Grew the company by driving leads from targeted ads
Leads from ads turned into around $2,000,000 of sales
Business grew, visibility improved, and the company was acquired
SAP Customer Data Cloud Solutions, known as Gigya at the time, an enterprise business offering their product to Fortune 500 companies, wanted to grow aggressively in hopes of being acquired.
However, they didn't know which advertising platform would be best for their customer data cloud solution, so they were testing three platforms: LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook. They were trying to grow aggressively and drive as many quality leads and sales as possible.
I've grown many companies effectively and efficiently by driving leads and sales. I also have extensive experience with all three platforms the client wanted to try: 12 years with Google, and I'd been working with Facebook and LinkedIn since their inception.
This is crucial for any client. In my experience, when issues arise further down the line, it's usually because we haven't reached a mutual understanding of our aims. Being aligned on each other's goals and understand exactly how I can help the client benefits the whole relationship.
I started off with an introductory call. At this stage, I ask what their priorities are and what they are trying to accomplish. Then I can set expectations based on that conversation.
Initially, I was working on all three platforms, trying to understand which were going to perform most efficiently and effectively.
For Google, I built keyword lists and created corresponding ads that spoke to this product. For Facebook and LinkedIn, I found and built up audiences that I thought would be most receptive to the solutions the client was offering, then wrote ads around those solutions.
Some campaigns used the lead ad format, or ad unit, within Facebook and LinkedIn. Others aimed to drive people to the company website to fill out a lead form there. I was testing those two distinct strategies against each other.
Next, I created retargeting campaigns on all three platforms and for the company website — again, to test them against one another.
I was retargeting two types of people: those who hadn't filled out a form and those who had but needed a push towards the next action.
This was a powerful way to drive actions and leads and sales, especially compared to cold campaigns alone. Not everyone targeted would take the actions we wanted, but some would if given more reasons to.
Next I began to interpret the numbers and make decisions I hoped would improve performance moving forward.
Facebook had been performing worse and worse, so we started pulling budget away from that platform. We put it into Google and LinkedIn at first, but we soon realized LinkedIn was generating higher quality leads, securing more conversion down-funnel, so we redistributed our finances even more in that direction. I went through a similar process assessing lead generation ads against direct website responses.
Learning from those initial tests was essential in hitting our goals.
At this stage, I had an open dialogue with people in house to find out what was working and what wasn't.
Although I already had insights from the data, talking to sales reps allowed me to see what was going on under the hood of the company. I got a more nuanced view of lead quality, how the sales cycle was looking, and whether their goals were being hit.
For example, Facebook is the cheapest of these three platforms, so, on the front end, the metrics looked great for Facebook and bad for LinkedIn, the most expensive platform. Speaking to sales reps, however, it was obvious that LinkedIn's strong business audience was worth the premium. This really challenged my preconceived notions of LinkedIn as a difficult and perhaps disproportionately pricey option.
I drove many more leads than the client had been receiving before, and a handful of those leads turned into sales. Since this is a SaaS enterprise product for Fortune 500 companies, their average sale is huge, so this helped them grow very fast. I drove around $2,000,000 in revenue from sales.
The huge increase in leads and sales then helped the client get acquired by SAP. They had been looking to grow quickly and get acquired, and this project helped them achieve that goal.
