Lead generation for a B2B SaaS company

About the project

Building a lead generation system for a B2B SaaS product. The audience was chief executives and marketing directors at mid-sized companies.

The challenge

Long decision cycles, a crowded market and a cost per lead of $150 before we started.

What we did

Built a multi-step funnel across LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads and email, with a series of webinars and written guides to warm leads up.

What worked

Webinars. In B2B the decision is made by three or four people, not one, and a webinar is the only format a person can forward to a colleague. Each registrant brought on average another 0.4 attendees from the same company, and those forwarded ones closed fastest.

What went wrong

For three months we measured success by lead count rather than lead quality. There were more leads, and sales spent their time on companies the product did not fit by size. That does not show up in a marketing report and shows up very clearly in revenue.

What we should have done

Qualify at the form, not after the call. Two questions about team size and current tooling remove half the wrong-fit enquiries before they ever reach sales.

What a proper plan does to the economics

15 leads at $150 is $2,250 a month for 15 enquiries. 41 leads at $94 is $3,854 for 41 enquiries. Spend rose 71%, the flow of enquiries almost tripled.

The more important part came after qualification: the share of leads reaching a demo went up, so the same money started buying more meetings rather than more work.