pmo365

pmo365 is project portfolio management (PPM) software, deployed to a company’s own Microsoft 365 cloud. pmo365 provides a library of apps, flows and reports, with a simple and transparent monthly subscription.

Challenge

We first met with pmo365 in late 2022 to try and see if we could help them with their marketing (GTM) engine. They had been through a few Marketing Managers and were getting increasingly frustrated because they were not getting results from marketing (i.e. little to no MQLs and opportunities). In addition, they had worked with a few marketing agencies and they felt like they “were another number” and were not getting results or the level of service they were paying for.

What we loved about our initial meeting with their CEO, Laith Adel, was his absolute clarity around his Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy for pmo365. Laith was clear on the lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity lifecycle stage funnel. He identified what would qualify/disqualify leads at each stage (importantly, what would define a MQL and SQL) and what marketing/sales actions were required at each stage. They just didn’t have anyone to set it up and drive their GTM after a few false starts.

SEO-wise, their Domain Rating (DR) had flatlined at 30 for 12 months with their current SEO agency and they were targeting keywords that a) no one was Googling (i.e. little to no monthly search volume) and b) were never going to drive revenue (too top-of-funnel).

When it came to Google Ads Ads, their previous agency had not set up their campaigns, ad groups, keywords and conversions correctly, which translated to a Google Ads cost-per-lead (CPL) of $2,146. Campaigns were set to ‘Maximise clicks’ as a bid strategy, each campaign only had one ‘Ad group’ and all keywords were set to ‘Broad match’ – all resulting in pmo365 burning cash with little to no results. On top of all of that, conversions were not set up correctly in Google Ads or Google Analytics, which further reduced performance.

pmo365’s LinkedIn Ads were also performing poorly. They were investing 5 figures every month in ad spend and were not generating any leads. Their previous agency had set up all campaigns with ‘Video views’ or ‘Website visits’ objectives and no website conversions or lead gen forms were set up. And their ad creative was dated. This resulted in a cost-per-lead of $10k+.

pmo365 were already using HubSpot for their CRM and marketing/sales, but their website was on WordPress with multiple WordPress templates, headers, footers and CSS styling which made it difficult to make any website updates.

And finally, pmo365 were not posting consistently on LinkedIn as a company and they had no outbound sales (SDR/BDR) cold email/call activity to book meetings for their Account Executives. 

Content Chemistry rebuilt our marketing funnel and pretty much immediately we started to see leads coming through.

Dan Stopher, Chief Operating Officer

Solution

After completing a detailed audit of pmo365’s SEO, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, website, LinkedIn company page, HubSpot account and marketing funnel, we had a clear picture of what we needed to do to get pmo365’s marketing/GTM engine back on track.

We started with SEO and identifying which keywords were the ‘revenue’ keywords – in other words, which were the keywords that would actually drive revenue for the business vs top-of-funnel (TOF) keywords that get little to no traffic and would never move the needle. We agreed on a top 10 keywords to focus on for the next 6 months that we would target, track and obsess over. We also knew that we needed to continue building the website’s Domain Rating (DR), so we also developed a link building strategy in conjunction with the targeted keywords. We then layered in content and on-page optimisation to ensure that their website was setup for success.

The keyword research for SEO also informed our approach for Google Ads. We built all of pmo365’s campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads and conversions from scratch to maximise every dollar invested. And we split up campaigns by region, then by branded, non-branded and competitor campaigns, then by ad groups and by keyword match type. We focused all campaigns on maximise conversions (not clicks) and we setup conversions correctly in both GA4, Google Ads and we made use of Google’s enhanced conversions which uses HubSpot’s first-party CRM conversion events.

We then turned our attention to LinkedIn Ads, which we also setup completely from scratch. We created campaign groups by region and then multiple campaigns by audience, objective and ad format (i.e. single image vs video vs carousel). By targeting a variety of audiences and A/B testing them all, we were quickly able to identify the best-performing campaigns (audiences) and double-down on them. We also tested 50+ different ads, CTAs and lead gen forms per campaign to test and optimise everything to the max.

Before pmo365’s WordPress website went down, we had already recommended migrating their website from WordPress to HubSpot and we were (thankfully) in the process of completing the migration. When the website went down with no way to get it back online on WordPress, we worked quickly to get the website up and running on HubSpot within a few hours. Thanks to HubSpot, pmo365 can also now easily make edits to any website page or blog post and make design changes as needed (and quickly).

To address pmo365’s inconsistent LinkedIn posts, we recommended and executed a 3 x post per week strategy, including webinar and blog post promotion and thought-leadership content. We have also supported the CEO and Sales Directors on LinkedIn, to connect with their ICP, expand their network, book more meetings and close more deals.

To support the hire of new Sales Directors in the UK and Ireland (UKI) and Australia/New Zealand (ANZ), we also recommended and launched an outbound sales campaign, including cold email and calling. We reached out to 5,000 prospects and made over 300 phone calls each month across the UKI and ANZ regions.

We also set up their HubSpot for success with custom RevOps/GTM dashboards, reports, views, lists and workflows.  

For FY24, we saw a 20% increase in revenue, which internally we have no doubt is a direct result of our improved marketing with Content Chemistry.

Dan Stopher, Chief Operating Officer

Results

We've been able to deliver outstanding results for pmo365 across every aspect of their marketing/GTM funnel. When it comes to paid search/social, we've been able to reduce their cost-per-lead (CPL) by 95% for Google Ads and 98% for LinkedIn Ads. Regarding SEO and organic search, we've been able to increase their Domain Rating (DR) from 30 to 41 in 12 months and achieve Google page 1 rankings for all targeted (revenue) keywords. From an outbound perspective, we've been able to book 93 meetings for their sales team. And most importantly, we've been able to influence a 20% increase in pmo365's revenue for FY24 compared with FY23.

I'd hate to see where we might be had we not found Content Chemistry. pmo365 would absolutely endorse Content Chemistry to other organisations who are looking to improve their marketing and see a much better ROI.

Dan Stopher, Chief Operating Officer