• To create a sustainable marketing funnel from awareness to lead generation.
• Improve brand awareness of the Bottomline Technologies Paymode-X® offering.
• Improve prospecting of quality potential customers.
• Increase lead generation through an acquisition strategy.

The Bottomline Technologies PPC campaign was rolled out in a three-phase plan: Short term, focusing on initial brand and product awareness, mid-term, which was focused on prospecting with a more targeted approach and long term which was to enable a lead generation strategy through paid adverts and driving traffic to the site to create a sustainable approach at all levels in the funnel.

Sponsored LinkedIn Content

Sponsored Content was used to create brand awareness to serve the LinkedIn target audience, ensuring the relevancy of initial content to start their journey and act as a hook for nurturing the relationship in the future. We provided users with helpful information at the start of their journey (and continually nurture them) to increase the chance of conversion in the longer term. By curating content that was freely available, with the data capture being for an optional PDF downloadable of that asset allowed better conversions.

To get a better understanding of the types of content that would work best we curated combinations of the above post types for each campaign to understand what works best from a creative, messaging, and performance perspective. 

Landing Pages

The landing pages reflected initial messaging and were structured to be easily digestible with links pointing to further resources/topics should the user wish. At this point in the user’s journey, we established Paymode-X® as a reliable source of thought leadership, therefore we did not gate content at this stage. However, we produced downloadable PDFs that packaged up versions of what is available on the page. The main CTA to collect data was a downloadable asset. 

Performance Tracking

To track the activity of users across the website we created custom audiences on LinkedIn. This allowed us to target and exclude users from brand awareness campaigns, prospecting campaigns, and acquisition campaigns. We used UTM parameters to track the behaviour fully in Google Analytics with the ability to create segments and dashboards to monitor behaviour.

Paid Search on Google

Google Search Ads was used and keywords were split into campaigns and ad groups based on intent and relevancy. The landing pages used Hotjar recordings to monitor the behaviour and optimise regularly.

• Each campaign had a dynamic ad group that targeted selected landing pages to ensure that traffic to those pages is maximised; these were closely monitored and negative keywords were added regularly to improve conversion.
• Audiences were included at an ad group level. This was a combination of custom, in-market, and affiliate audiences to monitor the costs for each audience type and allowed us to use bid modifiers based on performance.
• Excluded converters from GA audiences (event-based) or Google Ads conversions - to stop the waste of budget once someone converts.

Performance Tracking

For tracking, we used a combination of Google Ads tracking to create audiences and conversions. Google Analytics automatically tracks the performance of Google Ads so additional segments and behavioural analytics were carried out in GA.

The more users that visit the Paymode-X® pages, the larger the audience is available for prospecting. The primary objective was to re-engage with users who have been to the website but have not taken any valuable action from a data exchange perspective.

• LinkedIn campaigns were used to target users who had been to key site pages but had not converted and were further targeted using the job function/title to distinguish the persona types to tailor the ads to their needs.

• Google Display static images, Gifs and responsive display ads were used to reach the target audience as a remarketing tool.
• Google Search was used to identify users who have been to Paymode-X® pages, we look to utilise Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs). This allowed us to serve separate messaging to users who have been on the website and are either looking for solutions or potentially broader searches. Since we know these users have previously been exposed to the Paymode-X® offering we can look to target broader high-volume searches without worrying about capturing the wrong intent.

At this point in the customer journey, they know about the brand, they know about the offering, and they have parted with their details for gated assets. If prospects have downloaded assets but have not yet proceeded with more meaningful actions, such as demos, webinars or have not gotten in touch with sales, we will target these prospects with product demos and webinars. This will drive prospects further down the sales funnel and generate more leads for sales to follow up on.

Performance tracking

For these specific campaigns, we tracked conversions in the shape of form fills. Form fills and gated downloads were tracked in Google Analytics and synced with Google Ads, so when a user converts they will not be targeted in other marketing journeys.