Facebook is a great place for software and SaaS companies to target their exact audience on a personal level. This level of precise targeting is what is getting Facebook in trouble, but as of right now nothing has changed with the ability to target this way, only with some of the data and insights you have access to.
This level of targeting is available through a free Facebook Ad account to anyone, you just need to know the right way of setting it up.
Here are few ways you can use Facebook ads to bring in new customers and keep the ones you already have:
1. Prospect using 1% lookalike audiences:
Facebook "lookalike audiences" are new audiences that Facebook creates based on a current audience that you have already aggregated.
This could be a list of people that are already customers of your product or if you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website, an audience of your website visitors.
By exporting a list of your current customers from your CRM and loading this to Facebook, you can select the top 1% of users on Facebook that most closely match the users who are on your list.
The tricky thing in marketing to this new audience, is having the right message. The people on the lookalike list are more than likely hearing about your product for the first time, and it’s going to take more than one ad to get them to convert. One highly effective way is to create ads from a popular posts on your website’s blog to bring them to your website for the first time.
The better the quality of the people on the list the more effective your lookalike audience will be. If you have the data, use a source audience of your highest value customers as the seed audience for the lookalike.
2. Retain current customers:
When customers stop using your platform, the more likely they are to churn.
Allocate a small amount of your marketing budget to target current customers to keep them engaged. Provide updates on new features, blog posts, or personality pieces.
Your ads will likely cost less because they will have high engagement. Depending on the size of your audience, a budget of $5-$10 a day might be enough to cover your bases here.
3. Drive traffic to landing pages:
Driving prospects off of Facebook to a landing page is a solid strategy for turning prospects into leads and sending them directly into your CRM.
By using a landing page (not a page on your website) designed entirely around capturing their contact information, you reduce the chance of them losing interest and leaving your site.
Once you have captured their contact information, make sure to follow up with them immediately.
4. Remarket to free trial cancellers:
Not everyone who doesn’t go from free-trial to paid subscriber is a lost opportunity.
They might have gone on vacation or had a busy few weeks at work. If they do lapse and aren’t automatically set up for a paid account you should encourage them to sign up.
Setup a custom audience to reach them again with a specific creative about their free-trial ending.
This might have to be a manual process depending on what CRM you use. Zapier offers the ability to sync many CRM's with Facebook custom audiences, however some companies will find themselves having to this manually.
Conclusion:
These are just a few ways you can use Facebook to market your software or SaaS company. And there are so many more…
the key to Facebook ads is having the right audience targeting and message match. This way you can speak to your prospects and customers depending on who they are and where they are at.
Good luck and let us know if you have any questions!
