Category: PPC

PPC Management Pricing: 6 PPC Agency Pricing Models to Consider

Posted on by Daniel E. Lofaso

What’s the best PPC management pricing model for your business?

A PPC agency takes the time-consuming task of optimizing your account and maximizing ad spend off your plate.

For many small businesses, the average PPC management fee, which runs between $250 to over $2,000 per month or billing cycle, is a well-earned ROI.

After all, PPC management costs not only cover an agency’s operational expenses but motivate certified PPC managers to surpass and exceed their clients’ KPI goals.

The bad news? PPC agency pricing models can be confusing as they vary by company, service packages, monthly fees, and more.

That’s why I’ll give you a quick rundown of the six most popular PPC management pricing options in this guide, including the benefits and drawbacks of each.

PPC Management Pricing: Pros and Cons of PPC Agency Pricing Models 

There are six popular pricing models PPC agencies tend to favor:

#1. The Flat Fee 

Consider the flat fee like paying a retainer to a PPC agency. You’ll be charged an agreed-upon sum each month, and your agency will work on your PPC account.

Benefits

 
  • Predictable invoices. You’ll know exactly how much you’ll be spending on your PPC management costs because they’ll always be the same month-to-month.
  • Consistent work on your account. Agencies with retainers always have someone working on your campaigns so they’re not ignored.

Drawbacks

 
  • Low accountability. The flat fee doesn’t show you how many hours someone’s actually putting into your account. Your account may get stagnant on a set-and-forget track.
  • May limit growth. If your account performs well, your PPC agency may require an increase in their flat fee to justify the extra work it will demand. Or they could limit performance to stay within your budget. Neither is desirable.

#2. The Hourly Rate

When a PPC agency charges by the hour, PPC managers will work on your account for a set number of hours each billing cycle. 

Benefits

 
  • Dedicated billable hours. Your account won’t be ignored or only worked on for a few minutes once a month like the risk flat-fee pricing brings.
  • Control campaign size and regulate invoices. With only a set number of hours PPC managers can work with, your budget won’t balloon out of control, and you won’t get surprised by huge invoices.

Drawbacks

 
  • May not see a correlation between billable hours and success. Sometimes optimizing a single landing page eats a massive chunk out of your billable hours allotment, leaving no room for other campaign-drivers.
  • Potential for wasted hours/money. What happens when A/B testing shows the original performed much better? Your company’s still on the hook for paying for those “wasted” hours without any ROI.
  • It doesn’t reward efficiency. If an agency knows they’ll be working a set number of hours each billing cycle, they may drag out tasks instead of quickly turning them around.

#3. Percentage of Ad Spend

Many PPC agencies charge a percentage of your total monthly ad spend to manage your account. The average PPC management fee, in this case, ranges between 15% and 25% of your budget.

Benefits

 
  • Scalable growth and predictable invoices. As your budget increases, so does the amount of work a PPC manager will need to perform to generate new leads and manage larger campaigns. Since their fee is tied to and scales with your budget, you’ll get to skip rate negotiations and simply perform a quick calculation anytime you want to increase or decrease spending.

Drawbacks

 
  • May require an account minimum. Since payment depends on your budget, an agency may need a minimum account value to cover its operational costs. 
  • No incentive for optimizing your budget. An effective PPC manager could slash your cost-per-conversion and boost your spending budget. But this doesn’t earn the PPC agency any more money since their fee is directly tied to your budget.

#4. Hybrid: Management Fee + Percentage of Ad Spend

Hybrid pricing models charge a flat monthly management fee (like option #1) and a smaller percentage of your total ad spend (like option #3). 

Benefits

 
  • More control of your spending budget. You never know what a PPC agency may do with your budget if you’re paying a flat or hourly rate. In this case, the flat management fee takes care of operational expenses and tedious tasks like weekly reports. These billable chores won’t eat into your dedicated PPC budget, which may be beneficial for your metrics.

Drawbacks

 
  • It may take longer to see results. The agency will always make their cut, even if your campaigns don’t do well. So you need a clear understanding of your goals and KPIs so you can track ROI and ROAS metrics.

#5. Performance-Based Pricing (Charge By Lead)

PPC agencies on performance-based pricing models leverage their expertise and work their magic to generate leads for your business. Then, they essentially charge you for those leads.

Benefits

 
  • Boosts lead volume. PPC agencies in this model only earn revenue when they acquire leads for your business. So to make money, PPC managers focus on boosting one KPI specifically: your lead volume. 
  • Incentivizes high performance. PPC agencies earn more revenue the more leads they bring in, adding incentives for hardworking PPC managers to grow your account. Their lead-generating tactics may even widen your audience reach.

Drawbacks

 
  • You may still pay a PPC management fee, especially if you’re starting from scratch. There’s lots of work to be done on the front-end before you can start generating revenue to sustain your PPC team. Once it brings money in, your management fee may lessen or disappear.
  • Unpredictable invoices. High-performing campaigns rake in more leads, so they’ll earn the PPC agency more revenue. The more you make, the more you may need to shell out in lead fees. Be prepared for rollercoaster invoicing.
  • Potential for low-quality leads. If your PPC agency only pays attention to monthly lead volume, you won’t have any other KPIs to judge their performance. These leads could turn into sales, or they could go nowhere. Low-quality leads will sink your ROI.
  • May tank your sales team. If your PPC agency sends boatloads of crummy leads to your sales team, they’ll burn through their resources barking up the wrong trees. This could topple successful sales processes through no fault of your employees.

#6. Milestone-Based Pricing

Milestone-based pricing widens the expectations of performance-based pricing by giving both your company and your PPC agency common goals.

During onboarding, you’ll set up custom milestones your PPC agency will need to reach in a designated time frame. You’ll also lay out the specific KPIs you want monitored and improved.

Your PPC agency earns their keep once they reach those milestone goals — and they’ll score bonuses for surpassing them too.

Benefits

 
  • Teamwork makes for robust growth. Setting clear expectations during the onboarding process gives everyone on your team and your PPC agency a clear understanding of your goals and where you want to be.
  • Greater accountability. Rather than concentrating on lead volume only, you’ll get to monitor important KPIs like CTR, CPC, and other vital data for your campaigns. These will show what needs further optimizing. You’ll also notice a clear ROI (or lack thereof).

 

Drawbacks

 
  • Longer onboarding process. Because you’ll be using your KPIs to set pricing, establishing an understanding of how you want them to improve can be time-consuming. But it’s required to make sure you’re both in agreement about where you want to see growth and how to track performance.
  • Difficult to price performance. Will your PPC agency charge more for conversions than simple leads? Will leads from different channels cost the same? Is there a seasonal element to your wins/losses that needs to be accounted for? It can be challenging to price the agency’s performance. So make sure you understand how success correlates with pricing on every metric level.
  • The price and scope of work must evolve as your business grows. You’ll need to revisit the onboarding process and lay out brand new milestones and KPIs for your PPC agency as you grow and these goals change. 
  • Bonus fees for surpassing milestones. If PPC agencies exceed the KPIs and goals set, they have the potential to earn bonuses, which could create unpredictable invoices.

What’s the Best PPC Management Pricing Model for Your Business?

Choosing the best PPC agency pricing model has everything to do with your company’s goals. That’s why it’s crucial to partner with a PPC agency that works hard to understand your current dilemmas and figures out ways to solve them.

This may take more than charging a basic PPC management fee each month. And it may require a detailed onboarding process and regular performance-tracking check-ins.

But the ROI will be well worth the spend and effort.

So is your business ready to dominate search engine market share and make more money? 

At Digital Elevator, we’ll help you build your brand, increase sales/leads, and discuss your best options for success. Schedule a discovery call today! 

Biotech Account-Based Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn Ads 

Posted on by Daniel Lofaso

Account-based marketing (ABM) is the holy grail for biotech companies that sell complex products to institutional buyers, healthcare providers, and scientific decision-makers. But without a way to get in front of those hard-to-reach stakeholders, even the most brilliant strategy falls flat.

LinkedIn is the only platform that allows biotech marketers to surgically target exact job titles, industries, and company sizes. Combine that with an ABM framework, and you have a predictable, scalable way to drive demand from your highest-value accounts.

Here’s how to build a LinkedIn ABM strategy, based on our biotech PPC expertise, that generates real results in biotech—without bloated prospect lists or wasted ad spend.

Table of Contents

Build Your Targeting Strategy Without Uploading a List

The traditional ABM playbook starts with a static list of target accounts. While you can buy a list from a site like BioPharmaGuy and upload it into LinkedIn, you can skip this step (and expense) and let the LinkedIn algo do the heavy lifting.

If you already have a list of companies you want to target, that’s fine, too. You’d just want to consider testing an uploaded list versus something LinkedIn targets based on the parameters you set up.

According to our LinkedIn Ads manager, Piper, she gives the following advice:

Regarding LinkedIn list uploads, they can be highly effective, however, the success of list targeting depends on a few factors:

  • Match Rate: LinkedIn requires at least 300 matched profiles to run ads. The match rate depends on the quality of the data (company domains and LinkedIn profile URLs help).
  • Engagement Strategy: If the list is small, layering additional targeting (like job functions or seniority) can help broaden reach while keeping it relevant.
  • Campaign Objective: Lists work particularly well for account-based marketing (ABM), retargeting, or precise outreach.

Company lists typically have a better match rate than contact lists; however, contact lists are good for retargeting.

Personally, we like to let LinkedIn do the heavy lifting, using Campaign Manager to target, for example:

  • Company industry: Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices
  • Company size: Focus on mid-market and enterprise buyers (51+ employees)
  • Job titles and seniority: R&D Directors, Clinical Operations, Procurement Managers, Lab Heads
  • Groups and interests: Life sciences professionals, biotech investors, or niche verticals (e.g., cell and gene therapy)

This approach allows your targeting to scale and self-optimize without the manual headache of building and maintaining a CSV.

Segment Cold, Warm, and Hot Audiences for Funnel Control

Biotech buyer journeys are complex and don’t happen in a linear fashion. By using segmentation to target leads by behavior, you’ll have a better chance of peaking the interest of your top, middle, and bottom funnel prospects.

Segmenting by funnel stage ensures you serve the right message at the right time:

  • Cold (top of funnel)
    • Focus on messaging that highlights the company’s biotech innovations, value proposition, and mission to build the initial awareness layer.
    • You’ll typically want to run this for at least 30 days to get LinkedIn enough data to see who is interacting with your ads. The goal here is not conversions but to get biotech prospects to click your ads and visit your website so you can retarget them and nurture them.
  • Warm (middle of funnel)
    • Use LinkedIn’s website visit tracking and retargeting lists to create engagement-based campaigns.
    • Incorporate diverse content types such as case studies, testimonials, white papers, press releases, and other resources on the website to your ads.
    • These people are only targeted after they’ve interacted with the cold layer since they now know about what you do and the problems you solve for. 
  • Hot (bottom of funnel)
    • BOFU campaigns will be introduced only after sufficient engagement is observed (like the interaction with multiple content pieces, a pricing page, or contact forms).
    • The warm segment has familiarity with your brand, has demonstrated interest from what we can see from our retargeting layers, and has shown some sort of purchase intent.

Use separate campaigns and creatives for each stage to keep performance optimized. More on that below.

Ad Types That Work for Biotech ABM

Different ad formats shine at different stages of the funnel—and cost plays a big role in what to prioritize.

  • Single Image Ads (All Funnel Stages): The most versatile format with lower CPMs ($60–70). Use these for cold outreach, mid-funnel engagement, or retargeting with a clear call to action.

Source: LinkedIn Single Image Ads

  • Video Ads (Top & Middle of Funnel): Great for brand awareness and education. Expect a CPM between $80–$100, making them relatively cost-effective for engagement. Use to explain complex biotech workflows or product mechanisms.

Source: LinkedIn Video Ads

  • Carousel Ads (Middle Funnel): Ideal for explaining processes or showcasing multiple benefits. Slightly more expensive than single image ads but often worth it for more immersive storytelling.
  • Thought Leader Ads (Top of Funnel): Run from the profile of a scientific founder or executive. Perfect for building credibility early in the funnel. CPMs vary but are often higher due to premium positioning.

Source: LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads

  • Conversation Ads (Bottom Funnel): Excellent for driving demos or downloads from warm audiences. High intent, but often more expensive ($150+ CPM), so use selectively.

Source: LinkedIn Conversation Ads

Match each format to your campaign goal, and remember: higher-cost formats often yield higher-quality leads when timed right.

LinkedIn ABM Mistakes

Biotech audiences are highly skeptical given their background in data and objectivity. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid when running LinkedIn ABM campaigns so as to not blast through ad spend.

Starting with Mid or Bottom Funnel Campaigns 

When running ABM ads, by far the biggest mistake we see is when other agencies or our clients are running campaigns that skip the initial cold layer of targeting. Their campaigns have not yet broken down the barrier that communicates who they are, what problems they solve, and the outcomes they can expect when working with you.

Think about it: if you see an ad for a white paper from a biotech you’ve never heard of how likely are you to read it? Compare that to a company whose ad you interacted with, website you visited, or blog you’ve read that runs the same ad. 

Don’t skip the cold layer, it sets the foundation for the rest of your campaigns.

Not Retargeting

Biotech buyers have a lot going on in their work lives, so hitting them with one ad is often not going to cut it. This is why we always recommend retargeting ads based on user behavior.

This is also why we generally recommend driving clicks through to your website rather than keeping prospects on LinkedIn (like with Lead Gen Forms).

Sales cycles can be long. Make sure to retarget to optimize for use behavior.

Falling for LinkedIn’s Audience Expansion Option

You may be tempted to use LinkedIn’s audience expansion option to “show your ads to member accounts with similar attributes to your target audience.”

We find this results in unnecessary ad spend, often showing your ads to audiences with weaker attributes than more sophisticated targeting.

Avoid this setting as a general rule.

Retargeting That Reflects Real Buying Behavior

Don’t stop at initial targeting. That is probably the biggest missed opportunity we see when taking over accounts for biotech clients. 

LinkedIn lets you retarget based on:

  • Website visits (especially demo, pricing, or case study pages)
  • Video views (great for engagement scoring)
  • Lead form opens (even if unsubmitted)

Build progressive retargeting flows that get more direct over time—starting with soft educational offers and ending with sales CTAs.

Budgeting & Campaign Settings That Maximize Results

LinkedIn isn’t the cheapest platform, but it’s the most precise—and that matters in biotech.

  • We find that starting with a minimum of $3,000/month to collect actionable data is a good budget. It can often be started with less, but the reduction in ad spend may mean limitations in targeting capabilities. 
  • Organize campaigns by funnel stage or audience type for clean reporting

If you’re targeting high-value biotech accounts, LinkedIn ABM isn’t just an option—it’s a necessity. With the right strategy, you can create a campaign system that aligns with how scientific buyers actually make decisions.

Need help building your funnel or fixing underperforming campaigns? We’ll audit your targeting, creative, and retargeting to show you exactly what’s working—and what needs to change. Or, we’ll build one from scratch. Reach out today for a discovery call.

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