Case Study · Payalma
B2B FinTech scaled across 5 countries at $28 cost per lead
A multi-channel acquisition system spanning USA, Australia, Canada, Dubai, and Albania. Google + Meta + TikTok + SEO orchestrated as one funnel. not four silos.
The Client
Who they are.
Payalma is a B2B payment gateway operating across five international markets. Target buyer: enterprise finance and payments leaders evaluating gateway providers. typically a CFO, Head of Payments, or VP of Engineering at a mid-market e-commerce or SaaS company. The category is brutally competitive (Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, regional players in every market), switching costs are high, and trust signals are everything. The CMO who hired me had inherited a paid program from two prior agencies; the second was fired the week before our first call.
The Challenge
The starting point.
Scale qualified lead volume across 5 distinct markets. USA, Australia, Canada, Dubai, Albania. each with different payment regulations, buyer cultures, CPC benchmarks, and competitive intensity. In B2B FinTech, a flood of unqualified leads is more expensive than no leads at all: SDR time, CRM bloat, sales-cycle distortion. Two prior agencies had hit the lead-volume target and gotten fired in month 3 when the sales team's qualified rate cratered to ~12%. The CMO told me on Day 1: "If you bring me cheap leads with no buying intent, I will fire you faster than the last two."
Constraint 1: Monthly budget: $22,500 split across 5 markets and 4 channels
Constraint 2: Sales team needed 41%+ qualified rate to operate efficiently
Constraint 3: Albania and Dubai were brand-new markets. zero brand equity
Constraint 4: Compliance constraints in USA + Australia restricted certain financial-claim language
The Strategy
What we actually did.
Five-market multi-channel orchestration. Not one channel doing everything. each channel doing what it's best at, then reinforcing the others.
Google Ads for high-intent commercial search
Branded competitor terms + commercial intent ("payment gateway for [vertical]") + bottom-funnel ("payment processor pricing"). 9.2% conversion rate at scale because we caught buyers in active comparison mode.
Meta retargeting + qualified-lead lookalikes
Re-engaged people Google brought in but who didn't convert immediately. Lookalikes seeded off the qualified-lead segment specifically. not the all-leads pool. so the algorithm learned what good actually looks like.
TikTok for top-of-funnel warming in newer markets
Built brand familiarity in Albania and Dubai, where Payalma was new. Founder-style content explaining the product in 30 seconds. pure awareness, no aggressive selling. Retargeting layered on Meta caught the warmed audience.
SEO as the long-term inbound engine
Content built around the questions enterprise buyers ask before they ever search for a vendor. By month 6, SEO was contributing 30% of qualified leads at zero incremental ad spend. The channel that pays back forever.
Cross-channel funnel alignment
Every paid touch reinforced organic content. Every SEO visit triggered retargeting. Country-specific creative + landing pages. same brand, localized messaging per market. No siloed campaigns competing against each other.
Results
The transformation.
Prioritized lead quality over raw volume. Sales team's qualified-lead rate hit 41% (vs ~15% industry average for paid B2B FinTech). Successfully scaled across 5 markets without ad-account suspensions or compliance issues. Built a self-sustaining funnel where channels compounded over time.
Distributed across 4 channels and 5 markets.
Below the B2B FinTech benchmark of $50-150 (Demand Gen Report 2025).
Across 6 months. sales-qualified, not marketing-qualified.
Industry average is ~15% for paid B2B FinTech.
High-intent search captured in active comparison phase.
By month 6, organic was contributing 30% of qualified leads.
Channels reinforced each other over time, lowering blended CAC.
What we'd do next
The next chapter.
Phase 2 would extend the playbook with a LinkedIn ABM layer targeting named enterprise accounts, a podcast partnership program in two priority markets, and a referral program built on top of the qualified-lead segment. Goal: cut blended CAC another 25% by month 12 while doubling qualified-lead volume in Albania and Dubai.
Spending $10K+/mo on B2B paid acquisition with rising CPL?
Book a 15-minute funnel diagnosis. I'll show you which channel is being asked to do work it can't do alone. and what to do about it.
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