How we helped an ed-tech unicorn build an agile growth approach by quickly testing and optimizing to scale results from paid channels while maintaining flat budgets.
Multiverse is a global ed-tech leader that develops apprenticeship programs to help close the tech skills gap in the workforce. They work with enterprise organizations to build their own pipeline of new talent or reskill their existing teams into tech and data roles.
189%increase in MQLs in 6 months
22%decrease in monthly ad spend
38%increase in known account engagement in the US
TL;DR: Between October 2022 and March 2023, we built an inbound pipeline in a new market by testing over 70 campaigns on LinkedIn to establish a benchmark CPL. Then, we constructed testing frameworks at the campaign, audience, and creative levels. Once a campaign hit our threshold for acceptable conversion costs, we either validated the idea or refined our approach to keep learning. By adopting this methodology, we were able to test rapidly while hitting MQL targets – all on a decreased ad budget.
Multiverse has strong brand equity in the United Kingdom, but isn’t well known in the United States. After closing their Series D in 2022, they knew that in order to grow aggressively, they had to build an inbound pipeline in the U.S. market. Our challenge? Finding quick wins while building a foundation for long-term growth in a saturated market for tech talent solutions.
So, how did we build an inbound lead pipeline using account-based marketing?
Let’s dig in ↓
Our team created a testing framework for LinkedIn where we bucketed campaigns and creative concepts into “validated, non-validated, and needs to be validated” groups based on our CPL benchmarks.
What We Did:
We used 6Sense as our ABM platform and worked with the Multiverse team to identify a list of target accounts in the US. Because of 6Sense’s capabilities and Multiverse’s TAM, LinkedIn presented the clearest path to success. It offers robust B2B targeting to narrow in on specific positions, departments, and seniority levels working at our target accounts. LinkedIn also offers highly-visual placements, giving us the timeline real estate to creatively convey Multiverse’s most compelling value props.
We knew that key learnings could be muddied without a structured testing framework, so we focused on testing three specific things:
Our primary KPI, cost per marketing qualified lead, guided our testing framework. No matter what we tested, we knew that once we neared our cost per MQL threshold without actually generating a lead, we’d need to make aggressive optimizations or kill it completely. Collaborating closely with Multiverse’s in-house marketing team, we decreased cost per MQL by 57% by identifying the types of content and messages that convert. Here’s a deeper look at those results ↓
In six months, we saw significant growth in all key performance indicators, with 30% increases in MQL target volume quarter over quarter while budgets were cut because of economic conditions.
Initially, we found that our top message “solve the tech talent shortage” became irrelevant overnight when all the major US tech organizations began layoffs in late 2022. After pivoting our creative strategy to stay relevant in a changing market, we found that promoting content that solves a timely pain point keeps Multiverse top of mind when our target audience is actually in-market for an apprenticeship-based talent solution.
Katie Swoap McLane, Head of Growth at Multiverse
Speed wins in B2B marketing: Brands with systems set up to gather data, build insights, and make quick decisions are most efficient with ad dollars.
Make sure you’ve spent enough to validate a test: When your CPL target is $1,000+, and you’re testing multiple audiences and creatives, it’s easy to look at the entire investment divided by total leads and call it inefficient. However, when you dig deeper, you’ll see that some concepts haven’t spent enough to validate that it’s effective – or ineffective. Applying a validated vs. non-validated framework to all elements of your campaign helps you learn rapidly.
Build reporting methods that keep you pivoting proactively: If you’re reporting on ABM campaigns on a weekly basis, you’re setting yourself up to be reactive. You’ll always be one step behind. By automating reporting (in our case, building out a Zap that posts a Slack message when a lead comes through), marketing and sales can stay in lock step with each other to make optimizations based on lead quality faster.
You can scale with static budgets: While investing more ad dollars can certainly help achieve more significant results, it’s not the only way to grow. Efficiency is the game, and you can increase lead volume by optimizing every element of your current campaign setup.
Scaling campaigns that generate high-value customers for a Fintech client, backed by comprehensive tracking and reporting.
Your compounding growth curve begins here.
Tackling Rising Acquisition Costs with an Ad Creative Testing Framework
