IQPC

Our objectives focused on driving enhanced performance across key paid media metrics:

• Improve cost-efficiency by reducing cost-per-acquisition throughout the event portfolio with unique targets per event category whilst maintaining or exceeding conversion volume

• Increase conversion-rates for both key conversion actions and micro-conversions that enabled further nurturing of audiences

• Develop audience insights from paid media marketing that contribute towards optimisation of IQPCs entire marketing and sales funnel

With IQPC employing a huge team of internal marketing managers, each leading on different categories of events and requiring personalised support and category knowledge from our paid media team; our work required a bespoke approach to account, campaign and communication pipeline management. 

Managing 165 individual ad campaigns for 85 IQPC events, over six-figures in annual advertising spend and working with dozens of internal stakeholders across various time zones we needed to introduce simplicity and efficiency to an immensely complex lattice of siloed knowledge!

Combining IQPC-hosted forms used by their internal marketing managers, a dedicated forwarding email, Asana and some clever automation we built an infinitely scalable system for the IQPC team to direct campaign briefs to the Evoluted team.

Upon receipt, our team acknowledges the campaign brief and using templated tasks begin the campaign build in the shared Asana project. Each campaign follows a uniform approach to keep communication consistent, with fields for each aspect of the campaign. With custom tagging systems, each IQPC marketing manager can asynchronously check in and comment on the campaign’s build progress from request right through to the ads going live.

Ultimately, tackling development of a collective SOP made it easy for our team to quickly navigate between campaigns, the platforms they’re running on and their scheduled run time; and, crucially, enabled us to work effectively with stakeholders based in Australia, the U.S. and across Europe.

These processes were complemented by regular video meetings to discuss overall account performance, success stories from specific campaigns which could be applied across IQPC’s whole network of events, and business and industry changes that our team would benefit from knowing.

With a streamlined communication process in place, we shifted focus to the performance objectives:

• We introduced multiple account leads, each designated to particular event categories in order to develop deep knowledge over time of their events, audiences, geographies and more; enhancing our understanding of IQPCs business and our ability to improve performance.

• Identifying that many events relied on form completions that only requested a user’s email, we hypothesised that users might view these simply as email harvesting activities and thus bounce from the page. To test this, we introduced multivariate landing page tests with a variety of form lengths and fields to find the “sweet spot” of information gathered vs. likelihood of conversion.

• Alongside landing page optimisations, we trialled a wide range of approaches to ad creative. Testing everything from a purely factual approach and educational tone, to using tones of optimism and excitement and messaging around exclusivity and community; we were able to identify messaging and tone which resonated best with each audience.

• And of course we conducted plenty of experimentation around audiences and keywords including long-tail modifiers to understand how search-intent impacted performance.

Split-testing landing pages to trial different creative copy and form fields increased conversion rates across the board, with one such test doubling conversion rates and leading to new insights on what resonated for that professional audience.

Managing over $100,000 in advertising costs across 165 IQPC campaigns, our new campaign types and creative asset styles generated 3,226 tracked conversions, representing an enormous 368% growth in conversions year-on-year.

Critically, these results have been achieved while also making IQPC’s ad campaigns more cost-effective. Events that ran in both 2022 and 2023 saw an average 63% year-on-year reduction in cost per lead, with some events recording a CPA as low as $5.27. 

Advertising spend now goes a lot further, enables more experimentation and has unlocked new opportunities expanding IQPC’s paid media campaigns to include Microsoft Ads and LinkedIn advertising.

Of course, we’re continually iterating our processes to make them as smooth as possible for both sides, shortening the campaign turnaround time even further and seeking new opportunities to start integrating CRM, sales team and revenue data into our campaigns.