LiveTiles: cost per lead down 75%

The brief

LiveTiles is an ASX listed SaaS company, making intranet and digital workplace software, with significant global expansion through acquisition across Europe, the UK and the US. We managed paid digital, SEO and analytics for LiveTiles across Australia and all its international locations, as a full service digital marketing strategy, planning and execution partner.

Then COVID-19 arrived. LiveTiles needed to define and tackle short and long term changes to its digital marketing strategy that would navigate the influence of the pandemic, while still lining up with its global growth ambitions. It also needed more qualified leads at a lower cost.

What we did

We made two big shifts in strategy:

• From channel-led to audience-led. We built the strategy around the people LiveTiles sells to, using Gartner's globally applicable personas, so the same thinking worked in every market.
• A lead generation objective by geography. Each market got its own goal, with initiatives grouped under three pillars: Paid Digital, SEO and Analytics.

Paid digital. We ran campaigns across Google Search, LinkedIn, Facebook and Display, in Australia, the US, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. We worked obsessively on conversion points and on the cost of acquiring each customer, so budget went where it brought in qualified leads.

SEO and link building. Our core outreach strategies were link attraction content and no link brand mentions. We created infographics that tied trending topics back to LiveTiles: one linking blockchain to AI, a key part of LiveTiles' workflow, and one on 5G and how it would affect certain industries. Outreach on those pieces earned response rates of 24.8% and 22.32%. We also found places that mentioned LiveTiles without linking to it, and asked for the link.

Events. For Love Your Work, a digital event LiveTiles CMO Nick Rameka created for HR and marketing teams in larger organisations, we advised on a media mix led by Facebook, with LinkedIn, Google Display and Search covering every stage of the funnel and testing which audiences worked. We also advised on creative that put the event's well known speakers front and centre.

The results

Over 10 months in 2020, from January to October, LiveTiles' cost per lead (MQLs) fell by 75% and leads (MQLs) rose by 80%.

• Leads up 20.7% with a 33% decrease in media budget
• Competitor keyword overlap taken from 10% to 44% in paid digital
• Organic traffic up 82.8%, against a target of 50%
• Sessions up 60%, new users up 65% and keyword discoverability up 40%, year on year
• Moz Domain Authority from 35 to 45 over 1.5 years of effort, 7 points ahead of the next closest key competitor worldwide
• Love Your Work registrations 29% above target, with an average conversion rate of 9%. Speaker-focussed creative cut the cost per registration by 82%.

We worked with LiveTiles for around three years, from about 2019 to 2021.

“During the last 3 years of cooperating with the team at Foresight, they have shown a high level of dedication and professionality. Results are always at the forefront of their thinking. They will go the extra mile to find ways to support you and their people are a joy to work with.” Thomas Talsma, LiveTiles