Overview - How we 10X'd Qualified Leads While Cutting CPL by 50%
Client Background
InTouchLink specializes in providing business operations SaaS solutions for senior living communities.
Their services include digital signage for senior living homes, activity calendars, menus templates, senior activity tracking, senior community tv software, remote monitoring, and other services designed to enhance the senior living experience. Overall, their services streamline aspects such as communication, organization, and engagement.
As a B2B SaaS provider, InTouchLink brings a comprehensive suite of services that are highly specific to the needs of senior living communities.
The Problem: Low-Quality Leads and No Accountability
The previous advertising agency was bringing in an abundance of low-converting, irrelevant, or otherwise unqualified leads.
When they questioned their previous agency, there was little explanation as to why. This lack of accountability suggested that the past agency was simply not putting in the necessary effort.
We at InterTeam found InTouchLink through cold email outreach. Our focus on "qualified leads" and reducing "low-quality clicks" stood out. They wanted a higher quality B2B marketing strategy for targeting senior and assisted living communities.
Upon our initial analysis, it was discovered that approximately 50% of targeted keywords were set to "broad match."
As in most cases we encounter, this resulted in a high number of low-quality leads being generated.
The resulting problem was that costly searches were being made for queries like "senior living homes," which are unrelated to InTouchLink as a senior living management platform.
Advertising Performance And Deliverables
- Designed & implemented 3 new Unbounce landing pages
- 50% reduction in cost per lead (CPL)
- Identified and added over 1,000 negative keywords to optimize advertising campaigns, improving targeting and performance
- Launched Microsoft, or Bing, ad and Google ad campaigns to expand reach and maximize results
- Implemented an automated attribution system with Salesforce using Attributer.io, eliminating manual data entry and improving our understanding of where specific leads were coming from.
- 10X the number of qualified leads from 5-6 per month to over 50
Challenges
Challenge #1: Creating Marketing Strategies to Target Senior Living Homes
InTouchLink posed a unique service and set of challenges. During the first few months of the project, we were seeing lackluster results. Progress and performance wasn't near where we wanted it to be. We hadn't yet figured out an effective B2B SaaS marketing strategy for targeting senior living home employees.
After the initial stages, we discovered that progress was being limited by the client's website. This prompted us to pause our current focus targeting the ad campaign, and shift to that of InTouchLink's template for an activity calendar, which was being employed as a lead magnet.
We realized that many users than expected were interested in accessing the lead magnet. The problem was that the lead magnet wasn't actually available.
In addition to the missing lead magnet, we needed to deal with irrelevant keywords drawing clicks, such as "senior living homes," "assisted living homes," and many more.
It became apparent that there was an overwhelming abundance of variations in how people talked about and searched for senior living homes. Our keyword strategy needed to adapt accordingly.
Solution: Targeted senior care staff and excluded searches from parents and seniors looking for senior living homes.
From the start, we outperformed the previous agency in the number and quality of leads. We were getting high quality senior living and assisted living community leads consistently through Google ads and Bing ads campaigns. Our campaigns targeted more specific service keywords like "digital signage for senior living."
We also added over 1,000 negative keywords, excluding any search terms that contained the words "sales" or "marketing." These greatly reduced ad cost and limited the influx of unqualified leads.
However, in terms of bringing in new customers to improve revenue, results were middling at best.
We shifted focus away from the ad campaign and created 3 new landing pages using Unbounce, InterTeam's preferred landing page builder. The first of which was a redesigned and conversion-optimized service page.
After the landing page went live, several additional changes were made that greatly improved lead quality and targeting.We implemented high-intent targeting, ensuring that only the most qualified leads were being reached.Additionally, we dropped terms like "assisted living" that were highly competitive and had low conversion rates.Continued fine-tuning of selected keywords took place, eventually resulting in a 50% decrease in CPL.
Challenge #2: Problems With Retargeting And Marketing Attribution in Salesforce
We also had problems with retargeting and lead attribution in Salesforce. For the retargeting, the issue was with our conversion rates. Our retargeting audience volumes were and they didn't seem to be ready to book a demo.
One reason was because of the aggressive nature of the ask and the relatively long form that needed to be filled out. In our experience, "Book a Demo" is one of the highest friction calls to action you can use in B2B advertising, so it makes sense that it would have a low
The audience already had access to a 5-minute demo, which might have contributed to their hesitation.
Solution: Created a 2nd Landing Page Promoting a Free 5 Minute Demo Video With a Shorter Lead Form
We then built another landing page in Unbounce built another landing page inviting leads to sign up to get access to a "Free 5 Minute Demo Video".
On this page, users were able to fill out a much smaller form to gain access to the demo video. This created a seamless transition from the initial interaction to a more in-depth demonstration of their services.It also streamlined the overall lead generation process and captured valuable contact information for follow-up and nurturing leads.
Challenge #3: Problems With Lead Source Attribution in Salesforce
We also had problems with lead attribution in Salesforce. We could see that a large number of leads were coming through in Salesforce, but we were having trouble attributing these leads to our campaigns due to restrictions in the capabilities of Salesforce's native attribution.
Attribution is incredibly important for running B2B advertising campaigns because it allows you to optimize for high quality leads that have come from your campaigns and also identify low quality leads that you may be seeing in your campaigns. This made it an absolute priority for us to fix.
Solution: Implement Attributer.io for tracking google ads leads in salesforce
Attributer.io is a simple marketing attribution SaaS solution that captures UTM parameters from your ads and holds this information until a lead converts. Once the lead fills out a form on your site, Attributer.io automatically syncs the original source data into Salesforce, allowing you to track which medium, advertising platform or other sources, campaign and even keyword that specific lead original came from, ensuring you never lose track of where your leads are coming from—even if they take weeks or months to convert.
By integrating Attributer.io with Salesforce, we were able to accurately attribute each lead to specific Google Ads campaigns, allowing the client to see exactly which ads and keywords were driving the most valuable leads. As a result, we were able to prove to them that a large number of leads that were previously unattributable were in fact coming from our Google and Bing campaigns, proving our value was significantly higher than originally though.
The attribution also allowed us to better optimize our campaigns for high performing ad assets and
Click this link to sign up for Attributer.io now for free to improve your marketing attribution in Salesforce!
Challenge #4: Leads Were Being Lost to Dead Clicks
Microsoft Clarity, which is a heat-mapping software that InterTeam uses for all of our clients. This software provides us with valuable insights into how users interact with websites through recorded sessions.
One of our findings from Microsoft Clarity was an alarming number of dead clicks. These are clicks that lead nowhere due to broken buttons or links.
It was discovered that approximately 5% of the recorded sessions had at least one dead click.
Specifically, 2 of the pages that used to serve as lead magnets, namely the activity calendar page was identified as the primary culprit. This meant an alarming number of users who were interested in taking the next step were being lost as potential customers.
Solution: Redirect Traffic to Landing Page #3
To address the dead clicks issue, we created a 3rd Unbounce landing page promoting a free activity calendar template in exchange for an email and name, since the original dead links were promoting similar templates. We then redirected everyone who visited the dead click page to the new landing page to recover high-intent traffic.
In the first week alone, we generated 15 new leads specifically for the activity calendar template, without any ad spend!Not only that, these leads were also high quality, with 13/15 using professional email addresses for senior living homes. Each of these leads had the potential to generate deals ranging from a minimum of $1,000 up to six figures.
Result: From 5 to 53 Qualified Leads in one month, 50% Reduced CPL
InTouchLink brought about the biggest month-over-month improvement in performance of a single account that InterTeam has seen to date.
This improvement was evidenced by a significant increase in qualified leads. These were generated through various channels such as lead form submissions from booking demos, activity calendar templates, and demo video form submissions.
As compared with InTouchLink's previous outsourced agency, We at InterTeam delivered a remarkable 10X increase in qualified leads generated.
Not only did the number of leads increase, but CPL was also reduced by 50% due to the inclusion of over 1,000 negative keywords and the targeting of more specific high-intent queries.
Before working with InterTeam, InTouchLink generated 5 or 6 leads per month. In the summer of 2023, the leads increased to 10-15 per month.
By September, the breakdown of leads by source was as follows:
- Google Ads = 13
- Bing Ads = 15
- Activity Calendar = 14
- Total Monthly Leads Generated = 42
Moving into October, the trend of increasing leads continued to yield the following results:
- Google Ads = 32
- Bing Ads = 12
- Activity Calendar = 9
- Total Monthly Leads Generated = 53
As a result of InterTeam's efforts, InTouchLink cited that they had their best month ever as reportedly having earned $3 million in revenue in October.
InterTeam is proud to share such impressive results, demonstrating the effectiveness of a holistic strategy approach that resulted in a positive impact on lead generation and overall company performance.
Another notable discovery through our investigative approach was that Bing produced shockingly good results compared to Google. While the actual number of leads generated was comparable, the cost per click (CPC) was significantly lower, with Bing's CPC being half as high as Google's ($5 instead of $10).
This insight not only provided InTouchLink with great results but also helped them reduce their ad spend for future campaigns.
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