If your business is looking to use Google’s advertising platform, or maybe you’ve been using it minimally and are ready to try display, consider this article as a warning.
Display has a tendency to get out of control fast. Often it can be misleading. There are tons of audience, topic, and segment options that give you the perception of tight control.
However, especially for SaaS and ESPECIALLY for B2B SaaS, these features aren’t geared towards your business.
This article is meant to make you aware of the good and bad sides of display so you can make a well rounded decision.
Note: this does not necessarily apply to Video and P.Max campaigns.
The understandable temptation of display in SaaS
I’ve had many SaaS clients ask about and even insist that we run display campaigns in Google Ads and have seen mixed results.
Typically, and this article will cover more on this later, retargeting campaigns are what work best.
What always tempts business owners into using display is that the volume is virtually infinite and the costs per click can be pennies on the dollar.
Especially in B2B SaaS where volume for targeted keywords can be very low while CPCs are high.
The thought process behind this is based on the idea that if you can afford 1,000s of clicks with the same money that is currently getting you 50-100, how could you go wrong?
“Even if the targeting is a little worse, shouldn’t we benefit from more clicks?”
My answer: “no.”
What does cost per click indicate
The misnomer that costs per click being higher is understandable. Thinking about paying $30 per click can give any small software company founder an ulcer. Not to mention that watching the data roll in slowly can be a final straw for even the most patient founders.
This is why you hire experts in the area with real experience in your field.
A quality Google Ads Manager who specializes in Google Ads for SaaS will tell you that the cheaper the clicks, the less relevant the click is.
Which means that unless your display ads are retargeting, those $0.10 clicks are borderline irrelevant.
It’s one thing if you are paying $30/click on irrelevant keywords, but targeting users who are searching for your service will never lead you astray. That’s the case for Search Ads.
Now consider this against Display’s non-retargeting options of Audience, Topics, Custom Segments & Placements.
These targeting options are packaged as really neat, accurate, functional ways to target your desired audiences.
Read on to see why this isn’t always true.
How targeting works on display
As previously mentioned, if you want to target specific users who have not interacted with your brand online with display ads, there are a few different options available.
These options can be overlaid to further increase your overall accuracy.
Audiences
Audiences are buckets that Google puts people into. Users get sorted into these buckets based on their search and browsing behavior. Every user of the internet is categorized into many of these buckets.
The buckets that you can retarget to are hierarchically organized as well. For example, there is a ‘life event’ audience for “business creation.” Under that is an audience called “recently started a business,” a subcategory.
If you select to target the higher hierarchically organized item of “business creation” you will also be targeting the lower. Just a little side note.
Often these audiences are vague and inaccurate. Google keeps pretty quiet about what level of engagement is required for enrollment in an audience.
Does searching “Turbo-Tax” make a user eligible for the “accounting software” column? How about accidentally clicking on a QuickBooks display ad?
The argument being made here is that the quality in audiences is questionable at best.
And if you see an audience that could either have B2B intent or B2C intent, it is almost guaranteed that Google is using it as a B2C bucket. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s relevant. Google’s innovates for B2C first and B2B when it can get to it.
Topics
You select topics in a similar way to Audiences. Topics are also hierarchical in how they are displayed, allowing you to dial in to an extent.
Topics are pretty limited towards specific users (namely consumers).
When targeting topics, Google looks at the content on the web page, YouTube channel/video, etc. and determines whether or not to play your ad.
The tough part is that Google isn’t looking for these words specifically. It’s almost like it gives these topics a ‘super broad’ designation.
Even Google warns you to stay away from Topics unless you have an unlimited budget with brand awareness goals.
Again, these are mostly aimed at consumers, not B2B users.
Placements
Placements allow you to pick specific websites, YouTube channels, and apps where you want your ads to show.
While limiting your volume greatly, this might be one of the best ways to target your desired audience if they all have similar behaviors in terms of browsing.
For example, if you have a manufacturing management SaaS and you know of a manufacturing magazine online that has display ads, you can choose to only show your display ads on that site.
To me, this is one of the best options in Display ads for SaaS owners. However, finding applicable placements can be hard.
Custom Segments
Custom Segments is a newer adaptation in terms of targeting in Google Ads.
Like Topics and Audiences, SaaS advertisers can use Custom Segments to observe behavior or target users.
‘Observe’, in this case, means you can track users in that category’s performance without affecting targeting. Eventually, the advertiser can choose to adjust bids for those segments or target them.
Custom segments allow you to combine multiple search attributes to form a persona.
Again, don’t get roped in by how accurate these audience segments sound, the truth is, these options are broader than broad keywords and are not as targeted as they are marketed.
Not to mention, the more you layer in, the more expensive the clicks will be. Leaving you with less than nothing in terms of conversions.
Search Targeting
Search targeting uses the keywords you enter to target users who have searched phrases similar to the ones you’ve entered.
Again this is a broad comparison. If it was targeting users who at one point searched exactly what keywords you wanted to target, then this would be very valuable. However, it’s not.
Interest Targeting
By entering keywords, this acts as a way to create your own audience segments. Google will treat the keywords like broad keywords and find sites, pages, videos and channels with content that aligns.
Website/App Targeting
Lastly, selecting specific websites and Apps will allow Google to look at the content on their respective pages and target users on other sites that Google deems relevant.
To be honest, if you were layering all of these on top of each other, you might have a fairly targeted audience.
However, in SaaS & B2B, the lower volume will end up making a fairly targeted audience un-targetable by Google.
Demographics
Demographics include targeting age ranges, income levels, locations and more.
This might sound nice, but Google doesn’t really know these things about its users. Not as accurately as you think.
One study by Search Engine Land found that at most, these features are 50% correct.
It even found that the geographic targeting can be insanely off. One of the features that I would have figured to be the most accurate.
Strengths Of Display
Again, if you have the budget, Display’s cheap clicks and vast volume are great avenues to explore.
Just expect a long road to success.
Display targeting and automated bidding get better by the month and still remain relatively cheap.
Typically, Google’s new features lag in efficacy for B2B and most SaaS users by a year or so.
So don’t get B2C success mixed up with what can work for your B2B SaaS.
The Best Time To Use Display Is Retargeting
Forever and always, the best time to use display is with retargeting.
As soon as you start up your website, or at the very least when you set up your first Google Ads, you should create some relatively specific audiences.
That way you can start building up those audiences so that once you have the budget to retarget, you can. Most audiences require a sample size of 100+ to target on display and 1000+ in search.
Any traffic that goes to your site, regardless of its source, can be retargeted.
As long as you have good targeting with your incoming traffic, or well organized retargeting audience structure, you can effectively use retargeting to focus on relevant users while they search elsewhere on the web.
Summing Up Why Display Is A No-Go For SaaS Advertisers
The best example I can give the reader to show the accuracy of how Google likes to categorize people is to check for yourself.
You can check how Google has assigned you a profile by:
- Navigating to your Google account page: https://myaccount.google.com/
- Select Data & Personalization
- Scroll to Ad Settings
- Select Ad Personalization
- Find the section called “How your ads are personalized.” This will show you what audiences Google has associated you with.
For me, I’d say that Google was accurate for about 30% of these, and I manually entered some of these in at one point.
If you are a startup with a limited budget; are you willing to spend money on something that is roughly accurate at best?
Should you be running search ads for your SaaS?
Yes, your SaaS should be targeting low funnel searches with search ads.
If your SaaS is in a competitive search market, or people are searching for your solution directly, why not target users who are actually asking for your product?
The strength of search ads in SaaS is that you can read your user’s mind. A search is a direct indication of their intent.
Even if you could have a hyper-targeted audience in Display, the user isn’t necessarily intending to visit your website.
A click might be considered more of a distraction in this case.
Asking a user to ‘book a demo’ or ‘sign-up’ off of a distraction is a tall order.
Here are some resources on why search ads are useful and how to set them up:
- Search Keyword Intents
- Optimizing In The First 120 Days Of Your Search Ads
- Avoiding Classic Google Ads Mistakes For SaaS
- An Easy & Effective Search Ad Strategy For Google Ads
Summarizing
In summary, if you are a B2B or SaaS looking to use display, proceed with caution.
Display has very appealing attributes but a lot of negatives hidden under the surface.
Google will encourage you to use Display because it enables you to spend more in the platform.
However, tight budgets can be better focused elsewhere. Don’t get trapped by the lipstick on this pig.
Thanks for reading!