Any healthy search ads lead gen campaign starts with an intelligent campaign structure.
Many B2C eCommerce tutorials online will tell you there are multiple ways to structure your campaigns. I would argue that most SaaS businesses have a single option (unless their SaaS has multiple offerings).
Having a great, intent-based structure will keep you organized and enable faster growth. Restructuring an ad account can lead to 27% decrease in CPA.
So whether you are reconstructing SaaS search ads accounts or building your first, here is a good way to look at your keywords so you can get more leads.
The 4 Main Types Of SaaS Search Intents
Search term intents go by many names depending on the Google Advertiser. Not to mention that outside of SaaS, there isn’t even agreement on the number of intents.
For SaaS however, it can be a lot simpler than many B2C writers will make it feel.
The three intents that SaaS marketers have to worry about are informational, navigational, and transactional.
Informational
Informational intent searches are search terms where a user is trying to learn about something.
This could include long tail keywords like “what should my SaaS landing page look like?”
Often these searchers want to watch videos, read blogs and see rating lists.
Navigational: Brand & Competitor
Navigational intent indicates that the user knows where they want to go, they just don’t know the address.
These are searches like “Calendly” or “Hubspot.”
This search indicates the user is either ready to buy a specific brand or wants to go to a brand’s page to contact, log in, etc.
Transactional
Transactional keywords indicate that the SaaS searcher is well-informed about the market and is ready to book a meeting, get a demo, start a trial or buy now. You know, become a lead or customer.
Often, in the Google Ads SaaS world, these keywords look like “spend analytics tool” or “Calendar tool for business.”
Good ad accounts focus almost 100% on these keywords (at least to start).
Finally, many will split “transactional” keywords into two, one being commercial and the other being transactional.
Differences in how SaaS buyers operate and search volume contribute to the consolidated version that was just laid out.
Benefits of organizing your SaaS account based on intents
Your SaaS Google Ads campaigns should be organized by intent. If your budget is small, just focusing on transactional keywords should be your priority. This is where your SaaS leads are lowest-hanging.
These keywords will drive the bulk of the value in your account.
In fact, 85.2% of all search ad conversions come from transactional clicks.
It’s important to keep intents in separate campaigns for the following reasons.
Your SaaS can emphasize each intent value
Each level of intent will behave differently from one another. Typically SaaS transactional search intents have low volume, high CPCs and high conversion rates.
Informational searches typically have the highest search volume, less expensive CPCs, and lower conversion rates.
Navigational, brand intents will have medium to low search volume, extremely low CPCs and higher conversion rates. Comparatively, competitor campaign’s conv. Rates will look more like transactional keywords.
| Intent | Volume | CPC | Conv. Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigational | ++ | $$ | ++ |
| Informational | ++++ | $ | + |
| Transactional | + | $$$$ | ++++ |
With how much these key characteristics vary from intent to intent, it is very important that your software-as-a-service business doesn’t lump them all into one campaign.
Disorganized campaigns going to confuse you and Google
With that in mind, the high volume and cheaper informational keywords will eat your budget.
This will lead to you getting less clicks on your transactional keywords which should be the most valuable keywords in the search ads account.
Not to mention, trying to interpret performance in a jumbled account like that will lead to headaches and mistakes.
How To Differentiate Between Different Search Intents
Each SaaS intent has indicators to help you keep them straight. Unfortunately, as with most search ad theories, there is a lot of gray area in between. This can be a starting point.
| Search Intent | Key Indicators |
|---|---|
| Navigational – Brand | Contains your brand name |
| Navigational – Competitor | Contains competitor name |
| Informational | Asks a question, talks about a pain, “how to” |
| Transactional | Includes “tool,” “software,” “for business,” “for salon” |
For most, it’s easiest to picture what type of content a searcher wanted when they typed it in Google’s search bar.
- Navigational Brand: home page
- Navigational Competitor: likely the searcher wants to see that competitor’s homepage, so if you are going to target these terms, create a comparison page.
- Informational: blog post, “how to” article, “best of” list, general information article.
- Transactional: product details, features/benefits, conversion opportunities. Here’s how to make a great transactional, low funnel landing page.
Google Ads Search Intents Are Different For SaaS
Lead generation is a completely different craft in Google Ads than what eCommerce and B2C advertisers are used to.
A big part of that is the difference in how transactional searches look.
Your future SaaS users are very feature/benefit/use focused. They’re also hyper aware of your competitors.
Transactional Searches In SaaS Vs Elsewhere
For your lead generation in Google Ads to be efficient, you can not rely on your SaaS transactional intent keywords to look like B2C.
In B2C, a transactional term might have the words “buy,” “online,” or “discount” appended to the phrase, indicating a commercial intent.
That’s because B2C products and services have more searches and are usually available on various marketplaces. This means they are literally looking for a place to buy it (for cheap).
Your SaaS users however, are not going to use the words “buy” or “online.” Most likely those keywords won’t be searched and therefore your SaaS can’t target them.
“Website hosting,” “spend analytics platform,” and other product-related terms will be your go-to.
Also, look for terms with feature, benefit, and use indicators. Keywords that contain things like “for procurement,” “small business,” “easy,” “no code,” etc. will also be transactional.
Note: those types of keywords can give you a direction in terms of landing page content as well.
Navigation Intent For Saas Google Ads
Navigational intent keywords are another type of keyword that can render positive results in Google Ads.
Between B2C and SaaS, these keywords are pretty similar.
These terms include brand names mostly.
Targeting your own brand name is good for when your competitors are showing above you for your own name.
Targeting competitor campaigns (especially on “_____ alternative” terms) can render good results. Just make sure they are a direct competitor.
Avoid running ads on terms that include “login” or “free alternative.”
Is Informational Intent Different For SaaS?
Your informational intent keywords will look pretty similar between SaaS and B2C. As far as lead generation is concerned, these keywords should be your last resort when paying for clicks.
However, your SEO strategy will largely target these keywords. So there is a place for them in your overall search strategy.
Informational keywords in B2C will often look like: “fix back pain when working.”
While SaaS keywords can look like: “manage all of my SaaS applications.”
You’ll notice that neither of these know what solution is going to fit their needs yet.
Solutions that could fit each of these are “shoe inserts” and “SaaS management platform” respectively. However, the user might choose to solve these issues in different ways like stretching and reducing their SaaS apps.
If you want to target these keywords, lead the user to a list or ‘how to’ article.
Which Search Intents Should I target With Google Ads
At this point it’s pretty clear as to which keywords are better for Lead Gen in Google Ads.
For aggressive SaaS accounts who want to target more users, there’s a place for all intents.
First Few Months Of SaaS Google Ads
Especially for SaaS startups, and accounts with more search impressions share available in current campaigns, sticking to transactional intent keywords will be the best course of action.
Yes, transactional keywords are more expensive & lower in volume but their conversion rates will more than make up for it.
At the end of the day, you can always loosen up your match type to attract more traffic and give more control to the algorithms, while keeping your transactional keywords.
Growing Your SaaS Google Ads Dominion
As you grow your lead gen campaigns for SaaS, expanding to retargeting, competitor, brand, and finally informational keywords is the general rule of thumb (in that order).
This way, with transactional keywords driving the ROI in your account, these other campaigns build your SaaS sales funnel up from a strong base.
Summary
Transactional intent is the place to focus on for your SaaS search ad campaigns. You’ll end up with more leads at a lower cost which will generate marketing dollars for aggressive expansion.
I hope you learned something reading this article. If you have any questions, as always, you can get all of this advice applied directly to your business FOR FREE. Fill out the form on this page and get a free strategy meeting.