Unlocking growth: Maven Collective Marketing's success with Microsoft Advertising

About Maven Collective Marketing

At Maven Collective Marketing, we specialize in delivering B2B marketing expertise you can measure to yield award-winning results for SaaS and software services clients, including Microsoft Partners across the globe for more than 500 organizations.

Maven Collective Marketing began serendipitously when clients from a previous business venture approached our CEO, Erica Hakonson, to continue working with them as a consultant. What started as a solo consultancy quickly evolved into a full-fledged agency, driven by demand and a clear market need. Over time, we carved out a unique niche, exclusively serving Microsoft Partners and have since become a trusted marketing ally within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Today, Maven Collective is a team of 20 talented professionals, each bringing specialized expertise to help our clients thrive. Our audience spans the globe, including North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa, and ranges from small startups to large enterprise organizations.

Their mission and vision

At Maven Collective, our vision is to help Microsoft Partners break free from the sea of sameness. While many partners may appear similar on the surface, we believe each one has something truly unique to offer. Our mission is to uncover and amplify that uniqueness—positioning our clients as industry leaders in their market.

We specialize in measurable, strategic B2B marketing for Microsoft Partners, helping them define their niche, elevate their brand, and drive meaningful business outcomes. But our purpose goes beyond marketing.

What gets us out of bed in the morning is the opportunity to:

• Create space for new voices in the Microsoft ecosystem—especially those who may have traditionally been boxed out.

• Deliver real value to our clients, stakeholders, and employees through thoughtful strategy and impactful storytelling.

• Give back to our community through pro bono workshops, mentorship for entrepreneurs, and a commitment to work-life balance.

• Build a business that’s not just about profit, but about helping others grow, thrive, and realize their potential.

We’re driven by the belief that marketing can open doors, create opportunities, and make a measurable difference in the success of others.

Success with Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising has become a pivotal part of our digital strategy at Maven Collective, consistently delivering strong results for our clients—often outperforming other platforms in both lead quality and ROI.

• Klarinet Solutions: Microsoft Advertising played a pivotal role in their brand and website relaunch. Within just 90 days, paid search campaigns led to a 191% increase in qualified leads, over five times more form submissions, and a 312% boost in conversion rate—dramatically accelerating their pipeline growth.

• Long View Systems: After integrating Microsoft Advertising to their broader demand generation strategy. With over $46K invested across seven months, the campaigns generated nearly 27,000 clicks and quickly became their most heavily funded paid media channel. They also qualified for Microsoft’s pre-approved co-funding, significantly amplifying its reach and impact.

• Big Cloud: Starting with a modest pilot budget, but after outperforming other platforms in cost-per-conversion and lead quality, they reallocated the majority of their spend to Microsoft Advertising. In just five months, the campaigns delivered 45 leads and 140% more conversions than Google Ads—making it their top-performing paid channel.

Across our portfolio, we’ve seen a 717% increase in clicks and a 738% increase in ad spend year-over-year. These results underscore the value of making Microsoft Advertising a central part of our strategy. Not just as a channel, but as a competitive advantage for Microsoft Partners.

Tools of the trade

We rely on several powerful features within Microsoft Advertising that help us optimize performance and deliver measurable results for our clients.

• Auction insights: It provides valuable visibility into how our ads are performing against competitors, helping us refine strategy and stay ahead in competitive markets.

• Ad scheduling and location targeting: These features allow us to allocate budget based on performance, focusing spend on high-performing regions, time slots, and even devices. This level of control ensures we’re maximizing ROI by investing where it counts most.

• Audience targeting: It enables us to use it for remarketing to re-engage high-intent users and guide them further down the funnel with tailored messaging.

• Ad extensions: It has been incredibly effective for driving direct engagement, particularly call extensions. They make ads more actionable and improve visibility without increasing cost-per-click.

Together, these tools give us the flexibility and insights we need to build smarter, more strategic campaigns that deliver real business outcomes.

Their biggest wins

One of our biggest wins has been the strategic shift from being exclusively a Google Ads partner to fully embracing Microsoft Advertising as a core part of our paid media strategy. What started as a small test has evolved into a major transformation.

Over the past year, we’ve successfully migrated many of our clients from Google Ads to Microsoft Advertising—making it their primary paid search platform. This shift wasn’t just about diversifying channels; it was about performance. Microsoft Advertising consistently delivered stronger lead quality, better cost-efficiency, and greater alignment with our clients’ B2B audiences.

We’ve also expanded our media mix to include LinkedIn Ads and Reddit Ads, creating a more holistic and targeted approach to demand generation. But Microsoft Advertising remains the anchor driving measurable results and becoming a key differentiator in how we deliver value to Microsoft Partners.

This pivot has not only elevated campaign performance but also deepened our expertise and credibility within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Their growth journey

Microsoft Advertising has become a reliable and strategic channel for helping us and the Microsoft Partners we support broaden reach, capture attention, and generate high-quality leads.

What sets it apart is the unique alignment with the Microsoft ecosystem. The audience we’re targeting is often already engaged with Microsoft platforms, using tools like Edge and Bing natively. This creates a more seamless and relevant advertising experience, allowing us to connect with users in a context where they’re already primed for B2B engagement.

By tapping into this ecosystem, we’ve been able to drive consistent growth for our clients and expand our own business. Microsoft Advertising has opened the door to new opportunities, new audiences, and new ways to deliver measurable impact.

Making a difference

We believe in using our expertise and resources to give back and uplift the communities we live and work in. Over the past year, our team has volunteered time and talent to support entrepreneurship and social impact initiatives.

We were proud to lead entrepreneurship workshops for two incredible organizations:

• S.U.C.C.E.S.S.: This organization empowers underserved women entrepreneurs across Canada with the tools, resources, and mentorship to launch and grow their businesses. Our Mavens shared marketing expertise to help turn their ideas into reality and build confidence through economic independence.

• Rise: Rise supports Canadians facing mental health and addiction challenges by fostering entrepreneurship through low-interest loans, training, and mentorship. We led a workshop to help Rise entrepreneurs market their businesses and bring their visions to life.

We’re actively seeking new opportunities to give back in 2025 and are excited to continue making a difference.

Additionally, through our annual Pay It Forward Initiative, each Maven selects a charity that resonates personally, supporting causes from advancing healthcare to nourishing communities. It’s our way of spreading meaningful impact during the holiday season.

We’re also proud to share that we’re currently under review for B Corp certification, a reflection of our commitment to purpose-driven business practices that benefit people and the planet.

Innovative ideas

Innovation is at the heart of everything we do—from how we create content to how we help Microsoft Partners navigate a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): As search behavior evolves with AI-powered tools like Copilot and ChatGPT, we’re testing how adapting content from SEO to AEO can be optimized to align with conversational search and AI agents, ensuring our clients show up where and how their audiences are searching.

• Microsoft Partner benchmark report: We are proud of our work on aggregated data insights through our Microsoft Partner Benchmark Report. By compiling data from 200+ partners across different sizes, regions, workloads, and certifications, we’ve created a holistic view of the Microsoft Partner ecosystem. This kind of insight doesn’t exist anywhere else, and it can help partners make smarter, data-driven decisions.

• Rethinking the B2B buyer journey: We recognize that ads are just one-way buyers discover solutions. That’s why we take a holistic approach, by showing up across multiple touchpoints, from digital campaigns to in-person community engagement. Especially within the tight-knit Microsoft Partner community, face-to-face interactions remain essential.

• AI-Driven video and voice content: We’re embracing AI-driven video and voice content to meet audiences where they are. Instead of creating content once and pushing it everywhere, we’re investing in formats that can be repurposed across platforms, making every piece of thought leadership more valuable, accessible, and impactful.

These initiatives reflect our commitment to staying ahead of the curve and helping our clients do the same.

GenAI

We actively integrate GenAI into our workflows to enhance productivity, improve decision-making, and deliver more value to our clients.

• Copilot for Microsoft 365: We adopted it across our team, embedding it into our daily work modes. As Copilot continues to learn from our organization’s data and processes, it’s becoming an increasingly powerful tool for streamlining tasks, generating content, and boosting efficiency.

• Copilot workshops: To deepen our understanding and adoption, we’ve hosted workshops with both our internal team and clients. This allowed us to explore real-world use cases, address challenges, and identify opportunities to integrate AI more meaningfully into our operations.

• Power Platform and Power BI integration: We’re preparing our internal data infrastructure to take full advantage of the Power Platform, including Power BI, where AI capabilities can be leveraged for deeper insights and smarter reporting once our data is fully integrated.

• Teams’ AI-powered features: We’re using AI-powered tools in Microsoft Teams, such as meeting recordings, transcriptions, and summaries, to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing across projects.

While we’re still navigating some of the complexities of how best to answer and implement certain AI-driven solutions, we’re committed to learning, experimenting, and evolving alongside this transformative technology.

Looking ahead

We’re thrilled to share the launch of our 2024 Microsoft Partner benchmark report; an in-depth survey of 200 Microsoft Partners that uncovers key trends, challenges, and data-backed strategies to help partners optimize their investments, increase visibility, and drive revenue growth.

As the dedicated marketing partner for Microsoft Partners, we created this report to cut through the noise and provide clear, actionable insights. It highlights where top-performing partners are excelling, how they’re strengthening collaboration with Microsoft, and what it takes to move from lead generation to true revenue generation. It also explores the critical role of community and how shared knowledge can elevate performance across the ecosystem.

You can explore the full report here →

To support the launch, we will be rolling out a multi-channel ad campaign, including display and text-based Microsoft Ads, and third-party ads across platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit. This ensures we can share this valuable resource with as many Microsoft Partners as possible.

We’re excited about the conversations this report will spark and the opportunities it will unlock for partners looking to grow smarter and faster within the Microsoft ecosystem.