5 ways to lower CAC in B2B campaigns

Practical recommendations to help you boost efficiency without cutting spend

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is one of the most heavily scrutinised metrics in B2B acquisition. It’s a perennial topic in SaaS boardroom discussions, and often a constant push-and-pull between growth teams to make budgets work harder. With revenue targets multiplying, the modern growth marketer often faces the classic marketing paradigm: deliver more, with less.

If you’re operating in a high-growth environment, this pattern will feel familiar. As targets rise and budgets grow, paid performance starts to move in the wrong direction. Campaigns seem mature, but CPL is on the rise. Targeting seems fine, yet efficiency keeps slipping. All of a sudden, a perfect storm emerges: your budgets are delivering less than they used to, and it’s not obvious why. Growth starts to feel harder to buy than it should.

The good news is improving CAC in paid media campaigns is rarely about spending less, it’s about spending with more precision. You can make meaningful gains by fixing issues with your campaigns before looking elsewhere in the customer journey.

Your ad campaigns are just one part of the equation. Sales performance and website conversion also play a role, among a multitude of factors. For the purpose of this article, we'll focus on practical paid media levers (in SEM & Paid Social) you can control to influence CAC, and what you can start doing about it today.

1. Sharpen and enforce your ICP

Most CAC problems start way before ads even launch.

If your ideal customer profile (ICP) is vague or too broad, you will pay for clicks that were never going to convert in the first place. SEM is particularly unforgiving because Google or Microsoft Ads will happily spend budget on searches that are technically “relevant” but commercially wrong.

How it impacts CAC

• A loosely defined ICP burns spend on poor-fit clicks and delivers low quality leads.

• SDR’s and AE’s waste time selling to leads that will never convert, hindering conversion to opportunity/customer.

• CAC worsens even if CPL looks fine.

Tactical improvements to your ICP

Go beyond firmographics and enrich your ICP with real buying context.

Add intent signals such as:

• Company size ranges that actually convert (based on your own CRM data, not just the market segment you aspire to win)

• Job titles with real buying influence (e.g. heads of department, functional champions and procurement), not just “interested audiences”

• Revenue and growth signals (e.g. new hires or funding rounds)

Align your ICP with the CRM reality:

• Evaluate closed-won deals and late stage pipeline against the above criteria

• Identify the common traits (e.g. size, buying committee, growth signals)

• Compare against form fills and early stage leads to expose mismatches

SEM examples

• Similar to the above, map high intent keywords against ICP fit, not just search volume. A keyword can have high intent but still attract the wrong audience.

• Cluster keywords based on intent level and fit.

  • Go hard on high intent + high fit terms (with appropriate guardrails)

  • Constrain high intent + low-fit terms with negatives, qualifiers and landing copy

  • Shift low-intent groups into mid-funnel campaigns or exclude entirely

LinkedIn examples

Use Matched Audiences (master TAM & ICP lists) or company size filters to prevent over serving to low value accounts.

• Avoid broad job functions that skew towards junior positions. For example, “Marketing” or “Operations” can attract a wide range of non decision makers.

• Tighten seniority and function to match your real buying committee.

Once your ICP is clear, exclusion becomes just as important as inclusion. CAC will improve fast when you stop paying for the wrong traffic.

Once your ICP is clear, exclusion becomes just as important as inclusion. CAC will improve fast when you stop paying for the wrong traffic.

2. Tighten up exclusions and eliminate wasted spend

Building on the above, CAC improves faster when you stop paying for the wrong clicks.

Most advertising accounts have “silent waste” baked in, such as irrelevant terms, poor targeting and bad audience parameters. Exclusions are one of the quickest wins because you’re not waiting for creative testing or landing page rebuilds to pay off; you’re simply plugging the leaks.

How it impacts CAC

• Exclusions protect budget so it can be concentrated on high intent, high value traffic.

• Campaigns travel further - with less wastage, audience penetration increases.

• Exclusions reduce low quality leads and increase conversion rate from lead to MQL/SQL.

SEM exclusion tactics

Negative keywords for:

• Small business intent when targeting larger segments (e.g. “small business”, “cheap”, “affordable”, “for startups”)

• Free, cheap, template, DIY searches (e.g. “free”, “template”, “example”, “spreadsheet”, “DIY”, “how to do it yourself”)

• Jobs, careers, salaries, and student-related “academic” queries

LinkedIn exclusion tactics

• Exclude “myself”, small and over-sized segments depending on your ICP

• Remove job seniorities like entry level, intern, and in some cases, lower managerial levels

• Remove existing customers, competitors and poor fit verticals

Tip: Exclusions should be reviewed monthly, not set once and forgotten. In practice, you will usually find new waste every month, especially in SEM query traffic.

3. Set budget by intent and channel role

Broad-brush budgeting can easily blow out CAC if not corrected early.

A common mistake we see often is budgeting solely by channel rather than intent level while keeping the goals the same. Forcing every channel to behave like a bottom-of-funnel conversion engine is bad math:

• Over time, paid budgets shift almost exclusively to brand and your best-performing high-intent search campaign - starving awareness and demand.

• Modest paid social lead generation campaigns begin over-optimising for cheap leads.

• Demand gets killed early because upstream campaigns get bled dry due to “clicks only” performance.

The fix is simple: Allocate budgets and structure campaigns by intent and buyer stage, then measure each stage against the right KPIs.

How it impacts CAC

• Clear intent separation improves performance isolation and cost control.

• Budgets get set proportionately across the mix while respecting high-intent focus.

• You stop “taxing” awareness with conversion targets it cannot meet.

SEM focus

Separate campaigns by intent, with different bidding strategies, budgets, and landing page focus.

Example structure:

• High intent terms (e.g. pricing, demo):

  • Higher TCPA caps, protected budgets, conversion optimised landing pages.

• Mid intent (e.g. best tools, solutions, etc.):

  • Moderate budgets, education, softer conversions (e.g.webinar, guide, calculator)

• Low intent (e.g. problem exploration, research):

  • Lower budgets, content focused, nudging readers towards medium-intent resources.

Key point: Still protect spend for bottom-of-funnel campaigns that actually drive revenue. Then, apply sensible budgeting math for mid and low-intent campaigns to avoid inflating your CAC.

LinkedIn focus

Despite having many goal options, consider LinkedIn for its key strengths as a mid funnel education and demand shaping channel. Then use retargeting to drive - and assist - conversions.

• Run education and positioning to build intent with the right audiences.

• Retarget site visitors and engaged users with conversion focused offers.

• Ensure your conversion offer matches the audience’s journey phase (e.g. webinar sign-ups vs. demo’s in late-stage).

Key takeaway: CAC drops when campaigns are structured by intent, not just by channel. Be sure to protect bottom funnel activities and fund upper funnel campaigns proportionately. Select relevant metrics to measure each funnel stage and calibrate budgets often to keep revenue flowing and CAC under control.

4. Optimise towards revenue signals, not just leads

Cheap leads are often expensive customers.

If you optimise for lead volume alone, you likely increase CAC downstream. Typically, ad platforms learn to find people who complete forms, not people who buy.

The goal is to bring your optimisation closer to revenue by using higher quality signals, even if those signals arrive later.

How it impacts CAC

• Lead volume is a misleading success metric in B2B.

• Low quality leads slow pipeline velocity and reduce win rates.

• CAC should be measured against customers acquired, not leads generated.

SEM tactics

• Optimise towards higher-quality conversions sent from your CRM (e.g. SQL, deal value).

• Import offline conversions to backdate conversion data and shape towards high-intent signals.

• Where appropriate, use value-based bidding strategies tied to revenue or indexing models.

• Pause or constrain keywords that generate form fills but show no progression in CRM.

LinkedIn tactics

Optimise towards higher quality events where possible (for example: SQLs, Demos Booked), not just content downloads

• Tighten lead gen forms to discourage low intent submissions:

  • Add qualifying questions.

  • Mandate “work email” only.

  • Keep high-intent forms for hot audiences.

• Launch dedicated campaigns and raise bids for high-value audience segments (e.g. priority industries, highly engaged audiences).

Strategic point: It is better to pay more for fewer leads if those leads convert into revenue at a much higher rate.

Important note: For start-ups and low-volume sales operations, it’s not uncommon for qualified lead and deal volumes to be in the low double-digits. Ad platforms like Google typically require 30+ conversion points per month to work effectively. Back-date conversions with offline data to prime ad accounts and optimise towards mixed conversions or a value-based model to award high quality signals without discounting form-fills entirely.

4. Continuously review, expand and refine your targeting

CAC optimisation is an ongoing process, not just a one-off restructure.

Audience behaviour changes, and so will your targeting needs. Irrelevant search queries creep in and what was once a “no-go” area may now be a focus. If you’re not refining your targeting often, inefficiencies will quietly return.

This is where paid media triumphs as a controllable CAC lever. You can continually tighten relevancy and intent.

How it impacts CAC

• Query drift is real, and it costs money.

• Your audiences may fall out of date, increasing CAC from ineffective campaigns.

• Regular refinement protects efficiency and improves conversion rates.

SEM tactics

Review and eliminate poor-quality terms:

• Examine the search term report weekly and identify irrelevant keywords by intent and fit

• Update negative lists (at the right level) and pause “uncertain” keywords

• Scale high-performing keywords and break out into dedicated ad groups or campaigns

LinkedIn tactics

• Periodically stress-test master audiences vs. your ICP

• Add/subtract audience criteria (e.g. job titles, seniorities, industries, etc.)

• Review and update exclusions according to most up-to-date ICP

Key point: Optimising your targeting is as much about discipline as it is about getting your audiences right. When time is limited and competing priorities take over, it’s easy to slip into a set-and-forget mindset and assume performance will sustain. It rarely does. Build in regular review milestones to reassess your audiences and targeting structure and you’ll avoid wasted spend while uncovering new opportunities for growth.

In practice: helping a SaaS company reduce CAC while increasing customers

We recently worked with a client who faced this exact challenge. CAC was continuing to rise, despite lead volumes increasing month-over-month.

After deeper evaluation, we identified two major culprits. The first related to low-quality leads being generated in paid social. Despite growing lead volumes and corresponding shifts in budget, leads weren’t converting into paying customers. Secondly, we compared high-intent searches with revenue data and recalibrated the ad account towards revenue-generating terms.

After re-balancing the account and focusing ruthlessly on keyword pruning and optimisation, we decreased CAC by 65% over the space of three months. The cherry on top: downstream conversion from lead to customer increased by 65%, demonstrating the power of query refinement and funnel balancing. Read more about this case study here.