I was the sole growth marketer in a six-person marketing team at a global B2B SaaS company selling event and venue planning software, reporting to the CMO. Between January 2024 and October 2025, a period of 21 months, net MRR grew by 74%. Freemium-to-paid conversion rose from 1.9% in 2023 to 5% in 2025, and the site reached 89 number-one Google rankings without an SEO agency.
This is a B2B software case study rather than a travel one, and it is here for a reason: it shows the same visibility discipline applied in a competitive, measurable market, with the numbers to show for it.
The situation
This was an in-house role, not an outside engagement. When I joined, paid media was run by an agency, and I took it in-house. My work covered paid media, organic search and the move from free sign-up to paid plan.
What changed
Net MRR. Net MRR grew by 74% between January 2024 and October 2025.
Conversion. Freemium-to-paid conversion was 1.9% for the full year 2023, before I joined in February 2024. It reached 5% in less than a year, and held at 5% for the full year 2025.
Paid media. Ad spend of around EUR 285,000 a year across 14 markets. In 2024, ad-driven freemium sign-ups grew by about 88%, from 4,721 to 8,867, while ad spend roughly doubled and the paid conversion rate held, moving from 1.8% to 2.0%.
Ad spend converted from GBP at 1.19 (Bank of England spot rate, 22 October 2026).
Organic search rankings
89 number-one Google rankings across 398 tracked keywords (US, May 2026), including the highest-volume commercial term in the sector, with no SEO agency. These are traditional Google rankings, not AI answers.
AI search results
AI search became the highest-converting channel, at 17.0%, against 15.4% for paid search and 10.7% for organic search, at no media cost. Comparing April 2026 with April 2025, AI-referred conversions made up about 10% of the year-on-year growth in conversions.
Scope of contribution
AI visibility was one of several channels in an integrated programme covering paid media, organic search and conversion. The growth above came from the whole programme, not from AI visibility alone.
What another business can learn
The AI search figures are the most relevant part of this for a travel brand. Visitors referred by AI assistants converted at a higher rate than visitors from paid or organic search, and the company paid nothing in media costs for them.
The work behind the rankings is the same work that helps a brand get recommended by an AI assistant: understanding the exact language of the buyer, and making sure the brand is clearly, accurately and credibly present for the searches that matter. The tools change with the sector. The discipline does not.
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