How SaaS startup Suplari exceeded its sales targets with paid social advertising and paid search 

The Company

Suplari is a B2B SaaS company that uses advanced machine learning to help enterprises achieve spend agility by automating data, spend analytics, insights and actions to predict and manage costs, cash flow and investments.

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The Challenge

LinkedIn is a primary source of our leads. I was managing it all myself, but I needed a digital marketing partner to manage LinkedIn and really push volume as much as we could while maintaining the cost per lead – Andrew Haller

Andrew Haller, the senior product marketing manager at Suplari reached out to Optidge to get support running paid LinkedIn campaigns. He needed to attract more leads while keeping the cost per lead at (or below) an acceptable price ($150 CPL). Then months later, things heated up: Microsoft acquired Suplari and set aggressive sales targets. With extra budget available, Suplari asked Optidge to also run paid search campaigns. Our challenge was to bring in a higher volume of quality leads for the complex, highly technical product.

Our goal

  • Increase the number of leads while maintaining a $150 Cost Per Lead from Top of Funnel” Prospecting Campaigns

Phase1: Paid LinkedIn Ads campaign

  • Effective advertising on LinkedIn hinges on one thing: delivering valuable, relevant content to the right target audience to pique interest and then generate demand. To achieve this, we focused on testing various creatives to find the “winning piece” which would resonate with the target audience and subsequently generate leads. Working closely with Andrew and his team, we tested keywords, experimented with content angles and then created rich, valuable content around topics the audience displayed interest in. 
  • Once leads came into the platform, we exported and analyzed audience variables like Job Titles and other quality indicators so we could optimize, and expand to new audiences. 
  • This approach ensured we achieved our goals: generating high volumes of leads at both top and bottom of the sales funnel.

Phase 2: Paid Search

In July 2021, Microsoft acquired Suplari. This was a huge win for the company. It bought massive credibility –  along with aggressive business targets. To meet these targets, Suplari asked Optidge to help expand their lead generation efforts through paid search.

The objective:

Suplari needed to reach decision-makers at decent-sized companies across the globe (USA, Europe, Australia, and Canada). To achieve this, we had to overcome several challenges. Firstly, we had to maximize our spend while trying to reach a costly audience. Secondly, keywords with the most search volume could overspend and not bring in quality leads – we had to test and hone in on top target keywords. Finally, getting the messaging right for a complex product and industry was tricky. 

The Optidge team was really effective at testing both creatives and audiences. They were constantly iterating to find better messaging, and better campaigns, so we could drive budget to successful campaigns, and also expand those into different audiences and continue to kind of test new demographics and new messages.

 – Andrew Haller, Suplari

The Campaign

  • We began by carrying out extensive keyword research relating to the product. We then created 6 international campaigns (1 branded and one non-branded for each of the three continents we were targeting).
  • We also created competitor campaigns so we could bid on competitor terms to position Suplari alongside other well-known companies.
  • Finally, we built retargeting campaigns to capture people who visited our landing page but didn’t convert. We retargeted this audience with display ads that highlighted “now is the time to buy” due to lowered pricing after the Microsoft acquisition. 
  • Increasing lead volume wasn’t the only goal. Tracking lead quality played a pivotal role in the campaign. We regularly asked Andrew for feedback on the lead quality and then used these insights to focus the budget on segments that generated the highest-quality leads.
  • Ongoing optimization included using dynamic text on landing pages to personalize the messaging, analyzing heatmaps on landing pages to optimize performance, and focusing the budget on the highest-performing campaigns and keywords.

The results

Both the LinkedIn ads campaign and the paid search campaign were extremely successful, bringing in high volumes of quality leads for the sales team to follow up with and convert to paid customers. On LinkedIn, we managed to reduce the CPL from an average of $150 per lead to $132.31 while increasing volumes. 

Paid Social: LinkedIn Advertising

Duration: April 2021 – March 2022
Total Spend: $250K+

  • Top of Funnel Content Leads
    • Leads: 1,500+
    • CPL: $132.31
  • End Goal Demo Request Leads
    • Leads: 100+
    • CPL: $585.63

Paid Search: Google Ads

Duration: October 2021 – May 2022
275+ Leads generated

With Optidge’s help, we’ve been able to successfully meet targets in terms of our marketing like lead targets sales opportunity targets and subsequently close sales.  Each quarter, we’ve been able to effectively to over-deliver against our sales target.

– Andre Haller, Suplari

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