B2B SaaS · Test management · Google Ads + CRO

How a test management SaaS company cut the cost of a qualified trial by more than 90%

Segmenting spend around profitability and sending high-intent traffic to more relevant landing pages cut cost per qualified trial from $3,322.65 to $331.12.

90%+lower cost per qualified trial
349qualified trials from competitor landing pages
25.25%more product demo registrations

Cost per qualified trial fell from $3,322.65 to $331.12.

The situation

Paid search was generating trials. Just not efficiently enough.

The company had meaningful search demand and an established Google Ads program.

The problem was how budget was being distributed.

Locations with very different economics were being treated too similarly, making it difficult to concentrate spend around the markets producing the strongest qualified-trial outcomes.

At the same time, high-intent competitor traffic and demo campaigns were being sent to landing pages that weren't specific enough to the reason someone had clicked.

The opportunity wasn't simply to drive more traffic.

It was to make the existing traffic substantially more valuable.

The company

A test management platform used by software teams to plan, track and report on their testing.

What was getting in the way

The account wasn't distinguishing enough between good traffic and expensive traffic.

01

Geography was too broad

Markets with different ROAS and trial-to-qualified-trial rates were being managed without enough differentiation.

02

Competitor intent wasn't being matched

People searching around competing products were landing on generic pages instead of experiences that explained why this product was the better alternative.

03

Demo traffic had room to convert better

The existing product-demo landing page wasn't turning enough high-intent visitors into registrations.

What I changed

Put the budget where qualification was strongest.

The strategy combined smarter geographic allocation with landing pages built around the reason someone was searching in the first place.

  1. 01

    Built six geographic performance tiers

    Locations were analyzed using two downstream signals: ROAS and trial-to-qualified-trial ratio.

    Markets were then grouped into six tiers, allowing bidding and budget decisions to reflect profitability and qualification rather than treating every region the same.

  2. 02

    Built competitor-specific landing experiences

    High-intent competitor searches were routed to landing pages designed around the comparison the prospect was already making.

    Instead of asking a generic page to do all the work, each experience could explain the product's value in the context of that competitor.

  3. 03

    Reworked the product-demo page

    The demo-signup experience was redesigned around a clearer path to action and stronger conversion principles.

    The aim wasn't more clicks. It was getting more of the existing high-intent traffic to actually request a demo.

The result

A radically different cost of acquiring a qualified trial.

90%+
lower cost per qualified trial
$3,322.65 $331.12 Cost per qualified trial
349qualified trialsgenerated by competitor-specific landing pages
$222.35cost per qualified trialon those competitor pages
16.9%increase in demo-page conversion rate25.25% more product demo registrations

The geographic restructure, the competitor pages and the demo-page rebuild ran as one program. These figures reflect the combined effect rather than any single change in isolation.

What made the difference

Better allocation beat simply adding more budget.

The biggest improvement came from treating different traffic differently.

Markets with stronger economics received a strategy built around those economics.

Competitor searches were matched with competitor-specific messages.

And high-intent demo traffic got a landing page designed for the action we actually wanted people to take.

The account didn't need more activity. It needed more relevance and better decisions about where the budget went.

About this work

This work was completed while I was part of the Paid Media team at Powered by Search. I was responsible for the paid acquisition strategy and was hands-on in the planning and execution covered in this case study.

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