Oceanbotics: from spam leads to $6M+ in revenue
Written by Michael Nadalin, Founder of Market Lead and Harvest Lead · Last updated 25 August 2026Underwater remotely operated vehicles, sold worldwide. A rebuilt advertising system that stopped paying for hobbyists and started finding military, government and commercial buyers, with $6M+ in revenue generated.
The situation
Oceanbotics manufactures underwater remotely operated vehicles for military, search and rescue, commercial marine and research work. Their vehicles are used by Boeing, the Alaska Marine Highway System and police departments around the world.
The product was world-class and the marketing was not. The previous 90 days had produced 50 leads in total, most of them spam or hobbyists with no commercial intent, at $180 to $400 each and a 0.6% conversion rate. Nothing in the setup separated a procurement officer from someone who wanted a toy.
What we built
- A landing page on a proven high-conversion layout, with a multi-step form that filters for commercial intent and arms the sales team before the first call.
- Military, government, police and commercial testimonials, plus a comparison table against competitors.
- Google Ads segmented by search intent and funnel stage, with comprehensive negative keyword lists removing low-intent traffic.
- Video-only Meta creative, with retargeting, broad prospecting and targeted prospecting campaigns per country.
- A live lead dashboard and full attribution from ad to audience to campaign to lead, quote and sale.
The part that actually made the difference
Retraining the algorithm. Hobbyist and individual leads were excluded from conversion tracking, and only high-intent commercial leads were fed back to the ad platforms as conversions.
Until that point Google and Meta were doing exactly what they were asked: finding more people likely to fill in a form. Once the signal was commercial buyers only, the platforms went looking for commercial buyers. Budget then followed downstream revenue rather than form fills.
| Previous 90 days | Rebuilt system | |
|---|---|---|
| Leads | 50, mostly spam or hobbyists | 200 commercially qualified |
| Cost per lead | $180 to $400 | $25 |
| Conversion rate | 0.6% | Up 2,400% |
The outcome
Within 30 days the business went from a crowded market of cheap competitors and spam leads to a targeted global sales pipeline. Leads now come from military procurement, government contracts and commercial marine operators, including a Boeing executive, the Alaska Marine Highway System (a $183K quote) and international dealer enquiries.
The approach has since scaled across multiple countries and product lines, including the compact SRV8C vehicle. In total the campaigns have generated $6M+ in revenue.
Why this matters for machinery businesses
Oceanbotics is not an agriculture business, but the problem is the one we see on every high-value machinery account: a platform optimising toward whoever fills in a form most readily. If the ad platforms cannot tell a $100k buyer from a tyre-kicker, they will find you tyre-kickers, cheaply and in volume. The fix is the same on a farm machine as on an underwater robot.
Common questions
- What did Harvest Lead do for Oceanbotics?
- We rebuilt the advertising around commercial intent: a landing page with a multi-step qualifying form, Google Ads segmented by intent with heavy negative keyword filtering, video-only Meta campaigns per country, and conversion tracking that only counts commercial leads so the platforms optimise toward real buyers. The result was 200 qualified leads at $25 each against 50 mostly spam leads at $180 to $400, and $6M+ in revenue to date.
- How do you stop ad platforms sending low-quality leads?
- Stop telling them a low-quality lead is a conversion. Exclude unqualified leads from conversion tracking and feed back only the leads that match a real buyer, so Google and Meta learn what a good lead looks like. Pair that with a qualifying form and negative keywords and the volume of junk falls quickly.
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