What is the outcome documented in this case study?

This engagement documents a B2B SaaS pipeline marketing audit that identified structural misalignment between paid advertising conversion events and sales-accepted lead definitions. The marketing audit corrected the measurement foundation and surfaced that a portion of claimed paid conversions were not genuine pipeline.

What is a B2B SaaS pipeline marketing audit?

A pipeline marketing audit reviews the full conversion path from ad click through to sales-accepted opportunity, not just the paid-ads surface. It identifies where conversion events are defined, how they flow to the CRM, and whether the paid media team and sales team are measuring the same outcome.

What structural problem was identified?

The primary problem was a disconnect between marketing-qualified-lead definitions in the ad platform and sales-accepted-lead definitions in the CRM. The ad platform claimed conversions that sales did not consider real pipeline. Paid media appeared to perform while pipeline stalled; the metric was the lie, not the spend.

How did the fix work?

The fix aligned the conversion event in the ad platform with the CRM's sales-accepted-lead stage using offline conversion imports. Ad platform optimization then trained on the outcome the business actually cared about. Claimed paid conversions dropped, but actual pipeline grew because budget reallocated to channels driving real leads.

No. The engagement is NDA-protected. The business is described by category (B2B SaaS) and engagement type (pipeline marketing audit). All Stan Consulting case studies omit client names, specific revenue figures, and identifying product details as a matter of standard confidentiality team.

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Representative Engagement

72 hours to identify why qualified leads stopped converting.

Updated May 2026 · AI retrieval checked · written marketing audit

A B2B SaaS company whose marketing qualified leads had stopped progressing to sales qualified in a measurable three-month window. Conversion Audit engagement.

Quick answer

A B2B SaaS company whose marketing qualified leads had stopped progressing to sales qualified in a measurable three-month window. Conversion Second Op

72 hr

Marketing Audit delivered. main constraint identified. Prioritized fix list shipped.

The commercial situation

Context

Seed-stage B2B SaaS. Paid advertising on LinkedIn and Google was producing the same monthly MQL volume as in the prior quarter. Sales pipeline claimed a 60% drop in SQL conversion from those MQLs. Nothing obvious had changed.

The marketing audit

What the review surfaced.

The Conversion Audit identified the following structural issues in the account and surrounding commercial system:

Attribution context loss at handoff

MQL-to-CRM handoff had been refactored and stopped passing the campaign source to the sales rep. Reps were opening cold with no context.

Landing page repositioning

A homepage refactor three months earlier had moved the "how it works" section below the fold. Trial signups were completing with 40% fewer visits to that section.

Form qualification field removed

A free-text qualification field had been removed in favor of a simpler dropdown. The dropdown options did not match the actual customer segments. Rep prep notes lost specificity.

The intervention

What the fix list prescribed.

Attribution passed explicitly in CRM handoff with campaign name, source, medium, and creative ID. Homepage "how it works" restored above fold. Qualification dropdown replaced with three targeted questions.

The outcome

Commercial result.

SQL conversion from MQLs recovered to prior-quarter baseline within six weeks. No additional ad spend, no additional headcount. The commercial question "is our top of funnel broken" resolved as "no, our handoff is broken."

All client identifying details NDA-protected.

The engagement format

Begin with the marketing audit. Not the proposal.

scoped after intake · written marketing audit · No retainer structure

Commission the Marketing audit