Paid social media & SaaS businesses are a match made in heaven. Due to their typically longer sales cycles, most SaaS businesses require at least 7-10 separate touchpoints with a prospect in order to convert them to a customer. And the top and middle funnel stages are even more important than.
Powerful paid social channels like LinkedIn Ads, Facebook and Twitter are the perfect instruments for filling this hole, and pushing an early stage lead into a fully-fledged customer. And as a result, they are staple elements of most SaaS marketing strategies.
In this article, we provide our favorite shortcuts that can help you maximize the potential of social media for your SaaS business (and save you time & money in the long run). If you want an extra boost, you might want to consider investing in an experienced SaaS growth agency like Digital Rhinos. Let’s get into it!
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Nail your Audience
The key to performance on any Paid social media platform is being able to configure the perfect audience. If you don’t nail this step, any campaign you run is unlikely to achieve the results you’re after. So, how do you perfect the art of audience creation?
First step is to do in-depth persona research. Find out exactly who your target audience is. This means everything from who they are, to where they work, what they do, what their interests are and where they spend their time online. Collect all this inform
From there, the specifics of getting in front of this audience depend on your platform. For Facebook Ads, for example, we’d recommend creating a list with an intent platform like Bombora, or by creating a lookalike off your prospects or customers.
While for LinkedIn Ads, we’d recommend using the very nuanced, specific demographic filters (job title, seniority, location) to make your audience as targeted as possible (or use a list in the same way you would on Facebook).
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Leverage Video
Video is the language of the modern marketer. And even more so when it comes to paid social. If you haven’t reserved a big space for video in your collateral – big mistake! We’d recommend creating at least one SaaS video for every stage of the funnel – top, middle and bottom.
This might look like a high-level brand awareness video, a video promoting a lead gen asset and a demo walk-through video. Obviously, the more diversity the merrier – but this is the startin point we’d recommend. Try out different things – animated vs live action, short vs long, CTA vs no CTA. See what works and pivot to accommodate.
Leverage video like a pro and we promise your SaaS business won’t regret it!
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Lead generation campaigns for mid funnel
Our final tip on the agenda is using lead gen campaigns promoting a MOFU content asset at the mid funnel. This is particularly effective for Linkedin Ads and Facebook Ads where the lead generation capabilities are very strong.
Leverage a longer-form asset like an eBook, guide or whitepaper that deals with a pain point your target audience is suffering on, and then present a number of ways to solve that (including your own SaaS tool).
Then gate it behind a form and choose the fields you want to capture – Name, Email, Company, Phone Number etc. We’d recommend using a lower number of fields as the more info you ask for, the higher the friction. At the same time, you want to make sure you’re getting value out of the campaign. Our sweet spot is 5-7 fields.
Smash your social targets
Now that you have our 3 shortcuts to Paid social media success, you have no excuse but to smash your social targets and supercharge your overall SaaS marketing results. Before you get out there and take what’s yours, keep in mind that these channels, while important, are best used in conjunction with other types of channels like Google Ads, Bing, Capterra, SEO and Youtube. Now, go forth and thrive!
