Don't just spend the budget. Decide where it goes.
STIX plans and runs paid campaigns on Google, Meta, or LinkedIn — whichever fits your business — and treats every dollar in the account as a decision someone should be making, not a bill that pays itself.
I approved ad budgets from the client side for five years. I know exactly what it's like to sign the invoice and wonder what it bought.
A campaign can keep spending long after it stops deserving the money.
The platforms will keep charging either way. What keeps a budget honest is somebody making decisions — and these aren't decisions:
Set it and forget it.
Campaigns launched months ago, still running on the same audiences and the same ads, because nobody's been back in the account.
Report the clicks.
The numbers the platform hands over look busy every month. Clicks aren't customers, and busy isn't the same as working.
Spend to the budget.
The money gets spent because it was budgeted — not because anyone decided this month that it's still the best place for it.
The question we ask instead
Where should the next dollar go?
Every dollar in the account gets asked before it's spent — and the answer changes as the campaigns produce leads. Sometimes it's keep. Sometimes it's test something new, move money toward what's working, put more behind it — or pull some back. And sometimes the honest answer is stop.
Sometimes the best advertising decision is to stop spending.
This is what deciding looks like.
A budget under review, line by line: what keeps its funding, what's worth a test, what stops — and where the freed-up money goes next.
the next dollar, moved to Campaign C
Paid Advertising
Running the ads is the visible part.
The real work is deciding what deserves more budget, what needs to change, and what should stop.
Channel & campaign strategy
Where paid advertising fits for your business, which platform earns the budget — Google, Meta, or LinkedIn, decided for your situation rather than defaulted — and what the campaigns should be asked to produce.
Ads & creative direction
The offers, messaging, and creative the campaigns run on. STIX builds the ads, keeps them fresh, and retires the ones that have stopped earning attention.
Landing alignment
The click has to land somewhere that keeps the ad's promise. We make sure campaigns point at the right pages — and if the landing experience itself is costing you leads, we'll say so instead of letting the ads take the blame.
Lead-quality feedback
Not every form fill is an opportunity. We pay attention to which leads were real — with your input — because lead quality is what tells the budget where to go next.
Measurement & reporting
What was spent, what it produced, and what we're changing — in plain language. You should never have to decode a platform dashboard to know what your money is doing.
Budget reallocation
The ongoing job: moving dollars toward the campaigns producing qualified leads, holding tests at test-sized budgets, and stopping what's stopped deserving the money.
Fair questions.
Which ad platform would you put us on?
Whichever one fits how your customers actually buy — Google when people are searching for what you do, Meta when the job is reaching them before they search, LinkedIn when your buyers are other businesses. STIX isn't tied to any platform, so the recommendation follows your business, not our habit.
How much do we need to spend?
STIX recommends a minimum ad spend of $1,500 per month. That money goes directly to the ad platforms to run your campaigns — it's separate from STIX's management fee, which we'll go over in a consultation based on scope. Below that level, campaigns tend to produce too little signal to make good decisions with.
Should we put this budget into ads or SEO?
Usually that's not an either/or. Paid advertising creates demand sooner; SEO builds visibility that compounds over time — they're complementary, and plenty of businesses run both. The real question is how much emphasis goes toward each right now, and that's a judgment call we'd make by looking at your situation, not a package we default to.
What happens when a campaign isn't working?
You hear it from us first — then we act on it: adjust the targeting or the message, move the budget somewhere better, or turn the campaign off. What we won't do is keep a failing campaign alive because it's the one we're being paid to run.
Do you handle the leads after they come in?
Paid Advertising's job runs through the qualified lead — getting the right people to raise their hand. We pay close attention to which leads turn out to be real opportunities, because that's what tells us where the budget should go next. What happens inside your sales process is yours; if following up on leads is where things slip, that's what our CRM & AI service exists for.
What will we see in reporting?
The decisions, not just the data. Plenty of agencies forward the platform's numbers and call it reporting; ours is built around what those numbers made us do — which campaigns kept their budgets, what we changed, and why. If a report ever leaves you wondering what you're paying for, it has failed.
How quickly should we expect leads?
Paid advertising is one of the fastest levers in marketing — campaigns can start producing inquiries soon after they go live — but anyone promising you a specific number by a specific date is guessing. The early weeks buy signal as well as leads: what comes in, and what it's worth, is exactly what tells us where the next dollar should go.
Let's decide what your budget should be doing.
A consultation looks at where your money is going now — or where you're thinking about putting it — and whether paid advertising deserves the next dollar. If it doesn't yet, we'll tell you what does.