Mesh.ai, a Y-Combinator & Sequoia-backed startup, operates in the employee performance management domain. Unlike traditional HRMS tools, Mesh.ai emphasizes continuous performance management throughout the year. With established competitors dominating the market, our challenge was to elevate Mesh.ai's ARR from $200K to $1M within a year. With the sales team converting approximately one-third of the 'sales qualified opportunities,' the demand-gen team was entrusted with the responsibility of building a $3M Sales Qualified Pipeline on a $1.5M ad budget.

Our primary advertising platform was Google. We meticulously created ad groups and dedicated landing pages for top-performing keywords. By focusing exclusively on high-intent, bottom-of-the-funnel keywords, we ensured our entire funnel was revenue-centric. We also leveraged Google Optimize for A/B testing of landing pages and drilled down on analytics to identify and bid higher on keywords that generated the most SQLs. Specific campaigns were designed for these keywords, aiming to attract only the most qualified leads.

To eliminate friction and enhance the user experience, we streamlined our demo forms. Using tools like Clearbit, we enriched the data we collected, ensuring we gathered comprehensive insights without overwhelming our potential leads with lengthy forms.

Metadata was employed for targeted ABM campaigns. By focusing on specific high-value accounts, we tailored our marketing strategies to resonate with their unique needs and challenges, ensuring higher conversion rates.

As the chief architect behind Mesh.ai's demand-gen strategy, I established all marketing automations on HubSpot, integrated form concierge with ChiliPiper, and implemented a Mar-tech stack comprising over 20 tools. These tools were strategically chosen to optimize various stages of our visitor-to-customer funnel. Our conversion funnel was structured as Lead - MQL - SQL - SQO - Customer. HubSpot served as our CRM, ensuring seamless lead flow and tracking, while Salesforce was employed to maintain top-tier lead flow standards. Additionally, ChiliPiper was integrated to facilitate direct meeting bookings from forms, further enhancing conversion rates.

Our strategic initiatives and relentless focus on optimization bore fruit. In just a year, we successfully built a Sales Qualified Opportunity pipeline worth $2.3M, showcasing the efficacy of our methods and the potential of Mesh.ai in a competitive market.