Product and Background

  • Global technical software company
  • Based in Australia with sales teams Worldwide
  • B2B business targeting government and large industry players

Ad Goals

  • Dramatically increase sales of software support
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Become a market leader

Results

Growth to Market Leader

We helped this company grow from its beginning as a start-up in 2012 to a global market leader

Award Winning Company

They have won 4 consecutive Queensland Premiers Export Awards

High Profile Client Base

We helped the company achieve significant milestones on the global stage including recently securing Microsoft and NASA as customers

“I’ve always been really involved with their digital marketing development. Working very closely with their marketing team. For example, together we engaged developers to set up their sales force tracking.”

Kim Dawson

Google Ads Specialist

Products

One of the world’s leading providers of automated network management software to enterprise, telecommunications and MSP organisations.

Founded in Australia, now with staff worldwide.

Network management software – manages all the devices on the network. Can check problems & send alerts out (for free)

Purchased add on products that:

  • Can monitor licences
  • Display data differently
  • MSP’s (Managed Service Providers) support
  • Up to sending out clients to implementing and training staff so the system in running properly.

My Responsibilities

In the beginning they were reliant on one major telecommunications company in South America.

I’ve always been really involved with their digital marketing development. Working very closely with their marketing team. For example, together we engaged developers to set up their sales force tracking.

Because they have such high dollar value sales and there are not many of them, when one happens, we need to be able to see every interaction with sales team and in all stages of advertising. This the essence of a sales funnel for this type of product.

I had to establish a complex analysis to determine:

  • Inputs for a rating system for the sales force to evaluate all incoming leads, based on conversion of leads to sales

  • Target number of high-quality leads to generate weekly

  • Create a budget for acquiring leads of that quality

  • Have set maximum cost per lead

  • Improve on that cost per lead

One of the benefits of this program is that they now have a sophisticated sales force to track software at all the touch points for potential customers.

Google Ads Strategy and Targeting

We started by offering free open-source software which attracted a large range of clients. We then fine-tuned the campaign to only advertise to the larger companies who need the software support the client was selling.

Major competitors include Cisco, SolarWinds and Auvik with huge marketing budgets.

My client ran on a skeleton budget for many years, so we needed to be extremely targeted with the Google Ads campaign. Strategies included:

  • Geo targeting around the headquarters of potential customers and competitive customers
  • Only targeted Linux user profiles
  • Tested many different ad types – video ads, display ads, native ads (Advertising that appears within the natural content of a website), Google Search, Display and YouTube networks
  • Experimentation and fine tuning were essential to success

  • The cost per click in some experiments varied extremely widely. E.g. 10 clicks for $1,000 or thousands of clicks for two cents a click. That is a range of 200 clicks to 1,000,000 clicks for the same cost!

  • Retargeted various audiences

Conversion Goals

  • Changed over time, experimenting with lots of things to find out what worked best for them
  • As we progresses, the focus became requesting a demonstration (the closest we could get to a sale)
  • Major clients were brought in from Google Ads, including Microsoft and Service NSW

Offering the open source then selling products off that was hugely successful. So much so that the company was bought out by First Wave a successful public company in the digital space.

Lead definition has changed a lot. The sales value of some leads is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Have tried to leverage every opportunity that has come around. For example, went via Youtube and selected all the channels that people in the industry might watch and target those.

Research & Feedback

Because it is so competitive, we have had to do everything possible to ensure a high Quality score in Google Ads. If key word, ad cop and landing page all line up really well, you get more cost effective advertising, for example $30 off a $100 click. The decision makers vary significantly, so the key words and ad copy varies a lot. This has involved testing many specific landing pages.