Saas Marketer - Tom's rant

Tom's rant

b2b is changing

Feb 09

I have a bone to pick.

It's a bone to pick with paid social ads.

Paid social ads on "awareness platforms" E.g. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter.

To put it bluntly, trying to get people to convert for anything remotely complex on these platforms with paid spend is a futile exercise.

Too many marketers and marketing agencies think they can just spin up a poor creative, do a little interest or demographic targeting and get demos or trials.

This is no longer the case. In fact, I don't think it was ever the case.

Why doesn't it work?

It doesn't work because...

Think about the buyer... they're scrolling whilst waiting for their coffee, sitting on a boring call or walking their dog.

They are NOT in the frame of mind to assess complex B2B processes to see if your SaaS will fit in.

They want to be entertained... and maybe educated.

Your weak ad copy pushing them towards a demo or free trial... or even worse, an eBook will get ignored.

I have spent approaching $100k on these types of ads on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter... and they have never worked.

And the worse part: you're harming your brand. Every time one of your target customers ignores your direct response ad... it increases the liklihood they will ignore something else from your brand again.

So what does work?

Giving people what they want.

Give them content that will entertain and educate about problems they are experiencing (that your product can help solve).

I recently did this test on Linkedin with a client:

🅰️ $13k spent - 94 reactions, 0 comments, 0 shares
🅱️ $600 spent - 95 reactions, 27 comments, 6 shares

Can you guess which strategy we used for 🅰️ or 🅱️?

Yes exactly.

More on that test, including the Linkedin post we boosted for 🅱️ here.

If we can add value to our ideal buyers as they scroll on mobile... then when it comes round to actually solving their problem, they will either:

Tell a colleague to check out our solution
Google our brand name and request a demo
Tell their friend to check out our solution

In summary, it’s unlikely we will see a direct ROI from these ads, and that's because it's impossible for a social platform or Google Analytics to track human behaviour in the real world (for now).

But over time we will be adding value to the market, building trust in your brand… and ultimately getting more desktop “organic” or “direct” free trial/demos.

It’s a mindset shift away from short term, churning and burning through the market, to long term education and value add.

A mindset shift that every SaaS Marketer now needs to make, if they don't want to end up wasting $000's, whilst harming their brand.

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