The client
Transnova Africa is a supply chain and logistics strategy consultancy. It helps businesses redesign transport and supply chain networks using prescriptive modelling, digital twins and transport management systems.
The problem
Transnova was doing the marketing. Since its go to market launch the team had produced blogs, video series, case studies, a playbook and three social posts a week, backed by Google, LinkedIn and Meta ads.
What leadership could not get was a straight answer to a simple question: which of these leads are real, and what did each one cost?
Clicks were easy to report. Revenue was not, because nothing connected the campaign to the conversation sales actually had.
What we found
We started by working the leads, not the dashboard. Every inbound lead was followed through and classified.
In the first two months, most inbound leads could not be reached at all.
The majority of form submissions were contacts nobody could get hold of, most likely bots, with the rest split between job seekers, internal test entries, competitors and genuine prospects. Cost per lead looked acceptable. Cost per real lead did not.
What we built
Tracking that survives the handoff
- A Campaign Tracking property group on the contact, so source, campaign and variant stay attached to the person after the form
- Hidden tracking fields on the campaign forms, and company made a required field to filter out low intent submissions
A landing page theme built for one job
- A HubSpot theme built from Transnova's own design system: lead magnet landing page, thank you page and a three step booking funnel
- Ten editable modules, brand colours in theme settings, and a thank you page that greets the visitor by name and puts the download and the booking in the same place
A nurture that ends in a meeting
- Five automated emails across days 0, 2, 5, 9 and 14 for the Digital Twin Playbook campaign
- The sales lead's meeting link wired into the pages and the sequence, so the next step is always a conversation
- A matching path for LinkedIn lead form contacts, so the two channels can be compared fairly
Reporting leadership reads
- Monthly Exco reporting on marketing activity, spend against budget and lead conversion
- A reporting dashboard for the CRO, tying effort to leads worked and meetings booked
Challenges and how we handled them
Three teams, one campaign
Creative sat with an external agency, copy approval with marketing, and meetings with sales. We ran the build to a written list of dependencies with owners, so a late asset was visible as a late asset rather than a late launch.
Bots that look like leads
A form that accepts anything reports anything. Tightening required fields and classifying every lead by hand for the first months gave the team a true baseline before automating anything.
A retainer, not a project
Twenty hours a month means choosing. We kept a quick wins focus sheet so the hours went to the gaps costing the most, not the loudest request that week.
HubSpot platform in play
- Marketing HubForms, automated email and nurture workflows
- Content HubCustom landing page theme and booking funnel
- Sales HubMeetings and lead follow up
- Custom propertiesCampaign tracking that stays with the contact
- ReportingExco and CRO dashboards against effort
What we learned
- Work the leads before you report on them. A spreadsheet of classified leads beats a dashboard of unclassified ones.
- Cost per real lead is the number. Cost per lead hides the bots.
- Every campaign asset has an owner and a date. Otherwise the launch slips and nobody can say why.