Client results

Four retainers. Zero names. The patterns matter more.

Every B2B SaaS agency site has the same logo wall. We'd rather show you four anonymised cases in full, profile, starting situation, what we actually changed, what it returned, and honestly, what didn't work along the way.

Why we don't name clients. Most of our retainers are with marketing leaders at growth-stage SaaS companies, many don't want their paid-media performance posted publicly, and we respect that. Every case below is a real engagement, with scrubbed company details and rounded metrics. Revenue and spend bands are accurate. Happy to walk through specifics under NDA on a call.

01
€5M ARR · B2B SaaS HR-tech · DACH Retainer · 18 months LinkedIn-led

Killed the lead-gen forms. Pipeline 3.2× in two quarters.

Situation

~€25k/mo on LinkedIn lead-gen forms. Strong MQL volume, but <3% converted to SQL and close rate was 2%. Sales thought marketing was sending noise; marketing thought sales wasn't calling back. Both were partly right.

What we changed

  • Killed all lead-gen forms. Every campaign now clicks to a real landing page.
  • Rebuilt offers around demo + gated teardown (not ebooks)
  • Wired HubSpot enhanced conversions with stage-based values
  • Added competitive + warm-audience retargeting

What happened

  • Leads/mo fell from ~180 to ~55. Sales stopped complaining.
  • SQL rate went from 3% to 14% over two quarters
  • Pipeline sourced from LinkedIn: 3.2× vs baseline quarter
  • CAC down roughly 40% despite higher CPL
Pipeline sourced (quarter)
3.2×
From €180k baseline quarter to €580k (rounded) after two quarters of rebuild.
SQL rate
3% → 14%
Same sales team, better-qualified conversations.
CAC (blended)
−40%
Fewer leads, dramatically better conversion, the maths works.
What didn't work

We spent the first 6 weeks convinced we could salvage one lead-gen campaign by tightening targeting. We couldn't, it kept delivering MQL-shaped noise. The right call would have been to kill it in week 2. We lost about €18k in spend to that reluctance.

02
€12M ARR · B2B SaaS Cybersecurity · US + EU Retainer · 2+ years Google-led rebuild

From discovery to verification. CAC down 34%, branded SERP reclaimed.

Situation

Running Google Search only, single flat campaign mixing brand, category and competitor queries. Three competitors bidding on the brand term. PMax had been rejected internally as "unpredictable". Sales thought Google wasn't working; they couldn't see it was doing most of their verification.

What we changed

  • Split into six campaigns: brand defence, competitor, category, bottom-funnel, PMax-audiences, YouTube remarketing
  • Wired offline conversions from HubSpot closed-won
  • Killed all broad match outside brand
  • Rebuilt ad copy around differentiation, not features

What happened

  • Brand CPC fell 48% once we outbid competitors on defence
  • PMax-audiences drove 22% of net-new pipeline in Q2 post-launch
  • CAC from Google dropped 34% over 9 months
  • Share of branded SERP clicks climbed to 81% (from ~50%)
Blended Google CAC
−34%
Over 9 months, same spend envelope (≈€45k/mo).
Brand SERP share
50% → 81%
Clawed back from three active competitors bidding on brand.
Pipeline from Google
+62%
Year-over-year, driven by PMax-audiences + bottom-funnel search.
What didn't work

YouTube remarketing, which looked great on paper and was a core part of our Q1 plan, underperformed for a full quarter. View-through conversions looked strong; SQL attribution told a different story. We pulled it back to a 10% budget share, not the 25% we'd scoped. Honest outcome, not the one we expected.

03
€3M ARR · B2B SaaS Vertical SaaS · UK Retainer · 9 months First paid media

Zero paid media to €180k sourced pipeline in one quarter.

Situation

Founder-led sales, 40 inbound demos/month, all word-of-mouth. Wanted to start paid without blowing the CAC maths and without becoming dependent on it. Google SERP in their vertical was brutal, three established players with 10-year-old brand campaigns. LinkedIn-addressable ICP was tight (~18k contacts in the UK).

What we changed

  • Skipped Google Search entirely, CPCs were €40+ and we'd bleed
  • Started LinkedIn + Microsoft Ads on demand-capture only
  • Built an ICP list of 18k contacts; ran Sponsored + Message Ads
  • Every campaign had a hard CAC ceiling (€8k) before auto-pause

What happened

  • Month 1: nothing. Month 2: first 3 SQLs. Month 3: 11 SQLs.
  • €180k sourced pipeline in Q2 vs zero baseline
  • Blended CAC held at ~€6,800, below the €8k ceiling
  • Found 2 new ICP segments we didn't know were active buyers
Pipeline sourced (Q2)
€180k
From €0 baseline, on €18k total ad spend across the quarter.
Blended CAC
€6.8k
Against an €8k ceiling. Under-consumption was the goal, not scale.
Months to first SQL
7 weeks
Faster than we'd forecast. Tight ICP list did most of the work.
What didn't work

LinkedIn Message Ads, which we'd used successfully elsewhere, got almost zero traction with this ICP. We burned €4.2k testing three variants before killing the format. Sponsored Content on the same audience did all the real work. Different ICP, different format fit; we should have trusted that signal faster.

04
€30M ARR · B2B SaaS FinOps · US + DACH Retainer · 14 months Agency rebuild

Spend down 30%. Pipeline up 45%. The measurement was the problem.

Situation

Two agencies before us, €80k/mo on paid across LinkedIn + Google + Meta + Microsoft. No reliable pipeline attribution, HubSpot saw everything as "direct" or "LinkedIn" regardless of source. Previous agency had been asked to scale spend; they did, and CAC doubled quietly.

What we changed

  • Stopped every scale recommendation. Spent month 1 on measurement only.
  • Rebuilt GTM with server-side + consent mode + offline conversions
  • HubSpot-to-ad-platform sync rewired from scratch
  • Killed 4 of 7 campaigns based on actual-pipeline data

What happened

  • Real CAC was 2.3× what the previous dashboards showed
  • Cut spend from €80k/mo to €56k/mo over one quarter
  • Pipeline rose 45% year-over-year on 30% less spend
  • Attribution confidence, measured by sales + finance alignment, finally unblocked budget increases
Monthly spend
−30%
From €80k/mo to €56k/mo, holding for 8 months and counting.
Sourced pipeline
+45%
Year-over-year. First time marketing + finance agreed on the number.
Time to trusted attribution
6 weeks
From "we don't know what works" to stage-weighted, auditable attribution.
What didn't work

Meta Ads. We'd argued it was worth a 12-week test against this ICP (mid-market FinOps buyers). It wasn't. CPLs were competitive, but the pipeline it generated had a ~5% close rate vs 18% from LinkedIn. We paused it at week 10 and reallocated. Sometimes the right test is the one that tells you to stop.

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Send us rough context on your stack and pipeline target. On the call we'll tell you the top things we'd change, whether we'd take the project, and who to talk to if we're not the right answer.