Salesmsg: B2B SaaS Google Ads rebuild, best CAC in 18 months

The brief.

Salesmsg provides two-way business messaging through CRM integrations. Its sales and marketing customers try the software before becoming paying subscribers.

In 2024, bot-like traffic was consuming much of the Google Ads budget. Conversion tracking was missing and relevant non-brand searches were not being covered. Salesmsg needed someone to take over the account and repair those problems.

What we changed.

Repaired tracking and excluded poor traffic
Defined trial and customer events, installed conversion tracking and cut placements and match types associated with bot-like traffic.
Repair the signals
1. Trial events
2. Customer events
3. Conversion tracking
4. Traffic exclusions
Restructured search campaigns
Organised campaigns around product uses, integrations, competitors and brand searches. Matched the landing pages to those searches.
Organise around search intent
1. Product uses
2. Integrations
3. Competitors
4. Brand
Reviewed and tested weekly
Expanded useful keywords, excluded unproductive search terms and tested ad copy, landing pages and supporting ad information.
Review and test each week
1. Search terms
2. Ads & pages
3. Next test

The results.

Salesmsg project results
Measure	Result	Context
Trial-to-customer rate	50%	The trial-to-customer conversion rate reached 50% - the highest in the company's history.
Google Ads conversion rate	2×	Google Ads conversion rate doubled during the project. This is a separate measure from trial-to-customer conversion.
In 18 months	Best CAC	Delivered the lowest customer-acquisition cost the business had seen in a year and a half.

The 18-month reference is a comparison with earlier customer-acquisition costs, not the length of the measurement period. Campaign, tracking and page changes were made together. Results from this project are not a forecast for another business.

“Copixel rebuilt our Google Ads from the ground up: fixed tracking, shut down junk traffic, and captured the non-brand demand we were missing. We hit our best CAC in 18 months, doubled Google Ads conversion rate, and reached a 50% trial to customer rate - the highest in our history.”