Insights, Marketing

How to calculate your PPC budget for a successful SaaS marketing strategy

by Ryan James

Pay-per-click or “PPC” ads can be a minefield if they’re not already a part of your SaaS marketing strategy. With costs per click regularly changing as specific keywords become more competitive, it can be challenging to know what budget to allocate to your PPC campaigns.

Budgeting can make or break your SaaS marketing strategy, so you must get it right. In this blog, we’re helping you calculate your ideal PPC budget with our top SaaS marketing strategy budgeting tips.

Let’s get going!

First, what actually IS a PPC budget?

Your PPC budget is the amount of spend you set aside per month to pay for your PPC ads. Or, more literally, pay for each click on those ads! You can run PPC ads across several platforms, the most popular being Google Ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn ads.

What key factors influence your PPC budget?

• The platform: Each platform will have its own minimum pricing per ad click
• Competition: The more brands targeting the same keywords/audience, the more it’ll cost
• Relevance: The more relevant your ad is to your target audience, the less you pay per click
• Quality score: If your website and ads meet your platforms standards, you’ll pay less

How to calculate your PPC budget: Step-by-step

You’d be hard-pressed to find a SaaS marketing strategy that doesn’t include at least some budget for PPC campaigns. PPC ads help increase the visibility of your SaaS brand by placing your ads directly in front of your target audience.

The beauty of PPC ads is that they can quickly get interested people onto your website, perfect if you’re a start-up! They’re also fantastic for testing different messaging, graphics, audiences, and landing pages.

So, how much budget should you allocate to PPC? Follow these 4 easy steps below to find out.

Step 1: Know your PPC goals

Without first understanding what you want each PPC campaign to achieve and how this fits into your broader SaaS marketing strategy, you may as well be advertising in the dark.

Each campaign should have a specific purpose so that you can match that purpose with the search intent of your target audience.

Is the goal to get more people to sign up to your free trial perhaps? Book a demo? Or do you simply want them to read your last “ultimate guide” blog to start nurturing them and gauging interest?

Step 2: Perform keyword research

The keywords you choose to target, like “SaaS marketing platform” play a critical role in developing your SaaS marketing strategy and determining your PPC budget.

Why? Certain keywords incur a higher click cost per click based on their competitiveness. Narrowing down the keywords most relevant to your SaaS business (and most likely to convert) will ensure each click is worth the cost.

Step 3: Use Google’s keyword planner

If you want to choose the right PPC budget for your SaaS marketing strategy, then Google’s keyword planner tool will become your new best friend.

This impressive system will give you the most accurate cost-per-click trends, help you find new keywords, and indicate how many people search for them.

Google will even recommend the price you should bid for each keyword, so you’ll know you’re not going too high or low to get the results you want.

Step 4: Calculate the clicks you need

Dive into your Google analytics and divide the total number of clicks on your ads by the number of conversions that happened as a result.

This figure will give you an average number of clicks per conversion and help you determine how many clicks you need to achieve the same or better results.

And once you know how many clicks you need, you can multiply that by the average cost per click for specific keywords, allowing you to estimate your budget better to make a healthy ROI.

Want more SaaS marketing strategy tips? Learn more about SaaS budgeting in our previous blog!

We’ll leave you with these top PPC budgeting tips

Select the best budget type for your SaaS brand, whether that’s setting your budget according to industry benchmarks or basing it off a percentage of your total SaaS sales the year before.

Make sure you take keyword trends into account to predict how your PPC campaigns will perform and don’t forget to stay agile and react swiftly to changes in the SaaS market.

Does that all sound like a lot of work? Want our SaaS marketing experts to take PPC campaign management off your hands?

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