SaaS PPC Consultant: How to choose the right one for your company

SaaS PPC consultants are in high demand these days as SaaS businesses look for advertising that will give them an edge. However, not every PPC professional knows how to work with SaaS products. You also maybe need a SaaS PPC agency rather than an consultant expert.

But how do you find the right fit for your SaaS business? In this article, we’ll dive into a few ways to make sure that the professional you met is the right hire. A few of our tips apply to advertising agencies as well.

1 – The specificity of SaaS PPC vs traditional PPC

SaaS PPC has its own specificities that make looking for a SaaS PPC consultant a lot harder than looking for a consultant for any other businesses.

First of all, the SaaS environment is highly competitive. You can’t afford to stay behind. This means that every professional you pick needs to be constantly after new trends in PPC advertising, and everything that it involves.

At the same time, since SaaS purchases are made for the long term, your PPC consultant has to be aware of using top of the funnel keywords that get your prospects while they’re still researching products like yours.

1.1 – Lead nurturing and top of the funnel

There’s a reason why we recommend SaaS PPC consultants to target top of the funnel keywords: that’s the cost effective way to go about it.

In SaaS and in other businesses, highly competitive keywords and search terms are expensive. However, if you look up top of the funnel keywords, you’ll be able to reach out for those customers that are still in the research phase.

At the same time, you can’t start selling to those top of the funnel users straight away. You have to figure out creative ways of getting them in your lead nurturing process. For this step, we recommend sharing an ebook or other useful content in your landing page that will get you the contacts for your sales team to work on.

By offering some educational material, you’re helping users understand why your product solves their problem and why you are the best choice for them. Educating your prospects or leads is a great way of keeping your brand alive in their thoughts.

If your users remember you, it’s most likely they’ll want to buy from you rather than buy from another company they know nothing about. This way of selling keeps lead nurturing as a means to an end, and in our opinion, is the best way to go about it.

Case Study: How We Helped Kodo Survey to Generate 167% More Leads in 3 Months Using LinkedIn Ads

1.2 – Remarketing

As we mentioned previously, SaaS products are not something you buy without thinking a lot about it. This means your sales cycle is long.

How does this relate to remarketing? Well, remarketing works by targeting your website users and showing them relevant ads when they visit other websites. This makes it easier for your users to remember your product and go back to your website to check it out again.

Remarketing makes sure previous users in your website remember your brand, which will make the difference when they finally decide to go through with their purchase.

You might be afraid of being too invasive. Nonetheless, you should remember that you see ads all day when you’re browsing the web. The only ones that register are the ones that relate to brands you already know. See how this cycle fits your sales process perfectly?

You’re going after users that already demonstrated an interest in your brand, and that is the best way. If those users weren’t interested in your product, they wouldn’t have visited your website.

Remarketing can work in two ways:

First, you start by targeting all your website visitors. If you never did remarketing before, this is the best way to go about it.
However, once you have more data about your visitors from running campaigns, you can start segmenting users. Create different ads for users that visited your pricing page, users that only visited the home page, and so on.

2 – Factors to look into when choosing a SaaS Marketing Consultan

Now that we’ve given you a few tips about SaaS PPC, we’ll go about how to discover the best SaaS PPC consultant for your business. Read on to find out all you need to know about hiring this highly important professional for your team.

2.1 – Ask industry colleagues

The first step in order to find the right SaaS PPC consultant is to do your market research. Figure out how much can you afford to pay this professional and what sort of experience do they need to have in order to fit the bill.

After this bit of research, you’re ready to start looking for referrals. However, you’re not looking for any referrals: you need to find someone who fits your requirements, and that’s why you should ask SaaS professionals that work with similar products.

We often see people requesting referrals on Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Groups or similar. We might open an exception for forums, since those are more likely to get you an interesting candidate. The issue with Facebook and LinkedIn is that groups are general and fit a lot of different subjects and users. If you want to find the right SaaS PPC consultant, you need to go for a detailed approach.

Ask your friends in business if they know someone who would fit your budget and requirements. This is one of the ways to find the person that would fit your company perfectly, and it will also give you a feel for the market. Maybe you need to define your requirements more, or maybe you need to be a little less ambitious.

It’s essential to know the market in order to find the right SaaS PPC consultant for you.

2.2 – Does the Consultant Have a Client Portfolio?

A great way to figure out if the consultant you’re after fits your requirements is to ask for a client portfolio. Most SaaS PPC consultants will have examples of previous work that can help you understand their motivations and skills. We recommend taking a look at their portfolio to find out if their experience is relevant.

The way a consultant works with different companies might change, but you’re after patterns. What do they usually excel at? What is their main motivation? These are all questions you should be able to answer based on their previous clients and their portfolio.

2.3 – What is the fee structure?

Fee structures for PPC consultants and agencies usually fall into two categories:

A percentage-based fee that might be higher or lower every month;
A flat fee that ensures you always pay the same no matter the service provided.

Commission-based fees are better for low ad spend. If you’re spending a lot, taking a percentage of your ad spend is going to get a lot more expensive, so in that case we would recommend a flat fee.

However, even when paying a flat fee, you need to make sure you’re not contracting a service that’s too expensive for the value it offers.

2.4 – What’s your minimum monthly ad spend?

This is a question that gives you a very important detail to consider. Most SaaS PPC consultants have an established minimum monthly ad spend.

You should always ask any candidate for their minimum monthly ad spend to see if it fits your budget. It’s not worth it to go above your budget, unless when your business volume has increased after a while.

Request a quote for your company and evaluate it according your needs. If you have a low budget, it will be more difficult to cover all the keywords you target , but you can counter that by using the strategies we mentioned at 1.1 and 1.2 in this article.

Nevertheless, if your budget is quite high, you can be more aggressive and target keywords that are more competitive and closer to the bottom of the funnel. The way to go is to start with a low budget and then increase it as conversions start flowing.

2.5 – What is his online advertising niche?

If someone tells you they’re an expert in all PPC niches, you should be careful. That’s usually not the case: every SaaS PPC consultant has a specialty. And there’s nothing wrong about it.

A few possible niches can be Google Ads, Bing Ads, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads… there are many PPC platforms in which your consultant might be an expert.

When it comes to the niche, you need to know where is your audience. If you’re looking after Millennial users, Facebook Ads won’t be of much use to you. The same goes for other demographics and other PPC platforms. As always, market research can help you figure out where your advertising needs to be.

Once you know which PPC platform you should use, look for SaaS PPC consultants that offer expertise in your target platform. It is also important to make sure they have SaaS experience – as we mentioned, SaaS PPC is a whole different business.

2.6 – Make sure that consulting is their primary service

When looking for a consultant, you need to make sure that consulting is their priority. Some consultants market themselves as digital marketing experts when their focus is content marketing or social media marketing. SaaS PPC takes skill and in-depth knowledge.

The same applies for agencies. Many agencies offer “packages”, but if you have come to the conclusion PPC is what you need, you shouldn’t spend money on a package that includes services you’ll never use.

Once again, stay on track with your goals. Look for a consultant that specialises in PPC, not a generalist.

Case Study: How We Boosted Beakon Leads by 9x Using PPC

2.7 – Check them out on LinkedIn

It should not come as a surprise that most SaaS PPC consultants have a very active presence on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is free advertising for any professional. And the way that professional takes care of their free advertising is quite telling.

Take a look at their recommendations. How many people have recommended them for PPC advertising? Those people that recommended them, are they related to PPC or just random professionals?

Do they post often? A lot of professionals use their LinkedIn as their portfolio. If that’s the case, the better – you get to see what they’ve been up to previously without having to rely on their word.

2.8 – If they offer a free consulting gig, say yes!

Many PPC professionals offer you a “free trial” of their services. This means you can get an initial consultation without having to pay straight away.

This is great on two levels:

First of all, you get to try their services before you buy. This will give you an idea of what these professionals do best, if they fit your company culture and the needs of your SaaS business. Freebies are not always good, but this serves as a test drive that can help you immensely when figuring out if you should hire this consultant or not.
On the other hand, only someone that is highly confident in their work will offer a free consulting session. Of course, we all want to make money, but someone who’s willing to let you try it out for free knows what they’re doing and understands your concerns.

Of course, you shouldn’t suggest them to work for free. The initiative has to come from the consultant, not you. Otherwise, you risk losing a good professional that could join your ranks.

Wrapping Up

If you’re a SaaS CEO or business owner, you need to make sure you’re hiring the right person. The right PPC strategy can make or break your business, so you need to tread carefully when picking your PPC consultant.

The tips we have given you should help you with this task and clear a few doubts you might have in your mind about hiring a PPC professional.

Once again, it is also important to understand the niche you should aim for. For this reason, it’s important to have a clear picture in your head about what is your audience like and how can you help them solve a specific issue. Your customers’ needs should be above most factors when you’re advertising. Make your ads about them and you’ll get their attention.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS companies grow their MRR through SEO and PPC, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.