BambooHR aims to help small to medium-sized businesses focus on their most important asset: their people. Their software makes it easy to collect and analyze HR data — so teams can build the kind of culture and processes that empowers everyone to do great work.
No Cold Calls: A 100% Inbound Sales Strategy Requires Smart Marketing
With an emphasis on helping SMB prospects solve specific HR challenges, the BambooHR sales team only connects with individuals who proactively reach out to the company for a demo or with a pricing request.
This fully inbound approach means it’s up to BambooHR’s marketing team to attract website visitors and turn them into prospects. They relentlessly focus on creating engaging and relevant experiences at every step of the buyer’s journey, while making sure the cost per lead stays low.
The Approach: Sponsored Messaging and Easy-to-Complete Lead Gen Forms
Already leveraging a few LinkedIn features to drive their marketing strategy, BambooHR took a scientific approach. They tested a four-layered advertising strategy to engage their target audience of SMB HR professionals at every step of the buyer’s journey.
Single Image Ads promoted the company’s high-quality thought leadership playbooks such as ‘How to Onboard Like a Pro’ and ‘The Ultimate DIY HR Guide.’ In parallel, they ran Message Ads that invited individuals who engaged with the thought leadership content to register for a demo.
They implemented Lead Gen Forms to provide those fresh prospects with a seamless sign-up process without ever having to leave the page. And Website Retargeting continued to nurture site visitors who didn’t convert immediately with the sponsored content.
Knowing that attention is scarce, BambooHR designed their lead gen forms for the utmost simplicity to make it easy for prospects to fill out. “We use four main fields: first name, last name, work email, and phone number,” said Matt Steggell, a Paid Social Channel Manager at BambooHR. “Simple and clean is all we need to create a record. Our excellent salespeople can handle the next piece.”
And to help these marketing efforts scale, BambooHR leveraged LinkedIn-partner Marketo to automatically trigger marketing actions on those captured leads — such as an email response, inclusion in a nurture campaign, or alerting a sales rep.
The Result: Cost per Demo was Cut in Half
This approach worked. Really worked. BambooHR’s lead gen form campaign performed significantly higher than benchmarks, increasing the company’s cost per-lead efficiency by over 40%.
Compared to their website, BambooHR achieved 53% higher submission rates. “We've been able to see a great increase in conversion by leveraging Lead Gen Forms versus sending people to our site,” Steggell said.
Additionally, by engaging their audience in both the LinkedIn feed and through messaging, the team increased conversions by nearly 15%. The cost per demo was cut in half.
“Lead Gen Forms have quickly become a staple in our marketing strategy. We’ve seen results all the way down the sales funnel with cost per demo cut by nearly half. We’re looking forward to continuing this growth with LinkedIn in the new year.” —Matt Steggell, Paid Social Channel Manager at BambooHR.
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