Solved: Growth Agencies: Combine SEO, Ads, Outbound?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on your question about growth agencies versus specialists. It's a question we see a lot, and tbh the answer isn't as simple as one being "better" than the other, but my experience over the years points very strongly in one direction.

You're essentially trying to figure out the best way to build a reliable engine for growth, and deciding between a 'one-stop-shop' and a team of specialists is probably the most foundational decision you'll make. I'll walk you through how I think about this, why the all-in-one model is often a trap, and provide a framework for how to build a marketing function that actually works. It might be a bit of a read, but I reckon it'll be worth your time.

We'll need to look at the 'Growth Agency' Myth...

First, let's pull apart the concept of the all-in-one 'growth agency'. On the surface, it sounds brilliant. One point of contact, one invoice, one team handling everything. It seems simpler, more efficient. But in practice, it's often a recipe for mediocrity.

Think about it this way: paid advertising, particularly on platforms like Meta and Google, is an incredibly complex and fast-moving field. The algorithms change constantly. New ad formats are released. Bidding strategies evolve. To be genuinely good at it, you have to be completely immersed in it, every single day. The same is true for technical SEO. It's a deep, analytical discipline that requires constant learning to keep up with Google's updates. And outbound sales? That's a whole different skill set, rooted in sales psychology, process automation, and relentless follow-up.

An agency that claims to be an expert in all three is making an extraordinary claim. It's like finding a builder who insists he's also a world-class electrician and a chartered accountant. It's just not credible. What you usually find is an agency that has a core competency in one area (maybe they started as an SEO shop) and has bolted on the other services to increase their revenue per client. The person running your paid ads is likely an SEO specialist who's "learning on the job," or a junior account manager following a basic checklist. They lack the deep, nuanced expertise that separates a campaign that just 'spends budget' from one that drives profitable growth. We've taken over accounts from these types of agencies countless times, and it's always the same story: wasted spend, poor targeting, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the platform's mechanics.

They often spread your budget thinly across all channels to create the illusion of activity, rather than concentrating it where it will have the most impact. This lack of focus is the enemy of growth. You end up with a little bit of SEO, a few ads, and a handful of outbound emails, with none of them performing well enough to make a real difference. It’s a classic case of being a jack of all trades and a master of none, which is a very expensive way to do markiting.

I'd say you should build a team of specialists, not hire a Swiss Army knife...

The alternative is to act as the general contractor for your own growth. You hire a specialist for each specific job. You hire a dedicated paid ads agency (like us) to manage your paid channels. You hire an SEO consultant or agency for your organic search. You hire an outbound specialist for your sales development. This approach has several powerful advantages.

1. Deep Channel Mastery: A specialist lives and breathes their channel. They've seen hundreds of accounts, run thousands of tests, and spent millions in ad spend. They know the subtle patterns and nuances that a generalist will never see. For instance, in our work with B2B SaaS clients, we know that simply targeting a job title on LinkedIn isn't enough. We have to layer it with company size, industry, specific group memberships, and negative targeting to filter out the noise. We know from experience that a 'Request a Demo' call-to-action is often a conversion killer and that offering a valuable, free asset like a data-driven report or a free tool generates much higher quality leads. I remember one medical recruitment SaaS client who came to us with a Cost Per User Acquisition of £100 from a generalist agency. By focusing solely on refining their Meta and Google Ads funnels, a task requiring deep platform knowledge, we brought that CPA down to just £7. That's not magic; that's the direct result of specialisation.

2. Clear Accountability: With specialists, there's nowhere to hide. If your paid ad campaigns aren't performing, you know exactly who to talk to. The paid ads agency can't blame poor SEO, and the SEO agency can't blame the ad campaigns. Each specialist is directly responsible for the ROI of their channel. This creates a level of focus and accountability that is simply impossible in a blended model.

3. Strategic Flexibility: This model allows you to allocate budget dynamically to what's working. If you discover that paid social is driving the highest quality leads, you can instantly double down on that channel by increasing your budget with your specialist agency. In a generalist agency, your budget is often locked into a rigid retainer that covers all services, making it slow and difficult to pivot.

The key is to start small. Don't try to boil the ocean by launching on all fronts simultaneously. The most successful companies we've worked with master one customer acquisition channel first. They find a specialist, work with them to make that channel profitable and scalable, and only then do they look to open up a second front. This methodical approach is far more effective than the 'spray and pray' tactic of a generalist agency.

To help you visualise this decision-making process, here's a flowchart outlining the strategic approach I recommend:

You probably should define your customer by their nightmare, not their demographics...

Before you even think about hiring an agency, specialist or otherwise, you need to do the most important work yourself. You have to understand your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) on a level that goes far beyond demographics. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" is a useless definition. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

Instead, you need to define your customer by their pain. By their specific, urgent, career-threatening nightmare. Your customer isn't a job title; they are a person in a specific problem state.

For example, if you sell a FinOps SaaS product, your ICP isn't "a CTO at a tech company." It's "a Head of Engineering who is terrified she's going to have to tell the CEO that the AWS bill is 30% over budget again, and she has no idea why, putting her team's headcount for the next quarter at risk." See the difference? One is a sterile data point; the other is a visceral, emotional problem that demands a solution.

Once you understand this nightmare, your marketing becomes incredibly focused. Your ad copy writes itself. You don't talk about your 'cloud cost optimisation features'; you talk about 'getting a predictable AWS bill you can finally smile at'. Your targeting becomes precise. You're not just targeting 'CTOs'; you're finding them in the communities where they discuss these specific problems. Do they listen to the 'Acquired' podcast? Do they read 'Stratechery'? Are they in specific Slack communities for engineering leaders? This is the intelligence that fuels a successful paid advertising campaign. A generalist agency will never, ever go this deep. They don't have the time or the expertise. They'll plug in the job title, write some generic copy, and hope for the best. And that's why most B2B advertising fails.

You'll need to understand the math that actually matters...

The other thing that generalist agencies consistently get wrong is focusing on the wrong metrics. They'll report on vanity metrics like impressions, clicks, or even cost per lead (CPL). But a low CPL is meaningless if those leads never convert into paying customers. It's easy to get cheap leads; just run a broad campaign in a low-cost country. But those leads are worthless.

The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Once you know what a customer is worth to you, you can make intelligent decisions about how much you're willing to pay to acquire them.

Here’s the basic formula:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's walk through an example. Say you're a SaaS business:

• Your average customer pays you £500/month (ARPA).
• Your gross margin on that is 80% (after server costs, support, etc.).
• You lose 4% of your customers each month (Monthly Churn Rate).

The calculation would be: LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04 = £400 / 0.04 = £10,000.

Each customer you acquire is worth £10,000 in gross margin over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single £10,000 customer.

This single piece of information changes everything. Suddenly, a £250 lead from a highly-targeted LinkedIn campaign doesn't look expensive at all. If your sales team can convert 1 in 10 of those leads, your CAC is £2,500 – well within your profitable range. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring high-value customers. A true specialist partner will build your entire advertising strategy around these unit economics.

To make this tangible for you, I've built a small interactive calculator. Play around with your own numbers to see what your LTV and target CAC might be.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to bring it all together, my strong recommendation is to avoid the temptation of the all-in-one growth agency. The model is fundamentally flawed because true expertise requires deep specialisation. Your goal should be to build a lean, effective growth engine by hiring best-in-class specialists for the one or two channels that are most likely to work for your business right now.

Here’s the actionable plan I would follow:

Executing this framework requires a significant amount of work, expertise, and focus. It involves deep customer research, financial modelling, and the technical skill to manage complex advertising platforms. This is where partnering with a true specialist can make all the difference. An expert partner won't just 'run your ads'; they will act as a strategic extension of your team, helping you define your ICP, understand your unit economics, and build a scalable acquisition machine on your chosen platform.

If you'd like to discuss how this approach could be applied specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at what you're doing now, run through your numbers, and give you some honest, actionable advice on how a dedicated paid advertising strategy could work for you. It's a great way to get a taste of the expertise we bring to the table.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh