Buildkite is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that offers continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) solutions for software developers and teams. The company is currently valued at $145 million USD and boasts a strong client base with companies such as Spotify, Canva, Venmo, Peloton, and more.

When Buildkite first brought on Digital Growth Studios in May 2021, they had currently been sitting at a staggering $921.61 cost per MQL, and they had generated only 100 MQLs from Google Ads between December 2020 and April 2021.

Goals:

• Decrease cost per MQL
• Increase trial to paid user conversion rate by driving more qualified leads
• Develop a scalable strategy that will allow marketing to secure additional budget

If you know the SaaS industry, then you know there is a lot of $$$$ and competition involved. The industry is notorious for high CPCs and budget can get swallowed up in a hurry when the right strategy isnt in place. Buildkite came to us in this situation, burning through their marketing budget and trying to figure things out on the fly. They needed a hard reset and a strategy that would allow them to scale.

After diving deeper into their Google Ads account performance, we discovered that they were running mainly broad match keywords on automated bid strategies in most of their campaigns, which is a deadly combination. We then jumped right into the account restructure process by creating segmented Exact Match and Phrase Match campaigns on manual bid strategies that contained their core keywords, which were crafted to better control cost and performance across the board.

One month after launching our newly crafted campaigns we hit a comfortable $377.29 cost per MQL, a 59% decrease from the month prior, while increasing MQLs by just over 20% month-over-month.

After our initial success in stabilizing the account and building a solid foundation, we expanded Buildkites core keyword mix to included terms they had not previously targeted. In the months that followed we saw unprecedented growth and performance. Over the next quarter our campaigns generated a 696% increase in MQLs compared to the previous quarter at a historical low of $137.56 cost per, an 85% decrease from when our partnership began.