Early-stage marketing has one job: find out who pays, through which channel, and at what cost, before the money runs out. Much of what a digital marketing agency for startups gets hired to do, such as a brand refresh, a content calendar or a twelve-page website, can wait until that question has an answer. We run small, dated tests across ads, landing pages and cold email, and report what a paying customer costs, set against the runway you have left.
- For founders with a product someone has already paid for, and a runway measured in months.
- Two channels on small budgets with end dates, judged on paying customers, not clicks.
- A landing page per offer before a full website, so the message is tested before the build.
- Tracking live before the first dollar of ad spend.
- Cold email for B2B and SaaS founders who can name the companies they want.
- Monthly services run $500-$2,000 a month, month-to-month. Landing pages run $1,200-$2,500.
Where startup marketing burns runway
- Clicks and signups, no revenue. Campaigns told to find the cheapest click or signup, so they found people who click and sign up.
- Five channels, no answers. A small budget split so many ways that no test reaches enough results to read.
- A polished website, few customers. Months spent on the site before anyone checked whether the message sells.
- No idea what a customer costs. Tracking added in month three, so the first months of spend tell you nothing.
- A contract longer than the runway. A year-long retainer signed by a company that plans in quarters.
First, is there something to sell?
An agency is the wrong spend before anyone has paid you. Ads and outreach amplify demand that exists; they can't tell you why it doesn't. Until someone buys, the better experiment is the founder: talk to 20 potential buyers, sell the first few by hand, and note the words they use for the problem. Those words become the first ads. Once a handful of customers have paid a real price, the job changes from proving the product to finding more buyers like them.
What we do for startups
- Landing pages. You need to test an offer this month, not launch a website next quarter.
- Meta ads. Buyers won't search for a product they don't know exists, and you need to learn which message makes them stop.
- Google Ads. People already search for the problem you solve, and you want to know what a sale costs from that intent.
- Cold email for SaaS. You sell software to businesses and need demos or trial starts from a defined list.
- SEO and AI search visibility. The message is proven, and you want demand that keeps arriving after ad spend stops.
Cold email has setup rules of its own. Google's sender guidelines ask every sender to set up SPF or DKIM and keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%, so outreach goes from separate sending domains, never the one your customers and investors write to.
How a startup test runs
Write down the bet
Who buys, what they pay, and what a customer is worth in gross margin over the first year. That last number caps what you can pay to acquire one.
Tracking before spend
The event that matters, a purchase, a trial start or a booked demo, reports to the ad platforms on day one, with tagged links everywhere, cold email included.
One page per offer
A headline that continues the ad, one action, and two versions of the message rather than ten.
Two channels, fixed dates
Search if buyers look for the problem, Meta if they don't, cold email if you can name the companies, each with a budget and an end date.
Optimize for what the budget can reach
Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. A small budget rarely buys 50 sales a week, so early campaigns may optimize for the step closest to a sale, while we still judge them on sales. Link clicks vs the sales objective explains why the cheapest click is the wrong target.
Read it against runway, then build
The losing test stops and the winner gets more budget in steps. A fuller website, SEO and AI search visibility come once the message is proven, written around what already converts.
CAC only means something next to runway
An illustration, not a benchmark: a SaaS customer pays $100 a month at 80% gross margin, so each returns $80 a month. At a $480 acquisition cost, payback takes six months. With 18 months of runway that's comfortable. With seven, only customers bought in the first month have repaid by the end. Same CAC, opposite answer, which is why we report payback in months next to cost per customer.
Proof: what we can show
We haven't published a startup case study, and we won't borrow one. Two published pieces are relevant, labeled for what they are:
- A climbing gym, not a startup. Its Meta account had run on a link click objective and never reported a sale. With purchase tracking in first, cost per booking went from £28.82 to £5.13 on essentially the same budget. Over ten months it tested 118 creatives across 34 campaigns.
- Our own cold email platform. The system our cold email work runs on: verification just before each batch sends, one suppression list across every campaign, replies threaded back to the lead. It's our software, not client work, and publishes no sending, reply or meeting figures.
What it costs
| Service | Price | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Ads management (Google, Facebook or Instagram) | $500-$2,000 a month | Month-to-month, no setup fee, ad spend paid straight to the platform |
| SEO and AI search visibility | $500-$2,000 a month | Month-to-month, no long-term contract |
| Website, landing page or store build | $1,200-$15,000, fixed price | Agreed in writing; 50% to begin, balance on delivery |
| Cold email outreach | $500-$2,000 a month | Month-to-month, no setup fee |
| Landing page for a test | $1,200-$2,500, fixed price | Copy, build and tracking included |
Entry plans start at $500 a month. Full details are on our pricing page.
Who we're not for
- Ideas nobody has paid for yet.
- Founders who want a brand campaign or a follower count before a sales number.
- Runways that can't fund ad spend alongside a fee. A landing page and cold email you send yourself is the better spend, and we'll tell you so.
Guides for founders
- Digital marketing agency pricing: what ads, SEO and email cost by business size
- How much does a landing page cost?: builders, freelancers, agencies and custom builds
- Link clicks vs the sales objective: why a cheaper click can mean a costlier customer
- Meta Conversions API setup: server-side tracking in plain English
- How to get recommended by AI search: being named by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini
Questions founders ask a marketing agency
What does a digital marketing agency for startups do?
It finds out which channel and which message bring paying customers at a cost the runway can carry, then puts more money behind the answer: landing pages, small paid tests, cold email for B2B, and tracking from day one.
When should a startup hire a marketing agency?
After people have paid for the product at a real price. Before that, a founder selling by hand learns faster and spends less.
How much should a startup spend on marketing?
Work back from what a customer is worth in gross margin, how fast you need that money back, and how many months of cash you have. That sets a ceiling per customer. The test budget is whatever reaches a readable result on one or two channels.
Which channel should a startup test first?
Google Ads if buyers already search for the problem. Meta ads if they have the problem but don't know your kind of product exists. Cold email if you sell to businesses you can name. Two at a time is usually the limit.
Do you work with B2B and SaaS startups?
Yes. For software and B2B services, cold email to a defined list is often the quickest way to learn whether a message lands, because every reply tells you something.
Do we need a full website before running ads?
No. One landing page per offer, with tracking, is enough to start. The full site comes once you know what to say on it.
Do you require a long contract?
No. Monthly services are month-to-month with no setup fee, and builds are fixed-price. Your plan will change every quarter, and a contract shouldn't outlive it.
Want to know which channel deserves your next month of runway? Book a strategy call and bring two numbers: what a customer is worth to you, and how much cash is set aside to find them.