Digital Marketing That Drives Tangible ROI

There's no universal number, but a useful benchmark is 7–12% of gross revenue for businesses in active growth mode. Where you fall in that range depends on your industry, competitive landscape, and how aggressively you're scaling.

What matters more than the total budget is how it's allocated. We typically see the best results when businesses invest across a balanced mix of paid acquisition (Google Ads, Meta), organic growth (SEO, content), and conversion infrastructure (landing pages, tracking, CRM integration). Front-loading spend on paid channels can generate leads quickly, while SEO and content compound over time.

At Catch Digital, we work with businesses between $1.5M and $30M+ in revenue across North America and help them build a marketing budget tied to actual revenue goals — not arbitrary percentages. We also built a free Marketing Budget Calculator you can use to benchmark your spend against industry standards.

SEO (search engine optimization) builds long-term organic visibility — it takes longer to gain traction (typically 3–6 months for meaningful results) but compounds over time and reduces your cost per lead as rankings improve. Paid advertising (Google Ads, Meta Ads) delivers traffic and leads almost immediately but stops the moment you pause spending.

For most growing businesses, the right answer is both — but the ratio depends on where you are. If you need leads now, start with paid. If you're planning 12+ months ahead, invest heavily in SEO and content. The ideal setup is running paid campaigns to generate immediate pipeline while building SEO as a long-term asset that gradually takes over as your primary lead source.

Our approach at Catch Digital is to map this out as a full-funnel system — paid and organic working together at each stage of your customer journey, with clear attribution so you know exactly what's driving revenue.

It depends on the channel. Paid advertising (Google Ads, Meta) can generate qualified leads within the first 1–2 weeks of launch, though campaigns typically need 60–90 days of data to fully optimize. SEO is a longer play — expect 3–6 months before you see meaningful ranking improvements, with results compounding from there.

The first month with any agency should focus on onboarding, research, and building the strategic foundation. Rushing to launch without proper keyword research, audience segmentation, and tracking infrastructure is how businesses waste budget. From month two onward, you should see a clear cycle of testing, learning, and scaling — with each month building on the last.

We structure every engagement around a detailed Strategic Acquisition Map that outlines exactly what you should expect at each milestone, so there are no surprises.

Focus on three things: attribution, transparency, and strategic depth.

First, ask how they measure success. If an agency talks about impressions, clicks, and traffic without tying those metrics to leads, revenue, and ROI, that's a red flag. You want a partner who can show you exactly which campaigns generated which customers — not just vanity dashboards.

Second, look at how they handle reporting and communication. You should have access to real-time data, not a PDF that arrives two weeks late. Ask for examples of their reporting before you sign anything.

Third, evaluate whether they're strategic or just tactical. A good agency doesn't just "run ads" — they understand your customer journey, your sales process, and your unit economics. They should be asking about your business model before pitching services.

We built Catch Digital around these exact principles — radical transparency, full-journey attribution through proprietary tracking, and strategy that maps directly to your revenue goals.

A well-run digital marketing program should deliver a measurable return that exceeds your investment — but the specific numbers vary by industry, average deal size, and sales cycle length.

As a general benchmark: paid search campaigns for B2B service businesses typically target a 3–5x return on ad spend (ROAS), while e-commerce campaigns often aim for 4–8x. For SEO, the ROI is harder to measure month-to-month but tends to be the highest long-term channel because the cost per lead decreases as your rankings improve.

The key is having tracking infrastructure that connects marketing spend to actual closed revenue — not just leads. Most agencies report on lead volume, but that doesn't tell you whether those leads converted into paying customers. Our proprietary tracking system follows the full journey from first click to closed deal, so we can report on true ROI, not estimates.

For most businesses between $1.5M and $30M in revenue, a hybrid approach works best: a lean internal team (or even a single marketing manager) paired with an agency that provides strategic depth and specialized execution.

Here's the math: a single senior digital marketer costs $80,000–$120,000+ in salary, benefits, and tools. That one person can't be an expert in SEO, paid media, analytics, design, and conversion optimization simultaneously. An agency gives you a full team of specialists for a comparable or lower monthly investment, plus you're not carrying fixed overhead during slow periods.

That said, agencies work best when there's someone internal who understands your business deeply and can act as the bridge. The worst setup is outsourcing to an agency with no internal ownership — strategy suffers and things fall through the cracks. We operate as an extension of your team, but the partnership works best when there's a clear internal point of contact who owns the relationship.

A good onboarding process should feel thorough, not rushed. At Catch Digital, we begin with a deep dive into your business — your customers, your competitive landscape, your sales process, and what's worked (or hasn't) in the past.

From there, we conduct in-depth research including keyword analysis, audience segmentation, and a competitive audit. This feeds into a Strategic Acquisition Map (SAM) — a comprehensive plan that outlines which channels, tools, and strategies we'll deploy, how they connect to your customer journey, and what the expected timeline looks like.

Most campaigns go live by the end of the first month. From there, we operate on a recurring cycle of analysis, optimization, and scaling — with regular strategy calls and transparent reporting so you always know exactly where things stand.

We've built deep expertise across B2B, SaaS, professional services, real estate, fitness, pet care, and e-commerce — though we didn't set out to specialize in any one vertical. Our approach is built on systems and frameworks that adapt to any industry, which is why we've been able to deliver results across a wide range of sectors.

What matters more than industry match is business model fit. We work best with growth-oriented companies between $1.5M and $30M+ in revenue that have a clear product-market fit and are ready to scale their acquisition channels. Our clients span cities across North America, from our home base in Calgary to markets throughout Canada and the United States.

Radical transparency is built into everything we do. Our proprietary tracking system captures first-touch attribution, most recent UTMs, session behavior, page-path journeys, and engaged session duration — all tied directly to form submissions and lead conversions. This gives you a clear, unfiltered view of where your best leads come from and what drives them to convert.

We prioritize the metrics that actually matter to your business: cost per lead, return on ad spend, lead quality, and revenue attribution — not vanity metrics like impressions or raw traffic numbers. Our reporting includes live dashboards, detailed monthly analysis, and proactive strategic commentary. You'll always know what's working, what's not, and what we're doing next.

Three things: systems, attribution, and accountability.

Most agencies run campaigns. We build growth systems. That means mapping every stage of your customer journey — from first impression to closed deal — and developing strategies that move prospects from one stage to the next. This systematic approach creates compounding results, not one-off wins.

Our proprietary attribution technology gives us (and you) a level of visibility that most agencies can't match. Every lead is tied to a real source, every touchpoint is tracked, and every session is logged. We don't hide behind vague reporting — we show you exactly what's driving revenue.

And we hold ourselves accountable to the metrics that matter to your business. We work with companies across North America from our base in Calgary, Alberta, and we treat every client's budget like it's our own. The result: clear attribution, continuously improving performance, and marketing that functions as a growth engine — not a cost center.