B2B software is sold to committees, over months, with a free trial somewhere in the middle that looks like a conversion and often is not. That single fact reshapes every marketing decision: which events are worth counting, how audiences are built, what content has to do, and how an agency should be judged. Before comparing suppliers it is worth being clear about what the platforms can actually measure and what they require of an audience, because both are published, and both quietly rule out several of the plans that get pitched to early-stage software companies.
Measurement first, because everything else depends on it
Google Ads describes conversion tracking as the way to see which keywords, ads and campaigns drive valuable customer activity, and supports four kinds: website actions, app activity, phone calls and offline conversions imported from sales that happened away from the site. For software with a sales-assisted motion, that last category is the important one, because it is how a closed contract in one quarter gets attributed to a click in a previous one. It also feeds automated bidding, which optimises toward whatever you told it to value. Count a trial signup as the goal and the system will buy trials, including the ones that never become customers, which is the most common expensive mistake in this category.
Audience floors most early-stage plans ignore
List-based targeting has published minimums. Google's Customer Match requires a list to hold at least 100 members added or updated within the last 540 days to stay eligible, and works across Search, the Shopping tab, YouTube, Gmail and Display. LinkedIn's company list targeting requires an upload of at least 300 rows and a match of at least 300 accounts before a campaign can run, caps a list at 20 MB or 300,000 companies, and warns that audience generation can take up to 48 hours. A company with two hundred named targets cannot run them as a standalone paid audience anywhere. That does not kill the plan; it means the plan has to run through search intent, content and outreach instead.
Content that a search engine will surface and a buyer will use
Google's guidance on helpful content asks who made the material, how it was made, including whether generative tools were involved, and why it exists. It names trust as the most important element, supported by experience, expertise and authoritativeness, and it warns directly against content produced mainly to attract search visits or to summarise other people's work without adding value. For software marketing the practical test is whether a page could only have been written by someone who has run the product or the process it describes. Documentation, implementation detail, integration specifics and honest comparison pages pass that test; generic thought leadership rarely does.
Judging an agency on the right scoreboard
Ask any candidate which events it proposes to count, who will implement the tracking, and whether it will report on qualified pipeline or on form fills. Ask what happens to reporting when the sales cycle outruns the contract term, because a nine-month cycle on a six-month retainer means the agency will be judged on leading indicators whether or not anyone agreed to that. Ask for read-only access during an audit rather than handing over write access to ad accounts, and keep ownership of the accounts, the audience lists and the tracking configuration in your own name. Refuse guaranteed pipeline numbers; they depend on your pricing, your sales team and your buyers.
Questions people ask about b2b saas marketing
What should a B2B SaaS agency be measured on?
Events you agreed in advance, tied to revenue rather than to activity. Google Ads supports importing offline conversions so that sales closed away from the site can be credited to campaigns; without that import, reporting stops at the trial signup and the agency is judged on the wrong number.
Can an agency guarantee a number of qualified leads?
Not honestly. Advertising platforms sell delivery, not outcomes, and qualification depends on your own definition and sales process. A credible agency forecasts a range with stated assumptions and agrees what happens if the assumptions prove wrong.
Do we need account lists to run account-based campaigns?
For the paid layer, yes, and they have to clear published floors: at least 300 rows matching at least 300 accounts on LinkedIn, and at least 100 active members for Google Customer Match. Smaller target lists have to be worked through search, content and direct outreach.
Should we invest in content or ads first?
Ads buy immediate visibility and stop when the budget stops; content compounds but takes time, and Google notes that some changes register in hours while others take months. Most software companies need both, so the useful question is what proportion and how each is measured.