Avalara × FTA Global

Background

Avalara is a global tax compliance technology company helping businesses automate indirect tax, e-invoicing, reporting, and cross-border compliance.

APAC presented a very different search environment from North America.

Australia and New Zealand had mature digital economies and growing e-invoicing adoption. Singapore had a high concentration of enterprise regional headquarters managing complex ERP environments. India offered significant demand around GST and e-invoicing, but also generated large volumes of non-commercial tax searches.

The opportunity was substantial, but each market required a different route to qualified demand.

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The Challenge

Paid digital had a limited pipeline presence in APAC.

In early 2025, the programme generated fewer than five inquiries and negligible sales pipeline. Cost per MQL was running between approximately $850 and $950+, while regional spend lacked coordinated messaging and market-specific optimisation.

Three challenges shaped the reset.

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Different markets meant different buyers

A fast-growing ecommerce business in Australia had very different tax requirements from an enterprise Tax Director operating from Singapore.

One regional campaign structure could not serve both effectively.

Search volume did not always equal commercial intent

This was particularly pronounced in India, where high volumes of GST and tax-related searches came from students, accountants, personal tax filers, and other non-commercial audiences.

Without tighter filtering, sales teams were receiving large volumes of low-intent enquiries.

High-intent demand was limited but valuable

Bottom-of-funnel search volume for enterprise indirect tax solutions was relatively small across APAC.

That made wasted spend expensive. The programme needed to capture the right searches while maintaining strong visibility on the terms most likely to contribute to pipeline.

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The Strategy

FTA Global rebuilt the programme around buyer maturity, regional intent, and sales acceptance rather than raw lead volume.

Segment APAC by buyer type

The strategy separated three core groups.

Mid-market and D2C exporters across Australia, New Zealand, and India.

Enterprise regional headquarters in Singapore and Australia.

Cross-border SaaS and digital businesses in India managing global indirect tax requirements.

Messaging and keyword coverage were then aligned to the specific commercial triggers affecting each group.

Prioritise high-intent search

Google Search became the primary demand driver, supported by Performance Max, Microsoft Advertising, 6sense, and selected LinkedIn activity.

Budgets were concentrated where commercial intent and downstream pipeline performance were strongest.

Optimise toward sales outcomes

The programme was not optimised simply for form fills.

Google bidding models were calibrated using verified Salesforce early-stage opportunity and SQL signals, helping media optimisation reflect lead quality further down the funnel.

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The Execution

Two distinct search tracks

Campaigns were divided according to buyer maturity.

For growing SaaS and ecommerce businesses, messaging focused on companies outgrowing basic tax functionality within platforms such as Shopify and Stripe.

For larger enterprises, messaging focused on indirect tax automation beyond legacy ERP suites and broader enterprise platforms.

This created clearer alignment between the search query, the buyer’s operating environment, and the value proposition.

More than 150 negative keywords added

Search term hygiene became a major part of the programme.

More than 150 negative exact-match keywords were introduced across India and ANZ to remove student searches, personal tax queries, generic tax-code searches, and other non-commercial traffic.

Business email validation was also used to reduce personal email leakage.

Budgets followed conversion windows

Daily spend on stronger ANZ and Singapore campaigns was increased by more than 2x to 2.5x during higher-conversion periods.

This prevented high-performing campaigns from hitting budget caps during key corporate buying hours.

Channel investment was actively reallocated

LinkedIn initially supported awareness, but high ANZ CPMs made it less efficient for pipeline generation.

Budget was subsequently shifted toward Google Search, where stronger commercial intent and better pipeline economics were being observed.

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The Outcome

The updated APAC programme materially changed both volume and quality.

574 MQLs were generated, representing 55.6% YoY growth and 319% of plan.

28+ early-stage sales opportunities were generated YTD, reaching 250% of plan.

Optimized Search reduced cost per MQL to approximately $316 in Q2, around 65% below the previous $900+ baseline.

The broader commercial scorecard also shows $80K to $100K+ in sourced early-stage pipeline, while optimized Search achieved a sub-$350 cost per MQL.

Lead quality improved at the same time.

Brand campaigns achieved a 100% inquiry-to-MQL conversion rate, with disqualification falling below 7% on those campaigns.

The programme moved from a low-volume regional setup into a more structured acquisition system capable of generating qualified demand and measurable pipeline across four different APAC markets.

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What do we learn?

APAC cannot be managed as one paid search market.

Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and India have different search behaviour, regulations, business maturity, and competitive environments.

The performance shift came from treating those differences as part of campaign architecture rather than as minor localisation requirements.

The second lesson is equally important.

Optimising toward leads is not enough in enterprise B2B.

Search became materially more useful when keyword selection, lead qualification, budget allocation, and bidding were connected to what happened after the form submission.

That shifted the programme from generating demand to identifying demand that sales could actually use.

Services: Paid Search Strategy, Google Ads, Performance Max, Microsoft Advertising, 6sense Activation, B2B Demand Generation, Conversion Optimisation