B2B SaaS: 141% of pipeline target.
A B2B SaaS provider selling to HR executives across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific had just finished a quarter at 71% of its pipeline target, with each sales opportunity costing more than twice what it had at the start of the year. Rather than chase more leads, we pointed the search budget at the buyers most likely to become large deals. One quarter later, paid pipeline reached a record $5.4M, 141% of target, on 6% less search spend.
141%
Pipeline vs target, up from 71%
3.2×
Enterprise pipeline, in one quarter
6%
Less spent on search
Opportunities cost twice as much. Pipeline hit 71%.
Over the year, the paid program had grown steadily more expensive where it mattered most. The share of leads that became sales opportunities fell from 15% to 7%, and the cost of each opportunity rose from $4.3K to $9.9K. The final quarter closed with pipeline at 71% of target.
Part of the budget was going to campaigns that looked productive in the ad platforms but never produced a lead sales accepted. And brand search, normally the cheapest source of demo requests, was sending people to a homepage that had stopped converting.
The year before the change
Paid program, first quarter against last
What we changed
Aim at the largest buyers
Using the account’s long-term lead history, we raised bids for very large employers and returning visitors and lowered them for mid-size companies. New keywords came from searches that had already turned into sales opportunities.
Fund only what reaches sales
We stopped paying for campaigns that produced conversions in the ad platforms but no leads in the CRM, and paused 11 small ad groups that weren’t producing leads. That money went to the search campaigns already producing opportunities.
Defend the brand for less
Brand campaigns moved to bidding for the top position, and brand ads moved from the homepage to a dedicated demo page. Brand clicks got cheaper, and the people clicking started converting again.
Where judgment changed the plan
AI recommendations are a starting point. On four decisions that shaped this quarter, what sales was seeing in the CRM changed the call.
Four calls behind the result
4 recommendations · 4 reshaped
What the model recommended
What we did
What the model recommended
Match keywords more broadly to reach more searches
What we did
Kept broad matching only where keywords had a record of leads, and dropped it on Microsoft. Search cost per lead fell 10%.
Let automated bidding set brand bids
Bid for the top position instead. Brand cost per click fell 31% that quarter.
Keep Google’s newest campaign type running, with 14 conversions so far
Paused it after $1,600. None of the 14 became a lead.
Scale display, at $222 per conversion
Paused prospecting. Display spent $22.6K the quarter before and produced no leads sales accepted.
Two quarters · Google and Microsoft
The result: bigger deals and record pipeline
Paid pipeline reached $5.4M, 141% of target and the highest the program had recorded. Each sales opportunity cost about the same as the quarter before, $9.6K against $9.9K, but it was worth far more: average pipeline per opportunity rose from $69K to $168K. Enterprise pipeline more than tripled, from $1.1M to $3.7M.
The ad accounts got leaner at the same time. Search spend fell 6% while leads from search rose 4%, and the cost of each lead fell from $464 to $419. Across the paid program, leads were up 49% on the same quarter a year earlier, at the same cost per lead.
Pipeline by company size
Enterprise drove most of the gain
Pipeline against target
From a missed target to a record quarter
The enterprise gain came from several large deals, not one.
Quarter by quarter
| Quarter | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Paid pipeline | $2.1M | $5.4M |
| Pipeline vs target | 71% | 141% |
| Enterprise pipeline | $1.1M | $3.7M |
| Pipeline per opportunity | $69K | $168K |
| Cost per opportunity | $9.9K | $9.6K |
| Search spend | $202K | $190K |
| Search leads | 436 | 454 |
| Search cost per lead | $464 | $419 |
What we did next
The following quarter brought deep budget cuts, so the work turned to getting more from every visit. A new landing page for one of the main non-brand campaigns lifted its conversion rate from 0.69% to 2.19%, and a redesigned demo page beat the old one, 2.01% to 1.11%.
When automated bidding was tested on brand, conversions fell 48% and cost per conversion rose 145% within a week. We moved brand back to manual bids, and the next month brand cost per conversion fell from $384 to $176.
Microsoft got the same test-and-cut treatment. Its non-brand campaigns were relaunched and tested several more times, never matched Google’s costs, and were cut. Microsoft brand campaigns later became the cheapest source of opportunities in the program.
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