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Your SaaS Ads Are Lying (And It's Costing You a Fortune)
- Lukas Holschuh
- July 16, 2025
- 10:20 pm
Inside this article, you’ll discover:
Why most SaaS advertising fails (Hint: your ads and your price are in a toxic relationship).
- The raw truth about advertising for Subscriptions, One-Time Purchases, and Freemium models.
- Metrics that actually make you money (LTV:CAC, ROAS, Activation Rate) versus the ones that just stroke your ego.
- Real-world examples of ads that drove 45k signups and $30k in sales by telling the right story.
Want to stop burning cash? Schedule a free, no-BS consultation. I’ll show you exactly where your message is breaking down and how to fix it. This isn't a sales pitch; it's an intervention.
We can help you with all types of digital ads:
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Team @ Lukas Holschuh
Founder, Growth & Advertising Consultant
Your SaaS ads are probably failing for one reason: they're making a promise your pricing model can't keep.
It’s not intentional. But there’s a massive gap between the story your ads tell and the reality of what you’re asking customers to pay. They feel that disconnect. And that’s the moment they close the tab, your cost-per-click goes up in smoke, and you’re left wondering why your funnels are broken.
I’ve seen it a hundred times. A founder tries to use aggressive, scarcity-driven ads for a high-touch subscription product. It’s like proposing marriage on the first date. It’s weird, it doesn’t work, and you just wasted a lot of money on dinner.
Your pricing isn't just a number. It's the DNA of your business model. Your ads have to match it, or they die. Here’s how.
The Subscription: You’re Not Selling Software, You’re Selling a Relationship
A subscription is a long-term commitment. You are asking a customer to trust you, month after month, year after year. Your ads can't be a one-night stand.
The Mistake: Running hyper-aggressive "Buy Now!" ads that scream urgency.
Why It Fails: It attracts the wrong customer—someone looking for a quick fix, not a long-term partner. They sign up, cost you a fortune to acquire, and churn two months later. Your LTV:CAC ratio is a disaster.
Your subscription ads have one job: sell the vision. They need to show what life will be like a year from now with you as their trusted partner. And one of the best ways to do this is to offer a free trial, let people experience your product and go through the transformation it will bring them. In the ads, call out the problems and goals your app can solve, demo how your app solves your users' problems, use testimonials, explain the solution with case studies or user generated content. Sell the transformation, not the tool.
That's exactly how we helped a client drive thousands of trials in the case study below.
See The Results
See how we drove 5082 trials for a SaaS product with a subscription pricing model.
The One-Time Purchase: The Clean, Honest Transaction
This is the opposite of a subscription. It’s a clean, simple exchange of value. "Here is the tool. Here is the price. Your problem is now solved. Forever." It appeals to people who hate commitment and want control.
The Mistake: Using vague, "vision-casting" ads that talk about partnership.
Why It Fails: The customer doesn't want a partner; they want a hammer. They have a nail, and they want to hit it, now. Waffling about "our journey together" just confuses them.
Your ad strategy here needs to be brutally efficient. Focus on direct response. Clearly state the benefit, the price, and the offer. Emphasize ownership, permanence, and immediate ROI. This is where you track ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) like a hawk because each sale has to be profitable today. There is no "lifetime value" to save you later.
When you only get one shot, you can't miss. For this client, we built a machine designed for one thing: turning a click into cash.
See The Results
Here’s how we used a direct-response strategy to drive $30,000 in sales.
The Freemium Model: The Art of the Free Lunch
Freemium is a brutal numbers game. The hard truth is that 99% of your users will never pay you a dime. They are here for the free lunch. Your entire business model relies on the 1% who find your product so indispensable they can’t live without it.
The Mistake: Trying to "sell" the premium version in your ads.
Why It Fails: People clicking a "Free" ad are not in a buying mindset. Period. Trying to convince them to pay before they’ve even used the product is pointless.
Your ad's only job is to get a user to take the easiest possible first step. That's it. Your ads should be wide, cheap, and focused on the single most compelling part of your free offering. The product does the selling, not the ad. Your job is to get them in the door so the product can work its magic. The only metric that matters at first is Activation Rate—are people actually using the free tool?
To win this game, you need massive volume.
See The Results
This is how we opened the floodgates and drove 45,000 signups for a freemium app.
The Rules of the Game:
- Stop Lying to Your Customers. Look at your ad. Look at your price. Are they telling the same story? An ad for a $99 one-time tool (a hammer) should look and feel different than an ad for a $1,000/year subscription (a partnership).
- Track Metrics That Matter (Or Go Broke). Stop obsessing over clicks and signups. For subscriptions, it's LTV:CAC or death. For one-time sales, it's pure ROAS. For freemium, it's Activation Rate and Free-to-Paid Conversion. The rest is noise designed to make you feel busy, not profitable.
- The Ad Is Just the Handshake. The landing page is the rest of the conversation. The experience must be seamless. A direct-response ad must lead to a direct-response landing page. A vision-casting ad must lead to a page that builds the dream. Don’t break the narrative.
So, take a hard look. Are your ads and your pricing telling the same story? Or is there a disconnect?
That gap is where your marketing budget goes to die. It's where customer trust evaporates. And it's the invisible handbrake holding back your growth.
If you’re ready to close that gap, align your message, and build a strategy that actually works, let’s talk.
Book a free, no-BS consultation at holschuh.co.uk. I’ll tell you exactly what’s broken and how to fix it.
To your success,
Lukas
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