B2B manufacturing · Components
Cut cost per qualified enquiry 44% and stopped renting the pipeline
Almost all enquiries came from a marketplace listing, at a price the company did not control. We built a direct channel and let the sales team define what qualified meant.
Cost per qualified enquiry against baseline
12 months, measured in the CRM
- Client
- Industrial components manufacturer
- Industry
- B2B manufacturing · Components
- Region
- India & export enquiries
- Engagement
- B2B lead generation and SEO, 12 months
- Ad budget
- ₹1.2 lakh monthly ad spend
The challenge
What was actually going wrong.
Usually not the thing the business thought it was.
Around 88% of enquiries arrived through a single B2B marketplace listing. The company had no control over price, was shown alongside every competitor, and every buyer arrived already comparing on cost.
The website received about 600 visits a month and generated almost nothing. It had no product specifications, no certifications, no application pages and no reason for a procurement engineer to stay on it.
Sales and marketing had no shared definition of a good enquiry. Marketing reported enquiry counts; sales privately regarded most of them as time-wasters. Neither number was written down anywhere.
The sales cycle ran between forty-five and a hundred and twenty days, so anything optimising toward form fills was optimising against a signal four months removed from revenue.
The approach
What we did, in sequence.
- 01
Wrote down what qualified meant
Industry, order volume, application and geography, agreed with the sales head before any campaign change. Most disagreements about lead quality turn out to be disagreements about definitions.
- 02
Built the pages a technical buyer needs
Specification sheets, material and tolerance detail, certifications, application pages and comparison content — the material that decides whether an engineer shortlists you.
- 03
Targeted specification searches, not category ones
Paid search moved onto part numbers, materials and application-specific queries. Lower volume, far higher intent, and considerably cheaper than the generic category terms.
- 04
Connected the CRM back to the platforms
Qualified and opportunity stages imported back into Google with a 90-day lookback matched to the real sales cycle, so bidding chased deals rather than downloads.
- 05
Made enquiries reach a human quickly
Instant routing with the enquiry's specification attached, and an acknowledgement that answered the two questions every buyer asks — can you make it, and roughly what does it cost.
The result
What moved, and what caused it.
Cost per qualified enquiry fell 44% between the first and third quarters of the engagement. Total enquiry volume rose only 18%, which is the correct shape for this kind of work.
Owned channels went from 12% to 61% of enquiries. Marketplace spend was not cut, but it stopped being the entire pipeline, which changed the company's negotiating position at renewal.
Organic search took seven months to contribute meaningfully. That was slower than we projected at the outset and we said so in the quarterly review rather than quietly resetting the forecast.
Two export enquiries closed in the final quarter from application pages written for a domestic audience — unplanned, and now a deliberate part of the roadmap.
Measured outcomes
- lower cost per qualified enquiry
- 44%lower cost per qualified enquiryMonths 7–12 against the six months preceding the engagement, measured at the sales-qualified stage as defined jointly with the sales team.
- of enquiries from owned channels
- 61%of enquiries from owned channelsUp from 12% at the start of the engagement, with the remainder still coming through marketplace listings.
“For fifteen years our enquiries came from one listing we did not control. Having our own channel changed what we could say no to.”
Next step
Bring us a problem shaped like this one.
Forty-five minutes, no slide deck. We will tell you which of these engagements yours most resembles, where we think the bottleneck sits, and what it would realistically take to move it.
Or call +91 93060 49784 and email support@exponentialy.com — we reply within one working day.
What the call is
- 01
45 minutes, no slide deck
You talk to the person who would run the work, not a salesperson.
- 02
Your numbers on the table
What a customer is worth, where enquiries come from, and what you have tried.
- 03
A written plan afterwards
What we would fix first, and in what order. Yours to keep either way.