Hi there,
Thanks for getting in touch. I had a look at your situation and I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on your Meta Ads for your SaaS company. It's a common problem to see low CTR with a small budget, especially in the B2B space, but there are definitely ways to tackle it.
Running ads for SaaS is a different beast to a lot of other industries. The sales cycles are longer, the decision-making process is more complex, and you're often asking for a bigger commitment than a simple eCommerce purchase. A low CTR is often just a symptom of a deeper issue, so we need to look at the whole picture.
We'll need to look at your offer and funnel...
Before we even touch the ads themselves, the first thing I'd look at is what you're actually asking people to do. You mentioned you're a SaaS company, but what's the offer on your landing page? I've run quite a few campaigns for B2B SaaS, and the single biggest sticking point is often the offer itself. A lot of companies jump straight to a "Book a Demo" call to action. While that seems logical, it's a huge ask for someone who's just seen your ad for the first time.
Think about it from their perspective. They're busy, they see an ad that looks mildly interesting, they click, and now you want them to commit 30-60 minutes of their time for a sales call? Most people will just close the tab. It's a massive effort for businesses to even consider changing their software, let alone commit to a demo right away. They only do this if they absolutely have to, and it's never a quick decision.
A much better approach, and one that consistently works for our SaaS clients, is a completely free trial. No credit card required. This gets people in the door with very little friction. They can explore the software on their own terms, see the value for themselves, and then you can use email onboarding sequences and in-app prompts to nurture them towards a paid plan. I remember one client where implementing a frictionless free trial was the main change that took their cost per registration from over $50 down to just $2.38 on Meta ads. It's that powerful.
If a free trial isn't viable for your product for some reason, you need another low-commitment offer. A free tool, a valuable checklist, a whitepaper, something that solves a small piece of their problem and demonstrates your expertise. The goal is to get their email address so you can start a conversation, not to force a sale on the first date.
I'd say you need to get your creative right...
Okay, now for your direct question about content. A low CTR almost always points to an issue with either your targeting or your ad creative. For SaaS on Meta, your creative has to work incredibly hard to stop the scroll and communicate value in just a few seconds.
Forget slick, corporate-style ads. They just blend in. The stuff that works best is often what feels most authentic. I remember several SaaS clients seeing fantastic results with simple, user-generated-style (UGC) videos. They don't need to be high production value; in fact, sometimes a screen recording with a voiceover shot on a phone performs better because it feels more real and trustworthy.
Your creative should focus relentlessly on the pain point and the solution. Don't list features. Nobody cares that your software has 'synergistic cloud integration'. They care that it'll stop them from wasting 5 hours a week on manual data entry. Show them that.
Here are a few creative angles that consistently work for SaaS:
-> Problem/Agitate/Solve (PAS) Video: Start with the pain. "Hate chasing up invoices?" Show a frustrated person at a desk. "It costs you time and money." Show a calendar full of reminders. "Our software automates it all in 30 seconds." Show a quick screen recording of the feature in action, ending with a happy, relieved user.
-> 'Us vs. Them' Static Image: A simple graphic showing the old, complicated way of doing something (e.g., a messy spreadsheet) next to the new, simple way using your software (a clean dashboard). It's a quick, visual win.
-> Quick Demo Video: A 15-30 second screen recording that shows off the single most impressive feature of your software. No fluff, just pure value. Add captions because most people watch with the sound off.
Your ad copy needs to be just as direct. Call out your audience, state the problem, and present your software as the solution. For instance, instead of "Powerful Accounting Software for Modern Businesses", try "Finance Teams: Stop Wasting Days on Month-End Reporting." It's specific, calls out the audience, and hits a known pain point. Getting this messaging right is half the battle.
You probably should rethink your audience targeting...
This is where your small budget comes into play. With limited funds, you can't afford to spray and pray. You have to be incredibly deliberate with your targeting. The bigest mistake I see is people testing loads of broad, irrelevant interests.
For a new SaaS ad account, you dont have any data, so you need to start with detailed targeting. But you have to be clever about it. If you're selling a project management tool for marketing agencies, targeting an interest like "Marketing" is far too broad. You'll get students, entry-level employees, and everyone in between. Instead, you need to find interests that only your ideal customer would have. Think about:
- -> What software do they already use? (e.g., target interests like Asana, Trello, HubSpot)
- -> What industry leaders do they follow? (e.g., Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin)
- -> What publications do they read? (e.g., Adweek, Campaign)
- -> What job titles do they have? (You can layer job title targeting on Meta)
Once you get some traffic and conversions (at least 100, but ideally more), you can then move onto the more powerful stuff. I'd prioritise your audiences like this:
- Detailed Targeting (Interests/Behaviours): Your starting point to gather data. Get this as specific as possible.
- Retargeting (MoFu/BoFu): This is your lowest hanging fruit. Anyone who has visited your website, especially your pricing page or initiated a trial signup, should be in a retargeting audience. They're already warm. With a small budget, you might need to group all website visitors from the last 30-90 days into one audience to have enough scale.
- Lookalike Audiences (ToFu): This is how you scale. Once you have enough trial signups or customers, create a 1% Lookalike audience from that list. This tells Meta to find more people who look exactly like your best users. It's far more effective than guessing with interests. You can work your way down the funnel, creating lookalikes of website visitors, then video viewers, then trial signups, then paying customers.
I remember one client, a medical job matching SaaS, was really struggling. As the case study shows, we reduced their £100 CPA (Cost Per User Acquisition) to £7 CPA (Cost Per User Acquisition) using Meta Ads and Google Ads. We scrapped their broad targeting, built a tight retargeting funnel and then created a 1% lookalike from their existing high-value users. That's the power of proper audience structure.
This is the main advice I have for you:
I've put the key action points into a table for you. This is the framework I'd use to turn the campaign around.
| Area | Recommendation | Why it Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Offer & Funnel | Switch your main Call-To-Action from "Book a Demo" to a frictionless "Start Free Trial". Make it the most prominent thing on your landing page. | This drasticly lowers the barrier to entry, increasing conversion rates and giving you more data to work with for a lower cost. |
| Ad Creative | Create short (15-30s) videos focusing on a single, major pain point your software solves. Use screen recordings or simple UGC-style content. Test this against a direct, benefit-led static image. | Stops the scroll and communicates value quickly to a cold audience. Authentic-looking creative builds more trust than slick, corporate ads. |
| Audience Targeting | Start with 2-3 highly specific 'Detailed Targeting' ad sets based on niche software, publications, or influencers your ICP follows. As soon as you have 100+ trial signups, launch a 1% Lookalike audience. | A small budget demands precision. Specific interests find a higher concentration of your ideal customers. Lookalikes are the most reliable way to scale profitably. |
| Campaign Structure | Run one campaign with a CBO (Campaign Budget Optimisation) setup. Put each of your test audiences (e.g., Interest 1, Interest 2, Lookalike 1) in a separate ad set. Put 2-3 of your best creatives in each ad set. | This structure lets Meta automatically allocate your small budget to the best-performing audience, maximising your results without manual guesswork. |
Putting all this together takes time and a methodical approach. It's not about just setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about understanding the entire customer journey, from the first ad impression to them becoming a paying user, and optimising every single step. It involves knowing your audience inside out, creating compelling ads, and fine-tuning your landing page and offer.
That's where professional help can make a huge difference. An expert can bring years of experience from other SaaS campaigns, identify opportunities you might have missed, and implement a robust strategy to drive down your costs and scale your user acquisition.
If you'd like to go through your account in more detail, feel free to book in a free consultation with us. We can have a proper look at your setup and give you a more detailed plan of action.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
