But although your strategy between SaaS and other business models may differ, the platforms on which you market are the same. Pay per click (PPC) advertising on search engines and social media can help you to grow your SaaS subscriber base; especially if you keep these 3 tips in mind.

1. Focus on Problem & Solution Keywords

Your SaaS software provides a solution to a problem that your prospective buyers are experiencing. So plan your keyword bids around these instead of much more competitive terms, such as “purchase” or “free trial”.

Sit down with your sales team and find out what common questions or phrases customers repeat when discussing your product. Do they regularly discuss a particular problem they are experiencing, or ask how your software can help them resolve an issue? Fleshing out your buyer personas will really help you out with this process, so that you can target your PPC keywords the most effectively.

2. Drive Lead Gen with Remarketing

Closing a SaaS deal typically takes longer than the average sales cycle. Because SaaS requires an ongoing commitment, buyers will spend more time researching and comparing options, budgets and ROI before picking “the one”.

Remarketing is a great way to stay front of mind (and browsers) while your prospective subscribers are doing their research and due diligence. Highly effective, easy to implement and affordable to maintain, remarketing gives you the ability to essentially “follow” your website’s visitors around the internet with a simple line of code on your website, and it will show them your ads wherever they go. This is an incredibly powerful way to stay engaged with your target audience with well-placed, relevant ads or offers that speak directly to them (while encouraging them to always keep your SaaS solution top of mind!)

There are a few ways to set up a remarketing campaign:

1. Site Remarketing – as mentioned above, this will display your targeted banner ads after a visitor leaves your site, when set up via Google AdWords campaigns, for example.

2. Social Media Remarketing – similar to what happened to our newly engaged friend, social media remarketing places ads on social networks, like Facebook. If your visitors are on your bridal website and then log into Facebook, they will soon see placed ads for wedding-related goods and services.

3. Search Remarketing – this method targets users based on a specific keyword or phrase inquiry. For example, if you search Google for record players, you will next see a whole list of record players for sale under Amazon.com’s “Recommended for You” section.

The web offers a lot of distractions; remarketing is a valuable way to pull your target audience’s attention back to your brand and your Saas solution.

3. Play Around with Multiple Ad Platforms

PPC is not just limited to AdWords; experimenting on multiple ad platforms may bring you even more leads and a greater ROI than the traditional placements on Google’s search engines. Here are some other platforms and channels you may want to tap into:

• Search engine advertising through Bing
• Facebook Advertising
• Instagram’s “Shop Now” Featured Ads
• Paid Pins on Pinterest
• YouTube Advertising (via banner placements, sidebar placements or video display ads, skippable ads, overlay ads, and non-skippable ads)
• Sponsored Tweets on Twitter

The only way to find out which platform works best for your business and your SaaS solution is to experiment. Your goal is to find out where your target buyers are and which platform they are using, and then which keywords you can pick to garner the highest engagement with your audience.

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PPC advertising can offer a wide net in which to bring in new leads and business. And because you don’t pay unless your ads are clicked on by your target audience, it leaves you room to test the waters with new keywords, new landing pages, and new platforms until you find the most effective mix.

Of course, the above tips will only help you if you have a solid understanding of the biggest PPC platform: Google AdWords. Download a copy of our free guide, which will give you all the basic steps to get started.