Solved: Optimizing SaaS Ad Campaigns to Lower CPA

Hi there,

Thanks for getting in touch. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to optimise your campaigns and creative to unlock the next level of growth and significantly lower your CPA. I see you're in the MarTech space with a SaaS funnel builder – quite a few SaaS clients are seeing similar problems when they scale, so it's quite normal. Basically, what gets you initial traction won't necessarily keep working as you scale up your budget.

We'll need to look at audience refinement...

First things first, let's talk about audiences. If your CPA has plateaued, ad fatigue is probably playing a big role here, but so is a lack of audience refinement. You need to keep things fresh or your targeting will become exhausted. When you're scaling, it's easy to just keep pumping money into the same old audiences, but eventually, they get saturated. Are you layering your audiences at all? Have you looked at using lookalike audiences based on your best converting customers? Then, narrow it down even more with interest targeting like 'digital marketing' or 'marketing automation' – really dial in on your ideal customer profile.

I remember working on a campaign for a SaaS company where we found that layering lookalikes with specific interest targeting was a pretty powerful combination. It helped us reach new potential clients who were actually likely to convert, without just blowing through budget on random people who'll never become paying customers. Have you had a look at who is converting, look at their behaviours and interests and build that into your segmentation to see what happens.

I'd say you need fresh ad creative...

Now, let's move onto creative. If your ads are getting stale, your audience will start tuning them out. It's time to shake things up and test different ad formats and messaging. This isn't just about making things look pretty, it's about finding what resonates with your target audience at different stages of the funnel. It's important to keep your ads fresh or they will eventually just stop working.

I remember one SaaS client who was stuck in a rut. Their CPA was creeping up, and they couldn't figure out why. They were using really boring product screenshots and dry copy in their ads. We changed it to focus on customer testimonials and case studies, and their conversions went up. People want to see that your product is actually helping real customers, not just that it has a bunch of features. A quick and easy win is to test putting a person's face to the product.

And speaking of the funnel, make sure the creative aligns with the stage of the funnel. Top-of-funnel ads should focus on awareness and pain points, middle-of-funnel ads on solutions, and bottom-of-funnel ads on product features and pricing. People need different information at each stage of their buying journey, so your ads should reflect that.

You probably should track the entire funnel...

Finally, are you actually tracking the entire funnel? This is another big one that lots of companies overlook. It's not enough to just look at CPA – you need to know which ads are driving the most qualified leads and which ones are just wasting your money. Make sure you've got proper conversion tracking set up and that you're using a tool like Google Analytics or HubSpot to track your leads through the entire sales process. You should be able to tell which ads lead to which actions on your landing page - and then map these actions to customer conversions.

You need to track the entire journey, from the first ad impression to the final sale. Then, you can identify the bottlenecks and optimise accordingly. Are people dropping off on your landing page? Maybe you need to improve your copy or your design. Are they not converting from leads to customers? Maybe you need to tweak your sales process. Without proper tracking, you're just flying blind.

If you aren't optimising to conversions, I'd definitely optimise for conversions. I mean that's usually the goal. What I'd always do to optimise performance is split test creative and targeting within the same campaign.

You'll need to think about your targeting...

I also wanted to say something about the targeting and ad platform you're using. If your target audience is actively searching for a solution, Google Search ads may be your best bet. You'd do some keyword research to find keywords related to what your ideal customer persona might be searching for when they need your services. If they aren't searching for a solution, then social media ads might work. You'd need to get the targeting right. For B2B your main option here is usually LinkedIn as that's where you have narrow B2B targeting available.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Basically, scaling SaaS campaigns in the MarTech space isn't a walk in the park. But with the right approach, it's definitely achievable. It requires a mix of audience refinement, creative testing, funnel tracking, and the right ad platform. It's about understanding your customer, testing ideas out and optimising based on data. With a solid strategy and a bit of elbow grease, you can unlock the next level of growth and significantly lower your CPA.

You might wanna consider working with someone with expertise in scaling software campaigns. I've run quite a few campaigns for B2B SaaS and we've seen some really good results, e.g. I remember one campaign where we drove 4,622 registrations at $2.38 cost per registration for a B2B Software using Meta Ads. Of course, every business is unique. But our experience with similar businesses in the MarTech space could definitely be valuable to you.

We offer a free initial consultation where we review your strategy and account together. It is usually super helpful and gives potential clients a taste of the expertise they'll see if they decide to work with us.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh