The problem
Getting someone to book a software demo was an important step. But the demo itself wasn't the business outcome.
The prospect still needed to be a good fit—and have a realistic chance of becoming a sales opportunity.
That distinction shaped my paid landing-page work at Thryv, a small-business management software company.
The objective was to attract the right prospects, help them quickly understand why the software was relevant to their business, and improve the quality of the opportunities moving into sales.
What informed the approach
The paid strategy focused on business types that were more likely to need the software and get meaningful value from it.
Customer research also showed that saving time was especially important to these business owners. That gave us a clearer basis for the landing-page messaging.
Instead of asking visitors to interpret a list of software features and figure out why they mattered, the pages connected those capabilities to problems they already recognized in their day-to-day work.
The value needed to be obvious quickly.
What I changed
I redesigned the paid landing-page system around a modular structure that could be adapted for different campaigns, industries, and audiences without rebuilding every page from scratch.
I moved the primary value proposition higher on the page and supported it with customer testimonials and other trust signals.
I also improved the message match between the ad and the landing page. If someone clicked because of a particular problem, benefit, or promise, the page needed to continue that same conversation rather than forcing them to reinterpret why they had arrived.
The modular structure made it easier to tailor the experience for different audiences while keeping the underlying messaging framework, page structure, and measurement consistent across campaigns.
The result
Demo-to-opportunity conversion increased by 28%.
That meant a larger share of the demos generated through paid advertising progressed into sales opportunities.
During the same optimization period, paid customer acquisition cost fell by 10%, meaning the business was spending less to acquire each customer through paid channels.
Those results came from the broader paid acquisition strategy, including audience targeting, message match, and landing-page optimization. They cannot be attributed to a single headline, testimonial, or layout change.
And that's an important distinction.
A landing page can generate more leads while still sending the business the wrong people.
What this means for your advertising
Lead volume can make a campaign look successful long before you know whether those leads are actually valuable.
If you optimize only for form submissions, calls, or booked appointments, you can end up spending more money generating activity that never becomes meaningful business.
When we evaluate paid campaigns, we look beyond the initial conversion. We want to know which ads and landing pages are producing qualified conversations, sales opportunities, and ultimately customers.
That gives us a much better basis for deciding where to spend, what to change, and which campaigns are actually contributing to growth.
Are your ads bringing in the right leads?
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