MainStreet leverages LinkedIn for acquisition, reaching startups with highly engaging, value-driven messaging

Challenge

• MainStreet helps high-growth startups find and claim tax credits. They primarily serve tech companies with more than five employees in the United States. The average company discovers $51,040 in 20 minutes by working with MainStreet.

• Not only is MainStreet’s ideal customer profile (ICP) very specific, the company is very constrained in its messaging. “Our ICP is designed around the tax code,” says Nick Abouzeid, Head of Product Marketing at MainStreet. “We can’t rewrite what the IRS tells us or what we’re allowed to help people with.”

• The company wanted access to robust targeting tools, deeper metrics for measuring engagement, and opportunities to put broad, bottom-of-the-sales-funnel content in front of the largest possible audience. MainStreet turned to LinkedIn Sponsored Content to simplify its messaging and narrow its focus.

Solution

• MainStreet relied on LinkedIn’s powerful targeting tools to hone in on its ICP of high quality startups. “From day one, we were looking for very specific types of companies—specifically technology companies—and through LinkedIn we’ve been able to service a very niche, very large audience by using company targeting,” says Rohun Vora, Growth Marketing at MainStreet.

• MainStreet relied on a rigorous evaluation process for its Sponsored Content ads. The company constantly tested and deployed content to gauge and qualify each ad’s effectiveness. “A lot of our campaigns are evergreen, and they run 24/7,” says Nick. Using LinkedIn’s metrics, the company identified ads with the most appeal, to cut through the noise of newsfeed media and reach an eager audience with a meaningful message.

• Through LinkedIn Sponsored Content, MainStreet distilled its message down into clear, value-driven statements and calls to action. Paired with optimized website landing pages, powered by a Zapier-driven CRM integration, the company automated lead-gen so it could focus on forming a transactional relationship with qualified startups.

Results

• In scaling MainStreet’s advertising activities on Linkedin, the company grew their annual recurring revenue (ARR) by more than 400%. “I’m proud to say that LinkedIn is our number one channel in terms of ad spend, and that’s been consistent for the last five or six months,” says Rohun. “It’s the first channel we put serious paid acquisition dollars into, and it drove [returns] to quintuple what we were at before.”

• MainStreet’s Sponsored Content has been featured in LinkedIn’s Top Trending Sponsored Content List multiple times. The company is one of the highest-performing in terms of content engagement, qualified lead generation, and a variety of performance-driven metric—a direct result of effective targeting tactics.

Direct appeals to a specific audience

• MainStreet’s focused messaging, mixed with its targeting and the right member mindset, enables the company to engage and convert startups. Much of its Sponsored Content features very straightforward value propositions, addressed clearly to startups that may qualify for the tax credits MainStreet helps them find.

• “At a technical level, LinkedIn allows us to target businesses that are within our specific ICP,” says Rohun, “On a more human level, we find that people are on LinkedIn to do business, so we’re in a clear transactional relationship, which a lot of people try to hide on other social media platforms.“

A focus on bottom-funnel acquisition messaging

• Due to the nature of its service, MainStreet seeks to cast a wide net and automate the process of qualifying leads. The company relied on LinkedIn to channel leads into optimized landing pages, allowing these individuals to schedule a consultation. All the while, a Zapier integration added leads to a CRM for executive account managers to review and pursue.

• MainStreet’s seamless lead-gen process allowed it to focus more on identifying and acting on effective messaging. “We try to start pretty low in the funnel,” says Rohun. “We make sure our targeting and approach focus on saving people time which makes our messaging really straightforward.”

Success has many metrics; MainStreet tracks them all

• MainStreet is very performance-focused. The company measures success based on a variety of metrics, including on lead volume, qualified leads, sales meetings, opportunities, closed/won revenue, ROI, and more. LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Lead Gen Forms give the company tremendous insights into how effective its efforts are—and how to extrapolate performance across campaigns.

• Diverse metrics not only allow MainStreet to optimize its messaging, they also drive down cost per acquisition and total ad spend. “The biggest thing I would say with LinkedIn is that frequency of quality is the highest,” says Rohun. “And that’s super important for companies that are trying to scale and scale reliably with a paid acquisition channel.”

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