Most businesses struggle to find a great SaaS advertising agency. Truth be told, unless you’re a marketing expert, it’s hard to determine if a provider is any good. The advertising process is rather complex and involves numerous advanced tools, which is why potential clients can’t differentiate between bad and good marketing brands.
Luckily, there are a few simple tricks you can implement to figure this one out. For example, you should have quick calls with every candidate to establish their knowledge of English and overall professionalism. You can also ask them for their track record to analyze the results they’ve provided for past clients.
In this article, we’ll share all the tricks in our sleeves. But before we do that, let’s see why you should hire a SaaS advertising agency in the first place.
How Can Digital Advertising Help You?
In the last decade or so, many companies have transferred their operations online (entirely or partially). This makes a lot of sense because running an online shop allows you to save money on expensive rent, utility, and employee costs.
And while this strategy works like a charm for bigger brands that people know of, it isn’t ideal for smaller businesses. As no one knows about your company, they won’t browse you on Google. Because of that, we’re dependent on various marketing tactics to boost our online visibility and generate leads.
But what is the best method for increasing our brand awareness?
Business owners have a wide variety of marketing tactics at their disposal, including search engine optimization, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and more. Out of all these methods, digital advertising, and especially pay-per-click advertising, stands out as the most straightforward.
By hiring a reputable digital advertising agency, your software company can start generating leads today. Unlike organic methods, which take time to implement and bear fruit, ad campaigns are lightning-fast. Furthermore, by investing in ad space, you can leapfrog organic results in Google and social media.
SaaS Advertising Benefits
There are numerous reasons why you should choose this marketing tactic as your main promotional activity:
- Advertising provides instant results. As soon as you create a campaign, you can start generating leads, which makes it much faster than most other marketing tactics
- Ads are placed above organic results in Google and other search engines. They’re also showcased prominently on social media
- Ad campaigns give you full data insights. You can monitor how users reacted to your message and whether they converted in high numbers. Most importantly, it allows you to calculate whether or not you made a profit from ads
- You usually don’t need as big a team for advertising campaigns as you would for search engine optimization
- Although banners aren’t the most popular method of advertising, they can also provide some extra exposure for a relatively low price
SaaS advertising is one of the most straightforward ways of generating interest in your software. You can execute this tactic even with a small team, which can’t be said for some other campaigns. Ads shine for software brands that want to generate instant results and have to boost their cash flow badly.
SaaS Advertising Drawbacks
Unfortunately, there are also a few cases where you might want to select some alternative tactics:
- The biggest issue with SaaS advertising is that all your hard work vanishes as soon as you stop paying (except for sales and conversions). You won’t retain any links, content, or other proprietary resources you would retain with other tactics
- Because of that, PPC isn’t ideal for building brand awareness unless you’re willing to spend money in perpetuity
- The fact that you’re running ads doesn’t guarantee success, although good advertising agencies can usually overcome this challenge
Advertising is a short-term tactic that provides quick benefits. While it might not be for building awareness in the long run, people will still learn your name by browsing search engines and social media. Of course, you still need to run quality campaigns to get results.
Why You Need a Good Provider?
Besides the obvious one, which is running successful campaigns, there are several other reasons why SaaS brands should find good advertising providers:
- Good SaaS providers can focus on your overall marketing goals. They know how to reach out to the target audience, making sure you develop in the right direction
- Quality providers can ensure that your ad messages are in lieu of your other marketing efforts and brand messaging
- Top-tier advertisers usually have no trouble working with other departments and become an integral part of your marketing team
When hiring advertising providers, it’s not only about the results. It’s also about integrating this external team into your existing structure. Good advertisers can become the voice of your company, spreading the brand message and increasing conversions quickly and efficiently.
4 Tricks for Choosing a Marketing Agency
Even if you’re a complete layman, there are a few tricks you can use to find a quality marketing provider:
1. Review Online Mentions
Many business owners make the mistake of analyzing marketing providers’ Google reviews and a few top review posts. Truth be told, most marketing agencies don’t get much organic feedback, and if you see a review on some random blog, there’s a good chance that the agency paid for it.
Because of that, it’s really hard to determine if an advertising company is any good (at first glance, that is). You need to dig a bit deeper to uncover relevant insights.
For example, we suggest subscribing to one of the popular online mention tools and scouring the web. Check out the forum and social media posts to find random, unlinked mentions. They usually provide much better information than blog posts.
2. Check Their Site
You can also learn a lot about an advertising agency by checking the state of their website. The worst thing you want to do is start a business with an agency that has barely any content on its pages or, even worse, has broken site design. While this isn’t an indictment of their advertising performance, it shows their unprofessionalism.
We also suggest you pay attention to their testimonials. Many agencies feature renowned past clients on homepages, so you might as well look into it. Check the reputation of these brands and give them a call. A lack of testimonials usually comes off as suspicious and might indicate they haven’t had many reputable clients in the past (if any).
3. Learn About Their Methodology
You can learn a lot about an agency by seeing how they execute their campaigns. For a provider to achieve great results, they need to have a keen understanding of your particular SaaS vertical. They need to learn more about your target audience and what differentiates your product from the rest.
So, when you’re having the first call, you should take note of all the questions agency representatives might ask you. Even if they seem too curious, this is usually a good sign. You don’t want to partner up with a provider that does basic research and doesn’t know how to pitch your prospects.
You can also learn a lot by checking their track record. Ask them to show you campaigns they’ve done for other businesses. Quality agencies will give you short experts on their campaigns while concealing past clients’ information. This is a very good sign as it shows they care about protecting clients’ sensitive data.
4. Conduct Thorough Interview
Of course, the best way to learn about an agency and its marketers is through direct contact. Interviews can give you numerous insights about the quality of their service and the level at which they perform.
The first thing to pay attention to is their office. Although many agencies work remotely, you’d still want to partner up with someone who has their own offices. Similarly, you want to consider how they dress, communicate and which tools they use.
Another important thing to consider is if they’re too pushy. Top-tier agencies let their work speak for themselves. On the other hand, companies struggling to land clients usually have a nervous aura to them, which shows during all their communication.
Last Thoughts
If you’re looking for a quality SaaS advertising agency, you should definitely read this article several times over. We’ve provided a few incredible tips that will help even the biggest laymen differentiate between agencies. Most importantly, give yourself some time to learn about the advertising process; this will give you more leverage during interviews.
