Solved: Are Reddit Ads Effective? User Experiences?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how you might go about promoting your SaaS. It's a question we get a lot, and the answer isn't always as simple as just picking one ad platform and hoping for the best. Where you should advertise really depends on who your customers are and where they hang out online. I've laid out my thinking below, based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns.

We'll need to look at your customer first...

Okay, so the very first thing I'd do, before even thinking about ads, is get really clear on your ideal customer. Who are the companies that get the most value from your software? What size are they? What industry are they in? And most importantly, who are the decision makers at these companies? Are you selling to a Head of Marketing, a CTO, a small business owner? You need to know this inside and out.

Once you have a clear picture of them, the next question is: are they actively searching for a solution like yours right now?

Honestly, most business services, especially software, are pretty difficult to sell unless the company already has an urgent need or a problem they are trying to solve. It's a huge effort for a business to switch systems or adopt a new tool, so they're not usually browsing for new software just for the fun of it. They're looking when something breaks or when they hit a wall with their current process. Understanding this is probably the biggest factor in choosing where to spend your first advertising pounds.

I'd say you should focus on search first...

Because of that, for most B2B SaaS companies, Google Search ads will likely be your best option to start with. It lets you capture that existing demand. You're putting your solution right in front of people at the exact moment they're raising their hand and saying "I need help with this".

You'd want to do some proper keyword research to figure out what your ideal customers are typing into Google. Think about the problems your software solves. For example, if you sell project management software, you might target keywords like "best project management tool for agencies" or "trello alternative". The more specific you can be, the better. You want to match their intent perfectly.

This approach can be incredibly effective. I remember working with a medical job matching SaaS platform. When they came to us, their Cost Per User Aquisition (CPA) was over £100, which was just not sustainable for them. We did a full overhaul, and a big part of the strategy was refining their Google Ads, alongside some work on Meta ads, targeting very specific, high-intent keywords that their ideal users (both medical practices and job-seeking professionals) were searching for. By doing that, we managed to get their CPA right down to just £7. It completely changed the economics of their business and allowed them to scale. It really shows the power of getting in front of people who are already looking.

Of course, sending them from an ad to a poor website is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. We'll get to that in a bit, but your landing page needs to be built to convert this traffic, with a really compelling offer.

You probably should consider social media ads later...

What if your audience isn't actively searching? Or what if you've maxed out what you can get from Google Search and want to scale further? That's when you'd look at social media platforms. Here, you're not capturing existing demand, you're creating it. You're interrupting their scrolling to show them a solution to a problem they might not even have realised they could solve better.

For B2B SaaS, your best option here is usually LinkedIn Ads. It's more expensive, no doubt about it, but the targeting is brilliant for reaching specific professionals. You can target by job title, company size, industry, seniority, and so on. It's the best way to make sure your ad is being seen by the exact decision makers you need to reach.

For example, you can get really granular. You could make a list of target companies you'd love to have as clients and then target the specific decision makers at just those companies. This can be super effective for high-ticket offers. I remember a campaign we ran for a software client targeting B2B decision makers this way, where we were getting qualified leads for about $22 CPL, which they were very happy with. Depending on your objective, you've got different ad formats to test. Sponsored content (image or video ads in the feed) usually works well for generating leads, either to a landing page or using LinkedIn's own Lead Gen Forms which pre-fill the user's details. Lead Gen Forms often get a lower cost per lead, but the leads can be less qualified because it's so easy to sign up. Sending them to a dedicated landing page means more effort for them, so you'll get fewer leads, but they'll likely be much better quality.

Then you've got Meta (Facebook/Instagram). The B2B targeting options here are much more limited. You can target things like "small business owners" or admins of Facebook business pages, which can work well if that's your audience. But you can't target a "Head of IT at a 100-person software company" like you can on LinkedIn. That said, it's not impossible to make it work. I remember one campaign that drove 4,622 registrations for a software tool at just $2.38 per registration. It's definately worth testing, but I'd usually prioritise LinkedIn for precise B2B targeting.

You'll need a solid offer and website...

Right, this is a big one. You can have the best ads and targeting in the world, but if your website and your offer aren't right, you're just going to burn through your budget. I've looked at so many SaaS websites where it's immediately obvious why their ads aren't working.

The first thing is the offer. For a B2B software, you're dealing with long sales cycles. A business isn't going to make a snap decision. They need to trust you, and they need to try before they buy. Are you offering a free trial? If not, you really should be. I see so many companies that only offer a "Book a Demo". A demo is a sales call. A trial is a chance for the user to actually experience the value of your product for themselves. Your competition is almost certainly offering free trials, maybe even for several months, plus discounts to get people in the door. You need to compete with that. Who is going to commit to paying for a new accounting system, for instance, without even being able to click around inside it first? They just won't.

Then there's the website itself. Your landing page needs to be a persuasive, conversion-focused machine. The copy needs to be spot-on, focusing on the benefits and outcomes for the customer, not just listing features. I'm not sure what your main value proposition is, but something like "Where business meets privacy" might not be the main thing a business cares about. They care about their system being reliable, saving them time, making them more money, and having all the features they need. Your messaging needs to hammer that home.

The page also needs to build trust. B2B buyers are cautious. You need trust signals like reviews, testimonials, case studies, logos of customers you work with, maybe links to your social profiles. It needs to look professional and trustworthy, otherwise people won't feel comfortable even starting a free trial, let alone giving you their credit card details.

I've run quite a few campaigns for B2B SaaS, and the ones that succeed always have a killer offer (usually a completely free trial) and a landing page with persuasive copy that's designed to do one thing: get people to sign up. For our clients, we often bring in a specialist copywriter with experience in writing for SaaS to get this part right. It makes that much of a difference.

We'll need to look at your campaign structure...

Assuming you've got your customer, your platform choice, your offer and your website sorted, you then need to think about how to actually structure your ad campaigns for success. It's not about just throwing a few audiences into a campaign and seeing what sticks. You need a methodical approach.

I usually think about it in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your cold traffic. People who've never heard of you before. Here you'd be using your detailed targeting on LinkedIn (job titles, industries etc) or your keywords on Google Search. The goal is just to make them aware of you and get them to your site.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): These are people who have shown some interest. They've visited your website, watched a part of your video ad, or engaged with your social media page, but they haven't started a trial yet. You'd run seperate retargeting campaigns to this group, showing them different ads, maybe a case study or a testimonial, to nudge them towards signing up.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is your hottest audience. They've gone to the checkout or pricing page, or maybe even added a plan to their cart but didn't complete the signup. You need to hit this group with urgent ads, maybe reminding them of the benefits or offering a special limited-time discount to get them over the line.

This kind of structure allows you to tailor your message to how familiar someone is with your brand. For new accounts, you'd start with ToFu to gather data. Once you have enough website visitors (you usually need at least 100 people in an audience to retarget them, but really you want more), you can build out your MoFu and BoFu campaigns.

Within these campaigns, you need to be constantly testing. Test different audiences. Test different ad creatives – images vs videos, different headlines, different copy. This is how you find winners and improve performance over time. A common issue we see is that campaigns will work well for a while and then performance starts to drop. This is normal, especially for software. As you spend more, your costs will naturally go up because you start reaching people who are less likely to convert. The only way around this is to have a rigorous testing process to constantly find new winning creatives and new audiences, and to work on improving your website conversion rate and customer lifetime value. It's a continuous process of optimisation.

What kind of costs can you expect?

This is the million-dollar question, isn't it? The honest answer is: it depends. It's affected by your industry, your targeting, the quality of your ads, your landing page, and the country you're targeting. However, I can give you some rough ballpark figures based on what we typically see for B2B SaaS lead generation in developed countries like the UK, US, or Canada.

For a lead, like a free trial signup or a demo request, you might be looking at a Cost Per Click (CPC) somewhere in the £2-£10 range on LinkedIn, and maybe £1-£5 on Google Search for competitive terms. On your landing page, a decent conversion rate would be anywhere from 2% to 10% for a free trial signup. Let's do some quick maths to see what that means for your Cost Per Aquisition (CPA).

As you can see, the range is huge. A £20 cost per trial might be amazing for you, while a £400 cost would be a disaster. Where you land in that range depends on all the factors we've just talked about. Getting your targeting, ad creative, and landing page right is what moves you from the high end of that range to the low end. I remember we've had B2B SaaS clients getting trials for around $22 on LinkedIn, but we've also taken over accounts where costs were in the hundreds of dollars per lead. It all comes down to proper optimisation.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

To pull this all together, here is a summary of the approach I would recommend you take. Think of it as a phased plan to build a scalable advertising engine for your SaaS.

As you can probably tell, getting this right is more than just a bit of technical setup. It's about deep strategic thinking, understanding your customer, methodical testing, and continuous optimisation. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best; it's about building a robust system for customer aquisition.

This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. We could help you not just with the implementation but with the entire strategy, from refining your offer and landing page to identifying the best audiences and creating ads that convert. The goal is to make sure every pound you spend on advertising is working as hard as possible to grow your business.

Hope this has been helpful in giving you a clearer picture. If you'd like to chat more about your specific situation, we offer a free initial consultation where we can have a proper look at your SaaS and give you some more tailored advice. Feel free to get in touch if that's something you'd be interested in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh