SaaS Growth: The Founder's Paid Acquisition Guide

Most advice on SaaS growth is theoretical nonsense. It’s a mix of buzzwords like 'growth hacking' and vague platitudes about 'building community'. For a founder trying to turn investment into actual, paying customers, it's completely useless. You're not trying to win a marketing award; you're trying to build a business that doesn't run out of cash. The truth is, sustainable growth isn't about hacks. It's about a ruthless, systematic process of identifying who feels a specific pain, understanding how much solving that pain is worth, and then paying to get in front of them with an offer they can't ignore.

This isn't a high-level overview. This is a practical, step-by-step guide on how to build a paid acquisition engine for your SaaS business, based on what actually works. We'll cover the maths, the messaging, the platforms, and how to scale without setting your money on fire. Let's get started.

So, what's their actual nightmare?

Before you spend a single pound on an ad, you need to throw out your traditional Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). "Head of Sales at a tech firm with 50-200 employees" is a description, not an ICP. It tells you nothing about their problems, their fears, or what keeps them awake at night. It leads to generic ads that get ignored.

Your real ICP is a nightmare. A specific, urgent, and expensive problem. Your job is to become the world's leading expert on that nightmare. For example:

• Your target isn't a 'Head of Engineering'. It's a manager who is terrified her best two developers are about to quit because their deployment pipeline is a chaotic mess of manual scripts and failed builds. The nightmare is losing top talent and derailing the product roadmap.
• You don't sell to 'General Counsels'. You sell to a partner at a law firm who just had a panic attack because a junior associate nearly missed a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit. The nightmare is professional ruin and reputational damage.
• You're not targeting 'CFOs'. You're targeting a finance director who has to present cash flow projections to the board next week and knows, deep down, that their spreadsheet is a house of cards built on guesswork. The nightmare is looking incompetent in front of the people who control their career.

Once you've identified this problem state, everything else falls into place. Your ad copy writes itself. Your targeting becomes precise. You're no longer selling software; you're selling a solution to a painful, expensive problem. This is the foundation. If you get this wrong, nothing else matters. You need to find out where these people congregate online. What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Which industry newsletters (like Stratechery) do they actually read? Are they in specific Slack communities or following certain influencers on LinkedIn? This is where your ads need to be. Do this work first.

How much can you afford to pay for a nightmare?

The next mistake I see founders make is obsessing over a low Cost Per Lead (CPL). A cheap lead is often a worthless lead. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a customer who is actually worth something?" The answer lies in calculating your Lifetime Value (LTV).

This simple calculation changes everything. It's the difference between timidly testing ads with a tiny budget and confidently investing in scalable growth. Here are the components:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much revenue does a typical customer bring in each month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold). For SaaS, this is often very high, around 80-95%.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers cancel their subscription each month?

The formula is straightforward: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate.

Let's run an example. Say your ARPA is £250, your gross margin is 90%, and your monthly churn is 5%.
LTV = (£250 * 0.90) / 0.05 = £225 / 0.05 = £4,500.

Each customer you sign up is worth £4,500 in gross margin over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,500 (£4,500 / 3) to acquire a single new customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 5 qualified trials into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £300 for a single trial signup.

Suddenly that £100 CPL from Google Ads doesn't look so expensive anymore, does it? It looks like a profitable investment. This maths is what separates businesses that scale from those that stagnate. Use the calculator below to figure out your own numbers.

Why your 'Request a Demo' button is a conversion killer

Now that you know who you're targeting and what they're worth, you need an offer. And this is where 90% of B2B SaaS companies fail spectacularly. The "Request a Demo" button is the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action in marketing. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, wants to schedule a meeting to be subjected to a sales pitch. It's a huge commitment with very little immediate value for them.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. For SaaS, you have an incredible advantage here.

• The Gold Standard: Free Trial (No Card). Let them use the actual product. Let them connect their data, invite a colleague, and experience the 'before and after' transformation for themselves. When the product proves its own value, the sale becomes a simple upgrade. This creates Product Qualified Leads (PQLs), not Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) that your sales team has to chase.
• The Next Best Thing: Freemium. Give away a core part of your product for free, forever. This lowers the barrier to entry to zero and builds a user base you can later upsell. Think Slack, HubSpot, or Trello.

If you can't offer a trial or freemium plan, you are not exempt from providing value. You must package your expertise into a high-value asset. For a data analytics platform, this could be a free 'Data Health Check'. For us, as an agency, it’s a free 20-minute strategy call where we audit a company's ad accounts and give them actionable advice. You must solve a small piece of their nightmare for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. A great landing page is also critical; you can't just throw up a form and expect results. It needs persuasive copy and a clear design focused entirely on driving that one action, which is why we've put together a comprehensive guide on landing page optimization to help you convert more visitors.

Which ad platform should you use?

With a clear nightmare, your LTV calculated, and an irresistible offer, it's finally time to think about platforms. For most B2B SaaS businesses, the choice comes down to two main players: Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads. They serve very different purposes.

Google Ads is for capturing demand. You target people who are already aware they have a problem and are actively searching for a solution. Think keywords like "best accounting software for small business" or "crm for creative agencies". The intent is incredibly high, but the volume can be limited, and it can be expensive. This is usually the best place to start because you are fishing in a barrel of problem-aware buyers.

LinkedIn Ads is for creating demand. You target specific people based on their job title, company, industry, and seniority. You're interrupting their day with a message about a problem they might not even know they have, or one they haven't prioritised solving yet. It's less direct but can be incredibly powerful for reaching niche decision-makers you can't find anywhere else. I remember one campaign we worked on that brought in B2B leads for just $22 CPL for a software client.

The choice isn't always obvious, and often a combination of both is the right strategy. For a more detailed breakdown, you might want to look at our guide on the pros and cons of Google Ads vs LinkedIn for B2B. To help you decide where to begin, use this simple flowchart.

How to win on Google Ads for your SaaS

If people are searching for what you do, Google Ads should be your first port of call. It's the most direct path from problem to solution. But it's also a competitive space, especially in competitive markets. You can't just throw money at broad keywords and hope for the best.

Your strategy needs to be built on intent. Don't just target "project management software". That's too broad and expensive. You'll be competing with giants like Asana and Monday.com. Instead, focus on the nightmare. Target long-tail keywords that show specific, urgent pain. For example:

• "software to track developer time"
• "how to manage client feedback on designs"
• "zapier alternative for financial data"
• "secure document sharing for law firms"

These searchers aren't just browsing; they have a problem they need to solve *now*. Your ad and landing page must speak directly to that exact problem. The ad headline should mirror their search query, and the landing page should immediately confirm that you solve their specific pain. For founders, getting this right is critical. We've found that a well-structured campaign can be incredibly effective, which is why we put together a complete guide to generating leads for UK B2B SaaS with Google Ads.

A common mistake is to lump all keywords into one campaign and ad group. This is lazy and ineffective. You should structure your campaigns thematically around the 'nightmares' you solve. Each ad group should contain a very tight-knit group of keywords and ads that are hyper-relevant to each other. This improves your Quality Score, which lowers your cost-per-click (CPC) and improves your ad position.

For one software client, we ran Google Ads campaigns that brought in 3,543 users at a cost of just £0.96 per user. This was achieved by focusing obsessively on high-intent keywords and matching them with highly relevant landing pages. That's the level of precision required to succeed.

Mastering LinkedIn Ads: The surgical strike

While Google is about capturing existing demand, LinkedIn is about precisely targeting individuals to create new demand. This is your tool for reaching the exact Head of Engineering at fintech startups or the specific partners at law firms. The targeting capabilities are unmatched for B2B.

You can target based on:

• Company: Target specific company names, industries (e.g., 'Financial Services'), or company sizes.
• Job Title: Target specific titles like 'Chief Technology Officer' or 'Head of Marketing'.
• Skills & Groups: Target people with specific skills listed on their profile or who are members of relevant industry groups.

However, with great power comes great cost. LinkedIn is expensive. Clicks can easily cost £5-£15 or more. This is why your LTV calculation is so important—it gives you the confidence to spend that much, knowing the potential return. It also means you cannot afford to send this expensive traffic to a generic homepage with a 'Request a Demo' button. Your offer must be exceptionally good.

Video ads and Sponsored Content work best. A short, punchy video that outlines the nightmare and presents your solution can be very effective. I also recomend testing LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. These pre-fill a user's information from their profile, making it incredibly easy for them to convert. The leads can sometimes be lower quality than those who fill out a form on your website, but the lower CPL often makes it worth testing. We've seen this work incredibly well; for example, we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each for a B2B software client using Meta Ads, and the principle is the same for LinkedIn's native forms. The goal is to reduce friction as much as possible.

The key is to run lots of small, targeted experiments. Don't create one massive campaign targeting every CTO in the country. Create seperate, smaller campaigns targeting CTOs in the finance sector, another for CTOs in SaaS, and so on. Test different ad copy and creative for each. It's more work upfront, but it's the only way to find pockets of profitability that you can then scale. For more advanced strategies, our founder's playbook to B2B paid social covers these tactics in more detail.

The "Brand Awareness" trap that drains your budget

A quick word of warning. You will be tempted, especially on platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram), to run 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach' campaigns. The platform will promise you thousands of impressions for a very low cost. It feels like you're getting your name out there. This is a trap.

When you select "Brand Awareness" as your objective, you are giving the algorithm a specific instruction: "Find me the cheapest possible eyeballs within my target audience." The algorithm, being very good at its job, will seek out the users who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and definately least likely to ever buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason. You are paying to reach the worst possible segment of your audience.

For a startup or scale-up, brand awareness is a byproduct of performance, not a prerequisite for it. The best awareness you can get is a customer who switches from a competitor to your product and loves it. That only happens when you run campaigns optimised for conversions—trials, sign-ups, leads. Always, always optimise for the action you actually want someone to take. Let the awareness be a happy side effect of acquiring actual customers.

What to do when you can't scale further

At some point, you'll hit a plateau. You've found a profitable channel, but you can't seem to increase spend without your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) skyrocketing. This is normal. You've likely saturated the core segment of your most active, problem-aware audience. Scaling beyond this requires a more sophisticated approach.

First, look at your funnel. Can you improve your landing page conversion rate? Even a small bump from 3% to 4% is a 33% increase in leads from the same traffic and ad spend. Can you improve your trial-to-paid conversion rate? Better onboarding emails, in-app guides, or a sales-assist touch can dramatically increase the value of each trial you generate. This effectively allows you to pay more per trial and still be profitable.

Second, get more aggressive with creative testing. You need to find new messaging angles to appeal to different segments of your audience. If your initial ads focused on 'saving time', test a new set that focuses on 'reducing errors' or 'improving team collaboration'. We've had several SaaS clients see fantastic results from user-generated content (UGC) style videos—short testimonials or simple screen recordings from happy customers. They feel more authentic and can often outperform slick, high-production videos.

Third, it might be time to expand to a new platform. If you've maxed out high-intent search on Google, it's time to build a demand generation engine on LinkedIn. You've already proven your offer resonates with a core group; now you need to introduce it to a wider audience. This is how you build a multi-channel growth engine that isn't reliant on a single source of traffic.

Do you need an agency? How to vet expert help

As you scale, you might consider bringing in expert help. The agency scene is crowded and noisy. Choosing the right partner can be the difference between accelerated growth and wasted budget. When vetting an agency, ignore the flashy presentations and focus on three things:

1. Relevant Case Studies: Have they worked with B2B SaaS companies before? Specifically, have they worked with companies at a similar stage to yours, targeting a similar audience? Ask to see detailed case studies. For example, we're proud of our work reducing a medical SaaS client's CPA from £100 down to just £7, or generating 5,082 software trials for another client on Meta Ads. This kind of specific, relevant proof is what you should be looking for.
2. Deep Platform Expertise: Do they sound like they truly understand the nuances of the platforms you need? Ask them specific, tricky questions. "How would you approach building a lookalike audience for a low-volume conversion event?" or "What's your strategy for structuring a Google Ads campaign for a niche SaaS product?" Their answers will quickly reveal if they have real, hands-on experience or if they're just repeating generic advice. Finding a good paid ads consultant means finding someone who can answer these questions confidently.
3. The Initial Consultation: A good agency should offer a free initial call or audit. This is your chance to get a taste of their expertise. They should ask smart questions about your business, your customers, and your goals. They should provide some initial, valuable insights, not just a hard sales pitch. We always offer a free strategy review for this very reason—it builds trust and demonstrates our capability from day one. If you're looking for a specific type of agency, like a SaaS Google Ads agency in London, there are many to choose from, so this initial vetting process is absolutely crucial.

Don't be swayed by proximity. An agency down the road with no SaaS experience is far less valuable than a specialist agency who lives and breathes B2B software growth. Focus on expertise over post code. For founders, our guide to vetting B2B paid ad agencies provides a more detailed checklist.

Building a predictable, scalable growth engine for a SaaS business is a methodical process, not a series of lucky guesses. It starts with a deep, almost obsessive understanding of your customer's most painful problem. From there, it's about doing the maths to understand what a customer is worth, crafting an offer that provides immediate value, and then systematically testing channels and messages to find what works. There are no shortcuts. But by following this framework, you move from gambling on marketing to making calculated investments in growth.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing this framework takes discipline and a willingness to be data-driven. If you're a SaaS founder and you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your current strategy, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation where we'll audit your campaigns and provide actionable advice. Feel free to get in touch to schedule yours.