How Prelude Grew Paid Social Leads by 260% Through Targeted LinkedIn Experiments

About 

‍

Prelude Security is a cybersecurity validation platform that helps organizations confidently understand whether their security controls are working as expected. By continuously monitoring the coverage and configuration of their tools, Prelude helps security teams mitigate their risk and act with assurance, not assumptions, when it comes to protecting their critical assets.

‍

Challenge 

‍

Prelude had a strong value proposition and growing brand presence, but their growth strategy was evolving from sales-led to product-led. This required a new approach to paid that built more momentum and pivoted from booking demos to driving activated trials to indicate deeper buyer intent. 

The marketing team needed to quickly pivot their strategy from lead to user generation and product engagement, while preparing to scale their demand program and new sales model across multiple channels.

‍

Solution

To drive this account activation and conversion quality, we overhauled Prelude's paid social strategy with a focus on audience targeting, creative experimentation, and pipeline alignment. Here's what made the difference:
‍

1. Shifted to senior-level targeting

We moved away from junior job titles and focused on decision-makers and typical account users, which led to stronger conversion rates and higher trial engagement.
‍

2. Refined geography and segmentation strategy

By adjusting our segmentation and reallocating spend toward higher-performing regions, we saw a lift in engagement and conversion efficiency. The expanded retargeting pool further accelerated results.

3. Expanded paid social formats

We introduced new LinkedIn ad types, including document and video formats. Document ads performed especially well, driving a 10% engagement rate (2x industry average) and more than doubling the retargeting pool from 2.5K to 5.5K.

4. Increased activation tracking precision

We aligned all tracking to HubSpot-defined events, ensuring clearer attribution for trials, meetings, and logins. This enabled better optimization and true visibility into what was working down-funnel.

Results

The new strategy paid off — fast.

• 🚀 +260% increase in paid social leads vs. previous quarter, driven mostly by LinkedIn efforts
  
  
• 🔒 Paid social became the top-performing channel, with a 38% lead-to-opportunity rate.
  
  
• 🎯 Senior-level targeting and new formats led to higher-quality leads and more activated trials.
  
  
• 📊 Prelude now has a scalable demand engine with clearer attribution, stronger conversion rates, and aligned cross-channel strategy.

‍