Paid Ads
Meta, Google, and LinkedIn. Demand capture at the mid-market tier and brand reach where direct sales cannot quickly touch.
The Three Primary Channels
Google Ads (Search)
Buyers actively searching for compliance solutions. Mid-market and enterprise procurement.
Most predictable paid channel. High intent, high CPC. Always pair with retargeting.
LinkedIn Ads
Safety, EHS, compliance, and fleet titles in our ICP. Premium audience precision.
Retargeting earns the budget. Seed with thought leadership, retarget engaged accounts with conversion offers.
Meta (Facebook + Instagram)
Brand familiarity. Retargeting LinkedIn and SEO visitors. Reaching prosumer audiences on personal accounts.
Use for retargeting and brand presence, not direct demand capture.
Retargeting (Display + Social)
10% of paid budget. Highest ROAS because it re-engages organic, LinkedIn, and direct traffic.
YouTube (Pre-roll + In-stream)
Year 2 onward. Cheap awareness, hard to attribute. Low CPM.
Programmatic / DSP
Out of scope until LinkedIn and direct ABM are saturated.
Google Ads: Three-Campaign Structure
Search ads only. Display, YouTube, and Performance Max campaigns burn budget on impressions rather than high-intent clicks and are excluded. Three separate campaigns keep targeting and learnings isolated.
High-intent regulatory queries
Buyers actively trying to understand a specific CFR section, OSHA standard, or FMCSA rule. They have a problem in front of them right now. Phrase and exact match only. Each high-volume regulatory query gets its own dedicated landing page that mirrors the search.
Competitor and category queries
Buyers researching the category or comparing options. Includes generic terms like compliance management software and competitor brand names (allowed in bidding, not in ad copy). Separate landing page positioned for the SMB-to-mid-market segment so we don't bleed budget on enterprise EHS shoppers.
Industry-specific searches
Buyers who already know which agency regulates them and search by vertical (construction, trucking, oil and gas, healthcare, etc.). Lower volume than generic terms, higher qualification because the buyer self-segmented.
Match types: phrase and exact only. Never broad match. Test 15-20 keywords per campaign. After 30 days, kill the bottom half and double down on top performers.
Universal Negative Keywords
Add these as negative keywords across every Google Ads campaign before launch. They attract students, job seekers, training shoppers, and bargain hunters, none of whom are buyers.
LinkedIn Audience Targeting
The biggest LinkedIn mistake is layering too many filters. The platform requires minimum audience sizes; over-filtering creates audiences that cannot be reached. Use 2 to 3 filters maximum.
LinkedIn matches title strings exactly. Include all variations.
- 51 to 200 employees
- 201 to 500 employees
- 501 to 1,000 employees
Skip 1 to 50 (too small to support the ACV) and 1,000+ (better served by direct sales than paid).
Resulting audience target: roughly 80,000 to 150,000 in the US.
Use 2 to 3 audience filters maximum
LinkedIn requires minimum audience sizes. Over-filtering creates audiences that cannot be reached and burns the campaign before it starts.
Confirm audience size is at least 50,000 before launch
Below this, daily delivery is unstable and learnings are statistically thin.
Disable audience expansion and the LinkedIn Audience Network
Both broaden delivery in ways that do not benefit B2B compliance targeting. Keep the audience tight.
Use manual CPC, not auto-bid, until volume is established
Auto-bid needs significant conversion volume to optimize. At experimental and validated spend, manual CPC keeps cost discipline.
LinkedIn Ad Format Reference
Not every ad format is worth running. Discipline here saves budget before the first dollar is spent.
| Format | When and why |
|---|---|
| Sponsored content (single image) | Daily driver for cold audiences. Best CTR-to-cost ratio on LinkedIn. |
| Document ads | Lead-gen offers (PDF reports, guides) for warm and retargeting audiences. Auto-fills LinkedIn profile data, lower friction than form fills. |
| Conversation ads | Sponsored InMail-style messages for retargeting only. Higher engagement but expensive per delivered message. |
| Video ads | Expensive and low engagement for B2B compliance category. Video belongs on YouTube and the website, not in LinkedIn paid placements. |
| Text ads | Display-only on LinkedIn. Low CTR. Budget better spent on sponsored content. |
| Dynamic ads | Better for hiring than product marketing. Skip. |
A/B Testing Priority Order
Pick one variable per campaign per test. Run two ad variants with everything else identical. Test in this order to extract the most signal early.
Pain hook in the headline
Test variations: regulation-specific (cite a CFR), outcome-focused (audit pass), or data-focused (real enforcement context). Run on Google high-intent campaigns first.
Industry-specific vs. generic landing pages
Send half of vertical-driven traffic to industry-specific landing pages, half to a generic page. Industry-specific pages typically convert 30-50% better. Confirms whether the LP-per-vertical investment pencils out.
Free trial vs. demo request as the CTA
Older safety managers often prefer Schedule a Demo. Younger buyers prefer Start Free Trial. Test on LinkedIn first because the audience skews toward established titles.
Annual vs. monthly pricing displayed on the LP
Annual default usually wins on conversion and on cash flow. Test both on the same product to confirm.
Metrics Thresholds
The pass / fail bands for paid acquisition. Below these, kill the campaign or fix the issue. Above these, scale spend.
| Metric | Target | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per trial signup | Under $80 | The single most important metric at experimental and validated phases. Above this, the channel is not pulling its weight. |
| Trial -> paid (Google) | 10-15% | Higher than LinkedIn because intent is higher. Below 10% indicates a product or onboarding problem, not an ad problem. |
| Trial -> paid (LinkedIn) | 4-8% | Lower than Google by design. Audience is colder; trial is the first time many of them experience the product. |
| CPC by keyword / audience | Kill anything 2x above campaign average | The fastest way to free up budget for what is working. |
| Ad CTR (Google search) | 1% or higher | Below 1% means the ad copy or keyword match is wrong. Pause the ad, do not just lower the bid. |
| Ad CTR (LinkedIn sponsored content) | 0.5% or higher | LinkedIn baseline is lower than Google because audience is broader within targeted titles. |
Vanity metrics deprioritized at low budgets: impressions, reach, CTR alone without conversion context, Quality Score (noisy at low keyword volume).
Conversion Tracking Checklist
Set up before launching any campaign. Without this, paid spend attribution is guesswork and budget reallocation decisions are blind.
- Google Analytics 4 installed sitewide before any campaign launches
- LinkedIn Insight Tag installed on every page
- Google Ads conversion tracking with trial signup as the primary conversion event
- LinkedIn Ads conversion tracking with trial signup as the primary conversion event
- UTM parameters on every paid link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content)
- Cross-channel attribution dashboard combining Google Ads, LinkedIn, organic SEO, and direct
- Server-side conversion tracking via Google Tag Manager (more accurate as iOS and Safari restrict client-side)
- Conversion definitions agreed across marketing and sales (what counts as a qualified trial vs. a lead)
Paid Spend Trajectory (36 months)
Spend ramps on signal, not calendar. $5K/campaign/month is reached only after other channels are funding it.
Test signal across all channels before scaling.
Scale what worked. Kill what didn't. LP A/B testing at scale.
Sustained spend on proven channels. Weekly optimization.
Reached only after government, direct sales, and SEO are funding it. Paid scales last.
~$465K total paid spend across 36 months.
Where paid works, and where it does not
Paid works when LTV:CAC is above 3:1 and CAC payback is under 12 months.
| Tier | % of paid | Mo. at peak | ARPU | CAC | LTV | LTV : CAC | Payback | Works? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-market | 60% | ~58 | $6K/yr | ~$1,500 | ~$24K | 16 : 1 | 3 months | |
| SMB | 30% | ~29 | $600/yr | ~$400 | ~$2.4K | 6 : 1 | 8 months | |
| Prosumer | 10% | ~10 | $120/yr | ~$200 | ~$340 | 1.7 : 1 | 20 months | |
| Enterprise | (rare) | minimal | $60K/yr | varies | ~$240K+ | n/a | n/a |
Mid-market
Sweet spot. CAC payback under 90 days. Paid earns its budget here.
SMB
Works with tight LP conversion (3%+) and tight targeting.
Prosumer
Loses money. Acquire prosumer through SEO and product-led signup, not paid.
Enterprise
Enterprise rarely closes from paid. Government contracts and direct sales close it. Paid may surface a name.
Do not run paid ads at the prosumer tier.
$200 CAC to win a $10/month customer who may churn at month five loses money. Prosumer comes from SEO and product-led signup, not paid.
What paid does for every other channel
Retargeting lifts SEO
Every organic visitor becomes a retargeting cookie. More SEO traffic = higher paid retargeting ROAS.
LinkedIn ads warm cold email
Accounts that saw LinkedIn ads reply at 2-3x the rate to follow-on cold email.
Paid feeds LP A/B testing
LP testing needs volume to reach significance. Paid provides it. Every LP win lifts every channel.
Branded search lifts organic
Paid awareness drives branded searches that convert at 2-3x non-branded.
Sales gets warmer leads
Reps can reference paid touchpoints in cold outbound. Shorter hand-off.
- Paid media manager (in-house or agency)
- LP A/B testing program with conversion tracking
- Creative production cadence (ad copy + visuals weekly)
- Weekly optimization rhythm (kill losers, scale winners)
- UTM and CRM attribution wired end to end
- Monthly cohort tracking by channel and tier
- LTV calculation refreshed quarterly
- Budget reallocation discipline based on cost per qualified lead