How to Spot a Good SEM Agency in 5 Minutes (Hint: It's Not Their Case Studies)

Most founders and marketers are hiring search engine marketing agencies for all the wrong reasons.

Beautiful case studies? Check. Great testimonials? You bet. A slick pitch deck? Absolutely.

None of that tells you if they can actually grow your business.

You can figure out if an SEM agency knows what they're doing in about five minutes. And it has nothing to do with how many logos they've got plastered on their homepage.

Why Most SaaS Companies Hire the Wrong Search Engine Marketing Agency

A SaaS company gets some funding or hits a growth plateau. They decide they need to "do paid search properly." So they start talking to marketing agencies. Review proposals. Sit through demos. Compare pricing.

Everyone promises results. Everyone has "data-driven strategies." Everyone claims to be experts in B2B SaaS.

Six months later? The campaigns are running. Money's being spent. But the CAC is higher than projected, leads aren't converting, and when you ask why, you get vague answers about "algorithm learning phases" and "market seasonality."

The problem isn't that these search engine marketing companies are incompetent. Most of them are perfectly fine at running Google Ads campaigns. But "fine" doesn't cut it in SaaS. Not when your sales cycle is three to six months. Not when one customer is worth $50K over three years.

The Case Study Trap: What Marketing Agencies Won't Tell You About Their "Success Stories"

Every digital marketing agency has case studies. Beautifully designed PDFs showing how they "increased conversions by 210%" or "reduced CPL by 45%."

That huge conversion increase? It came from fixing a broken tracking setup. Any competent analyst could've done it. The CPL drop? They paused brand campaigns and only counted non-brand. Or they changed the conversion definition to include newsletter signups instead of actual demos.

When you're evaluating SEM companies, case studies can show experience. But they're the worst way to evaluate actual capability. Context is everything in search engine marketing. Case studies strip it all away.

You don't know what the starting point was. You don't know what else was happening in that company's marketing mix.You certainly don't know what problems they had to solve along the way. If you want to dig deeper into what to actually look for when hiring a PPC marketing agency, we've covered that too.

What Separates Best SEM Agencies From the Rest (And It Takes 5 Minutes to Find Out)

After running thousands of paid search campaigns for SaaS companies, we've realized something. The best way to evaluate a search engine marketing agency isn't by looking at what they've done for others. It's by listening to how they think about your specific situation.

Red flags show up in the first conversation. Usually within five minutes.

Red Flag #1: They Lead With Vanity Metrics Instead of ROI

If an SEM agency starts talking about impressions, clicks, or conversion volume before they understand your economics, run.

None of that matters if the unit economics don't work. You can have a million impressions and a 10% CTR. But if your CAC payback period is 18 months and you're burning cash, those campaigns are actively hurting your business.

We've seen clients spend $80K with their previous agency. Great CTRs, good conversion rates on paper. But when we dug into actual revenue data, they'd closed maybe two deals from all that spend. The agency was optimizing for demo requests without understanding that most demos were from unqualified leads who'd never convert.

Focusing on vanity metrics is one of the top reasons marketing campaigns fail to deliver ROI. The best search engine marketing agencies start with questions like: What's your ACV? What's your churn? How long does it take to close a deal? What's your LTV to CAC ratio target?

At Aimers, before we even talk about campaign structure, we want to understand the whole picture. PPC doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's one marketing channel in a broader growth strategy.

Red Flag #2: Their PPC Strategy Sounds Like Everyone Else's

"We'll start with branded keywords to build momentum, then expand to competitors and high-intent terms. We'll test different ad copy variations, optimize based on performance, and scale what works."

Cool. So will literally every other agency.

The thing about search engine marketing in 2025 is that the basics are basic. Everyone knows you should bid on brand terms on search engines like Google. Everyone's running RSAs and testing landing pages. What separates top SEM agencies from the rest is understanding the nuances of your specific business model.

B2B SaaS paid search is weird. Your ideal customer might research for months before converting. They might come through PPC but convert through a sales call. They might sign up for a free trial but not activate for weeks. Search Engine Journal reports that B2B SaaS campaigns require fundamentally different approaches than e-commerce or lead gen.

When we talk to potential clients, we don't pitch generic marketing strategies. We ask about their sales process. We dig into how their product is bought, not how it's sold.

The right search engine marketing strategy for a $99/month self-serve tool is completely different from the right strategy for a $50K enterprise deal. And if a digital marketing agency doesn't get that, they're going to waste a lot of your money figuring it out.

When ShipBob came to us, their previous agency had them running the same campaigns for small businesses and enterprise customers. No segmentation. We restructured everything based on company size and use case. That's how we helped them acheive that increase in conversions.

Red Flag #3: They Can't Explain How Search Engines Actually Work in 2025

Ask them about Performance Max. Ask about broad match. Ask how they think about audience signals now that third-party cookies are dying.

If they give you a rehearsed answer that sounds like it came from a Google webinar, that's a problem. The digital marketing landscape changes constantly. What worked for paid search campaigns two years ago is outdated now. Google's own Think with Google platform publishes quarterly updates on algorithm changes and best practices. Agencies should be living in these resources.

The 3 Red Flags at a Glance:

The 5-Minute Test: Questions That Reveal If an SEM Agency Actually Knows SaaS

You're on a call with a search engine marketing agency. How do you figure out if they actually know what they're doing?

Ask About Their Approach to Paid Search Campaigns for Long Sales Cycles

This is huge for B2B SaaS.

Most SEM services are built for e-commerce or lead gen with short cycles. Someone searches, clicks, buys. Done. But in SaaS? Someone might click your ad in January. Download a whitepaper in February. Attend a webinar in March. Request a demo in April. Close in June.

A mediocre agency will talk about last-click attribution and call it a day. But the best search engine marketing services talk about the entire funnel. They'll ask about your sales team's process. They'll want to know what happens after the demo. They'll discuss how to structure campaigns differently for early-stage research versus late-stage comparison.

When we started working with Orion Labs, we didn't focus on getting more leads. We looked at the entire buyer journey. That's why we were able to increase their sales opportunity value by 4X over our engagement. We weren't driving more traffic; we were driving the right traffic at the right stage.

How They Structure SEM Strategies for Different Funnel Stages

Ask them specifically how they'd structure campaigns for awareness versus conversion.

Most agencies will nod along and say they do that. Now ask for specifics.

How would they target someone who's never heard of your product category versus someone who's comparing you to a competitor? What keywords would they use? What landing pages?

If they can't articulate this clearly, they're probably planning to dump everything into one campaign and let Google's automation "figure it out." Consider getting a PPC audit if your current agency can't explain their funnel strategy.

What They Track Beyond ROAS in Search Engine Marketing Services

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is important. But if that's the only metric an agency talks about, they don't understand SaaS.

In SaaS, the money isn't made on the first transaction. It's made on month six, twelve, twenty-four. A customer who costs $500 to acquire might be worth $50,000 over their lifetime. Or they might churn in month two and be worth $200 total.

The marketing companies that get this track activation rate by traffic source, time to value for paid versus organic leads, retention cohorts by acquisition channel, sales cycle length by keyword theme, expansion revenue by original campaign.

This is where our analytics capabilities at Aimers really matter. We track the entire customer journey. Show you exactly which campaigns are bringing in customers who stick around and grow your business.

Why Top SEM Agencies Talk About Attribution Before Creative

When we start a new engagement, we usually spend the first week or two on tracking and attribution. Not on launching campaigns. On making sure we can actually measure what matters.

You can have the most brilliant SEM marketing strategy in the world. But if you can't properly track what's working, you're flying blind.

Most digital marketing agencies treat tracking as an afterthought. They'll set up basic Google Ads conversion tracking. Maybe install a Facebook pixel. Call it done.

Six months later when you ask which campaigns are actually driving revenue, they show you a dashboard of form fills and demo requests. Nobody's connected this to actual closed deals. We've inherited accounts where companies spent $200K+ and couldn't tell you which campaigns drove a single customer.

The Litmus Test: How They Respond When You Challenge Their Recommendations

Want to know if you're dealing with real experts or order-takers?

Challenge something they say. The response tells you everything.

Do They Defend Google Ads Blindly or Discuss Marketing Channel Mix?

We've had prospective clients come to us wanting to spend their entire budget on Google Ads. Because that's what their competitors are doing.

Sometimes we tell them that's a terrible idea.

If your product is new and nobody's searching for it yet, paid search might not be your best starting point. Maybe you need to build awareness through paid social first. Maybe you need content marketing to educate the market.

We do both paid search and paid social. Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. But we're the first to admit when something else might work better. Our job isn't to run ads. It's to help you grow efficiently.

Most agencies are incentivized to spend more on the channels they manage. More spend equals higher fees. But that creates a conflict of interest.

Can They Articulate When SEM and PPC Aren't the Right Solution?

Ask them: when would you recommend NOT doing paid search?

If they can't give you a clear answer, they're salespeople, not strategists. There are plenty of situations where search engine marketing doesn't make sense. Your product is so new the market doesn't know to search for it. Your conversion funnel is broken and no amount of traffic will fix it. You haven't figured out product-market fit yet.

At Aimers, we've turned away potential clients because paid acquisition wasn't the right answer for them at that stage. We've written about warning signs you've partnered with the wrong agency. One of them is agencies that can't say no.

What Digital Marketing Experts Actually Focus On (Instead of Polished Decks)

Data Infrastructure and Tracking Capabilities

This is boring. It's not sexy. But it's where the real work happens.

We're talking about proper event tracking. Server-side conversion tracking. CRM integration. Attribution modeling. When we onboarded Originality.AI, we spent the first month rebuilding their entire tracking setup. Not glamorous. But it meant that when we increased their Google Ads sales by 100%, we could prove it with data.

This is the foundation everything else is built on. Without it, you're guessing. You can use tools like our Google Ads optimization checklist to audit your current setup.

Cross-Channel Integration Between Paid Search and Content Marketing

Most SEM companies miss this. Paid search doesn't work in isolation.

Marketing rarely fails because of low traffic. The real leak is often deeper in the funnel. We've seen companies spending thousands on ads, getting decent traffic, but their landing pages convert at 0.5% when they should be converting at 5% or higher.

The SEM agencies that get results work with your content team (or they have landing page design and conversion optimization capabilities themselves). WordStream's benchmark data shows that landing page quality can impact conversion rates by 200-300%.

What's the point of spending $50 to get someone to your site if your landing page converts at 0.5% when it could convert at 5%?We've seen companies fix their landing pages and double their conversion rate without changing their ad strategy at all.

Even the best ad campaign can't save a broken landing page or bad analytics.

How They Approach Search Engine Marketing Strategies for SaaS Companies

SaaS is different. So many marketing agencies don't get it.

In SaaS, you're not selling a one-time purchase. You're selling a relationship. The best customer isn't the one who converts fastest. It's the one who stays longest.

The search engine marketing agencies that excel in SaaS optimize for customer lifetime value, not acquisition cost alone. They think about activation. Retention. Expansion.

When we worked with Mixpanel, we weren't just focused on getting more leads through Google Ads. We were extremely detailed about campaign management and analysis. Tracking which campaigns brought in leads that actually converted to paying customers, which had the fastest time-to-value, which customer segments had the best retention.

The Team Behind the Pitch: Why Your Point of Contact Matters More Than the Agency Brand

The person pitching you probably isn't the person who'll manage your campaigns.

This is super common in digital marketing agencies. Especially the big ones. The senior strategist with 15 years of experiance sells you. Then your account gets handed to a junior coordinator who's managing 20 other clients.

At Aimers, we're transparent about our team structure. The people you meet in the sales process are the same people who'll be in your Slack channel every week.

When you're evaluating SEM agencies, ask directly: Who will actually be working on my account day-to-day? What's their experience? Can I talk to them before signing?

If an agency won't let you meet the actual team, that's a red flag.

Real Talk: What Best Search Engine Marketing Agencies Cost (And Why Cheap SEM Services Are Expensive)

You're going to see a huge range when you talk to different agencies. Some will pitch you $2K/month management fees. Others will be $15K plus.

Usually, it comes down to three things: experience and expertise, level of service, and what's included.

An agency that's spent years figuring out SaaS-specific strategies is worth more than one that treats you like any other client. We've worked with companies from early-stage startups to public companies like Mixpanel.

When ShipBob said we had "the strongest project management they've seen across different vendors," it wasn't about being organized. It was about being proactive, treating their success as our success.

Some agencies only do campaign management. Others (like us) include analytics, landing page optimization, creative testing, conversion rate optimization.

The Real Cost of "Cheap" SEM Services:

Cheap SEM services are expensive in the long run. If you're spending $20K/month on ads with a mediocre agency, and they're 30% less efficient than a great agency, you're losing $6K/month in wasted ad spend. That's $72K/year.

Quick Decision Framework: Should You Keep Looking or Move Forward?

Your 5-Minute Agency Evaluation Checklist:

You don't need months to evaluate if an agency is right for you. You really can figure it out in a 30-minute conversation if you know what to listen for. For more guidance, check out our ultimate guide to hiring a SaaS digital marketing agency.

Ready to Talk Strategy?

Spend 30 minutes talking to us. Ask us the hard questions. Challenge our thinking. We'd rather you challenge us and decide we're not a fit than have you sign up and regret it later.

We work with SaaS companies across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Our clients stick around because we're good at what we do. Detailed campaign management, proactive optimization, obsessive tracking of what actually matters.

If you're wondering where your ad budget is silently leaking, or if you just want an honest assessment, reach out to us. No obligations, no pressure.

Or check out our case studies to see how we've helped other SaaS companies, and reach out when you're ready.