Choosing a marketing agency for a SaaS company
What to ask a marketing agency before hiring them for a SaaS company, and why understanding activation and retention matters more than campaign creativity.
4 min read
A SaaS campaign optimised purely for trial sign-ups will happily find people who sign up out of curiosity and never activate. The fix is feeding a later, more meaningful event — first key action completed, or a qualified activation — back into Google Ads as the actual conversion goal.
Structure by use case, not by feature list
- Campaigns grouped by the specific problem a segment is searching to solve, not a generic 'project management software' catch-all.
- Landing pages matched to that specific use case, showing the relevant feature first.
- Separate budget for competitor comparison searches, which convert differently than generic category searches.
Why sign-up volume is a misleading headline metric
A campaign generating cheap sign-ups that never activate looks efficient on a cost-per-signup basis while actually wasting budget. Track activation rate by campaign and channel, and be willing to pause a channel with strong sign-up numbers but weak activation.
A cheap trial sign-up that never activates costs more than an expensive one that converts to a paying account.
Remarketing to trial users, not just anonymous visitors
Where your privacy policy and consent setup allow it, remarketing to users who started a trial but have not activated a key feature can bring back people close to conversion, often more efficiently than acquiring an entirely new visitor.
The takeaway
Push activation events, not just sign-ups, back into Google Ads as conversions — otherwise the algorithm optimises for people who sign up and never return.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
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