A B2B startup I advised burned $400K on paid acquisition in 18 months. Spread across Google Search, LinkedIn sponsored content, two podcast networks, and a conference sponsorship that came with a booth nobody visited.
Marketing reported CPL. Sales reported garbage. The CEO reported insomnia.
This is the postmortem they should have written at month six instead of month eighteen.
The channel scorecard we finally built
Every dollar got tagged with downstream metrics — not MQLs, but:
- Demo held rate
- Opp created within 14 days
- Closed-won within 90 days (lagging, but decisive)
Paid LinkedIn drove leads. Cost per held demo: $1,240. Organic founder posts + carousels explaining implementation mistakes: cost per held demo: effectively staff time only.
Google Search worked for branded terms and 3 bottom-funnel keywords. Everything else was expensive curiosity.
What failed and why
Podcast host-read ads: Great for awareness, untraceable for pipeline. Killed after $60K.
Conference booth: $45K all-in. 22 badge scans, 2 meetings, 0 opps. Reallocated to customer dinner series.
Broad LinkedIn lead gen forms: Volume without intent. SDRs revolted.
The one channel that worked
Founder + head of customer success co-wrote weekly posts about implementation failures — specific, slightly uncomfortable, no product pitch in the body. CTA in comments. DM follow-up within 2 hours.
Not viral. Consistent. Compounding.
18-month channel kill/keep rules
- $10K test budget max before held-demo data
- Kill if held-demo rate < 25% after 60 days
- Keep if opp-to-close ≥ outbound benchmark
- Reinvest savings into what's working — don't spread evenly
Spend after the reset
Paid budget dropped to $8K/month focused on retargeting and 12 high-intent keywords. Total pipeline up 40% year-over-year because SDR time went to warm inbound, not cold lists from bad forms.
$400K taught them what not to do. The expensive part was not deciding faster.
Test small. Measure to held demo. Kill without sentiment. Double down without guilt.