Case study / SaaS
Increase sales-qualified pipeline from paid channels.
Overview
The situation.
Demo requests were coming in, but the sales team kept ending up on calls with companies that were too small, in the wrong sector, or years away from a decision. The funnel was busy; the pipeline was not.
Campaigns optimised toward the cheapest form fill, and the platforms did exactly what they were told—finding students, competitors and micro-businesses alongside genuine prospects. Sales accepted every meeting marketing produced, so the cost of a bad lead was paid in senior people's calendars, not just ad spend.
At a glance
- Industry
- SaaS
- Campaign
- Google Search + LinkedIn retargeting.
- Focus
- Increase sales-qualified pipeline from paid channels.
Brief
The engagement at a glance.
Client
Sample Client D
Industry
SaaS
Challenge
Demo requests came from companies outside the target market.
Objective
Increase sales-qualified pipeline from paid channels.
Strategy
Intent-based search · Firmographic qualification · CRM-synced conversions
Creative
Use-case and comparison messaging.
Campaign
Google Search + LinkedIn retargeting.
Funnel
- 01Search
- 02Use-case page
- 03Demo form
- 04SQL
- 05Opportunity
Approach
How we tackled it.
The CRM integration came first—without it, nothing else could be measured honestly. Search restructure followed, then LinkedIn retargeting aimed at the exact firmographic profile sales wanted. Weekly reviews paired marketing and sales to grade every demo, and the definition of a qualified lead was tightened twice in the first quarter.
Intent-based search
Campaigns were rebuilt around high-intent, use-case and comparison queries, with broad keywords pruned hard.
Qualify in the form
Company size, role and use case became part of the demo request, letting sales route and prioritise before anyone picked up the phone.
Optimise on SQLs
Qualified-lead events were synced from the CRM back into the ad platforms, so the algorithms learned what a good demo actually looked like.
Results
Performance over time.
Illustrative campaign figures—not actual client results, forecasts or guarantees.
+44%
SQLs
-19%
Cost per SQL
+58%
Pipeline
Qualified leads trend
Monthly conversions
Learnings
What we learned.
- → Optimizing on SQLs, not form fills, changed everything.
Takeaways for your business
- ✓The conversion you optimise for is the one you get—choose carefully.
- ✓Sales feedback is a marketing dataset, not a complaint channel.
- ✓Fewer, better demos beat a calendar full of the wrong ones.
Questions
Questions about this kind of engagement.
Did the longer form hurt conversion rate?+
Form completion fell modestly, but sales-qualified pipeline rose sharply. The questions filtered out poor fits before they consumed sales time.
How does CRM-synced optimisation work?+
When a lead reaches an agreed quality stage in the CRM, a conversion signal is sent back to the ad platform, which then finds more people like that lead.
How long did the feedback loop take?+
The technical setup took about two weeks; the meaningful improvement in lead quality showed over the following quarter as the platforms learned.
More studies
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