Growth-led Performance Marketing Case Study

How growth.cx leveraged Google & LinkedIn to generate 100+ MQLs and 25+ Enterprise Demos for iona.ai

100+

MQLs

25+

Enterprise Demos

250+

Book Reserve Leads

About iona.ai

iona.ai helps HR and recruitment teams automate pre-joining workflows, including offer management, document collection, background verification, candidate communication, and Day-0 training in a single structured flow..

Pain Points Faced by iona.ai

Limited paid performance readiness due to a lack of ad-optimized landing pages and incorrect conversion tracking.
Inefficient campaign structure and broad audience targeting are impacting lead quality and CPL.
Need to clearly identify and segment high-intent buyer personas across Google and LinkedIn.
Requirement to build a scalable performance framework to consistently drive MQL to SQL growth.

Website :

https://www.iona.ai/

Business Type :

B2B HR Tech

Industry :

BFSI, Hospitals & Healthcare, Business consulting, Retail, IT, Mining, Manufacturing

Offices :

India

Ideal Customer Profile :

Regions: India

Buyer Persona: Founders, co-founders, Directors, Managers(40+ years): Head of HR, CHRO, National Talent Acquisition Heads, HR Transformation Leads

Company Size: 5000+ employees.

Our Observations

Only the homepage was available, and no specific landing pages were available initially.
Conversion tracking was incorrect.
The website was not optimized for ads.
There was no campaign history, so we started from scratch.
Proper planning for LinkedIn Ads was required, as this was an important requirement from the start.

Challenges we faced

Identifying the potential customer profile.
Setting up a high-performing campaign structure for Google.
Enabling LinkedIn Lead Gen campaigns with a well-researched audience.
Optimizing ad spend to maximize lead flow.

Our Strategy

By conducting extensive competitive research and analyzing the target industry, we decided to start with Google Search and LinkedIn campaigns, while expanding to other campaign types further down the line.

Platform: Google

Campaigns

Google Search (Non-Branded)
Google Search Competitors.
Demand Gen Lead Generation.

Ad Copy Strategy

Focused on high-intent HR audiences from the initial stages.
Lead generation-focused copy enabled users to take action.
CTAs were designed to drive demo bookings.

Platform: LinkedIn

Campaigns

Brand Awareness
Lead Gen
ABM Lead Gen
Event Campaign & Book Reserve Campaign

Ad Copy Strategy

Focused on brand awareness in the initial stages.
Lead generation-focused creatives enabled users to take action.
CTAs were designed to drive demo bookings.

Our Execution

Our Execution on Google Ads:

We started with high-intent keyword search and broad Demand Gen campaigns.
Started lead generation campaigns with different ad groups, focusing on products and features.
A/B tested different ad copies, ads, CTAs, and landing pages.
We also started Demand Gen campaigns.

Our Execution LinkedIn Ads:

We started with brand awareness and lead generation campaigns.
Later, expanded campaigns with contact list and ABM list lead generation.
Started lead generation campaigns with different ad groups, focusing on products and features.
A/B tested different ad creatives, CTAs, and landing pages.

Note: Out of 270 leads, only 34 are regular leads. The remaining leads are book reserve and event leads from the account.

What Worked & What didn't Work (Google)

What worked?

01
Ultra-optimized keyword strategy.
02
Regularly monitoring negative keywords.
03
Targeting mobile users and using bid adjustments for PC users.
04
A/B testing ads.
05
Segmenting ad groups.
06
For a narrow audience segmented by industry and job titles, this approach worked well.

What didn't work?

Wider targeting without segmenting ad groups.
Received many personal leads from BGV keywords.

What Worked & What didn't Work (LinkedIn)

What worked?

01
Ultra-optimized industry targeting strategy.
02
Regularly monitoring company data.
03
Targeting specially selected companies from ABM campaigns.
04
A/B testing creatives.
05
Segmenting companies.
06
For a narrowly targeted audience segmented by industry and job titles, this approach was effective.