Sculpteo prints industrial parts on demand, and a B2B order can land months after the first click. Midsummer Agency runs its paid search, brought LinkedIn in for a materials launch, and connected the CRM so the real value of every campaign can shine through.
PPCPaid SocialTracking
Sculpteo is an online 3D printing service, founded in Paris in 2009. A customer uploads a 3D file, picks a material, technology and finish, gets an instant quote and orders. The parts come out of Sculpteo’s own factory near Paris and ship worldwide.
The vast majority of its customers are businesses:
Some of them order straight from the site, like any online store. Others work through the sales team on larger production projects. Both kinds of buyer search the same words, across more than 75 material and finish combinations and campaigns in French, English, German and Spanish.
Sculpteo wanted paid search to bring in orders and qualified projects at a healthy return, and wanted to see clearly what each campaign was worth to the business.
A 3D printing customer rarely buys on day one. Someone signs up, uploads a file, fixes it, chooses a material, and often places a small test order first. The bigger orders follow weeks or months later, and some come in through the sales team rather than the site. So a lot of the value paid search created showed up outside the ad platforms, where they couldn’t see it.
There was room to grow on 3 fronts:
LinkedIn brought a challenge of its own. Sculpteo was launching a line of high-performance materials for industrial use and wanted to reach decision-makers in demanding industries like automotive. LinkedIn clicks are expensive, and the buying cycle runs to many touchpoints over several months.
We started on Pay Per Click, rebuilding Google Ads and adding Microsoft Ads soon after, then connected HubSpot so every order could find its way back to a campaign. Paid Social followed, with LinkedIn Ads for the industrial materials launch.
ServicesGoogle Ads · Microsoft Ads · HubSpot Integration
We archived the legacy campaigns and rebuilt the account from scratch, organized by language and search intent instead of by individual material. Microsoft Ads came in soon after to pick up extra volume at competitive costs.
We moved bidding up one step at a time, from maximizing conversions to maximizing conversion value and then target ROAS, so the algorithm never lost its footing.
Around half of early sign-ups had no file to print. We started qualifying in the ads themselves, with headlines like “Upload your 3D file”, so the click came from someone with a project in hand. Sculpteo reworked its own journey in parallel: the quote simulator now asks for a file, and account creation moved to checkout.
We accepted fewer leads in exchange for better ones. We also kept searches like “stl printing”, “scanner” and “filament” live, because for Sculpteo they describe real production work.
Google Analytics missed a large share of the value, especially repeat purchases from customers paid search had brought in. We connected HubSpot, which followed each customer from registration to order and credited the campaign that found them, every time they bought again.
Sculpteo is moving to a new CRM, so we advised against building a costly workaround to import pipeline revenue into Google Ads in the meantime.
Later we put efficiency ahead of size. We concentrated a smaller budget on the best campaigns, folded micro-campaigns together by language and intent, and moved the strongest onto value-based bidding. Brand runs as its own lever, with a dedicated budget and defense against competitors bidding on the name.
Automated scripts handle the routine work: a lighter weekend schedule for a B2B audience, overspend alerts and a link checker. Most recently we split the English market into a US and Canada campaign and a UK, Belgium and Netherlands campaign, so the US budget is protected.
ServicesLinkedIn Ads
For the industrial materials launch, Sculpteo offered a free physical sample kit. An engineer can hold the material, test it and show it to the team before committing to a production run.
We opened with a single ad aimed at several industries, with the kit kept in the background. Then we rebuilt around it:
The new setup moved the numbers in its first week. LinkedIn’s native integration with HubSpot let us follow every lead after the form and rebuild the whole customer journey.
On LinkedIn, sample kit requests grew 145% while cost per acquisition fell 72% over a 3-month test against the year before, and the campaign hit 100% of its goal.
On search, non-brand campaigns return around 2x ROAS on real revenue. That figure counts only direct online purchases, so it leaves out pipeline deals and the repeat orders the same customers place in the years that follow.
Every campaign is now judged alongside HubSpot and the sales pipeline, and the account is ready to see offline deals natively once the new CRM is live.
Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Midsummer Agency, we have differentiated ourselves from other competitors and brought in new leads from LinkedIn for our sales division. The team’s workflow has also been very efficient, ensuring all project timelines are followed.
Carmel
Head of Marketing, Sculpteo
Dario
Pay Per Click
Runs Google Ads and Microsoft Ads today, from the efficiency restructure to value-based bidding, brand defense and the US split.
Valentinas
Pay Per Click · Paid Social
Rebuilt the account, connected HubSpot and ran the LinkedIn sample kit campaigns. Still covers the account alongside Dario.
Ecommerce plus physical stores? B2B and B2C under one roof? One market or eleven? The businesses other agencies find too complex are the ones we make shine.
