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Tactics do not equal strategy -- and the Plannuh team proved it.
Plannuh helps marketers unify their marketing plan, budget, and ROI in one easy to use platform for full visibility and agility (live in less than a week). Plannuh creates efficiency by completely automating marketing budget and expense management so marketers never have to track spend again. Uniquely, Plannuh can calculate the true ROI of your marketing to validate the success of both your campaigns and your overall plan.
To get more marketers taking advantage of their platform during this critical time, Plannuh sought to leverage their newly released book "The Next CMO: A Guide to Operational Marketing Excellence" to drive leads. While Plannuh had historically allocated some spend via LinkedIn through various tactics, the $140 cost per lead needed to be brought down. Plannuh prioritized a holistic strategy to leverage LinkedIn as a refreshed growth opportunity -- they set out to acquire more customers at an efficient price point, as well as build up their database in HubSpot with qualified leads to be nurtured.
The new goal? Acquire 30 new leads per day at a significantly lower CPL.
Solution
The team established an overarching LinkedIn strategy through HubSpot. Adam Sklarin, their LinkedIn Account Executive, explains the important role HubSpot plays in securing the core analytics foundation for their success.
While various HubSpot features contributed to their growth, a few features in particular stood out to the team as key recommendations for companies eager to prioritize strategic paid advertising:
- Through the Hubspot integration with LinkedIn, Plannuh gained insights into not just impressions and clicks, but also meaningful contact information and customer spend to report on explicit ROI
- After creating audiences in HubSpot, Plannuh used these insights to target new and existing users on LinkedIn
- Plannuh leaned on HubSpot email marketing to nurture these new contacts into customers
The team leveraged the insights from HubSpot and LinkedIn to pivot their overall approach -- they utilized more ad formats including LinkedIn Spotlight Ads to drive efficiencies in scale and performance. In addition, they identified new areas of A/B testing LinkedIn Sponsored Content with fresh ad copy, varying assets, unique audiences, revamped targeting, and ad types. These LinkedIn types include Dynamic Ads, Message Ads, LinkedIn Website Demographics and Lead Gen Forms. Kelsey Krapf, Plannuh’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager, outlined why targeting and varying ad types were paramount to the Plannuh team.
Targeting Professionals
- In the past, Plannuh focused on individuals with job functions and titles that belong to certain groups related to their Ideal Customer Profile
- Eric Jones at B2Linked (a leading agency dedicated to LinkedIn campaign management) helped Plannuh understand the value of widening this segment -- through branching out to additional target audiences, relevant and qualified leads increased
LinkedIn Ad Types
- The team began unlocking the power of Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, and Lead Gen Forms to understand peak performance
- They found that Dynamic Ads yield brand awareness -- when marketers see these ads, they are familiar with Plannuh’s name and, ultimately, more likely to click and convert
- The team uncovered that all of these ad types can work in tandem with one another to bring tremendous results
Lastly, while targeting and ad types are important levers, the willingness to test helped solidify the impact to take Plannuh to the next level. Kelsey recognizes this fluidity is key to their success, “as a marketer you have to continue to test -- insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
Result
One month after implementing this refreshed strategy, Plannuh had decreased its cost per lead from $140 to $48 on average -- ultimately reducing their CPL by 66%.
Kelsey, in part, attributes this progress to testing coupled with having clear measures of success: for her, these include CPL, cost per deal, and intended pipeline. In addition to accountability toward these metrics, Kelsey shares her relentless pursuit of improvement -- if results plateau, she recommends exercising some patience but ultimately recognizing when it’s time to pivot.
Given their success in reducing CPL by leveraging LinkedIn ads and HubSpot, it’s no surprise why Eric emphasizes the importance of “letting the data tell the story” in an ad approach. Three can’t miss lessons to learn here? Harness the power of HubSpot & LinkedIn together to ensure strategy, targeting, and testing remain a core priority.
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