2x More Organic Registrations Than Paid Ads Through LinkedIn, Outbound, and HubSpot

Allan Abt is the second-generation leader of wechselstube.ch—the original Swiss platform for commercial foreign-exchange transactions, operating since 1999. Its business model is as clear as it is compelling: the platform bundles many small currency transactions from SMEs and individuals, negotiates better rates, and passes that advantage on one-to-one—making transactions up to 84% less expensive than using a customer’s primary bank. A strong organic funnel drove growth for more than 25 years.

Until that funnel was exhausted. Increasing the budget for Google or Bing no longer produced additional conversions. The next step was not more advertising, but moving one level higher in the funnel—to the 95% of the market that has the problem but is not yet actively searching. The result after the first months of the engagement: around twice as many registrations in the first half of the year as the traditional paid channel had previously generated—without adding a single role or spending additional advertising budget.

This case study explains how that channel was built across three layers: a clean CRM foundation in HubSpot, new-customer acquisition through LinkedIn, and an outbound approach that does not feel like outbound.

The Starting Point: A Funnel That No Longer Scaled

wechselstube.ch did not have a visibility or conversion problem. Quite the opposite—and that was exactly what made the situation challenging.

“We have understood our ICP very well for 26 years. Over time, we had built a wonderful funnel: our organic traffic converted the customers who already had a need. It worked extremely well. But eventually, that funnel was exhausted. We could not simply send more budget to Google, Bing, or another provider and expect more conversions to come out.” — Allan Abt

This is the ceiling that mid-sized providers with a strong product regularly hit: paid search only harvests demand that already exists. With a financial product that depends heavily on trust, the additional challenge is that buying decisions are not driven by more impressions, but by confidence. The question is not how to create more Instagram posts or selfies. It is how a decision-maker at a smaller Swiss company can build trust in the first place.

The first instinct was the same as it is for most companies: do it internally.

“Like many others, we first tried it in-house. In the end, I had 15 different variants in an Excel dashboard, had spent four days on it—and achieved an extremely poor result.” — Allan Abt

Four days of a managing director’s time for a spreadsheet that helps nobody: that is the typical outcome when leadership handles a core task on the side. The real turning point was recognizing that ideas were not the missing ingredient. What was missing was a system—and someone to operate it.

Step One: Build the CRM Foundation, Not the Next Channel

The initial contact came through HubSpot—SalesPlaybook is a HubSpot premium partner in Switzerland. What mattered was where the engagement began: not with more outreach, but with the foundation.

“As a first step, SalesPlaybook helped us structure all our soft conversions in HubSpot and actively work them—something we had never done before.” — Allan Abt

For a small company, the setup involved a learning curve. The support from the team kept this phase lean:

“We first had to learn HubSpot. Eric from the team was at our side—we could ask him anything, and he answered. That worked very well for the way we learn.” — Allan Abt

The value of this phase was a shift in perspective that went far beyond adopting new tools:

“HubSpot gave me an entirely new perspective. I moved away from manual work toward a dashboard where we can bring all our marketing channels together and genuinely manage Marketing and Sales.” — Allan Abt

The sequence is the point. A company that starts with cold calls and campaigns and adds the CRM later is building the first floor before the basement. Here, the foundation came first and everything else was built on top of it. That is precisely why everything that followed remained agile and lean instead of turning into a second IT project.

“Fortunately, we started with HubSpot together with you and then moved into active Sales—not the other way around. We had the foundation and could build on it. That kept the process agile and lean for me.” — Allan Abt

Step Two: Allbound Instead of More Advertising Budget

Once the CRM foundation was in place, the team added the channel capable of breaking through the old funnel’s ceiling: new-customer acquisition through LinkedIn combined with outbound—an approach SalesPlaybook calls Allbound. It starts with a sober view of the market: paid advertising captures demand. It reaches only the 5–10% who are ready to buy—the ripe yellow bananas. The other 90–95% are not actively searching today, even though they still have the problem. The only way to reach them is to create demand instead of merely capturing it.

For Allan, the broader realization was that he was not alone in facing this problem:

“During our conversation, I understood that I am not the only one with this need in the Swiss market. Whether it is a metalworking company, an industrial business, or a SaaS provider, it is ultimately the same everywhere: it comes down to trust. You do not sell by simply throwing generic ads onto a platform.” — Allan Abt

Operationally, this means publishing organic LinkedIn content two or three times a week, making Allan visible as a person and wechselstube.ch visible as a category, supported by structured outbound. One dedicated member of the team owns the volume motion:

“We need hundreds of customers every year. We are a small company, not a conventional SaaS provider with fixed recurring revenue—we have to create the volume deliberately. Diego deserves the credit here: he understands the volume game and knows which content a typical ICP needs.” — Allan Abt

The Success Factor: Hot Leads Go to Customer Success, Not Salespeople

The decisive design flaw in many outbound setups is that a salesperson ultimately follows up cold. wechselstube.ch deliberately designed the process the other way around—and that is what makes the channel viable for a product that depends so heavily on trust.

“We have no outbound employees and no hardcore salespeople. Our hot leads go directly to Customer Success. The leads who actually reach us by phone are very conservative—it does not feel like conventional cold outbound to them. They receive relevant information and the same sense of trust. In the end, the customer only needs the final reassurance: yes, this is the right company, and I can register here. That is the project’s true success factor.” — Allan Abt

Because content and LinkedIn have already answered the entire “why FX and why these terms?” question asynchronously, nobody has to repeat the explanation a hundred times on the phone. This has a direct financial effect:

“That keeps the team lean, with fewer than ten employees. Comparable providers have 15 to 30 people and the corresponding cost structure because they staff prequalification, presales, and Sales as full-time roles. This saves us two or three positions.” — Allan Abt

This is the lever behind the actual result. More registrations did not come from adding people or budget, but from a channel that builds trust in advance and reduces the burden on Sales:

“In the first half of the year, we generated more registrations than the traditional paid channel would have achieved over the same period—and we did it without paid advertising. That is worth remembering.” — Allan Abt

In figures, that meant around twice as many registrations as paid ads delivered—with the same team size and no additional advertising budget. It moves exactly the KPIs that matter: more qualified registrations at the top of the funnel, a leaner cost structure below, and customer acquisition that no longer depends on rising CPCs.

Why a Specialist Agency—Rather Than a Solo Freelancer or an Agency With More Than 50 Employees

Allan answers the question of who should build a system like this in two ways. The first concerns the operating model itself: SalesPlaybook has effectively become wechselstube.ch’s outsourced Marketing and Sales team across CRM, LinkedIn, and outbound.

“Manuel once said: essentially, you are hiring a Marketing and Sales employee through us. And that is true. With Diego, Fabian, and the specialists on your team, we set it up as though that one team member worked inside our company. That is a major compliment—they understand the playbook and can act when questions arise.” — Allan Abt

The second point is whether the partner fits a company of his size:

“From the beginning, it mattered to me that I would invest only if it paid off in Customer Success and could scale. I also understood that you work with smaller companies—not only with corporations that can assign entire departments to the task. That foundation was right.” — Allan Abt

Effort and Commitment: Why the Engagement Works Over the Long Term

Many decision-makers have a legitimate concern: “I do not have one day every week for a project.” This is exactly why the engagement has endured beyond the initial phase.

“The first two months took longer—the team needed to get a complete briefing from me, and it mattered to me that they genuinely understood our ICP and TAM. I could only let go once I received evidence that they understood it, rather than simply claiming they did. After that ramp-up phase, my involvement dropped to perhaps 15 minutes a day.” — Allan Abt

In practice, that is around one and a half hours per week or four to six hours per month. Two elements maintain the quality despite the limited effort: the four-eyes principle and a fixed cadence.

“Every week, I see which posts will be published in my name—everything crosses my desk under the four-eyes principle. That creates trust. And every two weeks, we sit down with your management team. It creates routine and commitment. We are in the same boat, and both sides succeed only when it works month after month.” — Allan Abt

This commitment is not a soft factor. It is the business model of the engagement: enough new customers every month, generating enough revenue to make Marketing and Sales pay off. It is also why a project became a long-term, effectively exclusive partnership spanning every acquisition channel.

The 2026 Market Environment: Why This Is the Right Channel Now

The timing is not accidental. In the 2026 market environment, every digital Swiss franc is scrutinized more closely.

“If you do not have to spend, you do not spend on something new. I wanted a proactive, robust channel that scales without depending on Meta, Google, or LinkedIn ads. If prices double and I get only half as much for my money, the entire calculation stops working.” — paraphrased from the conversation

The planned next step follows logically: measure customer lifetime value by lead and new customer, then use the data to decide whether to supplement Allbound with conventional advertising the following year—or whether the company’s own channel can deliver the required volume by itself. It is an acquisition system the company no longer needs to hand over to others because it operates in-house.

What CEOs and Revenue Leaders Can Take Away

Three principles make this case transferable to any provider with a strong product, a high need for trust, and a paid funnel that no longer scales:

First, build the foundation before the channel. Set up the CRM properly and structure soft conversions before building reach. Reversing that sequence pours leads into a system that cannot hold them.

Second, use demand generation where demand capture reaches its ceiling. Paid search harvests the 5–10% who are ready to buy. Growth beyond that comes from the 95% who are not searching yet—reached through LinkedIn content and signal-based outbound, not by putting more budget behind the same keywords.

Third, reduce the burden on Sales instead of expanding it. Send hot leads to Customer Success rather than cold salespeople. This keeps the team lean, protects a product built on trust, and saves two or three full-time positions.

Allan’s final words are also the most candid advice:

“I feel best when I genuinely reach people who understand that they can solve their problem with us. My advice is not to wait two months, as I did, before picking up the phone. I could have saved myself those two months.” — Allan Abt

The best time to build this channel was yesterday. The second-best time is today.