How a UK HR Tech SaaS Turned a Chaotic CRM and Leaking Ad Budget into €2.8M of Attributed Pipeline
A fast-growing talent management SaaS had the product, the market, and the ambition — but their HubSpot was a mess of unqualified leads, their Google Ads were burning budget on the wrong intent, and their sales team had no visibility. Six months later, pipeline is predictable, CPL is down 48%, and revenue attribution is clean.
attributed in 6 months, with +340% MQL growth and −48% cost per lead
The situation
The challenge
Talentflow (name anonymised) is a B2B SaaS selling talent management and performance review software to mid-market companies (200–2,000 employees) across the UK and Benelux. By the time they came to us, they had grown to £4M ARR on founder-led sales and early word of mouth — but the engine was breaking. Their HubSpot portal had four years of accumulated contacts with no lifecycle stage logic, no lead scoring, and no reliable attribution. Their Google Ads account had 11 campaigns running simultaneously with overlapping keywords, broad match bleeding into irrelevant traffic, and a ROAS that looked fine on the surface because nobody was tracking the right conversions. The sales team was working on gut feel: every lead looked the same in the CRM. They needed a revenue engine that could scale — not just more leads, but better ones, with the data to prove it.
Our approach
What we built together
HubSpot architecture rebuild from scratch
We rebuilt the entire CRM structure: redefined lifecycle stages (Subscriber → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Customer), aligned them to Talentflow’s actual sales process, and created a contact scoring model based on firmographic fit (company size, industry, Benelux/UK location) and behavioural signals (demo requests, pricing page visits, repeated email engagement). Workflows automated lead handoff to sales with context — no more cold handovers.
Google Ads restructure and intent-first bidding
We consolidated 11 campaigns into 4 tightly structured ones: Brand Protection, High-Intent Category (performance review software, talent management platform), Competitor Displacement, and Mid-Funnel Nurture. Eliminated broad match across all non-brand campaigns. Rebuilt conversion tracking with server-side events for demo bookings, free trial starts, and pricing page engagement. Switched to Target CPA bidding once the data was clean enough to trust.
Closed-loop attribution between Ads and CRM
Connected Google Ads click data to HubSpot contact records via GCLID capture and UTM tracking through the full funnel. Every deal in HubSpot now has a first-touch and last-touch channel attribution. Sales managers can filter their pipeline by channel origin — which campaigns produced which revenue, not just which leads.
Sales enablement: dashboards and deal signals
Built a HubSpot custom report suite: pipeline by channel, MQL-to-SQL conversion rate by lead source, average deal cycle by company size, and a weekly AI-generated digest for the sales director summarising pipeline health and recommended actions. Sales reps now know which leads to call first based on score — not inbox order.
Results
The numbers
How it happened
The process
Full audit + foundation
Complete audit of HubSpot portal (contact database, workflows, lifecycle stages, deal pipeline) and Google Ads account (campaigns, ad groups, keywords, conversion actions, match types). Identified the 7 critical gaps killing performance. Defined the new CRM architecture and campaign structure before touching anything live.
HubSpot rebuild + Google Ads restructure
Rebuilt HubSpot lifecycle stages and lead scoring. Migrated 28,000 contacts into the new structure. Launched 4 new Google Ads campaigns (existing campaigns paused but not deleted for continuity). Deployed server-side conversion tracking. First clean week of data on day 52.
Attribution layer + sales training
GCLID–HubSpot attribution pipeline live. Sales director has first clean view of pipeline by channel. Google Ads bidding switched to Target CPA once 30 conversion events recorded per week. MQL volume starts compounding as scoring identifies high-intent contacts already in the database.
Scale and pipeline predictability
CPL down 48% vs. pre-engagement baseline. Pipeline forecasting within 12% accuracy. Sales team working from scored, attributed lead lists — no more gut-feel prioritisation. Expansion into Benelux-specific campaigns launched in month 6, leveraging the clean data architecture built in the first 90 days.
«We had leads. What we didn’t have was intelligence — which leads were good, where they came from, and what to do with them. Studio Ideago built the system that told us all of that, and it changed how our entire sales team operates.»
— VP of Sales, HR Tech SaaS — United Kingdom