SEO Case Study: Increased Paid Leads by 170% in 5 Months for a B2B SaaS in San Jose
In 2025, a San Jose based B2B SaaS company partnered with Goforaeo after paid campaigns stopped growing and lead quality became inconsistent. They had product market fit and a clear ICP, but their ads were not turning spend into steady demos.
This SEO Case Study shows what we changed, what we did each month, and the proof behind the 170% paid lead lift.
Project details: dates, timeframe, location:
The work ran for five months with weekly optimizations and monthly reporting.
- Location: San Jose, California
- Timeframe: 2025-02-03 to 2025-06-30
- Primary channels: Google Search Ads, LinkedIn Ads, retargeting
- Primary conversion: demo request and qualified contact form submissions
Client snapshot: what they sell and who they sell to:
The client is a B2B SaaS that helps mid market teams manage workflows and reporting across departments. Most deals came from operations leaders, RevOps teams, and department heads.
They were already spending consistently, but results were flat. The ads also attracted some low intent signups that never turned into sales calls.
Their ideal customer profile in simple terms:
- Company size: 50 to 500 employees
- Markets: United States, mainly tech and professional services
- Buyer roles: operations, revenue operations, IT managers, team leads
- Buying trigger: replacing messy tools and manual reporting
Starting point: what was happening before we touched anything:
We used February 2025 as the baseline month because it reflects the account before major changes took effect. It also gave us clean month level numbers to compare.
Baseline performance in February 2025:
- Paid leads: 40
- Total ad spend: $18,000
- Cost per lead: $450
- Landing page conversion rate: 2.1%
- Click through rate on key campaigns: 2.4%
- Average cost per click: $9.80
- Lead to booked call rate (from CRM): 22%
The main issues we found:
- Campaigns were too broad and mixed different intents in one place
- Keywords pulled research traffic, not buyer traffic
- Negative keywords were weak, so wasted spend kept growing
- Landing pages were generic, with unclear proof and weak CTAs
- Tracking did not separate true demos from basic contact clicks
- LinkedIn was running, but targeting was too wide and creatives were tired
What we tracked and how we defined a paid lead:
To keep reporting honest, we defined a paid lead as a person who did one of these actions from an ad click:
- Submitted the demo request form
- Submitted the high intent contact form with business email
- Booked a call via the calendar link after coming from paid traffic
We also tracked lead quality signals inside the CRM. That helped us avoid celebrating leads that never had a chance to convert.
Secondary metrics we monitored weekly:
- Search terms and wasted spend
- Conversion rate by landing page
- Cost per lead and cost per qualified lead
- Lead to meeting rate by channel and campaign
- Pipeline influenced by paid leads (when available)
Tools used:
We used a practical stack. Every tool below was used to decide what to change or to measure impact.
Paid ads and platform tools:
- Google Ads
- LinkedIn Campaign Manager
- Google Keyword Planner
- Microsoft Clarity for behavior analysis
Tracking and reporting tools:
- GA4
- Google Tag Manager
- Looker Studio
- CRM reporting (HubSpot or Salesforce style dashboards)
- Call and form tracking with UTM rules
Build and testing tools:
- Landing page builder (Webflow or similar)
- Hotjar style heatmaps and recordings
- Google Optimize alternative testing setup using page variants and event tracking
Before vs after proof: February 2025 vs June 2025:
The strongest comparison is the first month vs the last month in the five month window.
Results in June 2025:
- Paid leads: 108
- Total ad spend: $21,000
- Cost per lead: $194
- Landing page conversion rate: 4.4%
- Click through rate on key campaigns: 3.6%
- Average cost per click: $8.10
- Lead to booked call rate (from CRM): 31%
The core improvement:
- Paid leads grew from 40 to 108
- That is a 170% increase in five months
The client did increase spend slightly, but lead growth was much faster than spend growth. That is why cost per lead dropped hard.
Strategy overview: what we actually did and why it worked:
We did not “scale budgets” and hope for the best. We rebuilt structure first, then scaled what proved it could convert.
Our approach had four parts that supported each other:
- Fix tracking and define true lead actions
- Rebuild search campaigns around intent and clean traffic
- Improve landing pages so clicks turn into demos
- Add smart LinkedIn targeting and retargeting to support search
Part 1: Tracking and lead quality cleanup:
We started here because you cannot optimize what you cannot measure. The account was counting soft actions as leads, so reporting looked better than reality.
We cleaned it up with:
- Separate conversion events for demo forms vs basic contact forms
- UTM rules that pushed campaign data into the CRM
- A simple qualification rule using business email and company fields
- Separate reporting for raw leads and qualified leads
What changed after tracking was fixed:
- We stopped over counting
- We saw which campaigns were producing real meetings
- We could cut waste without guessing
Part 2: Google Ads rebuild focused on buyer intent:
The best paid leads usually come from people already looking for a solution. So we tightened keyword intent and separated campaigns by stage.
We built:
- High intent Search campaigns for solution terms and competitor comparisons
- Middle intent campaigns for category terms with strong ad copy filters
- Brand defense campaigns to protect cheap conversions
- A dedicated campaign for “demo” and “pricing” type searches
Search cleanup that saved budget fast:
- Added aggressive negative keyword lists
- Reviewed search terms every week
- Split match types to control traffic quality
- Paused broad keywords that never produced meetings
- Built ad groups around one clear promise, not mixed messages
Part 3: Landing page improvements without a full redesign:
A big part of lead growth came from converting more of the clicks we already had.
We focused on:
- Clear first section copy: who it is for and what it solves
- Stronger proof: short results bullets, logos, and use cases
- Simple CTA repeated in the right places
- Shorter forms with better labels
- A “What happens after you book” section to reduce friction
Page changes that helped conversion rate:
- Added role based sections: Ops, RevOps, IT
- Added 3 short product screenshots with one line captions
- Added one primary CTA, not five different buttons
- Moved trust elements above the fold on paid landing pages
Part 4: LinkedIn targeting and retargeting that supports search:
LinkedIn works best when it is not treated like Google Search. We used LinkedIn for warm demand and to keep the client visible to the right roles.
We ran:
- Role and seniority based targeting for ICP accounts
- A small ABM list for high value segments
- Retargeting for site visitors who did not convert
- Creative refresh every month to avoid ad fatigue
Simple creative angles that performed:
- “Replace manual reporting” messaging
- “One dashboard for cross team workflows”
- “Short onboarding, real adoption” messaging
- Industry specific versions for tech and services
Month by month timeline: work done and monthly results:
Below is the monthly rollout, with the main actions and the numbers.
Month 1: 2025-02-03 to 2025-02-28:
February was discovery, tracking fixes, and quick wins. We did not rush scaling yet.
What we did in February:
- Full account audit on Google Ads and LinkedIn
- Cleaned conversion tracking and removed soft conversions
- Built negative keyword lists and started weekly search term reviews
- Identified the top 3 buyer journeys and mapped landing pages to each
- Wrote new ad copy for the highest spend ad groups
February results:
- Paid leads: 40
- Spend: $18,000
- Cost per lead: $450
- Notes: this month was the baseline and cleanup phase
Month 2: 2025-03-01 to 2025-03-31:
March was the rebuild month. We restructured campaigns so intent was clean and reporting was reliable.
What we did in March:
- Split campaigns by intent and buyer stage
- Tightened match types and added more negatives
- Launched a demo intent campaign and a competitor comparison campaign
- Built 2 dedicated paid landing pages with focused messaging
- Set up CRM reporting for lead source and meeting rate
March results:
- Paid leads: 55
- Spend: $18,500
- Cost per lead: $336
- Landing page conversion rate: 2.8%
- Notes: lead quality improved, fewer junk submissions
Month 3: 2025-04-01 to 2025-04-30:
April was about improving conversion rate and scaling winners. We shifted budget toward campaigns producing meetings.
What we did in April:
- Paused low intent keywords and moved budget to high intent groups
- Tested 3 ad copy angles focused on outcomes, not features
- Improved landing page proof sections and reduced form fields
- Launched retargeting ads with a simple demo message
- Added day and time bid adjustments based on conversion patterns
April results:
- Paid leads: 72
- Spend: 19,500
- Cost per lead: 271
- Landing page conversion rate: 3.6%
- Notes: best month so far for demo requests
Month 4: 2025-05-01 to 2025-05-31:
May was expansion. We added new keyword groups based on what Search Terms showed was converting.
What we did in May:
- Built new ad groups around high converting phrases found in search terms
- Added industry specific ad sets for the top converting industries
- Refined LinkedIn targeting to remove job seekers and students
- Launched a second landing page variant with a stronger “how it works” section
- Added a simple lead scoring rule so sales could prioritize faster
May results:
- Paid leads: 92
- Spend: 20,000
- Cost per lead: 217
- Landing page conversion rate: 4.1%
- Notes: lead to meeting rate started climbing
Month 5: 2025-06-01 to 2025-06-30:
June was optimization and steady scaling. We focused on pushing near winners into consistent winners.
What we did in June:
- Refined bids and budgets based on cost per qualified lead
- Cleaned search terms weekly and expanded negative lists further
- Added sitelinks and structured snippets to improve CTR
- Refreshed LinkedIn creatives and rotated messaging by role
- Improved the thank you page flow to encourage direct booking
June results:
- Paid leads: 108
- Spend: 21,000
- Cost per lead: 194
- Landing page conversion rate: 4.4%
- Notes: strongest month across volume and efficiency
What made the 170% increase genuine:
Lead count is not enough. The client wanted more booked calls and fewer dead leads. We tracked that closely.
Quality signals that improved by June 2025:
- Higher business email share in paid form fills
- More leads from the target roles, fewer from unrelated roles
- Meeting rate improved from 22% to 31%
- Fewer refunds and fewer disqualified leads reported by sales
Key lessons from this account:
These are the changes that created the biggest lift, explained in plain words.
1) Cleaner intent beat bigger budgets:
When keywords were too broad, spend went to people who were only browsing. Tight intent made every dollar work harder.
2) Landing page clarity doubled conversion rate:
The same traffic converted better when the page quickly explained:
- what the tool solves
- who it is for
- proof that it works
- what happens after booking
3) Weekly search term work was non negotiable:
This is where waste hides. Weekly cleanups prevented budget from drifting into junk traffic.
4) LinkedIn worked when used as support, not the main engine:
LinkedIn helped keep the product visible to the right roles, while Search captured demand at the right moment.
Deliverables we completed during the five months:
Here is what the client had by the end of 2025-06-30:
- Rebuilt Google Ads structure with clear intent layers
- New paid landing pages mapped to buyer journeys
- Tracking that separates real demos from soft actions
- Monthly dashboards with lead, cost, and quality signals
- A repeatable system for testing ads and pages every month
Closing summary:
From 2025-02-03 to 2025-06-30, this San Jose B2B SaaS partnered with Goforaeo and increased paid leads from 40 to 108 per month, which is a 170% lift in five months. Cost per lead dropped from $450 to $194, while lead quality improved based on meeting rates and CRM feedback.