Scaling PPC in SaaS Markets - 5 Secrets Every Marketer Should Know

BrightTalk SaaS & Cloud Marketing Summit 2013
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Scaling PPC in SaaS Markets:
5 Secrets Every Marketer Should Know
Gilad David Maayan | Agile SEM

Agenda
• PPC for SaaS: The challenge
• Secret #1: The Missing Keywords
• Secret #2: Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse
• Secret #3: Don’t Design Your Landing Page
• Secret #4: Get on Google’s Good Side
• Secret #5: Look at Your Leads
• Q&A

A Bit About Me:
Gilad David Maayan
• Worked with over 100 tech companies including ClickTale,
Oracle, CheckPoint, GigaSpaces, JFrog, and plenty of startups
• In a past life – wrote strategic marketing content and 1000s of
pages of technical documentation
• Previous job – SEO/SEM Manager of GigaSpaces
• Won 3 international awards for my work on wiki documentation
as a marketing tool
• Since 2010 – helping tech companies get business from search

For more info, see my LinkedIn Profile

The Challenge
Why PPC for SaaS is Hard, Damn Hard

SaaS is Different
Consumer Products/Mainstream SMB SaaS/Technology Products
1-5 Ad Groups per Product 10-100 Ad Groups per Product
High Search Volume Low Search Volume
•[travel insurance], 450,000 searches per month •[cloud security], 6,600 searches per month
•[cheap airline tickets], 368,000 searches per month •[application lifecycle management], 4,400 searches
•[cheap laptops], 110,000 searches per month •[cloud database], 2,100 searches per month
•[running shoes], 135,000 searches per month •[cloud management], 1,600 searches per month

High CPC / High Value High CPC / Low Value
High Chance of Intent to Buy Low Chance of Intent to Buy
These are the
biggest search
terms in each of
• Unique challenges in SaaS/technology markets: these fields!

• Many keywords, many niches, complex campaigns
• You need to be smart to get traffic (not to mention conversion)
• Audience is not inclined to buy
• A big plus: many niches are not competitive

Search Volume – Smaller than You
Think

Total Addressable Market

Total Search
Volume

• Search Volume is typically smaller than your Total Addressable
Market. This might be because:
• Most of the audience is not searching for your subject – using other
online or offline channels instead
• It’s a new field, terms have not solidified
• Your niche offering is too specific for the larger, more general keywords

Why It’s Hard to Scale
• Small-scale PPC campaigns can easily succeed because:
• You’re bidding on the most relevant keywords
• For these keywords you are the only relevant vendor
• Nobody else is bidding on these keywords
• BUT – search volume is very low

• When you try scaling up you’ll find:
• You’ll need to target larger, more general keywords
• High competition = high CPC
• Clickthrough rates very low (because your solution is specific)
• Quality score drops, ads “rarely shown”
• Leads hard to come by – and quality is low
• Cost per conversion/acquisition is often unacceptable

Secret #1
The Missing Keywords

Types of Keywords
• Informational:
• [cloud server security]
• [cloud security best practices]
• [brute force attack]
• Solution-seeking:
• [cloud firewall]
• [cloud security tools]
• [free cloud security]
• Commercial:
• [cloud security pricing]
• [buy cloud security]
• [enterprise cloud security quote]

Types of Keywords
• Informational:
• [cloud server security] About 80% of
search volume
• [cloud firewall] About 20% of
search volume
• Commercial:

Types of Keywords
• Informational:
• [cloud server security] About 80% of
search volume
• [cloud firewall] About 20% of
search volume
• Commercial:
You wish!

The Search Landscape
Example: “Network Security for Cloud Servers”

Firewall

Cloud
Security

Best
WordPress Practices
Drupal

Example: Network Security for Cloud Servers
Obvious keywords:
Could be relevant: Definitely about
If server is in the cloud server security
cloud Firewall

Cloud
Security

Could be relevant:
But “security” can
also mean anti-virus
Best
WordPress Practices
Drupal
Could be relevant:
Some best practices
talk about security

Obvious keywords:
Missing keywords:
Could be relevant: Search volume
Ifsearch volume
server is in the 1,500
8,000
cloud Firewall

Cloud
Security

Missing keywords:
search volume 5,000

Best
WordPress Practices
Drupal

Missing keywords:
search volume 2,000

* Search volumes are made up for the sake of this example

•No searches for their specific niche, “cloud network security”
•Only one highly targeted keyword theme, “cloud firewall”
• Search volume is only 1,500 – no room for growth
•By including four less targeted keyword themes, search volume
grows from 1,500 to 15,000
• People searching for these keywords may or may not be relevant
• Conversion will be lower – but it could still be worth it

Add Keyword Themes to Grow Your Campaign
•The more marginally-relevant keyword themes you add, the bigger
your campaign can grow
•Make sure that there is at least a fair chance that someone searching
for these keywords could buy your product
•It doesn’t matter if they searched for what you do –
what matters is that they are potential buyers
• In our example, “cloud best practices” is not something that is offered by
the vendor
• But behind this keyword is someone looking to improve how they work
on the cloud – could be a potential buyer

Working with Multiple Keyword Themes
•You will need to craft relevant ads and landing pages for each
keyword theme, in our example:
• Cloud Security – “Secure your Cloud Server”
• Drupal Security – “Secure Drupal on the Cloud”
• Cloud Best Practices – “Learn How Industry Leaders Secure Their
Servers” (could be a white paper or ebook)
•How to weed out irrelevant audiences:
• Using search modifiers and negative keywords
• Your ad text should clarify who this is relevant for
• For example, if you say “cloud”, on-premise users won’t click
• This boosts lead quality and reduces CPA

Latching on to Brands in Your Ecosystem
•In many cases relevant keyword themes are platforms you
support, complementary products or competitors
•Google allows you to bid for brand keywords, but might
“punish” you with a high CPC
•To get around this:
• Try not to use the exact brand term in your ad
• Make sure your landing page talks specifically about this
platform/product/competitor and how you connect to it

Secret #2
Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse

Your Offer Needs to be
Compelling

Source: IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3947266304/tt0068646

Compelling
Why is it impossible to refuse the Godfather’s offer?
1. It’s simple and crystal clear
2. It’s always aimed at a specific person in a specific context
3. Substantial value (your life back)
4. No alternatives (easy decision)

Compelling
A compelling offer in PPC:
1. Product is easy to understand and well positioned
2. Ad and landing page address the user’s specific needs
3. The product provides substantial value (in the user’s current state,
not “after you migrate to the cloud”, etc.)
4. It’s free (easy decision)

Compelling
A compelling offer in PPC:
1. Product is easy to understand and well positioned
2. Ad and landing page address the user’s specific needs
3. The product provides substantial value (in the user’s current state,
not “after you migrate to the cloud”, etc.)
4. It’s free (easy decision)

Why free?
•Because if the user needs to start thinking about money, you’ve lost them
•A perpetual freemium model is best for PPC
•“Free trial” is risky and results in reduced conversion
•Never try selling something in the PPC funnel
•Your objective is to get them using the product – you can up-sell paid
plans/services/packages later

The Litmus Test
Testing if Your Product is Easy to Understand
•The most sensitive point is your positioning
•Meet with 3 or 4 friends/colleagues who:
• Are similar to your potential buyer
• Don’t know about your product
•Show them your homepage/product page
for 5 seconds only
(much more time than you’ll get from your PPC visitors)
•Ask them to explain what the product is.
• If they got it, you’re good to go.
• If they didn’t, seriously reconsider your PPC efforts.
•Bottom line: If your message doesn’t come across in 5 seconds,
invest in other marketing channels (with longer attention span)

Targeting Your Landing Pages
• Start with one generic landing page
• Review your keyword themes, and imagine how people who
search for these keywords will react to your page:
• If they will understand more-or-less, it’s okay
• If they will be totally out of whack, build them a separate LP
• For example, if somebody searched for “cloud best practices” and
you serve a landing page about cloud firewalls, that won’t work
• As the campaign evolves, build specialized landing pages for
keyword themes that have high value/traffic/conversion
• Make sure that the value you provide to each of your
audiences – as described in the landing page – is very high
• If you have an audience for which value is lower, consider
removing them from the campaign
• Or build a separate landing page that emphasizes other values

Example: Garantia Data’s Offer
Substantial Easy to understand:
value: Everybody knows
These three Memcached - now
capabilities hosted on the cloud.
are a big deal
for the user.

It’s free:
No-brainer
decision.
Free tier
has
limited
storage.

Example: Garantia Data’s Offer Some in-depth
product info if you
want to understand
how it works

Easy to understand:
Signup and activation
very clearly explained.

Easy signup:
Encourages
quick decision.

Secret #3
Don’t Design Your Landing Page

Landing Page Design Best
Practices
PPC landing pages should:
• Be standalone and separate from your main site
• Keep important information above the fold
• Talk about benefits, not features
• Present logos of major companies using your product
• Present major media mentions of your product
• Use social widgets to show people are using your product
• Visually focus on the call to action
• Include a short signup/contact form on the same page
• Include images or video explaining/showing the product

Landing Page Design Best
Practices
PPC landing pages should:
• Be standalone and separate from your main site
• Consistent with your site’s branding
• Forget about all that.
Keep important information above the fold
•
• Don’t design your
Talk about benefits, not features
Present logos of major companies using your product
•
• landing page!
Present major media mentions of your product
Use social widgets to show people are using your product
• Visual focus on the call to action
• Include a short signup/contact form on the same page
• Include images or video explaining/showing the product

Landing Page Design is a Complex Art

It’s Much More than “Best Practices”:
•Landing page design requires specialized training and years of
experience – there are very few good practitioners
• And I’m not one of them 


• But I did hire one 


• But I did hire one 
• The field of specialty is called CRO (Conversion Rate
Optimization)
•A landing page can meet all the best practices and fail badly
•Some of the most successful landing pages don’t comply with
well known best practices (e.g. very long pages with C2A below the fold)


It’s Much More More than “A/B Testing”:
•A/B testing can help you…
• tweak a good landing page
Ideal
• choose between two good landing pages Page
•It CAN’T help you come up with a
good landing page
Option
•Because it can’t prove that a landing page is good B

• In the image, option B is 100% better than A Option
A
• But the “ideal page” is 133% better than B
(and 366% better than A)
• So it turns out both A and B are actually “bad”

What Can a CRO Expert Help
With?
Landing Page Implementation Stages:
1.Messaging
2.Structure
3.Design (graphic designer)
4.Build (web developer)
5.Analytics

What Can a CRO Expert Help
With?
Here’s What a CRO Expert Can Contribute:
1.Messaging
• Fine tuning slogan, bullets and offering
1.Structure
• Smart usage of screen real estate
• Telling the story visually
• Planning the next conversion steps
• UX for interactive elements
• Ideas for improving conversion
• (based on experience from 100s of A/B tests)
1.Design
• Feedback on initial drafts – does the message come across?
1.Build
• Feedback on user interaction – are the forms/buttons/slideshow easy to use?
1.Analytics
• How to correctly track conversion and pass lead parameters to CRM

Example: Cloudinary Heavyweight
testimonials to
communicate
Title ease of use
focused
on dev
platform

High
level
features
Call-to-
action
explains
integration
Interactive is required
gallery
showing
dozens of
image
effects

Key
differentiators

Example: Cloudinary
Trusted by
major
Developers like companies
a bit of “how it
works”

But also used
by the little
guys

Very easy
Value signup (but
provided by communicate
fremium plan d the need for
integration)

Secret #4
Get on Google’s Good Side

Getting on Google’s Bad Side
How Google Optimizes Profits:
•In the high tech sector, the vast majority of ad spending goes to
Google’s AdWords program
•Google makes money when someone clicks on an ad
•So Google wants to show ads that will get clicked
• Google tries NOT to show ads less likely to get clicked
•This is why Click Through Rate (CTR) is a major component of
your Quality Score
• Quality Score determines if your ad is shown at all
• And if so, how high up it appears and on which page (>1 is bad)
• Quality Score also determines your CPC:
lower quality = higher cost

Getting on Google’s Bad Side
This Leads to a Vicious Cycle:
You typically
start here

If even some of your
ads are irrelevant,
the entire campaign
suffers

Relevance, Relevance,
Relevance
Relevance is Key to Avoiding the Vicious Cycle:
•Improve your relevance and CTR by ensuring:
• All ads are highly relevant for the keywords in their ad group
• To make this possible, you need to create lots of ad groups with a
small number of keyword variations in each one
• Write unique ads for each ad group
• Write quality ads by following best practices – use keyword in title,
benefit in first line, call to action in second line, etc.
• Landing pages must be relevant to their respective ad groups
• Google checks if the page actually talks about the subject of the ad
group – not sufficient to stuff the keywords into it
•Get it right first time, to avoid getting stuck in the vicious cycle
for months
•Monitor and quickly remove low-CTR ads

Relevance, Relevance,
Relevance
Relevance Requires Hard Work:
•Writing and reviewing dozens or hundreds of ads
•Building separate landing pages for distinct subjects in your ad
groups
• Even if your users “get the picture” with one landing page, you
might need to add more for Google’s sake
•Monitoring and optimizing for CTR very frequently
(daily/hourly) until quality score stabilizes

Two landing page
templates:

Example: Ad Group Matrix One for upload/delivery,
one for the rest

Each square is a
potential ad group,
105 in total, about
80 relevant

Separate landing “v” means we will “NA” means we
page for each have an ad for this won’t advertise
platform for each of audience here
two templates

Where is Your Money Going?
• Several days into the campaign, you will want to know if it is
worth the money
• Keep in mind that you must run for at least a month to gather
enough data to make decisions
• Even after a month, conversion rates per ad group will not be
statistically significant
• Still, a month into the campaign you will want some indication
whether things are in the right direction

How Not to Measure A New Campaign
Performance Metric Why You Shouldn’t Rely on It*
Traffic / visits to site Can take more than a month until
quality score stabilitizes
Number of leads This is actually a good metric but it
only measures the scale of the
campaign, not the quality
Conversion rate Still not statistically significant per ad
group; the average is meaningless
Cost per acquisition You haven’t optimized your funnel yet.
High CPA could stem from problems in
signup, product bugs, etc.
Bounce Rate, Time on Site, etc. Most of these metrics will be biased
because visitors view only one page

(*) Of course you should use all these metrics –
just not as your main KPI for a new campaign

What’s Important to
Measure?
• The biggest question about your campaign is:
whether it brings in relevant traffic
• If traffic is relevant, you can fix the landing page and conversion
funnel later, but you know you’re on the right track
• If traffic is not relevant, you must improve it first!

• The landing page could appear terrible, but that’s only
because you’re bringing in the wrong people

How to Tell if Traffic is
Relevant
Just Look at Your Leads:
•Export a list of the leads/signups that originated from PPC
• In the first month there won’t be more than a few dozen
•Take the time to look at them yourself (use Rapportive or a similar tool
to discern data from email addresses):
• Which country are they from?
• Student/consultant or organization?
• How big/which type of organization?
• Developer/IT/other role? (executives are rare)
•Based on your experience with customers,
score each of the leads:
• Highly relevant – likely to result in revenue
• Moderately relevant – might result in revenue
• Not relevant – don’t need more of these

Is Your Campaign Any Good?
• If you have 10 or more high quality leads, you can celebrate!
• This is proof your PPC campaign can bring value
• You can estimate how much it cost you to bring them
• After optimization, this can and should drop by 50-90%.
• Now your objective is to find out where these leads
are coming from and bring more
• Make sure these types of people understand the
landing page, are converting and using the product

• If you have no high quality leads:
• There still might be medium-quality folks, see if they
are worth your while in terms of CPA
• See which important ad groups are NOT driving traffic –
try to get traffic, and check again if good leads come in

View the Recorded Session
I presented this session at the BrightTalk SaaS & Cloud
Marketing Summit 2013.

Click here to view the recorded session!

Thank You!
Reach out to me if you have any questions or comments.

Gilad David Maayan
Agile SEM

Mobile +972-50-6570046
E-mail gilad.maayan@gmail.com
LinkedIn http://il.linkedin.com/in/giladdavidmaayan

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