LinkedIn Ads success story · Cloud security company

How a cloud security company earned a 6X return on ad spend by nurturing buyers before asking for a demo.

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

Lacework’s content downloads produced plenty of leads that were not ready to talk to sales. It added video and documents to warm buyers up, used Conversation Ads at the bottom of the funnel, and even kept advertising to accounts after their demo. Leads got better and closed faster.

Business: Lacework
Market: Mountain View, California
Goal: Leads that turn into pipeline, faster

Analyst at a desk facing a large wall of monitoring screens in an operations center

The results.

Compared with its earlier content-download campaigns; the close-rate figure comes from an A/B test of accounts that had already had a demo.

6Xreturn on ad spend
40%more qualified leads
30%lower cost per lead
25%higher close rate on accounts shown brand ads after a demo

Pipeline and sales figures from Lacework’s reporting; sales velocity also rose by roughly 50%. Self-reported by the advertiser and published by LinkedIn; results for other businesses will differ.

The challenge.

Lacework is a cloud security platform that helps companies find vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. The marketing team knew exactly which companies and job titles it wanted, and LinkedIn could reach them.

The brief was simple: build pipeline with ads that drive content downloads. Downloads came in, but many of those leads were not ready for a demo and converted slowly. Reading a report is not the same as wanting to buy.

LinkedIn example of audience settings with job title, industry and company size criteria

What they did.

Video Ads · Document Ads · Thought Leader Ads · Conversation Ads · Lead Gen Forms

Warmed the audience first: A brand awareness campaign with short educational Video Ads ran ahead of the content offer, then viewers were retargeted to fill out a lead form.
Matched formats to stages: Document Ads, single image ads and Thought Leader Ads covered the middle of the funnel, each tested and refined with LinkedIn’s team.
Conversation Ads to close: For people already nurtured, Conversation Ads consistently delivered the most pipeline and sped up sales.
Kept advertising after the demo: In an A/B test, high-value accounts that stalled after a discovery call were shown brand ads. Those accounts closed at a 25% higher rate.

Why it worked.

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

A download is not intent: Treating every content download as a sales lead floods the team with people who are still learning. Nurturing first meant sales spoke to buyers who were ready.
Every stage had a job: Video created interest, documents built understanding and conversations started the sales process. No single ad had to do everything.
Marketing does not stop at the demo: Deals stall. Staying in front of the buying committee after a meeting kept the company top of mind while the decision was being made.
Judged on pipeline revenue: Measuring marketing spend against pipeline won, rather than cost per stage, made budget conversations easier and better.

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.

Map content to buying stages: We decide what someone needs to see before they are ready for a call, and build ads for each step.
Retarget by engagement: People who watched, read or replied move to the next stage automatically, so budget follows interest.
Support open deals: We run quiet brand campaigns to accounts already talking to your sales team, so the deal does not go cold.
Share one view of the funnel: Marketing and sales see the same numbers, from first view to closed revenue, in one shared report.