B2B SaaS: cost per SQL down 38% in 90 days.

Client: B2B workflow software. Average contract value around $9,000.
Channels: Google Ads, Meta retargeting · Window: 90 days

-38%Cost per SQL ($412 to $255)

+88%SQLs per month (41 to 77)

+16%Monthly ad spend ($16.9k to $19.6k)

01— Background

Where the account started.

The company was generating about 450 demo requests a month at $37 per lead. Sales said fewer than one in ten were qualified. The agency report celebrated cost per lead. Pipeline had been flat for two quarters.

02— What was broken

What the audit found.

Google Ads optimised for form fills, not for qualified leads. Smart Bidding found the cheapest form fills, which were students and job seekers.
Broad match keywords with a negative list of 40 terms. Roughly 24% of spend went to irrelevant queries.
Brand and non-brand shared campaigns, hiding non-brand cost per SQL of $560.
No offline conversion import. Google never saw which leads became SQLs.
Meta retargeting ran without exclusions for existing opportunities.

03— What we did

The work, in order.

Days 1-5

Audit

Pulled 6 months of CRM data. Measured lead to SQL rate at 9% overall and 3% for some keyword groups.

Days 6-14

Rebuild

Split brand, competitor and non-brand. Added 600 negatives. Moved match type to phrase and exact on high-intent terms.

Days 15-30

Signal

Built offline conversion upload from the CRM. Switched the primary conversion from form fill to SQL, with MQL as secondary.

Days 31-60

Lead quality

Added company-size and role fields to forms. Rewrote ads to filter: pricing from, team size, use case.

Days 61-90

Scale

Moved budget to the keyword groups with the lowest cost per SQL. Excluded open opportunities from Meta retargeting.

04— Results

Before and after.

Backend-reconciled figures over the window above.

Metric	Before	After	Change
Cost per SQL	$412	$255	-38%
SQLs per month	41	77	+88%
Demo requests per month	456	367	-20%
Lead to SQL rate	9%	21%	+12 pts
Cost per demo request	$37	$53	+44%
Monthly ad spend	$16,900	$19,600	+16%

Illustrative sample. Results depend on offer, margins, creative and budget.

“Our cost per lead went up and I was happy about it. Sales finally got fewer, better conversations. The weekly Loom made it easy to show the board what was happening.”

Head of Growth, B2B SaaS

05— Takeaways

Steal this for your account.

Optimise to the event sales cares about. Upload SQLs back to Google if you can.
Do not celebrate a falling cost per lead until you know the lead to SQL rate.
Add two qualifying fields to the form. Lead volume drops, quality rises, and cost per SQL improves.
Split brand from non-brand before judging any Google result.

06— More results