Instagram Ads for B2B SaaS
We run Instagram ads for B2B software companies with $10K or more in ACV, and we do one thing with them: book demos. If you’ve read our Facebook page, the audiences and the follow-up are the same. This page is about what’s different on Instagram, which is who’s there and what the ad has to look like.
Instagram is a strong fit for SaaS, and it’s the reverse of most B2B channels: the younger the buyer and the earlier the company, the better it works. A founder who closed a Series A last month is on Instagram tonight. So is the head of growth she just hired.
Who at a software company is on Instagram
Founders and co-founders, especially at companies under 150 people. They post their own company news there, and they see yours.
Growth, marketing, and RevOps leads. The people who buy tooling for their function spend their evenings looking at what other companies’ teams are shipping, and they do it in Reels.
Product and design leads. If your product has a UI, the person who decides on it is looking at other UIs on Instagram.
Who mostly isn’t: CFOs, CIOs at large companies, and procurement. For a SaaS company selling to enterprise IT, this page is short and Facebook or email does the work. For a company selling to founders and growth teams, Instagram is often the best paid channel there is.
What the ad has to look like
Vertical, full screen, sound on, gone in a swipe. A horizontal founder video from Facebook fails here because it starts too slowly and it’s the wrong shape.
Three formats we run for SaaS. Your founder on camera, vertical, one signal, hook in the first second: “You just posted a RevOps role after your round. Here’s what breaks in forecasting between 30 and 60 reps.” One product screen, the one that answers the question the signal raised, with a single line of text over it. And a real reply from a customer, name blurred, as a Story frame; “yeah, let’s talk, when’s good” from a VP is the most persuasive thing you can put in a feed.
Captions on every video, because half the audience has the sound off. Under 20 seconds for Stories, under 45 for Reels.
The audience
A signal audience of named companies that just posted the role your product serves, closed a round, hired a new leader, or changed their stack, matched by contact, company domain, the company’s Instagram account, and founders’ public profiles. Rebuilt every day. A retargeting audience of anyone who watched three seconds, tapped a Story, or visited your pricing page. A lookalike seeded from closed-won customers.
The signal audience on Instagram skews toward the funding and new-leader signals, because those are the companies whose founders are posting.
What that looks like in a week
A 60-person company closes a Series A on Monday and posts a Head of RevOps role on Wednesday. By Thursday morning both signals have fired and the founder and the new head of growth are in the signal audience. Thursday night the founder sees a 25-second Reel of your CEO saying the one thing about forecasting between 30 and 60 reps. She watches it through, which puts her in the retargeting audience. Saturday she sees the product screen with one line over it. Sunday night she taps the lead form, which asks for a demo and nothing else. Monday at 8am someone on our team emails and calls her, confirms the company size and the round, and books the demo on your AE’s calendar for Wednesday. Your AE walks in knowing about the round and the RevOps role.
On a Facebook-only program the founder would have seen the ad in her feed and probably scrolled past it. On Instagram she saw it between two Reels from companies she follows, and it looked like one of them.
The follow-up, and the daily loop
We run lead forms and a calendar landing page and test which books more demos. The form’s offer is a demo, never a download. Someone on our team emails and calls every fill the same day, sorts the founders from the students, and books the demo on your AE’s calendar. Every morning we check yesterday’s booked demos against the target; if we hit it, spend goes up, and if we didn’t, it’s the audience, the spend, the creative, or the follow-up, and we fix the one that’s off.
What it costs
The management fee is priced per program, based on spend and how many audiences and creatives are in rotation. We’ll give you the number on the fit call.
Ad spend is billed to your card by Meta. We don’t hold spend, there’s no markup, and you can see every dollar in your own ad account. You don’t need to run our email to run this.
Results
Those are software, logistics, and restaurant clients. We'll put a number from this channel here the first time a client in the category lets us use their name.
If your buyers are founders and growth leads, Instagram probably comes before Facebook for you. If they're CFOs, it doesn't, and we'll say so.
Book a 15-minute fit call
Tell us your ACV, your buyer, and whether they're founders or enterprise. We'll tell you whether Instagram fits, what the fee would be at your spend, and, if Facebook or email would do more for the same money, that too.
Other ways we work with B2B SaaS
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where most of this industry's buyers are, and the program most companies start with
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if you haven't picked a channel and want the qualification line and the reply report first
Instagram Ads for other industries
Questions people ask us
Isn’t this the same as your Facebook page?
Same ad system, same audiences, same follow-up. Different people and different placements. A Facebook ad reaches a 55-year-old CFO in her feed. A Reel reaches a 33-year-old founder between two other Reels. If your buyer is the second, Instagram reaches her somewhere Facebook doesn’t.
We sell to enterprise IT. Should we run Instagram?
Probably not. The audience is thin and the cost per reach is high. We’d say so on the fit call and point you at Facebook retargeting or the email program.
Can we reuse our Facebook video?
You can, and it’ll underperform. Instagram video is vertical with the hook in the first second and captions on screen. We shoot for the placement.
How much should we spend?
Around $3,000 to $8,000 a month for a SaaS test, with retargeting cheap and fast and the signal audience slower to fill. Six to eight weeks to a readable number.