The Pay Per Click Advertising Opportunity
Most Software Companies Are Ignoring
The software industry is often preoccupied with time-intensive, traditional sales methods—cold calling, endless demos, and networking events. But why waste resources when online advertising can deliver better results at a fraction of the cost?
Sales consultants frequently share the grim reality: it can take 18+ months to ramp up a new sales rep and years to make them profitable, assuming they stay long enough. In today’s competitive job market, where sales reps often hop jobs for higher pay, it’s no surprise that many software companies struggle to scale.
The secret that many other tech sectors have embraced is this: marketing comes before sales. Instead of spending six figures on outdated sales methods, invest in building a scalable, digital lead-generation pipeline.
When you’ve built a steady stream of inbound leads, you can then scale your sales efforts to close deals effectively. Until then, focus on filling your pipeline with high-quality leads ready to convert.
Tortoise and Hare specializes in creating high-performance Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns that increase brand awareness and connect you with in-market buyers actively searching for your software solutions.
Why Software Companies Are Doubling Down on Digital Advertising
Digital advertising spend in B2B has more than tripled in the past 5 years. Digital advertising spend in B2B is also growing at more than double the rate (11.6%) than traditional advertising spend is (5%).
For software companies, this shift has been transformative. Buyers are fatigued with intrusive cold calls and spammy emails. Instead, they prefer to conduct their own research before reaching out. By the time they’re ready to speak with a sales rep, PPC campaigns ensure your brand is top of mind.
The Way People Shop For Software Has Changed
There's 7.5 billion people in the world and that number is growing towards 10 billion quickly. The number of vendors a business engages with has also increased. All that's led to more and more massive scale of sales reps trying to connect with buyers.
Software buyers are increasingly fatigued with the constant barrage of cold calls and cold emails that assault them and increasingly prefer to do their own research before adding themselves to yet another salesperson's hit list.
In fact according to a 2023 survey by Cognism, only 27% of sales teams reporting calling at the best way to book meetings and only 17% of B2B marketers reported cold calling as their primary customer acquisition channel.
People still want to talk to sales, and experience better buying outcomes when a rep is involved, but they want to talk when they are ready and when they have done their own research. Enter PPC.
Prospect And Nurture Leads With Software Marketing PPC
Don't surrender these key digital battlegrounds to your competitors. Pay per click platforms offer you the chance to both prospect for new leads and nurture those already in your funnel.
Software Marketing PPC can help you:
- Connect with in-market buyers at the time they are shopping for providers.
- Stay top of mind with low cost display ads to get those brands touches.
- Distribute blogs and whitepapers to help educate, and attract attention from buyers.
- Distribute rich media that helps socialize your brand values and company culture.
- Capture email addresses with lead magnets for ongoing email marketing.
PPC Campaign Readiness Checklist
Running PPC campaigns for your Software company can be a very profitable endeavour but it's not without its challenges.
We've helped generate thousands of leads and add millions in revenue through pay per click advertising efforts and learned many lessons along the way.
Before you start an Software PPC advertising effort we recommend you have these items in place:
- An established brand
- A quality website that already generates occasional leads
- A social media presence and quality graphics on your pages
- Reviews on platforms like Google or Facebook
- A budget of at least $5,000/month you can spend on advertising
- A budget that can sustain at least 3 months of advertising but ideally 12 so you can understand seasonality impacts throughout the year and see the big picture
Not all of these are required to launch a successful advertising effort, but customers who meet these criteria tend to realize the most success.
How We Can Help
Configure Ad Accounts
We can help you configure your ad accounts for success by installing conversion tracking, remarketing pixels, and deploying optimal settings to help you maximize PPC performance.
Create Effective Marketing Campaigns
We'll help you refine your targeting and messaging in order to create effective Software PPC campaigns that reach your target audience. We write all the copy and assist with basic creative.
Optimize PPC Performance
Launching campaigns is just the beginning. Tortoise and Hare uses our deep experience running PPC campaigns for Software companies to refine your campaigns and generate profitable growth.
Platforms We Support
Ad Spend Managed
New Revenues Generated
Leads Generated
Why Do We Succeed In Software PPC
When Other Agencies Have Failed?
Some of the reasons we succeed where other agencies have failed with your Software PPC efforts:
- We only work with clients that we think we can help. Choosing our clients carefully is a big part of our success.
- We focus on the Software sector exclusively, where other agencies are splitting their time and focus.
- We specialize primarily in search engines, instead of splitting our focus into a million different areas, we keep a focus on what's most important, quality search engine traffic.
- We are technically savvy and are using our technical skills to take full advantage of what advertising platforms offer. Many agencies fall short here.
- As a small team, we're all experts, therefore you get experts working on your account, not interns.
Listen To Our PPC Advertising Podcast Episode
Listen to Hunter Nelson, founder and president of Tortoise and Hare Software, discuss PPC advertising with Taher Hamid in the podcast episode below.
Watch Our Mastering Google Ads For Software Companies Presentation
Listen to Tortoise and Hare Software founder and President Hunter Nelson talk about running paid search campaigns on Google to add leads to your software company's marketing pipeline.
What Some Of Our Clients Have To Say About Working With Us On Their PPC Campaigns
Frequently Asked Questions About Software PPC
This answer varies on factors like locations targeted, verticals targeted, growth goals, and more. Generally we recommend a minimum of $5,000/month put towards pay per click advertising.
We have a flat fee + percentage of ad spend model. Our minimum retainer is $1,500/month.
We frequently get customers that generate a lead in their first month of advertising but it can take 3-6 months to get campaigns dialed in and performing profitably.
Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook at a minimum.
Generally it takes about a month for us to get initial campaigns and configurations completed.
Pay per click advertising use machine learning to set their bids in dynamic auctions. They are dependent on you feeding them back data on what clicks turned into "conversions". We help you set up conversion tracking for activities like:
- Form submits
- Phone calls
- Newsletter subscriptions
- Other valuable actions on your website
Apply Now For A Free
Software Marketing Pay Per Click Advertising Consultation
We offer free 1-hour digital advertising consultations via a Microsoft Teams video conference to discuss your pain points and determine if Tortoise and Hare Software is the right fit for you.
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