Financial Services Platform
The Challenge
The Situation
Rising CPCs. Declining lead quality. Agency optimizing for wrong metrics.
Their agency optimized for "cost per lead" — chasing cheapest clicks regardless of quality. Result: 88% junk leads. Students, international users, people looking for consumer products.
Sales was furious. 100+ leads per month but only 12 were qualified.
Before dilucidus
Monthly ad spend
$42,000
Total leads per month
110
SQLs per month
13
After dilucidus
Monthly ad spend
$36,000
Total leads per month
58
SQLs per month:
36
What Was Broken
Form had no qualification questions
Retargeting showed ads to everyone (including existing customers)
Agency optimized for "conversions" not "qualified conversions"
88% of leads were unusable
The Solution
Week 1-2: Got account access. Confirmed 88% junk leads. Found form with no qualification. Discovered retargeting included existing customers.
Week 3-4: Added qualification questions to forms (company size, role, location). Rebuilt audiences to exclude students, job seekers, wrong regions. Set up lead scoring in HubSpot.
Month 2-3: Killed low-quality traffic sources (saved $6K/month). Reallocated budget to high-intent channels. Built email nurture for leads not sales-ready yet.
— Head of Marketing
Key Takeaways
What Worked:
Form qualification (immediately filtered out junk)
Lead scoring (prioritized best prospects)
Cutting low-quality channels (saved budget, improved quality)
What We Learned:
More leads ≠ better (quality > quantity for B2B)
Sales feedback is critical (they know what converts)
Sometimes the best optimization is spending less
Awareness campaigns showed no ROI in 30 days (but they matter long-term)