Getting your Google Ads to work for your SaaS

If you have a B2B or SaaS that you are running Google Ads for, you may have found that it is significantly different from running Google Ads for B2C (whether you’ve read articles or run them yourself).

If you replaced SaaS with eCommerce, you probably could find pages of search results that tell you what to do step-by-step, but none of those blogs even acknowledge the complete difference in strategies.

So, here are some of the common mistakes and barriers that B2B or SaaS Google Advertisers face along their Google Ads journey.

Note, there’s a table of contents on the side if you want to skip around!

Your SaaS Can’t Cut Through The Google Ads Competition

This is a tough issue to solve for B2Bs and SaaSs trying to run successful Google Ads. The truth is, most SaaS companies fall between one of two categories:

1. You’ve invented a new solution and users are searching for the pains your SaaS addresses but not for what you call your product.
2. You’re in a well known solution with lot’s of low funnel traffic but it’s hard to stand out.

If you think your SaaS solution falls in option 2, then you are going to have to be clever. 

For example, let’s say you offer a scheduling solution that is trying to break past Acuity or Calendly who spend almost a million dollars a month in Google Ads and you have a budget anywhere between $1,000-$10,000/month.

You’ve been spending on search ads for a few months and you just can’t get them to work for your SaaS. 

If you are choosing to just target mid-length keywords like “scheduling tool” or “calendar tool” you will likely run into a very frustrating problem and it will feel like your Google Ads aren’t working.

You’ll spend and see some success but you will take a long time to be ROI positive, if ever.

What’s actually happening though is that your competition has put so much time and money into these high-volume keywords that they have piles of data to make decisions on and to feed any smart bidding algorithms they might be using. 

If you want success with this route in Google Ads, you are going to have to offer a SaaS solution that is obviously leagues better than the competition, cheaper and be willing to spend a lot of time and money on your ads before you reach a sustainable place (unrealistic).

Or, the path of less resistance, will come with using a more clever keyword strategy.

Make your SaaS search ads work with benefit/feature/use keywords

The solution is to create a keyword structure that focuses on features and benefits.

Most of your SaaS or B2B customers vet 3-5 options before they make a buying decision.

A majority of those users have a specific set of features and benefits that they are looking for when using Google, so if you want to cut through your competition, the first thing I would try is create long-tail keywords to reflect a niche of your service.

Here’s an example of each of these:

Benefit – Easiest Meeting Booking Tool

Feature –  Book Meetings With Multiple Attendees

Use – Scheduling Tool For Mechanic

For the scheduling software you could target (in phrase match) terms like “scheduling tool for salons.”

This would feature ad copy that stands out as highly relevant to salon owners and a landing page geared towards those salon owners.

These tactics work universally but targeting keywords with a structure like this is important to getting your search ads to work with a limited budget.

To reiterate, this is to address the issue of your Google Ads not working for a SaaS company in a saturated market. 

You can really only target long tail keywords like this if there is a lot of awareness for that market

You Can’t Figure Out Which Search Keywords Apply To Your SaaS or B2B

Remember this from the first section?

Most SaaS companies fit into one of two categories:

1. You’ve invented a new solution and users are searching for the pains your SaaS addresses but not for what you call your product.
2. You’re in a well known solution with lot’s of low funnel traffic but it’s hard to stand out.

Well this one is for those who fall under the first category. 

If you have a relatively new solution to the market that you know is going to benefit a lot of businesses but your Google Ads aren’t working because no one is searching for it (maybe you don’t even have a concrete term to label your service) then you will most likely have to look for another search terms.

Target mid or high funnel search terms

My first instinct here would be to target higher on the sales funnel.

If you were a strategic sourcing analytics SaaS, then you have the luck of there being thousands of searches each month for things like “strategic sourcing tool.” 

However, if you are providing a service that gets your business featured on local news sites, you might be tempted to target similar services like “digital PR service” (indicating a more full-service PR firm), then you will be met with high costs per acquisition.

It would be much better to meet the customer higher in the decision funnel.

How about addressing a problem like “get featured on a local news site?”

This user doesn’t know the name of your service, or even if one like it exists. They might even be interested in reaching out to the local news themselves.

But if you want Google Ads to work in this situation, you are going to need to target terms like this.

For this B2B service, I would run ads that read “5 Steps To Get Featured On Local News.”

Those ads should lead to a blog-style page that lays out those steps but REALLY agitates how hard it might be to do.

At the bottom of that article you could say “Sound hard? We’ll do it for you for $500.”

It’s a crudely hashed out idea but if you are set on seeing success in Google Ads and no one is searching for your service, you will need to consider a strategy like this.

Those mid-to-high funnel terms are going to be cheaper per click and have more volume.

Honestly, if you feel like you’ve mastered the lower funnel terms, this is also a way to make Google Ads work for your SaaS or B2B on a larger scale.

You Have More Budget To Spend In Google Ads But Can’t

Consider the section above when you start noticing your current keywords are being profitability maxed out. 

Mid to high funnel terms can have a lot more volume, and once your google ads account is profitable, you can tolerate a little extra optimization time to increase your conversion volume and ultimately find more ways to feed your funnel. 

Targeting those mid and high funnel terms and creating intent-based content is where I would start but I would also look to the Display Network.

Using Google’s display network to reach more SaaS users

If you have a set of keywords that are working really well, you have a lot more budget to spend and you actually can not push those terms more by bidding up or raising your daily budget, then you might also want to look at the Display Network to get your Google Ads working for your SaaS.

Use retargeting audiences for display campaigns

The first way I would use Display campaigns is to create retargeting campaigns that target users who conducted key actions on your website but didn’t convert. 

Depending on the key actions that the retargeting audience is triggered by, you may be able to reel back in some of the users who clicked your Google Ads (or found you from any other source) and didn’t convert. 

Use In-Market audiences from Google to make more of your budget work for you

Google has gotten better and better at lumping users into audiences, and In-Market audiences are the ones that Google defines as users who are ready to buy within that predefined market.

I would pick a few highly relevant in-market audiences first and go from there, judging each’s performance on higher-level performance metrics. 

This is definitely a strategy I would pursue after you get your SaaS Google Search Ads working and you are making multiple dollars per ad dollar spent.

Retargeting audiences are a must with an in-market display audience, this way you can keep the in-market impressions in your marketing hopper.

Broaden your targeting settings

This is an easy one that gets overlooked a lot when users are concerned about their Google Ads not working for them in terms of meeting their growth goals.

If you have restrictions on the days and hours your ads show, consider broadening that. Especially if your conversions are all online.

You can also alter the country settings. If you are only showing in the US, then expand to other English speaking countries, or Europe or the world. Note: if the only language you are targeting is English, then any country you target will still only include users who’s browser settings are set to English.

If you aren’t showing on Google’s search partners, then consider doing that too! The clicks can be cheaper and you can see very similar results.

Your SaaS Gets Lots of Free Trials But They Don’t Convert

For me this is always a difficult conversation with my clients because it might be easy to blame the product since you would think that users signing up for free trials and not converting is a result of a bad product. And sometimes it is.

But if your Google Ads aren’t working for your SaaS or B2B product because you get free trials but no conversions then there are a few things to investigate first:

Try focusing more on search terms that have feature/benefit/use intent

This is the same advice as the section above. If you are targeting generic Google searches like “social media scheduling tool” but you don’t offer the same feature set as your competitors, then focus on a niche feature like “white label social media scheduler”. Even if you aren’t the only one to offer it, you will reduce the competition and ensure the user is getting the feature they searched for. 

Focus your landing pages

Along with the point above, make sure you are clear about the features that your service offers, if you are misleading the users on your site, then you will just be tracking garbage free trials and not getting real data.

Personal gripe: I see a lot of conversion pages have the “book now” button or “sign up” button which takes you to another page where you enter your info. If that page is void of any other information to further the sale, you will see a major drop-off in conversions!

Alter your conversion/trial process

This can be a big one, if all your trial or conversion requires is an email, then you might not be asking enough of the user to judge them as a qualified conversion.

Early on, it might seem like your Google Ads are working because you’ll get a lot of emails.  However, down the road, I’ve seen a lot of companies running into the issue where they can’t convert these leads.

Try adding another field or two. Ask for a name, ask for a business email (or filter out non-business emails when counting conversions).

Maybe even change your “free trial” to a “free demo” or something that requires more commitment. 

Google Ads Quality Score Is Limiting Your Reach

This Google Ads issue can go along with the “I’m ROI positive but can’t grow my impression volume” issue. 

If you are struggling with growing the impressions your SaaS gets with Google Ads then check out your ad quality scores.

You may notice that your keywords have the “eligible limited” status that says they rarely show because of low quality score. 

I normally don’t worry about those statuses until I reach this same point.

So what do you do? You have to play nice with Google.

Pop open those quality score columns: Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Landing Page Experience, & Ad Relevance.

You’ll immediately see where these keywords are lacking (if they are). 

Work on making your landing page contain those keywords. Same with the ad copy. 

With CTR, I wouldn’t stress if your ads are working well, just work on the other two first.

You Feel Like You’re Google Ads Wasting Money (Low Conversions)

Your Google Ads are wasting money? That’s a scary problem. But here are a couple of questions that can help you address if it is a problem.

How long have your Google Ads been running?

Look at your individual keywords, how many clicks do each of them have? 

If they have like 0-30 clicks each at most, then I’d say it’s too early to judge, if you want to speed up optimization without increasing your budget, reduce your account to just the keywords you’re sure are low funnel and relevant (and possibly change them to phrase match or broad match).

How big is your value of sale?

If each purchase is worth $1,000, you are going to have to spend more to optimize than a $10 product. 

You can not expect to be more than 1 ROI before you achieve that first. 

Having a 5+ ROI is not a crazy goal by any means but optimization is an iterative process.

Have you checked your search terms yet?

Look at the search terms report (not the keywords you’re running for).

You can isolate your highest spending keywords and focus on that to start. 

Are the terms that your ads are showing up for relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and relevant to your services?

Consider adding negative keywords to block bad terms. However, if after a couple of days of negative keyword adding you are still showing for 50% garbage terms, then pause that keyword or tighten its match type to the next tighter.

Leverage Google’s data

If all else is failing, break down the data into various views to look at the problem from other perspectives. 

I like looking at impression share metrics to see if we can lower our bids and get more clicks out of our budget. 

SaaS’s can experience burning of budget pretty significantly if your ads are showing at the top every time. Try lowering your budget incrementally so that you get more clicks out of your budget. Careful, because you can lower them to a point where you don’t get clicks. 

You can also segment your data and look at your columns over time, by match type, conversion action and more so you can see where your money is being spent.

Have a professional look at it

This is a copout answer since I am a Google Ads professional writing this blog but seriously, schedule a free audit and I will detail painstakingly FOR FREE the things you need to change in your account. No strings attached.

End plug.

Obvious answer

It’s easy as a SaaS Search ads manager to look at keywords and think “hmm I could see how someone searching that would need my services.” I get tempted by that thinking sometimes too. 

Don’t fall for it! If you want your Search Ads to work with a small budget, focus on the terms you know apply to your business. You can always add in later.

Also, make sure your landing page is clear about what you offer and is consistent with your keywords and ads.

Keywords That You Think Should Be Working Aren’t Working

Honestly, I run into this from time to time. We’ve created a sound campaign and ran it for a little but then the fear that you missed the mark seeps in.

Sometimes your product is too niche to advertise on low funnel words, maybe it’s best to start with addressing problems in blog posts for Google Ads or focus on awareness goals first (which can be a good way to waste your money as well so you’ll have to assess you channel options and your goals).

Check Competition

First thing to do is conduct some competitor research. Find direct competitors and see what words are in their ad text, what are their H1 words on their landing pages.

If you have access to keyword research tools, use them to see what keywords they are advertising on. 

If they offer pretty much exactly what you do, you can get your search ads to start working for you with some competitor campaigns.

Again, check the search terms, make sure they are quality, consider tightening your match types or adding qualifier words to your keywords. For example: App Developers -> Houston App Developers.

Dynamic Search Campaigns

If you are really lost but are dead set on getting Google Ads to work, you can set up a Dynamic Search Campaign which will scan your site and create ads and targeting with Google’s algorithms (think of it as organic search that you pay for).

Conclusion

Hopefully, this guide can help you assess the few types of issues any campaign can run into that will make you feel like Google Ads just isn’t cutting it for you.

I know it’s a long read but if you did read it all, and if you didn’t, thanks for coming here!

Like I said, I can answer all of these questions for you if you don’t want to think about this much more. 

I offer free audits where I return actionable steps to get your account working for you.

Best!

JJ