One sales system from the search to the signed deal. $1.28M closed from $123K of ads.
A commercial equipment maker moving into high-ticket B2B sales needed pipeline it could scale with a small team. It rolled out search in stages, on a sales system that took the manual work out of the funnel and tied every dollar to closed revenue: $1.28M closed from $123K of ads.
- Client
- Commercial equipment maker. Name withheld.
- Situation
- Moving from ecommerce into high-ticket B2B sales in a small, specialized market, with no acquisition system for that sale.
- How they sell
- Consultative, closed by a sales team.
- What was built
- The search strategy and campaigns, and the sales system they ran on: landing pages, HubSpot forms, booking and CRM, Google Tag Manager conversions, deal sync to Google Ads and a dashboard.
- Period
- 17 months.
The short version
The business was moving from ecommerce into high-ticket B2B sales, and referrals weren’t producing enough pipeline. To scale search with a small sales and marketing team, it needed a system that ran the funnel without manual handling and traced every deal to the search behind it, with the numbers in one dashboard to decide where spend went next.
The search strategy and the system were built together, and the campaigns were rolled out in stages on top. Five months in, closed revenue had passed $750,000 on under $50,000 of spend. In the last six months the program ran on about half the monthly budget, and deals kept closing.
- Closed deals
- 41
- Over 17 months
- Revenue to ad spend
- 10×
- $1.28M closed from $123K of ads
- Ad spend per closed deal
- $3K
- With an average deal of $31K
- Cost per lead
- Under $55
- From over $100, by the third and fourth months
The strategy
Search, scaled in stages
In a narrow B2B market, search intent is high: the businesses searching are already in the market. The risk was scaling on the wrong signal, or faster than a small team could follow up. So the system went in first, and search was scaled on it one stage at a time.
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Before launch: build the system
A qualified buyer was defined on budget, timing and the decision-maker. Landing pages went up for each type of buyer, with an application that asked those questions before a call could be booked. Tracking ran from the click to the signed deal, with the search behind every lead.
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Month 1: start broad
With the system live, the campaigns started broad to find where buyers were searching, and leads came in at workable economics from the first month. Each one was qualified and booked without anyone touching it, so the sales team’s time went on calls.
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Months 2 to 4: scale what worked
As deals closed, the system sent them back to Google, so it optimized for revenue, and the dashboard showed each keyword’s spend against its calls and deals. Spend stepped up on the searches that closed, and cost per lead fell from over $100 to under $55.
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The last six months: run lean
On proven searches, the program ran on about half the monthly spend of the first six months, and deals kept closing.
The system
The system behind the ads
The map has two layers: the buyer’s path, and the data under it. Every step lands in one HubSpot record, and signed deals flow back to Google Ads.
The tracking went in first, so every step was recorded against the search that started it.
Under the hood
In the order a lead moves through it.
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Pages by buyer type
About eight landing pages, one for each type of buyer, each written for the searches that buyer makes. Beside them sat a business case with an ROI calculator, plus pricing and getting-started pages, so a buyer could make the case internally before booking.
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The search on every contact
Hidden fields on the HubSpot form captured all five UTM parameters, the search term included, so each contact carried the campaign and search that found it all the way to the deal.
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Qualification before the calendar
Budget, timing and the decision-maker were asked before a buyer could book, and only buyers who met the criteria reached the calendar. The answers sat on the contact record, ready for the call.
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Tracking embedded widgets
HubSpot’s embedded form and booking widget don’t fire standard tag triggers, so listeners picked up their submit and booking events and passed them to Google Tag Manager.
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Conversions tied to the click
Form submissions and booked meetings went to Google Ads as separate conversions. The conversion linker and enhanced conversions matched each one to the click that sent it, using the contact’s details from the form.
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Deals as offline conversions
Each booked call opened a deal in HubSpot’s pipeline. As deals moved to closed won, HubSpot’s ad-conversion sync sent those stages back to Google Ads, matched to the original click, so Google optimized for revenue rather than form fills.
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Lead quality into the targeting
The sales team fed back on lead quality, and the searches behind poor-fit leads were cut back.
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One dashboard
Spend and keywords from Google Ads sat beside calls and closed deals from HubSpot, so each keyword was judged on the revenue it produced and the next dollar went where deals came from.
The result
What it did
Over 17 months, the company reported 41 closed deals and $1,278,525 in closed revenue on $122,972 of ad spend: ten times the spend, about $3,000 of ads per deal, and an average deal of about $31,000.
Running totals by month, redrawn from the original report.
Most of it came early. Five months in, closed revenue had passed $750,000 on less than $50,000 of ad spend. Revenue came in clusters: three months account for about four fifths of it, so a program like this is best judged quarter by quarter.
Why it’s here
What the system made possible
The system did the work that usually falls on people, from qualifying and booking every lead to keeping the numbers in one place. That left a small team free to sell, and let spend follow closed revenue. It also made the staged rollout possible, since each stage was judged on the numbers it produced.
The same applies to any sales-led business buying traffic: build the system first, then scale the channel on closed revenue.
That’s what the process review is for: where the work waits in your business, what it costs and what to change first.
Apply for a process reviewNotes on the numbers
These are the company’s own reported figures. There was no baseline from before the program, so this case reports what was built and what was recorded. It doesn’t claim a percentage increase in revenue, a better conversion rate, or revenue the business wouldn’t otherwise have had.
- Ad spend
- $122,972
- As reported. Ad spend only, without fees, sales time or other costs.
- Closed revenue
- $1,278,525
- Closed revenue as reported. Not collected cash, and not profit.
- Closed deals
- 41
- As reported for the period.
- Revenue to ad spend
- 10 times
- Arithmetic on the two reported totals (10.4), rounded down. Not a profit return.
- Ad spend per closed deal
- $3,000
- Arithmetic: $122,972 divided by 41 ($2,999).
- Average deal
- $31,000
- Arithmetic: $1,278,525 divided by 41 ($31,184). Individual deals may differ.
- Cost per lead
- Over $100, then under $55
- As reported: over $100 at first, then $35 to $55 by the third and fourth months. The source doesn’t define a lead or give exact periods.
- Five months in
- Over $750,000 on under $50,000
- Read from the original chart: about $761,000 and about $49,000.
- Three months
- About four fifths of revenue
- Three separate months, read from the original chart.
- Monthly spend
- About $9,900, then about $4,900
- The first six months against the last six, read from the original chart.
- The chart
- Approximate by month
- Redrawn from the chart in the original report. The end points are the reported totals, and the months between are read from the chart, to within a few thousand dollars.
- The build
- As built
- From the original case and the client’s own site.
- Period
- 17 months
- The program’s run, as reported.
Apply
Start with a process review.
Tell us about the department, and we’ll start with a free call. If it’s a fit, we map how it runs with your own data, then show you, on a map and in writing, where the work waits, what each problem costs, what fixing it is worth and what to change first. Then we talk it through, and you decide. If you already have a plan or a prototype, say so, and we’ll start by checking it.