Santi Magazu, CEO of OrbitalAds talks about how they got their first 12 customers (with a ticket size of around $25K ) by reaching out to targeted leads on LinkedIn. We also talk about their SDR outreach process, conversion funnel & how he intends to grow the company going forward.

• How OrbitalAds helps companies (primarily agencies) optimise their paid search campaigns
• How they got their first 10 customers in just 12 months
• How LinkedIn outreach & email outreach on targeted niches is responsible for most of the new growth
• How they are investing in inbound channels like webinars etc.
• Team, external funding & future vision

So out of the 12 customers that you've sort of got, uh, sort

of, uh, managed to close so far, like where, where, which one was the, was

the most responsible channel for you?

The most responsible channel so far, uh, has been, I'm

thinking, I'm thinking because it changed over time, but, uh, so far

has been link in probably Link in

link.

How, how many customers did you sort of get from LinkedIn as such?

I think we, we got over 50%

for liquid.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the Previ SA podcast.

Today we have Santi Mugga with us San uh, Santi here runs a

company called Orbital Ads.

Hey Santi, welcome to the show.

Thank you much for, uh,

having me.

Alright, Sandy, let's get started and let's try to understand what your

product does and why, uh, customers pay

you money.

It's very simple.

We help, uh, manage, uh, uh, pay search campaigns in Google Ads.

So basically, if you use Google Ads to get leads, to get awareness, We have a

very simple way, it's a SaaS service.

So we connect to your Google Ads account and you basically define the rules.

So let's say, let's say that you want to optimize your CCP C or have

a target cost per lead or a CPA, or return on advertising spend.

So you define the rule A.

We automatically connect to your Google accounts and we process all the

data from your Google search report.

We can also import data from third party.

Samera Citrix, um, or uh, similar web for keyword research and we are automatically.

Identify keywords you need to add your to your account or you need to ize or

you need to move from another to another.

We use a natural language processing to do that, and what we do is

basically we improve performance by about 15 to up to 20%.

Mm-hmm.

Of your campaigns, eh, end.

Top of that.

We save time to the tip because you don't need to do this

manually or do scripts to do.

So I wanna understand who your customers are and who you're trying

to sell this particular product to.

So can you, uh, so how many paying customers do you have

on your platform as of today?

We have

10 right now.

10.

And who are these customers?

What exactly do

they do there?

There are three types of customers.

There are.

Advertising agencies, which run campaigns for their clients.

So very large, uh, clients, uh, utility telcos, insurance, you name that.

That's the first time is, is advertising agencies.

They do this because they can deliver better service and

they save time the second time.

Are companies who manage advertising campaigns internally.

So they have an internal team doing this.

So they're looking for tools for the same reasons.

And third is a new segment we identify are what we call lead generation agencies.

So these are people who generate leads and that they sell the qualified lead to

utilities, insurances, telco, et cetera.

Got it.

And approximately how much revenue were you doing across all of these

customers last.

The, the average ticket is in the range of, uh, 15 to 2000, uh, dollars per month.

Sorry, 1500 to $2,000 per month.

That's, that's

the average, correct.

$25,000 annual contract value.

Something on, on that.

Yeah.

And that's the range.

Yeah.

And when did you get the first customer

on your platform?

We got the first SaaS customer in, uh, October, 2020.

So exactly two years ago.

That was the first one.

But to be frank, the product was sort of, Mvp, minimum viable product is

not the full product we have now.

So we spent the first 12 months basically adjusting the product through

the needs, and we really started selling, uh, beginning of this year.

Beginning of this year, this is when we really started selling.

Got it.

So it's, it's been approximately a year or so, right?

Something like that.

Yeah.

It's been about one year to find you the draw that we've been

in business for, for about 12 maps.

Right.

So since you got your Tenal customers, right.

So I, I'm assuming you know everything about this customer.

So talk to me about the process.

Right.

Where did they find you?

Right.

How did that type of funnel look like for you?

Were you running Google ads on your platform itself, or

how did it work out for you

so far?

So we don't use Google ads a lot to, to be frank, because

we go to a very niche segment.

This has have to be people who manage complex campaigns.

Cause if you have simple campaigns, you do need, uh, so, uh, which have a

significant investment in Google ads.

So they spend a lot.

and they have complex mix.

For instance, people who, uh, do campaigns in different languages because

our platform is language agnostic, so you can run campaigns in, in different

languages, even not speaking the language.

Mm-hmm.

, which is cool.

Uh, so it's a very difficult to, uh, to do a Google Ads

campaigns and target these people.

Yes.

Uh, so we use more Lincoln.

, you can do very specific audiences, and we do a lot of, uh, outbound,

uh, sales, uh, SDR reach.

So we really target people and we drive to them.

We call them every focus.

We have a very niche audience.

So, so

just, just help me quantify this, right?

So when you say outbound, why are your SDRs, what channel are you

primarily using and what is that particular niche that you're target?

So, uh, let me give you some numbers around this.

So we target ca clients in Europe, uh, north and South America,

and India for some reasons.

India is, is a very good market for this.

Mm-hmm.

, as you may know.

So we, uh, reckon to have about 12,000 customers.

Mm-hmm.

, target customers.

There are 12,000 companies right now who can buy our service.

So we can go very, very.

Micro segmenting.

So we look, uh, advertising agency India and there are not more than I no

1,500, which are really interesting.

So we go very precise on that.

On big A advertisers us there are maybe 500.

So how does the process look like once you

figure out this particular niche?

Right?

So are you doing outgoing emails or it, or is it outgoing calling

or some some magical strategy

that Yeah, we do a mix of that.

So first we tend to do, um, Emails first.

Mm-hmm.

, and depending on reaction, if they opened email, then we call.

So it's a mix of, uh, outbound emails and calling mm-hmm.

. And we are, yeah, we are just starting to do a bit of inbound,

doing webinars, doing uh, specific content and how people reach out to us.

We had the webinar yesterday for this first time.

For same manager in the US we got 50 people, over 50 people joined

the webinar, which for us, our small company was, was a big success.

Got it.

So, so I want you to sort of quantify this in terms

of, you know, top of an elite generation perspective, right?

So you, you mentioned you use LinkedIn as well as outbound using page channels.

Right?

So out of the 12 customers that you've sort of got, uh, sort of, uh,

managed to close so far, like where, where, which one was the, was the

most responsible channel for you?

The most responsible channel so far, uh, has been, I'm

thinking, I'm thinking because it changed over time, but, uh, so far

has been link in probably Link in

link.

How, how many customers did you sort of get from LinkedIn as such?

I think we, we got over 50%

for liquid.

3%.

Got it.

And, and what's the strategy here?

Like were you trying to build a brand, brand using your personal account or

LinkedIn or was there something else that you were trying to do there?

Summertime, we use personal content.

I'm the c e o that is the founder is is not in the sector.

So we use a really, our network, although we use, um, a database.

So we t database, then we go very, we use some, uh, automation tools.

We, we use a capital automation tools for linking for that.

Uh, that's the, the main thing.

Essentially,

essentially it's like a cold outreach on LinkedIn

that you're doing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how does, yeah, so just help me complete the story here, right?

How does the conversion look like?

So how, how much converge acceptance rate do we get and how many of them do

actually end up expressing interest using

this channel?

I would say that it is about 10%, no, except maybe the range of 20%

sentence, uh, getting to have a, a significant, a relevant conversation.

Maybe out of hundred, maybe I would say four more in the regional.

Four or five.

Sure.

In one that, that's,

that's the range.

And it, and it's just going from your LinkedIn account.

Right?

Nothing else.

Well, this is one thing we do.

The LinkedIn tends to be the, the founder of myself, uh, and we tend to go to the

c e o to the vice, you know, to the CMO and to the C levels of the companies.

Yes.

Got it.

Right.

So since you're closing deals in the range of, you know, 2025 k a on a

regular basis, I'm assuming that you'll need to do a lot more than just, you

know, Showing them your potential customer, your, your product, right?

You've got to somehow convert that.

Talk about the conversion funnel, right?

So once you sort of, somehow, so

the, yeah, so the typical, I, I'll give you the typical thing.

So the typical thing is you have a first conversation, which is about

really understanding the pain points.

That's, that's a goal to understand what the pain point and if they

manage campaign campaigns internally or if there is an agency which you

need to involve in the process.

That's first thing.

. So the second thing, normally they come with their specific, uh, pain points and

say, okay, you told me about this, but my specific problem is the cost per lead.

Mm-hmm.

. And what we do is a demo on that specific issue.

So I bring in someone from our client success team, which is

a bit of a same specialist, and they do a monographic on that.

If there is an interest and they start saying, Hey, what's the price of this?

Then we say, look, let's do this.

Let's do a free.

let you, you use this for 30 days, obviously, if they qualify and at the

end of the 30 days, you know, we'll, we, we, we will, you, you can become,

and we are having a, a conversion rate.

I did this yesterday, so I can tell you it's about 16% from con initial

convers session to try and buy mm-hmm.

And then, uh, the compression from, uh, tri by to paying customer.

Is between 60 and 70%.

I mean, good months is about 70% bad months 55.

So between 55 and 70% stay with us.

Mm-hmm.

, which is not bad.

Right.

So, so talk about the future, right?

How are you gonna scale up from let's two 50 K to something

like two 3 million, right?

What's the strategy going forward here?

So there is a product strategy, which is launching a new

product for small media businesses.

Mm-hmm.

small media accounts, which instead of being the range of.

1500 to $2,000 is going to be in the range of 50 to $500 per month.

That's a range.

That would be a simplified user interface is not only that you manage

less smaller campaigns, it's also that.

It's a simplified, less features, which is even better for some of these users.

Mm-hmm.

. So the first, uh, big thing is to go to a mid-market, which we don't serve today.

Mm-hmm.

. We have the product in beta where Connect, I hope, die by the end of the year.

This should be live.

. Mm-hmm.

, that's a big thing.

And then the next thing is to expand to, uh, Amazon advertising

and big manage of advertising.

So having under Network works and, uh, we're in the ra in

the, we are raising money now.

We we're going to do a new round of founding towards Q2 next year,

the second, uh, quarter next year.

And at that point we, I think we'll invest heavily in the marketing,

online marketing to get inbound, uh, traffic, which we don't get.

Got it.

Alright, so let's, let's conclude this, right?

So, so talk to me about the team that you have as of today.

So we have, we are, uh, 18 people.

Uh, half of this are developers and products, so half the

companies, developers a product.

Then we have, uh, uh, of the other eight.

Half is, uh, is selling.

Mm-hmm.

, uh, including myself and the founder.

We, we spend a lot of time with clients and half is, uh, client success.

So it's helping customers onboard and configure staff.

Got it.

And did you raise any external funding so far to

build the company?

Yes.

We raised, uh, since 2020, which was us, we raised, uh, 3 million euros so far.

Mm-hmm.

. Upendra Varma: Alright.

Thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Hope you much greater heights.

Thank you.

It was a pleasure.

And thank you very much for reaching out to us.