SEO Case Study: B2B compliance software achieved CPL -35% in 3 months
In March 2025, a California based B2B compliance software company partnered with Goforaeo to stabilize lead quality and improve paid acquisition efficiency across search and LinkedIn. The team had strong product market fit, but performance marketing was leaking budget through weak tracking, broad targeting, and landing pages that were not aligned with high intent compliance queries.
Client Snapshot and Starting Point
The engagement ran from March 10, 2025 to June 9, 2025 and focused on the client’s primary market in the United States, with most pipeline sourced from California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. The product was an enterprise compliance platform used by regulated and mid market teams such as security, risk, legal, operations, and compliance leadership.
What was happening before March 2025
Before the partnership, paid media was active, but it was not engineered for how compliance software is bought. Demand came from multiple stakeholders, sales cycles were longer, and the account level story mattered more than generic feature ads.
Key symptoms observed during the first week of March 2025:
- Leads were coming in, but the mix skewed toward low intent and early stage researchers.
- Conversion tracking was inconsistent across form types and demo routes, so optimization was biased.
- Keyword coverage was broad, with compliance adjacent terms pulling expensive clicks.
- LinkedIn targeting was set up as interest and job title heavy, which inflated costs.
- Landing pages were product heavy and proof light, which reduced trust for regulated buyers.
Baseline metrics in March 2025
The team used March 1, 2025 to March 31, 2025 as the baseline month to benchmark performance.
- Average CPL: $310
- Paid leads captured: 142
- Lead to MQL rate: 34%
- MQL to SQL rate: 18%
- Landing page conversion rate across paid traffic: 2.1%
- Top of funnel CTR average: 1.2% across LinkedIn and non brand search combined
These numbers were not disastrous, but they were inefficient for the category. In compliance software, high value pipeline typically starts with fewer, higher intent actions, so the next phase was to rebuild the system around intent, proof, and clean attribution.
What We Measured and Why It Mattered
We aligned measurement to the reality of B2B compliance buying. The objective was not to chase vanity leads. It was to increase qualified opportunities per dollar spent, while keeping lead volume healthy.
Measurement definitions used in this SEO Case Study
- Lead: any completed form or booked meeting that entered the CRM.
- MQL: lead meeting firmographic fit plus behavioral intent thresholds agreed with sales.
- SQL: sales accepted lead that progressed to discovery or evaluation stage.
Tools used across the stack
We did not add complexity for its own sake. Every tool supported either tracking integrity, targeting precision, or conversion uplift.
- GA4 for behavioral performance reporting and channel attribution
- Google Tag Manager for event standardization and clean tagging governance
- Google Ads for high intent search capture and retargeting
- LinkedIn Campaign Manager for job function and seniority based demand creation
- HubSpot for lead routing, lifecycle staging, and form logic
- Looker Studio for unified weekly reporting dashboards
- Hotjar for scroll depth, click maps, and session recordings on landing pages
- Clearbit for firmographic enrichment and fast fit scoring
- Ahrefs and Semrush for query expansion and competitor messaging analysis
- Zapier for lightweight routing fixes and enrichment handoffs where needed
Strategy Overview
The strategy was executed in three phases over three months, with weekly optimization loops. We started by fixing the foundation, then narrowed to intent, then scaled what worked.
Phase 1: Fix attribution and clean the funnel
The first two weeks, from March 10, 2025 to March 23, 2025, were about measurement truth. Without reliable conversion signals, bids and budgets drift.
Actions completed:
- Standardized conversion events across all lead paths, including demo requests, contact sales, webinar signups, and gated content downloads.
- Implemented server side friendly tracking hygiene where possible using GTM best practices and consistent UTM taxonomy.
- Added hidden fields in HubSpot forms to capture campaign, ad group, keyword, and referrer context.
- Rebuilt the lifecycle stage mapping so paid leads could be traced to MQL and SQL outcomes, not only form completions.
Early impact by March 24, 2025:
- The team identified that roughly 22% of conversions in Google Ads were misattributed or duplicated due to mixed pixel and offline conversion imports.
- Once cleaned, true CPL was slightly higher than previously reported, which helped set accurate expectations and decision rules.
Phase 2: Rebuild targeting and messaging around compliance intent
After tracking was stable, we shifted into intent alignment from March 24, 2025 to April 20, 2025.
Key decisions:
- We separated demand capture from demand creation. Search handled high intent queries. LinkedIn handled role based education and proof.
- We rewrote messaging to lead with outcomes compliance teams care about: audit readiness, reduced manual evidence work, policy adherence, risk reduction, and faster reporting.
- We removed broad keywords that attracted students, consultants, and generic compliance curiosity.
Search restructuring actions:
- Split campaigns into Brand, High Intent Compliance, Adjacent Risk and Governance, and Competitor Alternatives.
- Built negative keyword libraries weekly to block irrelevant traffic such as certification courses, compliance jobs, and legal templates.
- Shifted bidding to prioritize conversion quality by importing offline signals for MQL and SQL once volume stabilized.
LinkedIn restructuring actions:
- Rebuilt audiences by job function and seniority, focusing on decision committees:
- Security leadership, GRC, risk and compliance managers, legal ops, IT operations
- Security leadership, GRC, risk and compliance managers, legal ops, IT operations
- Added firmographic filters to prioritize industries where compliance urgency is higher.
- Introduced creative that used proof elements such as quantified time savings claims, audit readiness language, and implementation timelines.
Phase 3: Landing page conversion and lead quality tightening
From April 21, 2025 to June 9, 2025, the biggest gains came from conversion rate improvements and better fit scoring, not only cheaper clicks.
Landing page upgrades implemented:
- Created one landing page per intent cluster, instead of forcing all traffic into a generic product page.
- Added trust blocks above the fold:
- security posture highlights, data handling assurances, compliance framework mentions
- customer proof placement moved higher
- security posture highlights, data handling assurances, compliance framework mentions
- Reduced form friction by using progressive profiling:
- for high intent demo traffic, kept form fields tight
- for mid intent offers, added enrichment and later qualification
- for high intent demo traffic, kept form fields tight
Conversion experiments run with clear test windows:
- May 6, 2025 to May 20, 2025: Headline test focused on audit readiness vs workflow automation
- May 21, 2025 to June 4, 2025: Form length and CTA test for demo requests
- June 1, 2025 to June 9, 2025: Proof placement test using case proof snippets near the CTA
Lead quality tightening:
- Introduced a fit score using industry, company size, and role seniority, enriched via Clearbit.
- Routed low fit leads into nurture sequences instead of immediate sales handoff, which reduced wasted SDR time.
- Updated retargeting to prioritize engaged visitors who hit key page depth and pricing intent events.
Month by Month Performance, Without Hiding the Messy Parts
Below is the monthly performance trend during the engagement. These numbers reflect paid acquisition across Google Ads and LinkedIn, using the same lead definition throughout.
March 2025 baseline
March served as the benchmark and diagnostic month.
- CPL: $310
- Leads: 142
- Lead to MQL: 34%
- MQL to SQL: 18%
- Landing page conversion rate: 2.1%
- Notes: Tracking inconsistencies inflated reported results before cleanup, so this month became the truth set.
April 2025, foundation and intent alignment
By April, tracking was stable and targeting was sharper.
- CPL: $262
- Leads: 156
- Lead to MQL: 39%
- MQL to SQL: 21%
- Landing page conversion rate: 2.6%
- What changed most: Reduced wasted spend from broad queries and rebuilt LinkedIn audiences by role and seniority.
May 2025, conversion improvements and quality controls
May added structured landing pages and conversion experiments.
- CPL: $226
- Leads: 173
- Lead to MQL: 43%
- MQL to SQL: 24%
- Landing page conversion rate: 3.3%
- What changed most: Intent matched landing pages and cleaner lead routing, which improved both CPL and downstream conversion.
June 2025, final month of the three month sprint
June reflected the compounding impact of fixes and scaling winners.
- CPL: $202
- Leads: 181
- Lead to MQL: 46%
- MQL to SQL: 26%
- Landing page conversion rate: 3.7%
- What changed most: We scaled top performing keyword clusters and LinkedIn creatives while protecting quality with fit scoring.
Before vs After Proof
The reduction in cost was not achieved by lowering standards. It came from reducing waste and increasing conversion efficiency.
Core metric improvement over three months
- CPL moved from $310 in March 2025 to $202 in June 2025
- That is a 35% reduction over the three month engagement window
Supporting metrics that validate quality, not only cost
- Lead volume increased from 142 to 181, showing efficiency did not come from cutting spend alone.
- Lead to MQL rate rose from 34% to 46%, indicating better fit and intent.
- MQL to SQL rate improved from 18% to 26%, indicating improved handoff quality and sales acceptance.
Why This Worked in Compliance Software Specifically
B2B compliance is a trust heavy category. Buyers want proof, clarity, and low risk implementation, and they often involve multiple stakeholders.
The practical reasons the CPL dropped
- Cleaner conversion signals stopped the ad platforms from optimizing toward the wrong actions.
- Intent segmentation meant we paid for clicks that had a higher chance of becoming pipeline.
- Message proof alignment improved conversion rates, which reduces CPL even if CPC stays flat.
- Fit scoring and routing protected sales time and improved feedback loops, which improved optimization decisions.
What we deliberately did not do
- We did not chase cheap leads from broad compliance terms that usually convert poorly.
- We did not over optimize to click through rate at the expense of lead quality.
- We did not rely on gimmicky offers that attract non buyers.
Implementation Timeline and Operating Cadence
This was executed as a true sprint with weekly review and clear owner assignments.
- March 10, 2025: Kickoff, baseline audit, access setup
- March 17, 2025: Tracking standardization in GA4 and GTM
- March 24, 2025: Campaign rebuild live in Google Ads and LinkedIn
- April 7, 2025: First negative keyword and audience refinement cycle completed
- April 21, 2025: Intent matched landing pages published
- May 6, 2025: First CRO test window launched
- May 27, 2025: Fit scoring and routing updates completed in HubSpot
- June 9, 2025: Three month performance review and scale plan delivered
Takeaways You Can Reuse If You Sell to Regulated Teams
If you are marketing B2B compliance software, these principles tend to hold up across industries.
- Fix tracking first, or every optimization decision is compromised.
- Segment by intent, not by what you want to sell.
- Put proof near the CTA, especially for regulated buyers who assume risk.
- Tie paid reporting to MQL and SQL outcomes, not only form fills.
- Build landing pages around the compliance jobs to be done, not feature tours.
What Happened Next
After June 2025, the client had a stable foundation to scale spend without quality collapse. The next recommended steps were to expand into additional compliance framework pages, deepen retargeting by stakeholder type, and build sales enablement loops so SDR notes could inform future ad messaging.