A PPC agency gets clients through referrals, partner agencies, content, directories and outbound. What makes it harder than most agency sales is the buyer. The person who signs off on ad spend usually knows what a cost per click is, has a login to the account and has heard an agency promise to fix it before.
So the outbound that works for a PPC agency is built on proof the buyer can check. Package the offer as a result, find the person who owns the ad budget, open with one specific observation about ads they are running right now, and contact enough people every month for the math to hold.
As a planning figure, about 10 booked sales calls a month means reaching roughly 3,000 people a month. The arithmetic is further down.
Why is a PPC agency's buyer harder to win?
An average buyer judges your pitch. A PPC buyer judges the pitch and then asks whether you could have written it without knowing anything about their account.
Look at who reads your message. A marketing director who opens the ads dashboard every Monday. A founder who ran the first campaigns personally before handing them over. A head of growth who can quote last quarter's cost per lead from memory.
None of them need PPC explained. Some of them have already hired an agency, read the first monthly report and felt let down.
One US company came to us after 3 agencies had overpromised and under-delivered. Its founder was ready to give up on outbound and shift the budget to ads, even though the ads were not paying back either. Your prospect may be sitting in a similar spot.
Then they check you. In B2B, the decision rarely happens inside the email; it happens after the buyer has looked you up. They open your LinkedIn profile, then your site and whatever proof sits there.
With this buyer the check is sharper, because they know which numbers a good PPC agency should be able to show, and they notice when those numbers are missing. I broke down that check step by step in why the same cold email gets very different reply rates.
So for a PPC agency, two case studies with before and after figures do more work than the cleverest first line you will ever write.
I have run Google, Facebook and LinkedIn ads myself, and I came away seeing them as delivery systems for a message. A buyer who has done the same does not need the tactics listed back to them. They want to see what happened when you used them.
Where do PPC agencies usually find clients?
Every usual channel works to some degree. They differ in how much a numbers-literate buyer trusts them and in who decides when the next lead arrives.
- Referrals. Usually the highest trust you will get. You cannot schedule them.
- Partner agencies that do not run paid media, such as web design or SEO shops. They pass you a client who asks for help with ads.
- Content that shows how you think about accounts, such as short teardowns or a video walking through a real test. It is slow to build.
- Platform credentials. To hold Google Partner status, an agency's Google Ads manager account needs an optimization score of at least 70%, $10,000 in ad spend across managed accounts over 90 days, and at least half of its account strategists certified, according to Google's Partner requirements (checked September 2026). A buyer who knows the program reads the badge as the minimum.
- Directories and review sites such as Clutch, where buyers compare shortlists.
- Free audits. They work as a second step. More on that below.
- Outbound on cold email and LinkedIn. The channel where you pick the companies and set the pace.
Keep every referral you get. Outbound is what you add when the next client cannot wait for someone else's timing.
Are you selling PPC management or a result?
A PPC agency can lose replies before a single email goes out, because the offer reads like a menu. Google Ads management, paid social, LinkedIn ads, landing pages, reporting.
A buyer who already runs ads reads that list as "we do what you do". It gives them no reason to switch.
What looks like a lead gen problem can turn out to be a packaging problem. That fits PPC agencies better than most, because the result you sell is a number the buyer already tracks every week.
| Packaged as a service | Packaged as a result | |
|---|---|---|
| What the offer says | "Google Ads management for B2B companies" | "Lower cost per qualified demo for B2B software companies that spend on search" |
| What the buyer compares | Your fee against the cost of an in-house specialist | Their current number against the number you can show for similar accounts |
| What your proof has to show | Certifications and a client logo wall | Before and after figures from 2 or 3 similar accounts, each with a timeframe |
| Who tends to reply | People shopping on price | People unhappy with a number they already watch |
Pricing follows the packaging. A percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, a hybrid of the two, or a fee tied to results: each tells the buyer what you think you are selling.
If your offer promises a lower cost per lead and you bill a percentage of spend, expect the obvious question about why you earn more when they spend more. Have the answer ready before a prospect asks.
Get the packaging right and the same tactics start working. In practice it also means one niche per campaign.
An agency that serves software, manufacturing and professional services firms should pick one of them for outbound. I wrote about the discipline that takes in one offer, one audience, twelve months.
Who at the prospect owns the ad budget?
"Decision-maker" means little on a list. For paid media, the person who can say yes changes with the size and shape of the company. A starting point for the list:
| Company situation | Who usually decides | What they will judge you on |
|---|---|---|
| Founder-led, small marketing team | Founder or CEO | Whether the spend pays back in plain money |
| Mid-size B2B company with a marketing department | VP Marketing or Marketing Director | Pipeline targets and a report they can show the CEO |
| Growth-stage software company | Head of Growth or Head of Demand Generation | Cost per qualified lead and pipeline by channel |
| Company with an in-house PPC specialist | That specialist's manager | Whether you support their person or replace them |
One qualifier matters more for PPC agencies than any title filter: is the company advertising right now? A business with live ads is a conversation about improving a number. A business with no ads is a longer sale that starts with convincing them to spend at all. Split those two groups into separate campaigns.
How do you open a cold message to a PPC prospect?
Start with research that takes two minutes per company and costs nothing. Google's Ads Transparency Center lets anyone search an advertiser by name or website and filter the ads it has served by date and location.
LinkedIn's Ad Library is public too: it holds ads that ran after June 1, 2023 and keeps each one for a year after its last impression (both checked September 2026).
You will not see their cost per lead or their conversion data there. You will see what they say, where the clicks go and how many versions they are testing. That is enough for one honest observation.
Then apply a rule I hold for all outbound copy: past clients, results and case studies go inside the message itself. For this buyer, add the timeframe too. Here is a first message built that way:
Subject: your search ads in [country]
Hi [first name],
I looked at the search ads [company] is running in [country] this month. All [number] of them send people to the home page, and the demo form sits two scrolls down.
We run paid search for [type of company]. For one of them, moving ads onto dedicated landing pages took cost per demo request from [before] to [after] in [timeframe].
Want me to send the 3 other things I noticed? No call needed for that part.
Three rules hold it together:
- One observation they can confirm in two minutes. Check it twice. This buyer knows their account, and one wrong assumption ends the conversation.
- One result from a similar account, backed by an actual figure and the months it took. Use your own figures; if you have none for this niche yet, name the closest account type you do have numbers for.
- A small ask. Offering the notes first is easier to say yes to than a 30-minute call with a stranger. Other offers that work when a call is too big an ask follow the same logic.
The same message works as a LinkedIn note after the connection is accepted, cut to the observation and the ask.
Should you give away a free account audit?
A full audit is the classic PPC door-opener, and it works best after a first reply. As an opening offer it asks a stranger for account access, and it costs your team hours for every yes. The prospect keeps the findings whether they hire you or not.
Send a short list of observations for free. Do the full audit once there is a call on the calendar and read-only access on the table. I wrote separately about what free work does and does not prove.
How much outreach books 10 sales calls a month?
My planning number comes from how we build our own campaigns, and I first wrote it down in 2024: for 30-35 booked B2B calls in a month, contact no fewer than 10,000 people that month, and expect the ratio to move with the industry. That is roughly 290 to 330 contacts per booked call.
The agency I run, Smirnov Consulting Group, is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. Read the figure as a general B2B planning number; no single PPC agency produced it.
Scaled down, as planning guidance rather than a promise:
| Booked calls per month | Contacts to reach each month (planning figure) |
|---|---|
| 5 | about 1,400-1,700 |
| 10 | about 2,900-3,300 |
| 20 | about 5,700-6,700 |
| 30-35 | at least 10,000 |
Work backward from capacity. Say your team can onboard 2 new accounts a month and your own history says you sign 1 in 5 qualified calls. That is 2 x 5 = 10 calls a month, so plan on reaching about 3,000 people a month.
Then check the pool. If your niche holds 800 companies that advertise, 3,000 contacts a month means reaching several people per company or widening the niche. Pick one of those on purpose before you launch.
Why do PPC buyers ignore most agency outreach?
Cheap blast outreach cannot rescue a weak offer; more volume only finds the weakness faster. I made the longer version of that argument in my questions for anyone hiring a lead gen agency.
PPC prospects are an obvious target for that kind of blast, because anyone can see which companies run ads. These are the patterns that get deleted fastest:
- One message for every advertiser. If the email would read the same sent to a law firm and a software company, the buyer can tell.
- Leading with badges. Certifications answer "can you log in", while the buyer is asking "what did you change for someone like me".
- Percentages without context. "We doubled ROAS" with no account type, spend level or timeframe reads as a claim they have heard before.
- A smug tone about their ads. Point out what you saw. Leave the judgment out. Someone on their team built those campaigns, and they may be the one reading.
- A profile with no proof behind it. Your message may be fine, and they still stop at a LinkedIn page that shows no results.
Common questions from PPC agency owners
Do I need Google Partner status before starting outreach?
No. It helps once you qualify, but results from similar accounts carry more weight with this buyer. If you are below the Partner thresholds, lead with your best before and after figures and a sharp observation. Add the badge to your profile when you earn it.
Is it fine to mention a prospect's live ads in a cold email?
Yes, if you stay factual. Google and LinkedIn publish these ads in public libraries so anyone can see them. Describe what you saw, skip the criticism and offer something useful. That reads as homework done, which is exactly what this buyer wants to see.
Does content work better than outbound for a PPC agency?
They do different jobs. Content is what prospects find when they check you, so it supports every other channel. Outbound decides who hears from you this month. An agency with neither should start with two strong case studies, then outbound.