Doing the work

We are burning money on Google and LinkedIn ads and cannot tell if it works. How should an early B2B team do paid?

The short answer

Ads amplify product-market fit, they do not create it, so if the organic version of your motion is not working, paid will just make the failure faster and more expensive. Start with branded and competitor search on Google, where intent is highest and the cost per lead is a fraction of non-brand. Save LinkedIn for tightly targeted campaigns when your deal size can carry it, because it is materially more expensive per click. Budget honestly: a seed to Series A team testing properly is looking at 20,000 to 50,000 dollars a month, not 3,000, and roughly nine in ten campaigns fail on launch. Run it as a testing programme across platform, audience, creative, offer and landing page, and kill things fast.

Go deeper, your way

3 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📰 Newsletter
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Gives you the numbers before you commit: 20,000 to 50,000 dollars a month to test properly at seed to Series A, roughly 90 percent of campaigns failing at launch, and the five variables worth testing. It also says plainly that ads amplify product-market fit rather than create it.

The 0 to 1 Guide to Paid Media

From GTMnow (GTMfund) by Rex Gelb 20 min read

Open thegtmnewsletter.substack.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Freshworks' early marketing team on how they got to scale on deliberately low cost acquisition out of Chennai, plus which metrics they held themselves to (leads, demos, revenue, return on ad spend) at each stage. The counterweight to spending your way to growth.

SaaS Playbook: Marketing

From SeedToScale (Accel India) by Rachit Parekh 25 min read

Open seedtoscale.com →

The same ground, at another level

How inbound, content and demand gen reads from a different seat.

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Terms in this answer

Product-Market Fit Landing Page Series A

People also ask

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