Leads were coming in. Too many weren't qualifying.
The client is an identity and fraud company selling identity verification and fraud prevention to banks, financial services and fast-growing digital companies. I owned their account-based demand gen end to end on LinkedIn: audience build, creative, funnel design and budget.
The campaigns were generating leads. The problem was what happened next. In the best-performing segment, 35 of every 100 leads never became a sales-ready MQL.
I didn't start from a blank page. The company already had an ABM setup: defined target accounts and campaigns running against them. The accounts were right. What ran on top of them wasn't working. So instead of tearing it down, I kept their system and rebuilt the parts that weren't pulling their weight.
What they already had
An ABM setup that wasn't converting
Target accounts already defined
LinkedIn campaigns live against those accounts
HubSpot in place, but not feeding back into the ads
Leads arriving that sales couldn't use
What I built on top
Same accounts. A system that learns.
Messaging rewritten from real sales calls
Customer journey rebuilt by buyer readiness
Top-of-funnel content localized by market
HubSpot and sales feedback wired back into targeting
The Problem
A cheap lead isn't worth much if sales can't use it.
The target accounts were right, but the machinery around them was generic. Campaigns were being judged on cost per lead, so a lead that sales rejected looked just as successful as one that booked a demo. Winning creative was left running until it fatigued, and every ad was asking for the same thing whether the buyer was just curious or ready to talk. The goal was simple: get more of the leads already coming in to qualify, without spending more to do it.
The Change
Same 100 leads. 25 more ready for sales.
Before
65%
65 of every 100 leads became MQLs
After
90%
90 of every 100 leads became MQLs
That's 38% more MQLs from the same leads — no extra budget, no extra volume. Just more of the right people getting through.
The Strategy
Not more budget. A tighter loop between what sales heard and what marketing ran.
The conversion rate didn't move because of one clever ad. It moved because every piece of the funnel started learning from the same source: the conversations sales was having with real buyers.
Every stage learns from the one before it — and sales closes the circle
Listen
Message from the market
Wrote the messaging from sales calls, not from a brief
Most B2B landing pages describe the product the way the company sees it. Buyers describe their problem completely differently, and the only place that language shows up is on sales calls.
Got access to customer calls with the sales team and pulled out how buyers actually described their problem, their objections and what made them take a meeting.
Rebuilt the landing page messaging in that language, word for word where possible.
Simplified the landing pages: one message, one problem, one next step, instead of a page trying to explain the whole platform.
Why it workedA buyer who reads their own words on the page self-qualifies. The ones who don't recognise the problem leave before filling the form — which is exactly what you want.
Journey
Right ask, right moment
Rebuilt the customer journey around how ready the buyer was
Every ad had been asking for the same thing whether the buyer was curious or ready to buy. The journey was rebuilt so each stage asks only for what that buyer is ready to give.
Changed the customer journey into clear stages: educate with content, convert with demo campaigns, and let ready buyers book straight from LinkedIn with no form in the way.
Localized the top-of-funnel content across regions and locations, reworking each piece around that market's context instead of running one global asset everywhere.
Built separate demo campaigns by buyer type, so each audience saw proof points that matched its own world.
Why it workedLocal content earned attention in each market, and matching the ask to buyer readiness meant fewer early-stage leads being pushed to sales before they were ready.
Signal
Sales teaches the platform
Closed the loop between sales, HubSpot and LinkedIn
LinkedIn can only find more of a buyer if it knows which leads were good. Left alone, it optimises for whoever fills in a form.
Reworked audience targeting at regular intervals based on sales feedback about which leads qualified and which didn't.
Fed HubSpot lead data back into LinkedIn, so targeting and optimisation learned from qualified leads rather than raw form fills.
Refreshed creative on lead-to-MQL rate, not click-through rate, so the winning ad was the one bringing in buyers sales wanted.
Why it workedEach cycle made the next batch of leads look more like the last batch of MQLs. That compounding is what took the conversion rate from 65% to 90%.
Results
What $26K produced.
Lead-to-MQL
65→90%
in the top-performing segment
More MQLs per lead
+38%
same leads, more qualified
MQLs delivered
145
qualified for sales in 3 months
Cost per MQL
$178
on $26K of LinkedIn spend
How the numbers work.
Lead-to-MQL: from 65 to 90 MQLs per 100 leads. 90 ÷ 65 = 1.38, so 38% more MQLs from the same number of leads.
Cost per MQL: $25,799 ÷ 145 = $178.
How I tell it in the interview
The 60-second version.
Situation
Through Revv Growth in 2026, I ran ABM on LinkedIn end to end for an identity and fraud company on about $26K over 3 months. They already had an ABM setup with target accounts defined, but it wasn't converting: in the best segment, a third of leads never qualified. Rather than rebuild from scratch, I kept their accounts and fixed everything running on top of them.
Insight
Campaigns were judged on cost per lead, so a lead sales rejected looked as good as one that booked a demo.
Action
Pulled the messaging from real sales calls and rebuilt the landing pages in the buyer's own words. Rebuilt the customer journey around buyer readiness and localized the top-of-funnel content by region. Then closed the loop: sales feedback reworked the targeting at regular intervals, and HubSpot lead data went back into LinkedIn so the platform learned what a qualified lead looked like.
Result
Lead-to-MQL in the top segment went from 65% to 90%, which is 38% more qualified leads from the same volume. 145 MQLs in total at $178 each.
Lesson
More leads is easy. More leads that sales can use is the actual job.
We didn't need more leads. We needed more of them to qualify.
The budget didn't grow and the lead volume didn't need to. Changing what each campaign was judged on, and what each ad asked the buyer to do, turned the same traffic into more pipeline for sales.
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