The Client
GoRamp is a Transportation management platform specializing in proactive decisions for shippers while sourcing, planning, and monitoring. The company was created by industry insiders and professionals to optimize supply-chain workflow and communication between cargo senders and carriers.
The Challenge
When we started working with GoRamp, we found they had been relying heavily on Google Ads for about 12 months, primarily directing ad respondents to generate more demo request conversion actions. Cost-per-conversion actions weren’t ideal at almost $585 per lead. The transportation management market is a very competitive niche with high costs-per-clicks (CPCs). Some of the highest CPCs across any industry, in fact, as many CPCs were more than $12 per click, with numerous minimum first page bids at more than $10 per click. As a result, opportunities to reach their ideal target audience were limited because of budget constraints. GoRamp needed a more efficient way to target their audience. While keyword search advertising was providing traffic and visibility for their brand, the high cost-per-clicks from search advertising wasn’t sustainable and not the best way allow them to reach their specific buyer personas.
The Solution
GoRamp enlisted our LinkedIn Ads Agency to efficiently scale lead generation efforts with PPC and drive marketing qualified leads (MQLs). We decided to test LinkedIn advertising in order to better focus on its ideal customer target demographics. Working hand-in-hand with their internal team, we identified GoRamp’s key buying personas and, using LinkedIn’s comprehensive B2B targeting capabilities, created campaigns focused on those personas. We also introduced remarketing advertising campaigns in Google AdWords to reduce the reliance on keyword-based search advertising, while keeping GoRamp top of the list to potential prospects.
We decided to opt for LinkedIn lead generation ads objectives. More specifically, the LinkedIn lead gen forms, which enabled us to do the following:
- Capture leads and measure results without the use of a landing page. Using the lead gen form, we could capture prospects directly from their LinkedIn page.
- Collect more leads, as most of the information is pre-filled by LinkedIn.
- Target highly authoritative decision-makers with specific senior job titles, functions, and seniority that were only applicable to the client’s industry
Step 1: Targeting Audience Research
To make sure we connected with the right decision-makers within the right companies, during our lead generation campaign we came up with a system that still used LinkedIn Search mechanics to filter prospects. In particular, we leveraged:
- Location filters
- Title search
- Company size filters
- Keyword boolean search.
LinkedIn lead generation ads allowed us to target the following:
- Location: we targeted specific European countries where our client identified the best leads opportunities.
- Company size: we targeted companies which had over 100 employees.
- Job titles: we chose specific senior roles, as our prospects were likely to have authority, such as “Director of…” and “Head of…” roles.
- Skills: we targeted specific skills of our buyer persona.
With these criteria, audiences we were able to really laser in on key decision-makers struggling with the problems that GoRamp solves.
Step 2: Set Up a Mix of Campaigns
We opted for two different types of LinkedIn campaigns: sponsored content ads and text ads, which allowed us to promote GoRamp’s solution in the target audience’s feed. The ads would only show while they were connected on LinkedIn, as we were only using the LinkedIn lead gen forms.
Step 3: A/B Testing Ads
We always consider creating different copy angles before we launch any PPC campaign. In this case, after analyzing GoRamp’s target audience, we decided to focus on 3 different pain-points segmented with 3 different ads, each one focusing on a specific problem that our buyer persona may struggle with. This way we were sure to A/B test properly our different ads messages, constantly adjusting them to optimize the results.
Results
LinkedIn ads proved to be a very effective tactic for online B2B lead generation, allowing GoRamp to reach their exact customer demographics at a lower cost-per-lead. This was more demographically targeted, rather than keyword-heavy.
The results:
- Revenue increased by 181%.
- Pipeline increased by 1022%.
- In six weeks, LinkedIn Ads surpassed the lead volume that the previous 11 months of Google AdWords PPC had produced.
- In four months, LinkedIn Ads delivered 67% more leads than what the previous 11 months of Google AdWords PPC produced — for 79% less budget.
