B2B SaaS Facebook Ads Case Study: Scaling MQLs to 60/Month for Titan GPS
Last updated: January 6th, 2021
In a previous article, we discussed how Facebook Ads work for most of our clients in some capacity, and yet many B2B SaaS companies write off Facebook Ads as a viable channel for lead generation, because they view it more as a B2C channel.
When Titan GPS (a B2B SaaS company making fleet tracking management software) came to us in 2019, it wasn’t that they’d written off Facebook, they just hadn’t tried it yet. Their paid media efforts had been strictly focused on Google Ads.
But at the time, competition in their market had been rising. For example, in the months prior to us working together, one of their top competitors had roughly tripled their Google Ad spend:
As a result, Titan GPS had been experiencing a number of new challenges with their Google Ads:
- More competitors were bidding on their highest value keywords
- Costs per click (CPC) were rising dramatically
- Their cost per acquisition (CPA) had roughly doubled
Since Google was quickly becoming a crowded and expensive channel, we decided to expand their PPC efforts to include Facebook as well.
The thinking was: Being B2B versus B2C, some of their competitors would be absent from Facebook all together. And for those who were trying Facebook, most were likely to be making the same targeting and messaging mistakes we see other B2B companies making (more on this below).
By Q3 of 2020, we were consistently bringing in an average of 60 MQL’s per month through Facebook for Titan GPS. In this article, we walk through how we achieved these results.
We kick off with explaining the strategic offers we used and why we felt they were the right fit for Facebook in particular. Then we walk through examples of our audience targeting, ad messaging and creative, and landing pages we drove traffic to.
Are you a B2B SaaS company looking to expand and improve your PPC efforts for lead generation? Schedule a Free SaaS Scale Session to learn more about how we can help.
If you prefer to listen to this article, you can check it out on our podcast, SaaS Marketing Bites or listen here:
The Key to Our Facebook Ads Strategy for Titan GPS: Getting the Offers Right
We commonly see B2B SaaS companies offering trial and demo signups to cold prospects on Facebook. And these typically don’t perform well because the offer is a mismatch with where their audiences are in the buyer’s journey.
The low performance of their ads then discourages companies about the effectiveness of Facebook as a B2B marketing channel. And because of that, they give up and dismiss the platform altogether.
Instead, when targeting cold audiences on Facebook, we typically begin with offering resource downloads that prospects are more likely to opt in for. And then from there, we guide them down the funnel through email or remarketing ads.
During our onboarding workshops we learned that Titan GPS had a lead magnet already developed called “10 Things to Know About the ELD Mandate Before 2021.” It’s a timely and relevant resource for their target audience, providing facts related to an upcoming mandate which will require commercial truckers and fleets to use electronic logbook devices (ELD’s).
Note: ELD’s are one of the features of Titan GPS’s fleet tracking management software.
In addition to this, we also learned they’d developed a free logbook app to help commercial truckers and fleets get familiar with using digital logs in the lead up to the mandate.
So we decided to use these two resources as our primary offers. We developed ad to landing page flows for our campaigns, and launched them to new Facebook audiences based on their current customer list.
Below we share the details of this process, including screenshots of the various assets we created.
How We Approached Audiences, Ad Messaging, Creative, and Landing Pages
Once we decided to move forward with using their lead magnet and free app as our primary offers for cold audiences, we moved to the next steps in execution:
- Setting up Facebook audiences for their campaigns
- Developing ad messaging and creative
- Creating the landing pages we’d drive traffic to
While the right offers and messaging are critical for B2B companies to attract prospects through Facebook, how they’re combined and executed is what makes or breaks the channel’s effectiveness.
Setting Up B2B SaaS Audiences in Facebook Ads
When we start working with new clients, we almost always find their audience targeting needs work.
For example, companies often create Lookalike Audiences (LAL) based on all their website visitors. But if you consider the pool of people that visit any website, there is everything from:
- Completely random unqualified visitors
- People learning about your product for the first time
- People seriously considering or planning to purchase
So by creating LAL audiences based on all website visitors, they aren’t filtering for quality, and can end up with poorly fit traffic from their ads (and therefore wasted spend).
What companies should do instead, and what we did for Titan GPS, is create lookalike audiences based on more granular data sources. In Titan GPS’s case, we started with the current customers list from their CRM. That way, Facebook would create the audiences based on actual customers, not just any random website visitor. And therefore, the audience would yield higher quality prospects.
In this case, we used the same audiences for both offers (the ELD lead magnet and the free Logbook app). And the audiences worked well for each campaign in terms of lead quality and cost per download.
Note: If Titan GPS’s current customer list had been larger, we would have used even more segmented audiences (eg. creating LAL’s for highest value customers — in addition to ones based on any customer).
Developing Ad Messaging and Creative
As we mentioned, Facebook Ads messaging is one of the areas where we see B2B SaaS companies make mistakes.
Namely, they don’t answer the “who, why, and what” in a clear way. And without that, it isn’t apparent to audiences that the ad is for them, or that it matters to them, and they scroll right by it — decreasing engagement and click through rates (CTR), while driving up costs.
So for our clients, we always focus on communicating the “who, why, and what” very clearly through both our messaging and our creative.
And in Titan GPS’s case, we based everything on their target buyer persona, “Fleet Manager Frank.”
For example, here’s the ad we created for the Logbook app offer:
In a concise way, it communicates:
- The “why”: “Still using paper HOS logbooks?”
- The “who it’s for”: “Commercial drivers and fleets”
- And the “what”: “Electronic logbook app”
In addition, the featured image communicates more about the “who it’s for” (truckers and fleets), while the graphic overlay communicates the “what” (an app).
In doing so, we were able to capture the attention and engagement of relevant prospects, even though it was a B2B offer on Facebook, where people generally are not there for business.
Then, to compel prospects to click once we had their attention, we provided three detailed “Pro without Con” bullets to bolster the “why”:
For example, if we look at the first bullet: “Simplify Implementation. Flatten the learning curve by switching your drivers over to the Titan GPS Logbooks solution right now – completely free.”
It both communicates a pain point of prospects (the learning curve) as well as a benefit that their app brings to solve it (simplified implementation).
We find that once you have a B2B audience’s attention, they want detail and education. And by framing it to them in a way that communicates both their pain points and the way your offer solves their problems, cold audiences are much more likely to opt in.
The Landing Pages We Drive Traffic to
While we didn’t build the landing pages for Titan GPS (they were built in-house), we’ve consulted on them often. We’ll point out a few of the elements we recommended that follow our SaaS landing page framework.
Here’s an example of their current lead magnet landing page:
And here’s a synopsis of elements we’ve recommended and things they’ve done well:
- Headline: The headline reflects the first line of text in the Facebook Ad, providing prospects a sense of continuity and therefore trust that they’re in the right place.
- Signup Form: By keeping it to 4 basic fields (first name, last name, email, number of fleets), more people will optin, conversion rates will be higher, and more leads will ultimately end up in their funnel. And indicating the number of fleets is both low effort for prospects, and helpful for qualifying leads.
- Call to Action (CTA): By focusing all of the attention on a single CTA, they’re following best practices for conversion rate optimization (CRO).
- Countdown Clock: This is a clever way of instilling a sense of urgency that this is a problem that needs to be solved ASAP.
- Visual and Bullets: By providing a visual of the PDF cover page, they show visitors it’s a real, tangible thing that they can have now if they sign up. Then, the bullets do a solid job of communicating exactly how prospects will benefit from downloading.
Preliminary Results: 300 MQL’s from May to September 2020
During the months of May to September 2020, our Facebook Ads campaigns generated:
- 61 free logbook app submissions
- 239 ELD lead magnet downloads
- A total of 300 MQL’s
By selecting the right offers to use and following our Facebook process, Titan GPS was able to begin harnessing Facebook Ads — a channel that’s commonly written off by B2B SaaS companies — to generate an average of 60 MQL’s per month.
In just 5 months, 300 B2B prospects traded Titan GPS their contact information for a free yet valuable resource. And Titan GPS is now well positioned to become the solution those companies choose when the ELD mandate takes effect in mid-2021.
Are you a B2B SaaS company looking to expand and improve your PPC efforts for lead generation? Schedule a Free SaaS Scale Session to learn more about how we can help.
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