collecting emails and qualifying them manually for now, just like in early sales. I ask when they need monitoring, whether they’ve seen pricing, and if they control the budget — the idea is to identify people who’d buy today if the product existed. Only those I count as real potential customers.
Then I ask which features are must-haves for them to buy. That’s already helping me shape the roadmap around what’s essential, not just what I think is cool. Of course, I’m partly building this for myself (I run other SaaS products that need monitoring), but I’m not the market, so I want to stay grounded in actual demand.
Once I get around 20 qualified leads, I’ll calculate CAC and see if it’s even viable to move forward with the build.
Let’s definitely stay in touch — would love to swap learnings as we go!
>>f no one wants it, that’s wasted time
So I need to validate demand before I build
Honestly, there is a much faster and quicker way to validate demand: you just search for similar projects. Moreover, I can say that demand exists because there are tons of such "statuspage" projects.
What you need to validate are:
your willingness to work on a product that doesn't have anything unique in a very saturated domain
your ability to make it unique in some way and different from existing products
your ability to sell it in a saturated domain.
And by running ads, you can't validate all three points, IMHO.
Completely agree with researching competition to validate demand. Learned that the hard way with a product I'm currently considering launching. Completely ignored looking at competition and thought only about the problem and how broadly it seemed to be felt.
It's also fair to use the approach as Charlie outlined, to test out your specific landing page and intake funnel. I think that's more for after you've validated there's a market though.
Yeah, but IMHO, validating via only the landing page is a dead end. You can't rely only on ads, you should use SEO, social marketing, and other more reliable methods that can't be validated in a couple of days. It takes time, effort, and this is really what you need to validate.
After the idea is validated, agreed on SEO and social marketing. While still trying to validate though, not sure SEO makes sense since it's a much longer timeframe to see results. But social would make sense for quicker feedback.
Thanks — you're totally right that the existence of successful competitors already validates the general demand. I probably didn’t phrase that clearly enough in my post.
What I’m actually trying to validate is not just “does the market exist?”, but:
Can I attract traffic for this specific angle?
Can I sell this concept to real people before the product even exists?
Will it be profitable without needing VC-level burn?
Many founders build first and then struggle to get traffic. That used to work in the early days of the web and app stores — not anymore. Now, “product-first” is often “traffic-last”. Marketing must come first.
That’s why I’m running ads: I want to test channels, positioning, pricing — and see if I can reliably get qualified leads. Then I qualify them manually (like in a real sales process), figure out their urgency, budget, deal-breaker features — and if they’d buy today if the product existed.
Only after that do I ask: would this even be profitable? Based on CAC from real leads, I’ll see how many months of subscription I’d need to break even. If it’s more than 3 months — it’s not worth pursuing, unless I’m going for a venture model (which I’m not).
Regarding uniqueness — I think it’s overrated in big markets. When demand is high, there’s space for many tools with overlapping functionality. Coding is cheap these days — the hard part is acquiring customers.
So instead of betting on a “unique” product, I’d rather prove I can profitably acquire and convert users. That’s the real moat in 2025.
The truth is most ad campaigns underperform because they're built without solid tracking or structure. When I worked with MB Adv, the first thing they did was a detailed audit and then fixed server-side tracking, which gave me way clearer data. It's not about flashy promises, just precise execution that scales.
Can I please get the answer to what you do with early leads I'm intrigued.
Sure, I actually shared some thoughts on that earlier. You can check it out here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-i-m-testing-paid-ads-before-building-my-saas-product-blAUxNSaF616mG1D7TdU?commentId=VPzRqbLDjBGZLyclZuM1 — it covers how I’m handling early leads
Are you currently running a crowdfunding campaign?
No, I’m not running a crowdfunding campaign.
what are you working on currently?