Overview
Connected paid search, SEO, customer-focused content and conversion journeys into a single measurable acquisition model for a global manufacturer of thermal-imaging, sensing and security technology, exposing large differences in campaign return and designing lead scoring and attribution reporting across Pardot, Google Analytics and Microsoft Dynamics.
Who This Is For
Global technology and equipment manufacturers running paid search, SEO and content across many product lines and markets, such as industrial, public-safety, defence and consumer. This case is most useful if:
- marketing and sales don't share a definition of a qualified lead
- campaigns share budgets regardless of what they return
- Pardot, Google Analytics and Microsoft Dynamics, or similar tools, don't exchange data
- product content attracts traffic but rarely produces a sales enquiry
The Challenge
The manufacturer served customers across industrial, maritime, public-safety, defence and consumer markets, and its paid-search programme reflected that complexity. Campaigns carried large numbers of inactive or weak keywords, broad ad groups and loose links between search terms, ads and landing pages. Some campaigns shared budgets despite producing very different returns.
The customer journey was fragmented too. Product content attracted traffic, but there was no consistent path from discovery and evaluation to an identifiable sales enquiry.
Our Approach
We fixed the campaigns, then connected them to sales.
- Paid search audit: AdWords campaigns, ad groups, keywords, budgets and conversion performance reviewed, identifying budget-constrained campaigns, inactive keywords, low quality scores and over-broad ad groups.
- Campaign restructure: a new structure by product, market, application and customer segment, with keywords and ads aligned to relevant landing pages and calls to action for each stage of the buying journey.
- Journey and content mapping: content mapped from discovery through evaluation to conversion, with a planning framework covering audience, need, search intent, landing experience, data capture and measurement.
- Lead scoring: rules based on form submissions, landing-page conversions, email engagement, buying-page visits and CRM opportunities.
- Marketing technology integration: how Pardot, Google Analytics and Microsoft Dynamics should exchange campaign and lead data, and attribution reporting linking campaign source, medium, content and search terms to identified prospects.
Impact
867% against 85%. One product-model campaign was returning 867% year-to-date on advertising spend while a broader campaign sharing its budget returned 85%, a concrete basis for moving investment to what worked.
An underused channel. Retargeting delivered a lower cost per acquisition than display advertising but had not been given enough budget to reach its potential.
A shared definition of a qualified lead. For the first time, marketing and sales agreed what a qualified lead was and could see which campaigns produced them.
One connected acquisition model. Search, landing experience, content and tools, conversion, lead score, enriched CRM record and sales follow-up became one measurable path, with Pardot scoring behaviour, Microsoft Dynamics enriching leads and Google Analytics measuring the journey.
Shared budgets hide differences in return. Once returns were visible campaign by campaign, budget could follow evidence.
Delivered while at Making Waves (later NoA Ignite), as part of the multidisciplinary team supporting FLIR. This case study reflects individual contributions to the digital demand generation work. Publicly available information is referenced only to provide context and identify the client, and does not imply endorsement.
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