How to reduce your SaaS companies cost per lead by $300 on Google paid search

We had a SaaS client whose cost per lead was $523.05.

After 6 months we got it down to $153.50.

Note: This is their cost per lead on Google AdWords paid search for acquiring new booked demos.

If your running AdWords paid search traffic for your SaaS, here are some of the biggest wins we made to get the cost per lead down by over $300 that might help you too:

1) Removing traffic that wasn’t converting from the Google Display Network.

2) Adding a whole bunch of search terms that keywords were broad matching for as negative keywords in the AdWords account to reduce low quality traffic and unqualified leads.

3) Pausing all the keywords that had 0 clicks over the last 6 months to improve Expected CTR across the account so the cost per click would decrease.

4) Using all the ad extensions we could that you can’t get with organic to promote the unique selling points of the software and make the paid search ads 6 lines big vs 3 lines.

5) Changed the CTA on the landing page from going to the pricing page to a light-box popup with a lead form.

6) Added a headshot and short text testimonial of a major customer directly below the CTA button on the lead form. The testimonial was generally relevant to the feature being explained on the page (eg: estimating software) or the vertical (eg: plumbers).

The last 2 changes increased our landing page conversion rate from 0.65% to 3.37% (518% jump!).

When comparing results in number of clients acquired before and after, we went from 203 leads in 6 months to 884 leads in 6 months.

We don’t know the exact conversion rate on every lead to sale, as the leads get passed over to the sales team at this stage.

But assuming a standard lead to sale conversion rate of 20% and assuming it does not change, 4.35X more leads would mean 4.35X more clients acquired (ie: 203*20% sale conversion rate = 40 new clients, 884*20% sale conversion rate = 176 new clients).

We are now using new SaaS customer acquisition metrics technology in our agency that attributes closed sales from booked demos against individual ad campaigns.

This enables us to direct more of our clients ad budget towards generating leads in the ad campaigns where the most recurring revenue is being generated.

Thanks for reading! :) If you enjoyed it, hit that clap button below. Would mean a lot to me and it helps other people see the story.

If you’d like to see how we use other SaaS customer acquisition tactics to reduce advertising costs and increase trial/demo conversions for our clients, download this growth hacks spreadsheet.

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