The Expert Press Gets 55+ C-Suite Leads Within Two Months Through Google Ads
The Expert Press is a news platform run by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. The team collaborates with experts, analyzing data and unpacking complex topics to share leading industry insights. Through bylined news analysis, they help businesses and professionals increase their authority and visibility.
However, at the time we met, they had just launched their company. They didn’t have a proper brand outline or website and, therefore, were struggling to attract and identify qualified marketing leads.
Objective
As a newly launched business, it lacked the essential components to identify, attract, and convert high-caliber leads into paying customers.
They needed to create a B2B marketing strategy. To do this, they needed to:
1. Build-out their brand.
2. Create a site and landing pages that were searchable and user-friendly.
Our Role
The Expert Press partnered with InterTeam because of our experience with B2B marketing, Google Ads and LinkedIn Ad campaigns, and detailed research about finely defined audience groups.
Challenges
Before we could launch a Google Ads or LinkedIn Ad campaign, we had to cover some basics. InterTeam faced two main challenges.
Difficulty Identifying and Targeting Quality Keywords
The Expert Press didn’t have a website or landing page with a clear message that defined its brand and services. As impressive as it was, news-based thought leadership wasn’t prominently searched for as a service.
Identifying quality keywords to target for a service with no name posed a significant challenge. We needed to determine who their target market was to identify qualified keywords and reach an in-market audience.
Solution
We conducted a competitor analysis to identify relevant high-intent keywords and tailor copy that distinguished The Expert Press from its competitors. With the right keywords in hand, it was time to optimize their site — we created and launched over 50 landing page variations!
For Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads, instead of split-testing target keywords with different copy, we developed an indirect three-pronged campaign, categorizing the keywords into three groups:
- Based on the service
- End-result search terms
- Thought leadership search terms
We also supplemented our campaign with general promotional ads on display and discovery networks. When everything was set and done, the highest-converting page had a 15% conversion rate.
2. Problems Identifying Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
The second major challenge was that The Expert Press didn’t have a streamlined process for lead qualification. Their team didn’t know how to identify or qualify the incoming leads — they needed to learn.
Solution
We created a finely tuned lead qualification process that was easy to follow. InterTeam devised its own methodology that integrated Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads with HubSpot’s assigned lead lifecycle stages.
We also trained the staff at The Expert Press to identify and label highly qualified leads (executives earning between 1 and 10 million dollars annually).
When a lead came in, it was assigned the status “lead.” Given a Marketing Qualified Lead status, Google Ads counted the lead as a separate conversion. This allowed us to see which campaigns the MQLs were coming from and optimize them accordingly.
Results
The Expert Press went from having a website that looked like they had made it themselves (which they did) to landing 55+ C-Suite Enterprise leads within two months of the Google and LinkedIn Ad campaigns.
- 100K+ ROI
- 150 Leads
- 58 MQLs
The campaign helped The Expert Press gain a deeper understanding of its business and even led them to create an in-house sales team to manage incoming leads.
About InterTeam
InterTeam is a full-service PPC agency that offers expert marketing and advertising services to B2B services and SaaS companies. We use paid search and social ads to help businesses generate quality leads, achieve their marketing goals, and accelerate growth.
