ImageSource is a process management solutions company that specializes in government and tribal nations, primarily located in the northwest. To say it’s a niche offering, is an understatement. While their budgets may be on the smaller scale for the B2B world, they still need to feel the impact of the spend and drive quality leads. If anything the smaller spend and niche audiences means that every dollar matters more because waste isn’t an option.

The Problem

ImageSource needs leads like any B2B company, but with a niche service focused on limited verticals means its hard to find the right user. We knew paid search was the place to be, but it wasn’t a slam dunk because of the complexity of the type of keywords we wanted to bid against. We needed to bid on keywords that could be searched by a broader audience (often consumers looking for personal digital solutions) and we had to work hard to spend in the right spots to avoid waste and low quality leads.

Finding the right people was only the first step. We also needed them to convert which meant updating landing pages and user flow to get them closer to a lead.

The Solution(s)

It’s never one thing that solves the problem, but a combination of hard work across a variety of elements of the user journey led to gains in Q2 of 2024.

·       We made optimizations to the landings pages to improve where lead forms lived and what content users were first exposed to.

·       We refined the keyword structure (adding a lot of negatives) because our original keyword lists had too many keywords that could be searched by non B2B professionals. We had to go deep into the Search Terms section and keep adding negatives to show up for the best searches possible.

·       We adjusted bids to send better signals to the system so it worked more efficiently and drove better traffic to the site

·       We changed copy to be more succinct and relevant to our audience.

The Success

Simply put….THE LEADS!

We helped drive more leads in Q2 vs Q1 with half the volume of traffic. There was a 192% increase in leads on paid search while the raw traffic volume dropped 44%. We learned its not about volume of people coming to the site, but it’s about the quality.

And it wasn’t just the efficiency of the leads. Time spent improved from 16 seconds in Q1 to 55 seconds in Q2, a 244% gain. Paid Search traffic even had a higher time on site than Organic, which is people who are looking for ImageSource directly.

Summary

Paid search is often the best place to start with your paid spend, especially with limited budgets. And while intuitively its capturing demand, in the B2B space its easy to have keywords that overlap with a consumer audience. When waste is not an option with limited budgets, you need to chip away at the problems as they come because it won’t be one solution that solves the problem. By working on multiple levels of the campaign, you can see strong gains, even in an industry that has narrow audience goals.