SaaS Lead Generation: The Ultimate Guide

When composing your SaaS PPC strategy for your next ad campaign, the planning is as important as the execution.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising may seem like a gamble for leads at the expense of your time, money and efforts, but once you understand all the steps and components involved with the strategizing process, you can implement them to create a robust, engaging campaign that appeals to the right audience.

Software as a Solution (SaaS) brands looking to boost their lead generation can benefit from this exclusive guide we’ve put together that covers everything you need to know about SaaS lead generation – and how to guarantee success.

1 – SaaS Lead Generation Explained

SaaS lead generation is designed to help software-as-a-solution brands garner leads using a particular marketing strategy – usually digital – to attain the contact details of lucrative potential customers. This can be in the form of online marketing campaigns using platforms such as Google Ads, LinkedIn, social media channels (e.g.: Twitter, Facebook, etc.), SEO (search engine optimization), and so on. Working with a SaaS PPC agency can further optimize and enhance these marketing efforts by leveraging pay-per-click advertising strategies to drive targeted traffic and generate high-quality leads.

Lead generation is often the focal point of most SaaS marketing strategies, and it can be a challenging and competitive game. To leverage lead generation fully, it is crucial to understand what exactly a lead is. In short, it’s a person or a group of people. But it’s not just any old ‘regular Joe/Joes’. A lead will be someone who can benefit from your products/services and are likely to invest.

In the case of SaaS leads, they will be B2B companies looking for – you guessed it – software as a solution products. But it goes a little deeper than that. Most leads will be company decision-makers who may have expressed interest in your brand before – for example, by completing or partially filling out a form on your website to invest in an eBook, attend a webinar, and so on – these may be free for the lead, but they will have to quid pro quo their contact details to gain access, meaning you have them permanently on your system to target in the future.

More often than not, a lead will have a challenge or pain-point that needs remedying and they will be browsing the internet for solutions – solutions that you (and all of your competitors, of course) have.

Leads are rarely ready and waiting to convert – they often need generating and, later, nurturing. This is where your lead generation marketing campaign comes in.

2 – Types of Leads

As we mentioned above, leads aren’t as simple as just standard web-users. There are different types of leads at different levels of the buying journey, and with different challenges and pain-points that need addressing. This is what makes creating a failsafe lead generation marketing strategy a little tricky.

There are two main types of lead:

MQLs (marketing-qualified leads)
SQLs (sales-qualified leads)

MQLs

These leads are potential clients. However, they are not so far in the sales funnel that they are ready to be contacted by your sales team. Instead, they need to be converted into SQLs, and in order to do this a relationship must be established and then nurtured.

SQLs

Once the relationship has been nurtured, the lead is ready to be approached by the sales team to be converted into an SQL. They are now familiar with you and your products/services and are (hopefully) ready to start investing.

3 – Ten Ways To Generate Leads For Your SaaS Brand

So now that we understand the different types of leads, let’s look at the best ways to generate them.

Website Optimization

Primarily, the speed of your website (because nothing is more off-putting to a web-user than a slow-loading website).

It’s a known fact that if your website takes any longer than one second to load, you will lose your visitor – so much so, that almost 50% of them will go elsewhere. Not only that, it will negatively affect your site’s ranking too.

So with this in mind, you will need to regularly monitor your website’s loading speed, and invest in certain tools (such as Google PageSpeed Insights) to keep an eye on things, and optimize as needed.

Case Study: How We Helped a Security Analytics Software Company Generate 42% More SQLs Using LinkedIn Ads

Mobile-Friendliness

In today’s market, many web-users are browsing the net looking for products or services on other devices than the traditional PC or laptop. This includes smartphones, tablets, iPads, and even smartwatches – so you need to ensure your content is compatible for all of these – or you’re going to miss out on a HUGE market.

Ensuring your website is compatible with other devices (as well as the desktop) will ensure you’re reaching all of your audience and that they are able to reach out/convert at all times.

Powerful Content

Naturally, a huge part of lead generation success is creating powerful, professional, and engaging content.

The key to creating killer content is by researching your buyer personas and getting a firm gauge of the types of leads (AKA, your audience) you should be attracting – these will be the most profitable because they will be most likely to convert. You will also need to keep abreast of industry developments and marketing trends.

Another important factor is posting content on a regular basis – this means several times a week (minimum) to keep your audience engaged. This keeps the cogs in the marketing machine turning and keeps up a healthy dose of brand awareness to keep you on your leads’ radar.

Also, opting for professional SEO services can help keep a healthy, organic flow of traffic to your website too.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC advertising is an ideal solution for any SaaS brand, even if it may not seem so in conjunction with your other lead-gen methods, such as SEO.

In reality, a successful SaaS lead generation strategy should include both SEO and PPC, with both being laser-focused on your researched target audience. Also, it is important to understand that successful PPC advertising doesn’t (or shouldn’t) guarantee a perpetual influx of leads. Instead, it should be gradual.

PPC sometimes gets a bad rep in the B2B advertising world, but this is only because the advertiser in question hasn’t set their sights on the most important element of PPC campaign-planning, which is keyword research and bidding – or they have forsaken our above advice of optimizing their website!

To get the best out of PPC marketing, ensure your keyword research leaves no stone unturned – this includes researching the keywords of your competitors.

Blogging

The blog is still a powerful marketing resource, and it can be a part of your advertising that you don’t have to create content for yourself, which can be beneficial for those who are too busy to whip up dazzling content on a regular basis.

Instead, you can outsource expert writers and content creators to do it for you. Always be discerning with your outsourcing and invest in a good content creator with a good rep/client history, and you can be sure your marketing is in good hands.

Partnering

Chances are you’re already in partnership with other brands, or in an affiliate program, but if not, it could be time to start looking now.

Referral agreements can play a powerful role within your strategy because you can drop products/services simultaneously, which can be good for lead-gen – but only if your partnership marketing is on-point.

Partnership marketing doesn’t have to be complex or time-consuming. Instead, you can look into simple joint advertising solutions, such as email content that has input from both parties that can be shared to both audiences.

It can also be beneficial to invest in a SEO strategy that has strong and reliable backlinks to reputable, relevant companies.

ABM (Account-Based Marketing)

B2B marketing often benefits from targeting a specific group of accounts, as opposed to individuals (such as CEOs). This allows you to create tailored, personalized content to specific (and lucrative) audiences, which can often be quicker and more fruitful than individual targeting.

This is known as account-based marketing (ABM) and it can be a useful tool for your strategy.

Go Niche

Creating a niche-focused landing page can encourage lead generation because it will attract the right clientele by using niche-specific keywords by improving your site’s ranking.

You can use this to create content that sells the benefits of your product and why it will remedy the pain-point of the lead, letting them know your brand understands their vexations and can provide a solution.

Chatbots

Chatbots are an important (and cost-effective) way of encouraging your leads to provide their contact information when they land on your site, as well as answering any common FAQs, that also allows you to use their information in the future to nurture and convert them.

Web Forms

Finally, our last tool recommendation for SaaS lead conversion is the web form. Web forms, similar to chatbots, can be put on your landing page for the lead to fill out his/her info by encouraging them to sign up for something (such as a newsletter, for example).

Once the lead has signed up, you then have his/her email address to target in the future.

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

Conclusion

As you can see, SaaS lead generation has an abundance of tools and solutions at your disposal to create the ideal lead-gen strategy to target the best, most profitable, audiences. Once you leverage these tools, you can expect to see a healthy return-on-investments for your efforts.

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