In the lightning-paced world of SaaS marketing, achieving a 144% increase in Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) while driving down your budget by 56% might seem like an impossible feat.
But, over the last six months, our team at Directive partnered with a $100M+ ARR enterprise SaaS company to do just that.
To let you in on our methods, we’re going to take an insider dive into the strategies we employed to deliver these stellar results. We’ll also serve up actionable insights for senior managers as well as managers of paid media and demand generation in B2B SaaS companies.
Let’s begin.
A lowdown on the background and challenges
Our company in question—a $100+ ARR enterprise SaaS client with impressive aspirations—came to us to push past its commercial plateau and prompt sustainable growth.
The company’s main challenge came in the form of its Google Ads efforts (a promotional channel it relied upon heavily) due to a recent drop in engagement and revenue. After running a detailed audit of our client’s Google account, we discovered that lead quality as well as quality had dwindled. Our conclusion? Google Ads may not be the company’s most effective channel for generating growth.
In addition to this pivotal discovery, there was mounting Board pressure to generate both SALs and SQLs and move upmarket. A pivot in strategy was required—and fast.
Solving the issue: A strategic overview
To tackle this two-fold issue head on, we adopted a collaborative approach to create content-driven consistency across all key lead generation channels.
By presenting our client with their main roadblocks in greater depth, we were able to get its full buy-in—working together to improve brand awareness, drive a healthier ROI from paid ad content, and boost SQLs in a big way.
The scene was set, everyone was on board—all that remained was putting our SaaS business-boosting theory into action.
Discover: Our ever-expanding library of practical B2B SaaS resources for brands looking to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
Putting theory into action: Our key tactics
With the client on board with our proposed strategy, we rolled out our growth generation initiatives step by step—starting with a pivot in ad spend allocation.
1. Deep dive analytics & a change in ad spend
After sweating the relevant data, we came to the striking realization that Google Ads wasn’t the most efficient or effective channel for creating sustainable SaaS growth.
Conversely, what we did discover is that targeted professional social advertising was likely to be the high performance, budget-efficient channel we needed to succeed. So we went to work.
With our Customer Generation™ approach, we knew we could unlock paid social as our lead generating channel of choice.
To lay the right foundations, we flew our client’s entire marketing team to our California HQ and conducted multiple days of intake.
Upon learning our client’s core differentiators and understanding its existing customer base, we built out its TAM and manually verified every account on a global scale.
From that point, we reallocated ad spend from Google Ads to LinkedIn and launched conversation ads plus gift cards. These targeted campaigns drove four dream accounts for our client in the first quarter—all from clever creative assets paired with value-driven gift card incentives.
2. Cohesive content production
Once we started gaining momentum, we drilled down deeper into our client’s content production initiatives.
To do so, we worked with our client’s internal content resources to pinpoint any glaring gaps in its customer journey. Next, we created a library of content that would compel action from our client’s specific B2B SaaS audience segments and result in a consistent influx of direct bookings.
While most agencies create simple blog posts, we performed a deep dive into our client’s analytics to understand Google Ads queries that drove SQLs.
We also focused on improving its search engine results page (SERP) market share on queries that could well result in direct bookings. By keeping our content-centric approach simple, we made colossal progress on lowering CAC in a relatively short space of time.
3. Budget optimization: LTV: CAC Modeling for QoQ Analysis
To achieve a significant ad spend decrease while raising SQLs, we took definitive measures to further optimize our clients budget allocation. As you may have gathered, we achieved this by implementing a cohesive mix of low-spend, high-impact marketing activities.
We also did this…
After around 90 days, we paused and evaluated the success, as well as the failures, of our SaaS marketing strategy by leveraging LTV:CAC analysis at both channel and the ad unit level.
We discovered that while LinkedIn was our top-performing channel by a long way, there were inefficiencies with our client’s sponsored content vs. convo ads.
Here’s how we moved forward …
Rather than halting operations, our LinkedIn team ran an incremental analysis and found that while we should reduce spend on sponsored content, we shouldn’t pause entirely.
Why? It’s because users who saw a sponsored content ad within seven days of receiving a convo ad were 39% more likely to click (vs our “cold” cohort).
Adopting this balanced approach meant that we were able to capture consistently high-quality leads with pinpoint financial precision—a perfect storm for B2B SaaS growth.
The results…
Overall, our three-pillared SQL-boosting playbook was a resounding success.
Leading with targeted content that we amplified across our client’s most effective B2B consumer channels, we delivered on our promises—and a little more.
Here are the official results of our revised SaaS marketing strategy (*queue drum roll):
- A 144% increase in SQLs
- An impressive $7.5M-plus in the company’s incremental pipeline
- A 56% decrease in overall budget
This perfect storm of quantitative business-boosting results have had a qualitative impact on the business. This tangible level of growth is responsible for making our clients’ marketing department better resourced while improving its creative output.
In turn, productivity as well as communication has significantly increased across the board and brand awareness is at an all-time high. Rather than treading commercial water, this B2B SaaS brand is on the up.
Final thoughts: Lessons learned and best practices uncovered
In the realm of SaaS enterprise marketing and the pursuit to boost SQLs, creating content that meets your target customers’ needs head on while exploiting gaps in your competitors’ offerings is essential.
Be real.
During this journey, we learned that being real and taking a human approach to client collaboration yields the very best results.
By meeting your client’s key stakeholders (talent) in person, learning the business inside out, and finding tailored ways to drive impact—you’ll lay solid foundations for sustainable success.
Find your best promotional foot (and put it forward).
By adopting a deep-dive analytical approach and consolidating your SaaS company’s most valuable data across marketing channels, you can pinpoint the best places to allocate your budget and resources.
In doing so, you’ll be able to create content tailored to your B2B audience for each channel and ultimately, earn consistently solid ROI from your SQL-boosting efforts.
Enterprise SaaS marketing is a competitive space—but by adopting these key principles—you’ll gain the edge you need to thrive both now and in the long term…
- Squeeze maximum juice from your most valuable data
- Work with the promotional channels likely to present the best ROI
- Allocate your internal budgets and resources accordingly
- Prioritize the human aspect of collaboration and earn your client’s full buy-in
- Create content that taps into specific pain points and offers genuine value
- Keep testing, communicating, and evolving
We’re sure that checking out this success story has inspired you to improve your own enterprise Saas marketing strategy.
Adopt these actionable tips to boost SQL while optimizing your marketing budgets and earn sustainable growth for your SaaS business.
For further inspiration, explore our growing library of client success stories and for more insider advice on how to grow your SaaS venture, book a call with us. Let’s get the B2B ball rolling.
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Team Directive
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