7 Proven Ways to Grow SaaS Users with Facebook Ads

If you run marketing for a Software as a Service (SaaS) company, then you’ve probably thought about running Facebook ads to grow users for your product.

In fact, I would argue that a SaaS businesses are one of the most effective business models that you can promote with Facebook ads. But keep in mind that all business are different so you need to test everything.

Here are some of the strategies that I’ve used to generate over 500,000 new user signups for my clients while reducing their cost per new signup by as much as 44%.

 

1) Create a Lookalike Audience From Your Conversion Pixel

In my experience, the most effective audience for promoting SaaS companies is a Lookalike audience based on people who have hit the conversion tracking pixel at the end of the signup process for your product. Basically, this means that Facebook is going to help you target the people that their algorithms determine are the most similar to the people who have already signed up and converted on your site.

An alternative way to build a lookalike audience based on your users or customer is to upload a custom audience based on your existing users’ emails (but I’ve found the Conversion Pixel to be more effective at driving lower price signups).

Not only are lookalike audiences an effective source of new signups for a low CPA, but they usually will scale well to to generate high volume of new signups as well.

Pro Tip:  Facebook can track user profiles of people who signup from other marketing channels (not just Facebook ads) as long as you have the Conversion pixel on your page. So get your Facebook conversion pixel on your site long before you decide to set up your first ads so that Facebook will have enough data to build a good audience.

 

2) Optimize for Website Conversions

One thing a lot of people don’t realize is that Facebook ads are smart and they do a lot of optimization for you. When creating your campaign, set your objective as “Website Conversion” (i.e. new signups on your site rather than simply clicks to your website.

When you set up your Ad Sets, you will have the opportunity to tell Facebook exactly which conversion event you want to optimize for. This is done based on the conversion pixels you have set up (probably either your free trial signup conversion tracking pixel or your upgrade pixel).

I highly recommend that you optimize your Ad Sets for “Website Conversion” and set pricing to “Get the most website conversions at the best price.” But keep in mind that if Facebook hasn’t tracked many conversions with your pixel yet, then they won’t be able to optimize well. In that case, you might want to start with optimizing for clicks and switching to Website Conversion once there is a bit more data.

With the set up described above, you are giving Facebook a lot of space to optimize and get you the most conversions (SaaS signups) at the best price possible.  I know it can be hard to trust Facebook’s algorithms with everything from building your audience to bidding and spending your money, but trust me, I have seen this setup generate great results for many of my clients. Although it does often require testing and refinement to get it to peak performance.

3) Retargeting

You probably already know that retargeting is one of the best ROI campaigns that you can run. What you might not know is that you can run retargeting campaigns on Facebook via their native ad platform (Power Editor). There isn’t much advantage in 3rd party FBX platforms like AdRoll anymore.

I usually set up my Retargeting as unique campaigns (rather than simply separate Ad Sets) so that I can easily track the retargeting results compared to other top of funnel campaigns. As discussed below, I generally set up retargeting lists as an excluded audience from my other campaigns.

 

4) New User Activation

Another powerful strategy to grow your SaaS company is to use Facebook ads to help activate your recent free signups and to get them to use your product.

Just set up a retargeting campaign that triggers after someone visits a specific URL that can only be accessed after signup for the product (i.e. your signup success page).

The ads in your User Activation campaign should focus on educating new users about the benefits and features of your product. You can also consider using a short video ad for this purpose.

 

5) Promote Upgrades and Paid Plans

Facebook can also be a great tool for encouraging free trial users to upgrade their accounts. All you need to do is set up a campaign that targets the following two audiences:

1. Custom audiences based on emails of your current free users (you may want to segment out only users who are actively using your product)
2. Retargeting list of people who have recently signed in to their accounts on your site.

For these audiences you may want to run ad creatives that promote the benefits and features of your paid product. You should also consider promoting special deals and coupons.

 

6) Excluded Audiences

A lot of people know about using Custom audiences and Lookalike audiences to target the most relevant potential customers. But what most people don’t know is that Facebook lets you exclude audiences as well.

This is particularly valuable so that you don’t advertise to your existing users. So for example, if I’m running a campaign to promote a free trial signup for a a SaaS product, I would exclude my custom audiences of existing users as well as my retargeting list of people who visited the thank you page after signing up (exclude a segment of your retargeting list based on people who visited a specific URL).

Pro Tip:  For most of my campaigns I will actually exclude everybody who has already been cookied by my retargeting pixel. This way I know that my primary campaigns are only reaching new potential users who haven’t visited the site yet. Then I will run an additional campaign retargeting all past visitors to the site separately.

 

7) Content Promotion

Most SaaS companies know the value of content marketing (aka inbound marketing). But most companies don’t realize that Facebook can be a great tool for growing your brand and promoting your best blog content.

If done right, your blogs posts can serve as native ads to help bring in more email leads and free trial signups.

Read More: 7 Ways to Boost Your Content Marketing with Facebook Ads

Try promoting your content to the following audiences:

1. Your Facebook fans
2. Lookalike audiences
3. Fans of your competitors

 

Time To Grow Your Business?

Have you had good results promoting your business with Facebook ads? What strategies have worked best for you?