47 Insights Inc

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of marketing at a SaaS [software-as-a-service] company based in Victoria, British Columbia. Our product is a simple project management software for small to mid-sized teams. Creative teams tend to be the big customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 47 Insights?

Our Google AdWords and Facebook advertising had been managed by an agency in Southern California for about a year and a half. We were just not happy with the results. We didn’t have a lot of insight into what they were doing, and they weren’t very transparent with the process. We felt that it was time for a change. When I started at the company, I started looking for a firm that could help, ideally someone who was local here in Victoria.

Advertising for SaaS companies is somewhat of a black box and a very niche skillset. Attribution and everything about it is a lot more complicated than advertising for e-commerce. A lot of ad consultants I’d spoken to had worked exclusively or primarily in e-commerce. With SaaS, you have to factor the lifetime value of customers into your acquisition costs, and there's all kinds of different tracking and attribution that make it a bit more complicated.

The challenge was just figuring out what was going on. The big question was, “Can ads be profitable for us?” The previous people managing them couldn’t answer that. Paul [Founder & CEO, 47 Insights] was able to answer that quickly, within two months, and conclusively. In fact, ads can be profitable for us but it requires a lot of work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve increased our advertising efforts since we brought Paul on board. We kind of burned things down to the ground and then rebuilt them. Now, we’re taking them into places we never have before. We’re exploring things like video advertising and different ad units on Facebook. Paul is spending more time with us to actively manage those. We’re working out the plan as we go along, and we have a good check-in once a week. We look at all the numbers to see what is and isn’t working, and where we should be allocating our budget.

We originally engaged Paul to fix AdWords, and Facebook was a thing we were doing on the side. He’s very adept at both, and he’s also given me advice when we were switching email tools. He’s also been helping us out with some of the attribution stuff I mentioned. Knowing which campaigns and which sources of conversions are bringing in high-value customers was a challenge for us. We’re split across so many networks and so many tools, so he’s been helping us figure that out as well. So the work basically involves AdWords and Facebook, but Paul has a lot of experience and has been able to help us in other areas as well.

How did you come to work with 47 Insights?

We were introduced to Paul through a friend of ours here in Victoria and had a chat with him. We spoke to a few other agencies, but it was just an added benefit that Paul was here. He understood things much better than most people we were talking to.

We started working with him on a test basis, and he was very quick to show us some initial results. Unlike the firm we were with before, Paul was completely transparent with everything he was doing. He also educated us along the way, which we really appreciated. I think it was last November that we met him, engaged him in December, and we’ve been working together ever since.

How much have you invested with 47 Insights?

We’re in the ballpark of $30,000 per year. We just increased the budget, and I think it’s around $4,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2016, and our relationship is ongoing. We’ve increased the time we spend with him. He’s now in the office with us one day a week.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We had several retargeting and directing marketing campaigns running on Google and Facebook that were underperforming. The first thing Paul did was to show us that there is potential there and that it’s just being badly managed. The early gains were in campaigns where we were really unclear on what we were getting. Now it’s clear that value was being generated, and that getting trials from sources was possible for us.

We branched out from there to explore other campaigns we could be doing, what they look like, and how we could make the most of the fact that we have a large amount of traffic to our domain. We have a large audience to retarget. I worked with Paul on the marketing efforts we could try there. We spun up some local test campaigns and then did the same with Facebook. Once we reached the point of diminishing returns with AdWords, and it was getting more expensive across the board, we turned to Facebook. We’ve been ramping up that budget. Things are still looking promising there, and we’re increasing the expenditure every week. We haven’t hit any caps yet.

After we determined that advertising could be profitable, we next tried to figure out where the limits are on this. That’s where I’m at right now, trying to figure out how much we should rely on advertising to drive new business. In the last two weeks, since we’ve really gone harder on the Facebook stuff, I think we’ve increased the number of conversions by about 17% in the last two weeks.

How did 47 Insights perform from a project management standpoint?

Paul has been great. I couldn’t ask for anyone better. 47 Insights is very communicative, and I always know what's being worked on. He’s always available when I need him.

What did you find most impressive about 47 Insights?

I think it’s spending the time to educate us around why he’s making the decision he’s making, and why he’s recommending the decisions that we make. With everyone else I’ve worked with in advertising, it’s a bit of a black box. They’re doing their thing, which is great if you can get results. Our previous engagement went on too long without us really knowing if we were getting a bang for our buck. Paul knew that, and his ability to teach us at the same time has been very valuable.

Are there any areas 47 Insights could improve?

No. He’s been perfect.