Product-market fit on one side, nothing on the other
Koinly was interesting because we found quite solid product-market fit for individual customers, but we wanted to find new opportunities, specifically for B2B accountancy firms and similar.
They try to hack the product to accommodate accountancy firms, because they can resell in bulk, even with discounts. That's a nice way to go to market.
Why LinkedIn
I joined to lead B2B growth. Since it was accountancy firms, it was quite easy to find them and identify them through LinkedIn, because it’s a professional service. I was able to create very cool LinkedIn ad campaigns.
I also have done Google Ads, but it was a bit of a challenge, because we had two Google Ads accounts, one for B2C and one for B2B, and it was tricky to make sure that we are not cannibalizing each other. In the end, I had to isolate a lot of things, which made my reach not so big, but I still run ads in display.
The most successful was LinkedIn.
Four markets meant four versions of everything. The same ad ran in GBP, USD, CAD and AUD, and the compliance line changed with it: HMRC, IRS, CRA, ATO. An accountant in Toronto and an accountant in Sydney were being sold the same product and were never shown the same ad.
The vertical format
On LinkedIn, we recently introduced a wider image, kind of like a longer vertical. In this way, when I run vertical images, I was able to cover more than about maybe full screen, or more than full screen.
My click-through rate went through the roof.
I was getting these real numbers, but of course, on average, I'm not getting these. That was for a specific target audience and for specific creatives, but that was not an average. For some ad creative sets, I used to get 1.5% to 2%, which was obviously exceptional.
I forgot what exactly it was, maybe I have it somewhere written, but I think £8 per lead, and it was very cost-effective.
The dashboard survives and puts a figure on it. For the fortnight of 6 to 19 February 2022: £8.45 a lead, a 49.30% lead form completion rate, 0.79% click-through across all paid social. LinkedIn’s own published average for a lead form is around 13%.
I start the campaign running or optimizing for CPMs, and once I find what’s worked, I switch it to CPC and manage target CPC. I don’t follow recommendations from LinkedIn.
I refresh the creative every 3 to 4 weeks, because after some time click-through drops. People get tired of seeing the same creative, so just refresh it.
The lead magnet
My call to action or lead magnet was repurposed for a B2C crypto tax accounting guide. I changed the cover and made it for accountants, so I was running that as a lead magnet.
Once they convert, I send them that lead magnet for them to consume and read, and after that, I retarget them with another ad. We also drive them through email nurture to our webinar, or book a demo of our crypto tax accounting software, which was Koinly. And after that, we run the webinar session.
Where else the accountants were
Paid social was not the only room they were in. Koinly took stand 216 at Accountex, ExCeL London, on 11 and 12 May 2022, and went again at Xerocon, with $5,000 of prizes and a scan-to-win QR code on each cart. I also gave a talk for accountants, "Getting Started with Crypto and Best Practices", built around a live poll that ran to 500 people in the room.
Events and speaking accounted for more than 300 qualified accountant leads, converting at 15% to paying clients.
The traffic that came for free
The same fortnight the dashboard covers, /accountant/ was the most-viewed page on the site at 3,387 views. Organic search brought 1,109 users who bounced at 3.81% and stayed more than fifteen minutes. Against the fortnight before it, sessions were up 446% and new users up 670%.
The directory
From there, we sell them, or we sign them up at the end.
During my time, we also launched the crypto tax accountancy guide for accountants, and we were running that with a community, things like this.
Also, on top of that, for the accountants who signed up to our software, we also created the crypto tax accountant directory. It became a win-win situation where we reward accountants in firms that trust us and use us, and we help them connect for B2C, because we get a lot of traffic from B2C customers looking for a trusted accountancy firm.
After they signed
Two things carried the accountants past signup. A four-part product demo walked through the accountant view of the platform: the clients dashboard, uploading data, transactions, tax reports. And the Koinly Crypto Tax Academy, a video course running from an introduction through to a summary, taught the category itself rather than the software, which for most of these firms was the actual blocker.