Using closed customer data to improve lead quality for SaaS companies

Increasing lead volume is a primary focus for companies in the SaaS and B2B spaces. However, if the leads being generated aren’t turning into actual customers, ROI is negatively impacted. This can lead to budget cuts and fewer opportunities to scale and grow lead generation campaigns and business overall. 

Understanding which digital strategies are both contributing to the volume of leads and turning into actual customers is critical for SaaS companies. Here are three ways you can use that customer data to improve your lead quality and scale efficiently.

Allocate budgets to campaigns that have the highest number of closed leads

One of the challenges for SaaS and B2B companies running digital marketing strategies is how to allocate budgets. This is especially true if paid search or other digital campaigns appear to have similar performance. If your campaigns are performing relatively the same in terms of cost per acquisition (CPA) and conversion rate, how do you choose where to allocate your dollars? Turn to additional insights found in your closed lead data. Identify those campaigns that not only show good performance metrics but also that have generated leads that turned into closed customers. Doing so will enable you to make more efficient decisions. These factors also help your marketing team establish a campaign evaluation criteria that can help you make quicker, more informed budget optimizations in the future. 

Use closed customer persona data to prioritize your channel mix

Search networks such as Google and Bing have specific demographic users that visit their platform regularly. The same goes for social networks such as Instagram and LinkedIn. Each digital marketing channel caters and speaks to different demographics. So getting the mix of which you use is key to hitting your SaaS company’s target audience. Your choices are made clearer and easier by leaning on closed customer persona data. 

Personas are fictional profiles of your ideal customers. Demographics, behaviors, and goals from your actual customers are the foundation on which personas are built. Using these personas as a foundation, you can get more specific with what digital marketing channel is right for you to reach these ideal people (and be smarter with your budgets). 

Example:

Tom is our top closed customer IT-based persona and Jerry is our top closed customer email marketing-based persona. We learn from Tom’s data that he spends more time researching on search engines such as Google. We learn from Jerry’s data that he actually spends most of his time on social networks such as LinkedIn. Combining each personas’ search behavior with their closed customer data, we can deduce two things. One is that we should spend more on paid search campaigns to reach ideal IT customers that will close (our other Toms). The second is that we should spend more on social network ads to find additional email marketing closed customers (our other Jerrys). 

Add audience targeting to current campaigns based on closed customer personas

Closed customer data can also be used to add audience targeting layers to SaaS marketing campaigns. This extra targeting would allow you to bid higher on specific audiences that match your target market. 

For example, we might learn that business professionals and technology audiences are layers we want to increase bids on because our technology-based persona, Oliver, was our highest converting persona. Insights and data from closed customer personas that are used to further specify audiences for campaign targeting allow us to efficiently reach people most likely to convert into a lead and eventually into a customer.

Use analytics from closed customers to create ad and landing page messaging 

Gaining insight into closed customers’ initial search intent provides us the necessary information to tailor our ad copy and landing pages. Ad copy alone probably will not directly answer all questions a potential lead has about your company. Your prospective customers most likely also need information from landing pages for more complete answers. However, SaaS company website copy if often written in a broad, high-level overview viewpoint of the service. 

Understanding the common phrases, questions, and words used from your closed paid search leads can help narrow the focus of ad and landing page copy for better campaign results. Data from your analytics provider can point out additional keywords to add into the campaign mix, which can bump up search impression count. Additionally, using what you find from your research can help you craft more specific copy, which can improve click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. Building out search and display campaigns based on best performing messaging can help you continually tweak your efforts for maximum efficiency.

Integrating closed customer data into your digital marketing efforts is a great way to efficiently take on your competition. It’s crucial to understand the true ROI of your campaigns in the competitive world of SaaS. Knowing specifically which channels and campaigns are turning your leads into customers, will help your sales and marketing efforts scale more efficiently. 

Want to learn how to better utilize your closed customer data for digital marketing campaigns? Let’s talk.