MQL volume +2.4× without raising spend
LinkedIn ABM + paid search rebuild + lifecycle activation + attribution overhaul.
Where it started.
$8M ARR vertical SaaS, post-Series-B, scaling team and pipeline simultaneously. Demos plateaued for 5 months. Cost-per-MQL at $480, LTV/CAC at 2.6 (board target: 3.5). Founder-led growth had run out of headroom. CMO had departed 6 months prior; in-house head of growth had been hired but lacked senior operator support.
What was broken.
Six findings from the forensic audit. Numbered, evidence-backed, prioritised by impact × effort × confidence.
LinkedIn Ads run with broad audience targeting, no ABM layer, no retargeting tied to sales sequences. Cost-per-MQL at $480 was 2.4× category benchmark.
Demo request landing pages mismatched ad copy. Ad said "20-min demo," LP said "talk to sales." 38% drop-off attributable to LP message-match alone.
Customer.io onboarding sequence was 3 emails, no event triggers. Trial activation rate 22% — best-in-class is 50%+.
Programmatic SEO opportunity worth est. 22K/mo sessions sitting unbuilt — "alternatives to" + integration pages absent.
Attribution model was last-click via HubSpot — sales-influenced opportunities not weighted, expansion ARR not attributed.
AI search citations: 0 across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews despite category having clear search intent.
The work itself.
Concrete actions, not vague verbs. Each line shipped over the engagement window.
- 01Layered LinkedIn ABM at $40K/mo with 1:1 retargeting tied to sales sequences. Killed 22 broad-audience campaigns.
- 02Rebuilt demo request LPs with strict message-match. Conversion rate doubled.
- 03Migrated lifecycle to event-driven Customer.io. Built day-3 'aha moment' email tied to product event triggers.
- 04Shipped 14 'alternatives to' + integration pages with full schema + entity-rich content.
- 05Rebuilt attribution: BigQuery warehouse, Segment integration, Customer.io + HubSpot + Stripe unified into one identity graph.
- 06Implemented llms.txt + AI-citability schema rebuild. ChatGPT + Perplexity citations went 0 → 47/mo in 4 months.
What changed.
Reconciled to net revenue where applicable. Numbers verified internally before publishing.
| Metric | Before | After | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| MQL volume | 168/mo | 404/mo | +2.4× |
| Cost per MQL | $480 | $202 | −58% |
| Demo request → demo show rate | 31% | 47% | +16 pts |
| Trial → paid | 22% | 38% | +16 pts |
| AI search citations / mo (ChatGPT + Perplexity) | 0 | 47 | from zero |
| LTV / CAC | 2.6 | 4.1 | +58% |
“The plan was the first marketing doc we'd seen with kill dates. Every prior agency gave us a 60-slide quarterly deck and asked for the same retainer. RoiSpends gave us a working register we still update weekly.”
— Head of Growth, B2B SaaS · Series-B · $8M ARR
Honest learnings.
- Programmatic SEO + AI-citability is a leading indicator for SaaS. Citations precede traffic by 60–90 days.
- Customer.io event-driven trumps cohort-based for activation lift in PLG.
- ABM at $40K/mo on LinkedIn outperformed broad-audience at $80K/mo for this ICP.