PPC that a SaaS board can read as pipeline, not as clicks.

Enough to reach a decision on your own numbers rather than a round figure copied from a blog. The honest way to size it is backwards from deal value: at an average $6.81 click, a 2.57% close-through rate and an $84 blended cost per lead in B2B SaaS, a motion needs a few hundred qualified clicks before the data means anything, and a longer window if your sales cycle runs a quarter. We size the test against average contract value and close rate, agree in advance what result would make it a keeper, and stop early when the answer is already clear.

Three things: the click costs more, the sign-up is not the sale, and the buyer is a group. Software pays about $6.81 a click against $5.42 across all industries, so waste is expensive; the trial or demo is a milestone rather than revenue; and Forrester found buying groups reaching 14 members on genAI-feature purchases against seven without them. An account built for one decision-maker and a single cheap signal will underperform one built for a committee and a qualified opportunity, even at identical spend.

Ask three questions and the shortlist sorts itself. First, what will you optimise to — if the answer is leads rather than pipeline stages, the reporting will look better than the business. Second, who does the work: the strategist in the pitch, or a pooled team you meet at handover. Third, what happens to the accounts if we leave. Good agencies answer all three without hedging. It is also fair to ask what they would not run for you yet, because an agency that recommends every channel in the first meeting is selling a bundle, not a plan.

Usually yes, with a separate budget and honest expectations. Competitor searches convert at a lower rate and a higher cost per click than your own brand, but the searcher has already decided they need the category, which is the expensive part of the job. We treat it as its own motion with a specific comparison page, a target cost per opportunity of its own, and a cap so it never quietly consumes the budget. Where a competitor is much larger, we would rather fund alternative-to and switching queries than trade blows on their brand name.

Partly, and it is diagnosable rather than mysterious. ChartMogul's median free-to-paid rate is 8%, so some fall-off is normal, but a channel producing signups that never open the product is usually funding the wrong searches or promising something the onboarding does not deliver. We look at activation by campaign and by search theme before touching bids; often the fix is cutting two ad groups and rewriting one page rather than anything clever in the auction.

That is the common arrangement, and it works well when the split is written down. Typically we own the account structure, bidding, search term hygiene and the reporting spine, while your team keeps positioning, product marketing and the content calendar; we write ad copy together because nobody knows the objections like the people who hear them. We work in your tools, document every change, and run a weekly session so nothing is a surprise at the monthly review.

Delivery signals move within two weeks, cost per qualified opportunity becomes readable in six to eight, and payback depends on your sales cycle rather than on the advertising. A self-serve product can read closed revenue inside a quarter; an enterprise motion with a six-month cycle is judged on opportunity quality first and revenue later. We say which stage the data supports at each review instead of claiming revenue attribution the timeline cannot justify yet.

One page: spend, qualified pipeline created, cost per opportunity, win rate by motion and payback window, with last month's promises listed beside what happened. Underneath sits the detail — search terms added and excluded, tests running, pages changed — and a change log so any movement can be traced to a decision. If a campaign lost money we say so in the first paragraph rather than the appendix, and bring a recommendation for the budget rather than a reason to keep it.

Yes, and for most software companies the two only make sense read together: search harvests demand that already exists, paid social creates the demand that search later harvests, and judging either in isolation produces the wrong budget decision. Our paid social, LinkedIn ads and paid search specialists work from one plan and one measurement spine, so a demo is attributed once instead of being claimed by three suppliers.

A fixed monthly fee, quoted separately from media budget and scoped to the motions you want run. After an audit you get a plan tied to targets — cost per qualified opportunity first — and we will name the channels we would not run yet rather than selling everything at once. Where the useful scope is a measurement build and two landing pages rather than a retainer, we scope it that way and say so on the first call. You own the ad account, the conversion data and the pages throughout.