Most SaaS paid search accounts optimise toward the wrong event. They chase trial starts, hit the target, and the sales team still has nothing worth calling. I run SaaS campaigns against what happens after the signup, because that is the only number your board cares about.
What a click costs in SaaS right now. Median Google Ads cost per click in the United States, from the October 2026 edition of the Paid Media Cost Index, a Diwizi dataset pulled on October 15, 2026 with the date the source last refreshed each figure.
| Search | Cost per click | Source refresh |
|---|---|---|
| crm software | $37.13 | Oct 15 |
| project management software | $49.28 | Sep 13 |
| hr software | $91.59 | Sep 15 |
| marketing automation software | $80.43 | Sep 16 |
B2B & SaaS median, $80.43 across 5 keywords. Free to reuse with credit to the Cost Index.
The pattern repeats across almost every SaaS account I audit.
Google optimises for whatever you tell it to. Point it at free trial starts and it will find you people who love free trials. Point it at qualified pipeline and the whole auction behaviour changes.
One CAC number across paid, organic and outbound tells you nothing about whether paid search deserves more budget. Without channel-level attribution you are guessing with real money.
Bidding on rival brand names feels productive and quietly burns spend at terrible conversion rates unless the offer and landing page are built specifically for that intent.
A $40 per month self-serve plan and a $40K annual contract need completely different bids, funnels and landing pages. Running them together drags both down.
The campaign is one part. The measurement and the conversion path are what make it work.
Before anything gets scaled, the data has to be right. GA4 and Google Tag Manager audited and rebuilt where needed, conversion actions deduplicated, Meta CAPI or server-side tagging where it applies, and offline conversion import so the platform optimises toward revenue instead of form fills.
Trial to qualified to closed-won mapped back into the ad platforms, so bidding optimises toward revenue. This usually means offline conversion import from your CRM, which most accounts simply do not have.
Paid traffic dies on a bad page. I build and iterate the landing pages the campaigns point to, so the conversion path is one system instead of two vendors blaming each other. Fixed scope, tied to the campaigns, not open-ended web design.
Search captures existing demand. LinkedIn reaches the job titles that never search. I run whichever mix your motion actually needs rather than defaulting to all three.
A Looker Studio dashboard tied to your real conversion data, plus a written read on what changed and why. No 40-tab spreadsheet, no vanity metrics, no 'impressions are up' as a headline.
If your CRM cannot yet tell paid search which leads became opportunities, that is the first thing we fix. Everything downstream depends on it.
Some engagements have numbers I can publish from the account. Others are confidential, by contract or because they were employed roles, so I can speak to scope and approach but not exact figures. I would rather show you the real mix than invent a case study.
Google Ads and Performance Max in one of the most competitive local markets in the US, with expensive clicks, ZIP code choices and seasonal demand. The performance data is confidential by contract, so the case covers the work and the lessons, not the numbers. Read the case.
Cumulative account history since 2020: 5,707 clicks and R$ 63.61 per conversion. Conversions are contact actions recorded by Google Ads, not sales. I also created the brand identity and built the site. Read the case.
I have also worked in paid media in healthcare. Nothing from that work is published anywhere on this site: no employer named, no budgets, no results, no internal detail. It is listed only because it is where a large part of my healthcare experience comes from.
I go through the account, the tracking and the conversion path and tell you what is actually broken. You get the findings whether or not we work together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy, audiences and landing pages built around how your buyers actually search.
Weekly optimisation against the metric that matters to your business, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
SaaS companies with a trial or demo funnel and revenue tracking behind it.
Not a fit: Pre-revenue products still validating the market.
Both, but the honest answer is that paid search rarely works well below a certain spend floor. If you are spending under roughly $5K per month there is usually a cheaper way to find your first customers. I will tell you that on the call rather than take the retainer.
Yes, and in most SaaS engagements this is the highest-impact thing we do. Offline conversion import lets the platform bid toward qualified pipeline instead of raw signups. It works with HubSpot, Salesforce and most modern CRMs.
Tracking and structure fixes show up within the first few weeks. Meaningful CAC movement usually takes one to two full sales cycles, because the feedback loop is only as fast as your pipeline. Anyone promising results faster than your own sales cycle is selling you something.
Either. Some clients bring me in to run paid search directly. Others keep their agency and use me as the person who audits the work and asks harder questions. Both are legitimate.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
Rather book a time directly? Schedule a call.