The B2B SaaS Founder's Playbook for YouTube & TikTok Advertising

Most B2B SaaS founders I speak to think advertising on YouTube or TikTok is like setting a pile of money on fire. They see these platforms as playgrounds for B2C brands selling trainers and energy drinks, not serious software. And honestly, based on how most of them are trying to do it, they're not wrong. They take the same dry, feature-heavy approach they use on LinkedIn, slap it into a video, and wonder why they're getting zero results. It's a total waste of time and money.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: your ideal customers are on YouTube and TikTok. The CTO you're trying to reach is on YouTube learning how to fix a leaky tap. The Head of Sales is scrolling through TikTok on their lunch break. They just aren't in 'work mode'. So you can't approach them with a 'work' message. The entire playbook has to change. This isn't about going viral or getting millions of vanity views. It’s about using these platforms for surgical strikes, interrupting the right person with the right problem at the right time. Forget what you think you know. Let's talk about how to actually make this work.

So, why are my B2B ads failing on visual platforms?

The core of the problem is a category error. Founders try to apply the logic of search-based platforms like Google, where intent is explicit, to discovery-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok. On Google, someone types "accounting software for small business" – they've already told you their problem. On YouTube, they're watching a video about F1 racing. You have to manufacture the intent.

This is why your demographic targeting is failing you. "Companies in the UK with 50-200 employees in the finance sector" is a useless audience. It tells you nothing about their actual needs. You end up creating a generic ad that says something like, "The leading provider of innovative financial solutions," which speaks to absolutely no one. It's boring, it gets skipped, and you've just paid for the privilege.

You have to stop thinking about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) as a demographic and start defining it as a nightmare. A specific, urgent, expensive, and maybe even career-threatening problem. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified that her best developers are about to quit because their CI/CD pipeline is a broken, frustrating mess. For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's 'a partner missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a massive malpractice suit.' Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you nail that, you've got the foundation for an ad they physically can't ignore.

When you shift your perspective from demographics to nightmares, your entire approach changes. Instead of creating generic ads, you start to build highly specific campaigns that target their real problems, not just their job titles. This is the only way to break through the noise on platforms that aren't built for B2B. Most founders find this shift difficult, but our experience shows that getting this right is the difference between burning cash and building a scalable customer acquisition machine. We've seen it time and again; a deep understanding of customer pain is the foundation of any successful B2B paid social strategy that doesn't waste money.

How do I calculate what I can *actually* afford to spend?

This is the question that should precede any ad campaign, but it's the one most founders skip. They get obsessed with low-level metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Lead (CPL) without understanding the most important equation of all: the relationship between your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer dictates your entire strategy, your budget, and your ability to scale aggressively. Get this wrong, and you're flying blind, likely to run out of cash before you find product-market fit. Tbh this is one of the most common issues we see with new clients.

Let's break it down with some simple maths. For a SaaS business, it looks something like this:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount you make from a customer each month? Let's say it's £250.
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for costs like servers and support? For software, this is often high, let's say 85%.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? A healthy rate might be 3%.

The calculation is straightforward:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

LTV = (£250 * 0.85) / 0.03

LTV = £212.50 / 0.03 = £7,083

In this example, each customer you acquire is worth just over £7,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number is your north star. A healthy business model aims for an LTV to CAC ratio of at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £2,361 (£7,083 / 3) to acquire a single new customer.

Now, let's work backwards. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified trials into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £236 for that trial. Suddenly, a £100 CPL from a hyper-targeted YouTube campaign doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that separates founders who gamble from founders who build predictable revenue engines. Grasping this is fundamental, it's the core of how you can stop wasting money on ads and start scaling intelligently.

What kind of ad creative actually works on YouTube for B2B?

On YouTube, you are an interruption. No one is there to see your ad. They're waiting for their video to start. This means you have exactly five seconds—the length of the 'Skip Ad' button countdown—to earn their attention. If you waste that time with your logo, a fancy animation, or a generic opening line, you've already lost. Most B2B brands get this completely wrong. They think a YouTube ad is just a TV ad on a smaller screen.

The only way to win is to use a direct, problem-focused hook. You need to articulate their nightmare so clearly that they feel like you've been reading their emails. We use a simple framework for this: Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: State their exact pain point in the first five seconds. Be brutally specific.
• Agitate: Twist the knife. Remind them of the consequences of inaction. What happens if this problem continues?
• Solve: Introduce your SaaS as the clear, obvious solution—the bridge away from that pain.

Let's imagine you're selling a FinOps platform that helps companies control their cloud spend. A bad, typical B2B ad would start with, "Introducing CloudCost Pro, the intelligent way to manage your AWS bill." Skipped. Immediately.

A PAS-driven ad would start like this: (Video opens on a stressed-looking founder staring at a screen)
Hook (Problem): "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire you have to put out."
Agitate: "You're burning through cash you're meant to be using for hiring, and your board is starting to ask questions you can't answer. You're flying blind, and it's getting expensive."
Solve: "Imagine opening your cloud bill and actually smiling. You see where every single pound is going, and our platform automatically flags and eliminates waste for you. That's what our platform does. Start a free trial today and find your first £1,000 in savings in the next 15 minutes."

See the difference? The second ad isn't selling software; it's selling relief. It's selling control. That's what cuts through the noise. It's a core principle detailed in our guide to generating B2B leads on YouTube—you have to start with their pain.

When it comes to targeting, you layer this powerful creative on top of smart audience selection. Don't just target "business professionals." Get granular:

• Custom Intent Audiences: Target people who have recently searched on Google for terms like "AWS cost optimisation," "how to reduce cloud spend," or even your competitors' names. This is as close to search intent as you can get on YouTube.
• Channel Placements: Don't let YouTube decide where your ads run. Manually select to run your ads on specific videos and channels that your ideal customer watches. Think channels that review software, offer startup advice, or discuss cloud architecture.
• In-Market Audiences: Use Google's data to target people who are actively in the market for "Cloud Services" or "Business Financial Software." It's broader, but can be effective for scaling once you have a winning creative.

Is TikTok a complete waste of time for serious B2B SaaS?

Right now, you're probably thinking, "Okay, I can maybe see YouTube. But TikTok? That's just kids dancing. My customers are not on there." And you're partially right. Your customers are not on TikTok to be sold to. They're there to be entertained, to learn something new, or just to decompress. If your ad shows up looking like a polished, corporate video, they will scroll past it so fast it'll make your head spin.

For B2B SaaS, TikTok is a top-of-funnel play that only works if you follow one rule: your ad cannot look like an ad. It has to feel native to the platform. This means ditching the corporate gloss and embracing a more authentic, value-first approach. Think "edu-tainment"—content that educates and entertains simultaneously.

So what does this actually look like for a SaaS company?

• Quick, Actionable Tips: A 30-second video sharing one simple trick to solve a tiny version of the problem your software solves. For a project management tool, it could be "The 3-line email that will actually get your engineers to update their tasks." You provide value first, and only briefly mention your tool at the end.
• UGC-Style Testimonials: Don't create a polished case study video. Get a real customer (or an actor who looks like one) to record a simple, vertical video on their phone talking about their 'Before' and 'After' experience. Authenticity is everything. One of the best ways to get started is by sourcing custom UGC instead of trying to use AI or rip-offs.
• Myth Debunking: Call out a common misconception in your industry. For a cybersecurity SaaS, a video titled "Why your multi-factor authentication isn't as secure as you think" would grab attention from the right people.
• "Day in the Life" Content: Show a user enjoying the benefits of your software. For a sales automation tool, it could be a salesperson finishing their work at 3 PM because your tool did all the boring admin for them. It's aspirational and focuses on the outcome, not the features.

Targeting on TikTok is also a different beast. While you can target interests like "small business" or "marketing," the real power comes from the algorithm itself. Your primary job is to give the algorithm a strong signal with your creative. If you make a video that genuinely resonates with startup founders, the algorithm is scarily good at finding more of them. We often start with broader targeting on TikTok than on other platforms and let a winning creative find its own audience. We've seen some of our clients get great results on Meta ads with SaaS campaigns, like the one that got 4,622 registrations at only $2.38 each, and the principles are similar for TikTok: a strong creative and offer can make even broad audiences work.

The key mistake is measuring a TikTok campaign by direct, last-click conversions. It's an introductory handshake, not a closing argument. The goal is to plant a seed of awareness and trust so that when they *do* have the problem you solve, your name is the first one that comes to mind. Many founders get frustrated because they see lots of traffic but few immediate sign-ups, but that's often a sign of a deeper issue with their offer or landing page, not the ad itself. It's a common problem we see with businesses who complain about getting clicks from TikTok but zero conversions; the ad did its job, but the next step in the funnel failed.

What do I offer them? (Hint: it's not a demo)

This is probably the single biggest failure point in all of B2B advertising. You've done the hard work: you've identified the nightmare, created a compelling ad, and got the right person to click. They land on your page, and what do they see? "Request a Demo."

The "Request a Demo" button is the most arrogant Call to Action in marketing. It presumes that your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than schedule a 30-minute meeting to be sold to by a junior salesperson. It's high-friction, it offers zero immediate value, and it instantly frames your product as a commodity that needs to be 'demonstrated' rather than experienced. It’s a conversion killer.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment—a moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must give before you ask.

For SaaS founders, you have an incredible unfair advantage here. The gold standard offers are:

1. The Freemium or Free Trial (No Credit Card): This is the ultimate power move. Let them use the actual product. Let them import their data, invite a colleague, and solve a small part of their problem for free. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced. I remember working with a SaaS client who struggled with high CPAs until they switched from a demo request to a free trial offer. Their CPA dropped from over £100 to just £7. The offer was everything.
2. A Free, Valuable Tool: If a full trial isn't feasible, bottle your expertise into a tool that provides instant value. A marketing automation SaaS could offer a free 'Email Subject Line Grader'. A data analytics platform could offer a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top 3 issues in their database. It solves a real, tangible micro-problem for free, earning you the right to solve the whole thing.
3. High-Value Gated Content (Use With Caution): This is the lowest tier. A whitepaper or ebook can work, but only if it's exceptionally good and not just a thinly veiled sales pitch. A benchmark report with industry data they can't get elsewhere, or a detailed playbook on a complex topic. This is a much harder sell than a trial or a tool.

You have to see the journey from their perspective. An ad on TikTok interrupts them. A demo request is a huge commitment. A free trial, however, is a low-risk way to satisfy their curiosity. Your entire go-to-market strategy for paid ads hinges on making that next step as valuable and frictionless as possible.

How do I structure my campaigns to avoid burning cash?

Here's another uncomfortable truth: when you run a 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach' campaign on platforms like YouTube or TikTok (or Meta for that matter), you are paying the algorithm to find the worst possible audience for your product. You've given it a specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being ruthlessly efficient, does exactly that. It seeks out the users within your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever sign up for a trial. Why? Because those users aren't in demand. Their attention is cheap. This is the fundamental reason why so many founders are wasting their ad budget on awareness—they're actively paying to reach non-customers.

For any SaaS business that isn't sitting on a mountain of VC cash, there is only one campaign objective that matters: Conversions. You must always, always optimise for the action you actually want someone to take, whether that's 'Sign up for a trial', 'Start freemium plan', or 'Download tool'. This trains the algorithm to find people who don't just watch, but who actually *act*.

A simple, effective structure to start with looks like this:

• Campaign 1: Top-of-Funnel (ToFu) Prospecting
  • Platforms: YouTube In-Stream, TikTok In-Feed.
  • Objective: Conversions (optimised for Trial Signups).
  • Audiences: Your best 'nightmare-aware' audiences. On YouTube, this would be custom intent (competitor searchers) and channel placements. On TikTok, it might be a broader interest group with a really specific creative.
  • Creative: Your hard-hitting, problem-agitate-solve videos. Test multiple hooks relentlessly.


• Campaign 2: Middle/Bottom-of-Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) Retargeting
  • Platforms: YouTube In-Stream, TikTok In-Feed.
  • Objective: Conversions (optimised for Trial Signups).
  • Audiences: People who have visited your website in the last 30-90 days, or people who have watched 50%+ of your ToFu video ads but didn't click. Crucially, you must exclude people who have already signed up.
  • Creative: This is where you switch gears. They know who you are now. Show them a short UGC testimonial. Show them a quick 15-second screen recording of your product's "aha!" moment. Overcome their objections.

This simple two-campaign structure ensures you are constantly filling the top of your funnel with new prospects while also nurturing those who have already shown interest. It's a focused, disciplined approach that forces every pound of your ad spend to justify its existence through conversions, not fluffy metrics like 'reach' or 'impressions'. This is how we’ve managed to get dramatic results for clients, like with the B2B software company I mentioned, where a proper campaign structure was a key part of achieving 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each. Structure is strategy.

My main recommendations for you

Alright, that was a lot of information. The theory is one thing, but execution is another. If you're serious about making YouTube and TikTok work for your B2B SaaS, you need to stop thinking and start doing. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a clear action plan. This is the exact process we'd start with if we were working together.

Following this playbook is hard work. It requires discipline, a willingness to be brutally honest about your offer and your customer, and the patience to test and iterate. It's a world away from simply boosting posts or running generic awareness ads. Many founders we work with have tried to do this themselves and have wasted thousands on simple, avoidable mistakes—targeting the wrong audiences, using the wrong creative, or having an offer that was destined to fail from the start.

Working with an expert can help you bypass that expensive learning curve. We've run these playbooks for numerous B2B SaaS companies and know the common pitfalls and the hidden opportunities. If you're serious about unlocking growth on these platforms but want to do it intelligently and efficiently, it might be worth having a chat.

We offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can take a look at what you're doing now and give you some actionable advice based on our experience. It's a chance to get a second opinion and see if there's a faster path to getting the results you need. Feel free to book a consultation if you'd like to explore how we can help.