Exploring Paid Marketing for SaaS: Which Channels Work Best?

Starting off with two broad categories—search ads and display ads— the success of paid media in generating leads and boosting brand awareness has led to multiple ad types. Below, we dive into eight noteworthy paid marketing channels that prove useful for SaaS B2B marketing. 

8 types of paid media channels for SaaS businesses

1. Paid search advertising

Also known as search engine marketing (SEM), paid search advertising helps businesses show up before organic results on the search pages. Unlike organic SEO, which takes time to yield results, paid search ads generate traffic immediately after their launch. 

These ads are indicated by the word “sponsored” or “ad,” and are simple to set up. You have to select the keywords or search terms your target audience would use during their search and bid on them with several other competitors targeting those keywords. You’ll pay a fee to the search engine each time a searcher clicks on your ad. They are, thus, also called pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Search ads are valuable to find target users with a high intent to purchase and get qualified leads. The challenge with paid search ads is that the competition for popular keywords is fierce, requiring you to pay higher for them.  

2. Display advertising

This is a powerful tool to generate brand awareness, cultivate demand and create the need for your products and services among users. It involves strategically placing visual advertisements, such as banners, images, videos or interactive elements, on websites, mobile apps and social media.

Display ads target users who may not be actively looking for your products or services but match the characteristic traits of your target audience. To get started with display ads, define your target audience, identify websites or platforms your audience is likely to use and create visually appealing creatives that will leave a lasting impression on viewers.

While display ads tend to have low click-through rates and conversions, they have their unique space in paid media marketing. The key is to remember these ads don’t answer a demand like paid search ads but create demand.

3. Product promotion on software comparison sites

Software comparison sites play a critical role in software buyers’ journey, supporting them throughout their research, evaluation, and consideration phases. These sites are trusted by thousands of technology buyers as authentic sources of information and peer reviews. 

Advertising on comparison sites involves creating a profile for your products and services (initially for free). You can then upgrade your profile to move up the category results page, generate higher click-through rates and capture marketing-ready leads. By advertising on these sites, you don’t waste money trying to educate the market and attract users actively seeking a software solution. This increases your chances of getting hot leads that are ready to buy. 

To learn more on how to use these sites to your advantage, check out this article on how to reach the top of your software category

4. Social media advertising

With an expanding user base and the ability to target audiences with incredible precision using parameters such as age, job roles and interests, social media acts as a powerful tool for businesses. 

Social media advertising refers to displaying ads on popular social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. A huge advantage of social media ads is their visual impact and high engagement potential. 

However, one of the biggest challenges of social ads lies in their low audience intent. Often, users on social media are simply browsing through their feeds and they may pay little attention to the displayed ads. This makes targeting ads to the right audience segment, knowing your campaign goals and creating appealing content extremely critical for success.

5. Influencer marketing

Influencer advertising helps you reach a niche and highly engaged audience while gaining social proof and credibility from well-known individuals with strong social media following and influence in a niche industry. Typically, these individuals are social media personalities, industry experts or bloggers with loyal followers who value their insights and recommendations.

By partnering with influencers, you leverage their trust and rapport to subtly promote your products and services. With the right influencers’ support, you can shape the audience's purchase decisions in a huge way. 

When choosing an influencer, go beyond follower count to check their relevance to your products and credibility and engagement levels among your target audience.  

6. Affiliate advertising 

Like a referral program, affiliate advertising operates on a performance-based model. When an individual or a business endorses your products or services on their platforms (such as websites, blogs or social media accounts) and drives desired actions such as leads or purchases, they get a commission or referral fee. 

It starts with setting up an affiliate program for your business and laying down the goals (clicks, leads or sales) you want affiliates to fulfill.

Affiliate marketing is no-risk advertising as you only pay when an affiliate leads users to perform a desired action, letting you tap into their network of loyal supporters at a fraction of the cost.

7. Native advertising

Native ads smartly blend into the content of a webpage, appearing like organic editorials or news stories rather than traditional adverts. They’re widely used on high-traffic and popular news and journalism sites.  

Because native ads don’t redirect users to another site when clicked, they provide a non-disruptive and engaging experience to them. It bypasses the subconscious “ad block” that makes users ignore and filter out any advertisements and gives better interaction results, more than display ads. Even though publishers label this content as "sponsored" or "promoted" for transparency, users still feel curious to click on them.

Native ads can be challenging to create though. It’s easy to come up with a few banner ads to be used on multiple websites but creating new and authentic creative stories every month that also convey your marketing message is not as easy.

8. Retargeted advertising 

You must be familiar with being followed around the internet by travel ads after searching for holiday destinations. Retargeted advertising, or remarketing, helps you reach out to people who have already shown interest in your products or services but haven't yet converted into customers. 

Retargeted adverts work by placing a tracking pixel or code on the business website, which allows marketers to track users once they visit the webpage. If a visitor leaves without completing a desired action, say subscribing to your software or signing up for a free trial, retargeted campaigns are initiated to bring them back.

One challenge with retargeted ads is to make sure they’re delivered in a privacy-compliant manner and adhere to applicable regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). 

Not all paid channels are created equal. Focus on the ones that align with your objectives. Here’s an at-a-glance comparative view of paid media channels discussed so far. 

Monitor, assess and refine your paid media campaigns

Paid ads can be tracked and tweaked in real time for better performance. Continuously audit your existing paid media campaigns to identify areas for optimization. If you are seeing low conversion rates, low click-through rates and high landing page bounce rates, it’s time to revisit your strategy.