LinkedIn Ads success story · Payment fraud prevention software company

How a fraud prevention company earned 50% higher ROI on LinkedIn than on its other digital channels.

Name: Overtop Media Digital Marketing
Address: 933 Louise Ave Suite 101-18, Charlotte, NC, 28204, US
Telephone: (704) 237-0707
Price range: $$

Almost nobody searches for payment fraud prevention until it is too late. Eftsure used LinkedIn to teach finance leaders why it matters, offered practical guides through Lead Gen Forms, then retargeted engaged prospects with demos. LinkedIn ended up influencing 35% of its pipeline.

Business: Eftsure
Market: North Sydney, Australia
Goal: Create demand where almost nobody was searching

Business woman holding a payment card while completing a transaction on her laptop

The results.

ROI and cost per opportunity compared with Eftsure’s other digital channels.

50%higher ROI than other digital channels
35%of total pipeline influenced by LinkedIn ads
25%lower cost per opportunity than other digital channels

Pipeline influence and channel comparisons from Eftsure’s own reporting. Self-reported by the advertiser and published by LinkedIn; results for other businesses will differ.

The challenge.

Eftsure protects more than 2,000 businesses and government bodies from paying the wrong people, by verifying supplier details before money moves. It is the leader in its category in Australia, but the category itself was the problem: almost no one was searching for a solution.

Payment fraud is often treated as an IT issue, not a finance one. Before Eftsure could capture demand, it had to create it, by convincing finance decision makers that this was a preventable business risk they owned.

LinkedIn example of a funnel metrics report showing conversion rates between pipeline stages

What they did.

Full-funnel Sponsored Content · Lead Gen Forms · Retargeting · Job title and seniority targeting

Precise audiences, with exclusions: Eftsure built audiences of finance decision makers by job title, function and seniority, layered exclusions to keep spend clean, and used Matched Audiences to find people similar to existing sales leads.
Top of funnel: the problem: Videos, testimonials and thought leadership on data breaches and cybercrime showed the scale of the threat and the role finance plays in stopping it.
Middle: something useful: Guides, checklists and best practices were offered through Lead Gen Forms, creating a first real engagement with each prospect.
Bottom: the product: People who had engaged were retargeted with product content and free demos that showed how the solution answers the problems raised earlier.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

Demand has to be built: Search ads cannot capture demand that does not exist yet. LinkedIn let Eftsure reach the right people before they knew they needed it.
Each stage earned the next: Education made the guide worth downloading, and the guide made the demo feel relevant. Nurture reduced friction at the bottom of the funnel and lowered cost per lead.
Creative that is not boring: In a dry category, the team invested in stories and standout creative. Attention is the first conversion.
Constant targeting review: Benchmarking reach against the total possible audience kept the campaigns from running out of fresh people or wasting money on the wrong ones.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our linkedin ads management.

Plan three stages of content: Problem-awareness content, a useful offer behind a short form, and a product-focused retargeting stage, each with its own budget.
Target the people who own the problem: We define who loses money or sleep when the problem happens, and build audiences around them, with exclusions to protect spend.
Measure influence on pipeline: We track how many opportunities LinkedIn touched, not only the ones it closed, so brand spend is judged fairly.
Capture what you create: As the category grows, SEO and paid search make sure the people now searching find you first.