What a SaaS PPC agency should do: pick the right conversion, import CRM stages, split budget by intent, price fairly and report pipeline and CAC payback.
The Google Ads dashboard looks healthy. Trials are up a third on last quarter, cost per trial is falling, and the account manager is pleased. Then the sales team shares its numbers, and pipeline from paid search has barely moved. A lot of those new trials signed up, poked around for ten minutes and never came back.
This is the pattern we see most often in software companies running their own paid search, and it is very fixable. Google's bidding does exactly what it is told. If the account is told a trial sign up is the goal, it will find the cheapest trial sign ups it can, and the cheapest ones are rarely the buyers. Change what the account is told to chase, and the same budget starts finding different people.
This guide covers how we set up Google Ads for SaaS: which conversion to optimise to, which searches are worth paying for, how landing pages and budget should follow intent, how a SaaS PPC agency prices the work, and what a monthly report should show. It is the work our paid media team does for B2B and software clients.
Pointing SaaS paid search at pipeline
- Optimise the account to the furthest stage your CRM can report back within about 90 days, usually a product qualified lead or a sales qualified opportunity, and import it into Google Ads as an offline conversion.
- Split keywords by intent (problem, category, competitor and alternative, brand) and give each group its own landing page, budget line and target cost.
- Clear Click runs SaaS paid search to pipeline and CAC payback, with the CRM connected in the first month.
Which conversion should a SaaS account optimise to?
There are four candidates, and they sit in a line from easy to count to close to revenue.
- Free trial or sign up. High volume, fast feedback, weakest link to revenue.
- Product qualified lead (PQL). A trial user who has done the things that predict a purchase, such as inviting colleagues or connecting an integration.
- Demo request. Stronger intent than a trial, but form fills still include students, competitors and people who wanted the pricing.
- Sales qualified lead or opportunity (SQL). Closest to revenue, lowest volume, slowest to arrive.
The rule we use is to bid on the furthest stage that comes back often enough for the algorithm to learn from. Google's smart bidding wants a steady flow of conversions each month, so an account with eight SQLs a month cannot bid on SQLs alone. It can, however, bid on PQLs or demos and report on SQLs, then move the bidding target down the funnel as volume grows.
The mechanism for all of this is offline conversion import. When someone clicks an ad, Google attaches a click identifier to the visit. If your forms pass that identifier into the CRM, the CRM can send it back to Google Ads when the contact becomes a PQL, an SQL or a customer. In plain English, the ad account finally learns which of its clicks turned into money. HubSpot and Salesforce both have native connections to Google Ads for this, so it is usually configuration rather than development work.
Values matter too. Sending a deal value or an expected value with each stage lets you move to value based bidding later, so the account spends more chasing a 50 seat prospect than a single user.
115%: Growth in total marketing driven pipeline for Myagi, a B2B SaaS training platform, after paid search and paid social were restructured for lead quality and tracking was tied to pipeline.
Source: Clear Click, Myagi case study.
That project is a good illustration of the order of work. The tracking came first, because until the ad platforms could see pipeline there was no way to tell a good lead from a cheap one.
Which searches are worth paying for?
SaaS keyword lists tend to grow sideways until nobody can say what each term is for. We sort every term into four intent groups, because each one behaves differently and deserves a different target.
Problem terms and category terms
Category terms name the type of product: "employee training software", "contract management platform". The searcher already knows what they want to buy and is comparing suppliers. These convert well and cost the most, and in crowded categories the click can run to £20 or more.
Problem terms describe the pain: "how to track staff compliance training", "contracts getting lost in email". The person may not know a product exists. Volumes are often larger and cheaper, but the conversion is a guide, a template or a calculator rather than a demo. Bidding on problem terms and sending people to a demo form is one of the quickest ways to buy a lot of trials that go nowhere.
Competitor and alternative terms
Searches such as "[competitor] alternative" or "[competitor] vs [competitor]" come from people who already use or have shortlisted a product and are looking around. For SaaS these are often the best value terms in the account. In the UK you can generally bid on a competitor's name as a keyword, but trademark owners can restrict its use in your ad text, so the ads should talk about your product rather than theirs. A fair, specific comparison page converts far better than a homepage here.
Your own brand
Brand campaigns are cheap and protect the searches you have already earned through sales, PR and organic work. If competitors bid on your name, a small brand campaign keeps you at the top. Report brand separately, though. Brand conversions are mostly people who would have found you anyway, and folding them into the account totals makes everything else look better than it is.
The same keyword groups should be shared with whoever runs your organic search, so both channels argue over one keyword universe. Our guide to SEO for SaaS covers the organic side of the same map, including comparison and alternatives pages.
A landing page for each group
Each group then needs a page that matches the intent of the search that sent the visitor there. For SaaS that usually means four page types.
- Category terms go to a solution page with a short demo or trial call to action, pricing signposted, and proof from companies of a similar size.
- Competitor and alternative terms go to a comparison page that is fair about where the other product is strong and specific about where yours differs.
- Problem terms go to a useful resource, with a light conversion such as an email for a template, and remarketing to follow.
- Brand terms go to the homepage or pricing page, because the visitor already knows who you are.
Two details carry more weight than they look. Show pricing, or at least a starting point, because B2B software buyers who cannot find it often leave to find a supplier who shows it. And ask for the information sales actually needs, such as company size or team size, so the CRM can tell a PQL from a student project without a phone call.
How should a SaaS PPC budget split across stages?
Budget should follow pipeline, not clicks. As a starting point, take a SaaS company putting £10,000 a month into Google Ads (a worked example, not a client):
- Brand protection: around £500 to £1,000.
- Competitor and alternative terms: around £2,500.
- Category terms: around £4,500.
- Problem terms and remarketing: around £2,000.
After two or three months of offline conversions coming back, the split stops being a guess. Each group has its own cost per SQL, and the money moves towards whichever group produces pipeline most cheaply. In our experience competitor and alternative terms often earn more budget than teams expect, and broad category terms sometimes earn less.
Paid search is also the quickest channel to start and the quickest to stop. Many software companies lean on it while organic search builds, then let organic carry more of the category and problem terms once it ranks. The B2B PPC guide walks through the full funnel arithmetic for long sales cycles if you want to model your own numbers.
How do SaaS PPC agencies price their work?
Three models cover the market, and they are the same ones you will find in PPC generally.
- Flat monthly fee against an agreed scope. Predictable for both sides, and it does not reward spending more.
- Percentage of ad spend, usually 10% to 20% in the UK and lower as spend rises. Easy to scale, though the fee grows with budget whether or not the work does.
- Hybrid, a base fee plus a percentage above a spend threshold, or a bonus tied to an agreed outcome such as SQLs.
None of these is wrong. What matters for SaaS is that the fee is attached to a scope that includes the CRM connection and the reporting, because that is where most of the value sits. Our breakdown of PPC agency costs in the UK goes into how to compare quotes line by line.
Our own fee is flat and set against the commercial plan, with paid media management priced from £1,500 a month plus VAT. Offline conversion data needs a few months to build up before the account can bid on it, so we plan the work over a longer run, and the agreement sets out early termination terms plainly.
One candid steer, because it saves people money. If your monthly media budget is below about £3,000, an agency fee from £1,500 is a large share of the total, and the better first step is often a one off setup: tracking connected to the CRM, a clean campaign structure and a handover your team can run. We would rather say that on a first call than take on an account the numbers cannot support.
What should a monthly SaaS PPC report show?
The first page should answer the questions the board asks, in money. Cost per click and click through rate are useful diagnostics, and they belong further back.
- Pipeline created from paid search, by keyword group, with brand shown separately.
- Cost per PQL, cost per SQL and cost per new customer.
- CAC payback: how many months of a new customer's gross margin it takes to repay what it cost to win them.
- Changes made this month and the reason for each, with what is planned next.
CAC payback is the number that turns a marketing report into a finance conversation. As a worked example, if paid search costs £6,000 in media and fees to win one customer worth £500 a month at 80% gross margin, payback is £6,000 divided by £400, or 15 months. Whether that is good depends on your churn and your cash, which is exactly the discussion the report should prompt.
Expect the first two or three months to look uneven. The CRM connection is new, the bidding is learning, and SQLs from earlier clicks are still arriving. That is normal, and it settles once a full sales cycle of data has come back.
Getting CRM stages flowing back into Google Ads is usually the step that turns a SaaS account from trial volume into pipeline. See our search advertising service
Questions we get asked
How much does a SaaS PPC agency cost?
In the UK, management fees are usually a flat monthly amount, 10% to 20% of ad spend, or a hybrid of the two. Ours is the flat fee covered in the pricing section above, charged on top of your media budget. Setup work such as CRM integration and tracking is scoped at the start so the monthly fee is predictable.
How do the pricing models of SaaS PPC agencies compare?
A flat fee is predictable and does not reward higher spend, a percentage scales with the account, and a hybrid mixes a base fee with a spend or outcome element. The model matters less than the scope behind it. Check whether CRM integration, offline conversion import and pipeline reporting are included or extra.
Should SaaS companies optimise Google Ads to free trials?
Only if trial sign ups reliably turn into paying customers, which is more common for low priced self serve products. For most B2B software, optimising to PQLs or SQLs imported from the CRM finds better prospects for the same budget. Trials still count, they just should not be the target the bidding chases.
Is it worth bidding on competitor names?
For most SaaS companies, yes, because people searching for alternatives are already in the market. Keep the ad text about your own product, since trademark owners can restrict use of their name in ads, and send the clicks to a fair comparison page.
How long does Google Ads take to work for SaaS?
Search campaigns bring traffic from day one, but learning which clicks become pipeline takes longer. Allow two to three months for offline conversion data to build up, and a full sales cycle before judging cost per customer.
Where we fit
Our SaaS clients are B2B software companies that want paid search measured in pipeline rather than trials, and that are ready to connect the CRM so the ad account can see what happens after the form. For Myagi, restructuring paid search and paid social for lead quality and tying tracking to pipeline was part of the work behind 115% growth in marketing driven pipeline.
If your trial numbers and your pipeline numbers are telling different stories, we are happy to look at the account with you and say what we would change first. Get in touch whenever it suits.
