Mapping the Journey: The Hands-On Guide Revealed
In mid-2019, 360Science, an ambitious startup from England, embarked on a mission to revolutionise data matching services.
Partnering with Kwery, they set out on a transformative journey, culminating in a significant business milestone: acquisition by global enterprise data management giant Syniti.
360Science was known for its advanced data-matching software, adept at handling complex data sets and providing refined algorithms for data record identification, deduplication, and merging. However, they were encountering significant obstacles in amplifying awareness about their innovative software and converting this into tangible leads.
In a candid conversation, Matt Swanborough, the Digital Marketing Manager at 360Science, expressed his concerns, emphasising the inconsistency in their PPC performance:
"Our experience with Google Ads has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. The fluctuation in our cost per lead and the unpredictable quality and volume of leads have made it challenging to plan and meet our targets. One month, we're up; the next, we're struggling to make sense of the metrics. It's like navigating through a fog – you know there's a path, but it's hard to stay on course."
We began our journey with 360Science by getting to the heart of their product. We talked with their best sales professionals to truly understand what makes their software stand out.
This led us to create customer personas, which were essential in shaping our strategy to target and attract the right audience - data scientists, marketers, and database administrators - and use the right message for each segment that resonated with their distinctive needs.
After identifying our target audience, we focused on boosting the effectiveness of 360Science's search campaigns.
Beginning with a 'cluster analysis', we organised keywords into 'intent hierarchies' based on their potential to attract clicks that convert into leads.
With insights from our analysis, we then restructured the campaigns, zeroing in on keywords with commercial and transactional intent.
For instance, keywords like “data matching for enterprise,” “software to deduplicate customer records,” or “CRM customer and company name matching” were representative of stronger intent to draw in qualified leads—in comparison to more vague terms like “dedupe data” or “data matching”.
So, to ensure the efficient use of 360Science’s ad budget, our strategy revolved around maximising impression share on these high-potential keywords and only then investing on more broader terms and new experimental areas.
Following the search campaigns’ restructure, we shifted our focus to the accuracy of conversion data to better understand which keywords and ads were converting into paying customers for 360Science.
In collaboration with Matt, we developed a lead management system within Salesforce, 360Science’s CRM, that tracked the journey of each lead from initial engagement through to contract completion.
We closely monitored three essential stages: Market Qualified Leads (MQL), Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), and Contracts.
By feeding this data back into Google Ads, we were able to guide the algorithm to target leads that had a higher chance of resulting in valuable opportunities, fuelling ongoing campaign optimisation.
But success isn't just about targeting the right audience; it's equally about what happens after the click. This is where "post-click optimisation" comes into play, ensuring that once potential clients land on a page, they are compelled to take action.
Using Unbounce, we developed landing pages tailored specifically to each customer persona we had identified for 360Science. Each page featured a clear, enticing call to action, relevant and convincing content, and an intuitive design that made navigation effortless.
The results spoke for themselves. The initial conversion rates, which were modest at 2.41%, saw a significant jump to 5.68%, helping us to more than double the number of leads from the same budget.
After solidifying the core of our search campaigns, we turned our attention to exploring new opportunities for growth.
We decided to test the waters with broad match keywords, aiming to capture a wider array of search queries that might not have been captured by more restrictive keyword match types. To avoid attracting irrelevant traffic, we developed comprehensive negative keyword lists. Coupled with Google’s "maximise clicks" smart bidding strategy, this approach was designed to get the most out of our ad budget by targeting new, yet relevant, audiences.
The results of this experiment were encouraging. Within just 60 days, we saw a 27% increase in new leads generated from search terms that were completely incremental to our core campaigns. What was even more impressive was the cost-efficiency of this approach – the cost per lead was reduced by 16%.
Having maximised the potential of our search campaigns on Google and Bing, our new objective was to extend 360Science's reach and impact with display and video ads.
To ensure we are strategically positioning 360Science in front of the right audiences in different yet effective digital places, we used our own first-party data of sales-qualified leads as a seed audience to find and attract new users with similar characteristics.
At the same time, we narrowed our audience to include only individuals aged 25 and older and to show our ads only to individuals working in large and very large companies.
This helped us concentrate our efforts on engaging with senior professionals, decision-makers, and those likely to influence purchasing decisions in businesses where 360Science's solutions could be most beneficial.
The campaign results two and half years later when 360Science was acquired by Syniti.
Reflecting on the results, Matt commented:
"I couldn't be happier with the impact Kwery had on our business, culminating in the successful acquisition by Syniti. I recommend Kwery to anyone who wants to level up their business—their desire to succeed and outperform even their own goals is unlike any other agency we've ever worked with.”
Get in touch, and let's have a no-obligation, good old, honest chat about pay-per-click advertising.
You'll speak with a PPC specialist, not a salesperson.
