2,000monthly organic visitors, from zero
Artkai
Stood up SEO as a new acquisition channel — domain rating 27 to 44, 50+ leads, and 88 articles in nine months.
- DR 27 → 44
- 50+ leads generated
Service · Paid Ads for Product Design Agencies
Paid ads for product design agencies that need scoped project inquiries this quarter, not a feed full of designers liking your work.
Left on default, LinkedIn and Meta will spend your budget reaching the people who engage with beautiful creative — other designers — while the founder or VP who actually approves a six-figure design engagement never sees a coherent reason to call. We run paid social and paid search for design studios around the real buying unit (the practitioner who champions you and the budget-holder who signs), treat the ad creative itself as the first proof of your taste, and feed accepted, scoped inquiries back into the platforms so they optimize toward revenue — not cheap clicks. Over 9+ years we've done this across 60+ B2B tech companies — including product studios like Artkai — and tracked $30M+ in marketing-led revenue.
- B2B tech companies worked with
- 60+
- Years marketing to technical & executive buyers
- 9+
- CRM-tracked marketing-led revenue
- $30M+
- AI Search recommendation success rate
- 80%
- Buying-unit audience design for design studios: LinkedIn and Meta targeting built to reach the founder, CEO, and product/engineering VP who approve design spend at your ICP accounts — plus deliberate suppression of the designer, student, and agency-peer audiences the platform will otherwise chase because they engage with your creative.
- Creative built as proof of taste, not a generic lead magnet: ad concepts and outcome-led case-study creative that meet the bar your own portfolio sets, because a high-consideration buyer judges your craft from the ad itself — no stock-y 'download our checklist' units that undersell a premium studio.
- Dual-message offers for champion and signer: creative and landing pages that give the practitioner a reason to admire and forward you, and the budget-holder a business reason (velocity, risk removed, payback) to take the call — so an internal champion turns into a scoped engagement instead of a stalled one.
- Paid search for the high-intent moments: tightly-scoped Google campaigns on 'product design agency for [vertical],' 'app redesign agency,' 'design system / design sprint' searches buyers run with real intent — not broad design terms that drain budget on inspiration traffic.
- Scoped-inquiry funnels and landing pages: offer pages engineered to qualify and book a real design conversation (project type, stage, budget signal) rather than maximize cheap form-fills — because one scoped project is worth more than fifty curious clicks.
- Retargeting sequenced to a high-consideration cycle: founder-led and proof-led retargeting across LinkedIn and Meta that keeps a multi-month, multi-stakeholder design decision warm without fatiguing into rising costs.
- Offline-conversion feedback wired to your CRM: accepted, scoped inquiries imported back to the platforms so they optimize toward economic buyers and revenue, not the cheapest designer form-fill.
- Budget pacing and creative iteration for lumpy deal flow: spend, audience, and creative tuned to a small number of high-value projects — scaling only the angles that produce scoped pipeline, not the ones that produce the most clicks.
- CRM and analytics instrumentation: paid-to-inquiry-to-scoped-meeting-to-won-project tracking, with reporting on pipeline and revenue influenced across a project-based, multi-stakeholder path — not impressions, CTR, and CPL.
How the system works
How the system works
Diagnose the market
We map the real buying unit at your target accounts — who champions a studio (the designer or product lead) and who signs (the founder, CEO, or VP) — and the offers a high-consideration design buyer will actually respond to. We audit any current spend for the design-studio leak: budget optimizing toward designers and tiny teams because they engage with the creative, while the economic buyer is excluded. The picture reflects how design projects actually get approved, not what a media plan assumes.
Compare against known B2B tech patterns
We benchmark your situation against the design studios and project-based services firms among the 60+ B2B tech companies we've run paid for. Which channel and offer fit a six-figure, multi-stakeholder design sale, what cost-per-scoped-inquiry is realistic, which creative angles read as proof of taste — we know the patterns from Intelvision's enterprise paid demand and Split Development's project funnels, so we start from evidence instead of a blind learning phase.
Choose the right growth path
We set the channel mix, offer, and budget that fit your deal size and sales capacity, and we're honest about where paid belongs: it buys speed when referrals have plateaued or you're testing demand for a new vertical, while SEO and AI Search build durable, owned demand alongside it. You get a sequenced plan — which paid surface, which offer, what budget floor to learn and scale on — tied to scoped inquiries and revenue, not click volume.
Build the service system
We launch campaigns, creative, qualifying landing pages, tracking, and the offline-conversion feedback as one connected paid system. We brief and produce creative that does justice to your craft, coordinate with your designers so the ads meet the bar your portfolio sets, and stand up audience suppression and retargeting — so paid runs as a managed system, not a set of boosted posts your team babysits alongside client delivery.
Optimize against CRM + sales feedback
Every week we tune audiences, creative, and bids against accepted-SQL and scoped-inquiry data — and we feed real outcomes back as offline conversions so the platforms learn to find founders and VPs, not designers. Winning verticals and creative angles scale; the audiences and offers that only produce cheap engagement get cut; and new objections from discovery calls become next week's creative. Paid becomes a managed revenue channel, not a dashboard of impressions.
The XQL difference
Why XQL runs paid for design studios differently
- 01
Market memory
We've run paid across 60+ B2B tech companies, including product studios and design-led agencies like Artkai, so we already know the trap that catches studios first: the most beautiful ad pulls the most designers and the algorithm chases them. We start from audiences and offers that have produced scoped engagements for taste-judged sellers — which targeting reaches founders and VPs instead of peers, which offer a high-consideration design buyer will trade contact details for, which creative reads as proof of taste, not a generic lead magnet. You don't spend a quarter teaching us that admiration isn't pipeline.
- 02
Faster diagnosis
We don't burn months testing blind. In the first weeks we map the real buying unit at your accounts (who champions, who signs), separate the audiences that look like demand from the ones that book a scoped project, and audit any existing spend for the classic design-studio leak — budget quietly optimizing toward designers and tiny teams while the economic buyer is excluded. You get a launch plan tied to scoped-inquiry potential — channel, offer, creative angle, audiences to suppress — fast enough to show qualified conversations inside the first quarter.
- 03
Smarter channel selection
Paid buys speed, SEO buys durability — and we'll tell you which paid surface fits a high-consideration, project-based design sale. LinkedIn earns its premium when you need to target a founder or VP by seniority and firmographics; Meta works for retargeting and founder-led creative that builds familiarity before a buyer is in-market; paid search captures the rare high-intent 'product design agency for SaaS' or 'app redesign' moment. Because we also run organic, AI Search, and founder-led demand for studios, we weight paid against the rest of your GTM and only spend where it books scoped inquiries — the way Intelvision's paid demand was engineered into a flagship enterprise deal.
- 04
Sales feedback loop
In a project-based, multi-stakeholder design sale, the only signal that matters is which leads became scoped conversations — and that lives with your team, not the ad platform. We sit close to your discovery calls (real product initiatives vs. a founder kicking tires, which verticals convert, which 'just curious' leads to suppress) and feed accepted, scoped inquiries back as offline conversions, so LinkedIn and Meta learn to find buyers instead of admirers — the correction generic paid management never makes because it never sees past the form-fill.
- 05
CRM attribution
Design engagements are project-based, often six-figure, multi-stakeholder, and easy to under-attribute — a designer clicks and champions you, but a founder signs weeks later. We instrument paid end to end and report in revenue, not clicks: which campaigns, audiences, and creative produced scoped inquiries, what they're worth, how paid-sourced projects close — tied to your CRM. When we say paid produced a project, you can see it, the way Split Development traced 3 won Shopify-build deals and a 34% lead-to-meeting rate to specific funnels. That discipline is why we've tracked $30M+ in marketing-led revenue, and why a studio can defend paid spend with deal-level evidence instead of a CPL chart.
Why XQL vs alternatives
Why XQL vs the alternatives
DimensionTypical approachThe XQL way
Paid-ads agencyLets the platform optimize toward whoever clicks — designers and tiny teams — reports CPL, CTR, and impressions, and never connects a single scoped inquiry, let alone a won project, to the spend.Engineers audiences toward founders and VPs, feeds accepted scoped inquiries back as offline conversions, and reports pipeline and revenue tied to your CRM.
Generalist marketing agencyRuns the same low-ticket, cheap-lead playbook it uses for e-commerce or SaaS, ships safe creative that undersells your taste, and can't tell a designer admiring the reel from a buyer with budget.Brings market memory from 60+ B2B tech companies, including design studios like Artkai — paid built for a six-figure, multi-stakeholder, taste-judged design sale from day one.
Freelancer / media buyerManages the ad account but has no offer strategy, no creative that meets a studio's bar, and no sales loop — so the account optimizes to clicks with nobody closing the gap to revenue.Pairs media buying with offer, proof-of-taste creative, qualifying funnels, and a weekly sales feedback loop wired to your CRM.
Your own designers boosting postsBeautiful creative boosted to whoever engages — which is overwhelmingly other designers — with no buying-unit targeting, no qualification, and no attribution back to scoped projects.Keeps the craft and aims it at economic buyers, suppresses the peer audience, qualifies the inquiry, and proves which spend produced a scoped engagement.
Appointment Funnels (XQL)A focused booked-call funnel — one specific paid play for booking qualified design conversations.Paid Ads is the broader program — paid social plus search, audiences, creative, and retargeting; we run either or both as the studio's stage dictates.
Commercial outcomes
Proof from the same playbook.
Strategy first, channels second, sales feedback always. We measure by the qualified demand and revenue we can trace back inside the CRM.
Selected results
Senior operators on every account. Never a junior pod.
Client signal
What B2B tech founders and CEOs say
Thanks to XQL Group's efforts, we've seen a 207% increase in web traffic and an improvement in domain rating from 12 to 45. The team has successfully optimized our SEO strategy and gained around 160 backlinks. Overall, they're responsive and thorough in their project management.
Since working with XQL Group, our domain rating has improved from 27 to 44. In addition, we've seen a 15% increase in monthly traffic within nine months. The team completes work on time and within the agreed budget. Moreover, their subject matter expertise is highly impressive.
XQL Group's efforts have resulted in 44 leads from paid campaigns and improved web traffic from Germany by 5x. The team is responsive, quickly surfaces issues, and communicates regularly through chats and virtual meetings. Their expertise and proactiveness have impressed our team.
Organic traffic has increased by 10–15% each month, and we have started receiving our first inbound requests. XQL Group's optimization tips have also helped improve keyword rankings, and internal stakeholders are impressed with the team's collaborative approach.
XQL Group has successfully defined a clear marketing strategy and established our company's unique value proposition. The team has also helped hire critical specialists for our marketing team. They are communicative and organized, and their expertise in the tech industry is impressive.
Thanks to XQL Group's efforts, we have defined our marketing strategy and hired key developers for our website. The team has launched retargeting campaigns on LinkedIn and developed a strong content marketing strategy. XQL Group's marketing expertise is a hallmark of the engagement.
They were not just talking about AI search in theory; they knew how to approach it practically.
What impressed us most was their deep specialization in working with software development companies.
They've brought structure, strong execution, and constant initiative to improve outcomes.
They operated with the discipline and initiative of an internal senior marketer.
Their ability to combine strategic vision with hands-on execution was particularly valuable.
Their focus on results and true interest in making things work set them apart.
XQL Group's project management was exemplary.
The quality of their work is consistently high.
FAQ
Questions about this service.
By default, yes — and it's the single most expensive mistake in design-studio paid. A beautiful ad pulls the most engagement from other designers, the platform reads that as success and finds more of them, while the founder or VP who signs gets de-prioritized as 'unlikely to convert.' CPL looks fine; the deals never come. We engineer the audience the other way: target the economic buyer by seniority and firmographics, deliberately suppress the designer, student, and agency-peer segments, and feed accepted, scoped inquiries back as offline conversions so the platforms learn to find buyers, not admirers. The creative still has to be beautiful — the buyer judges your taste from the ad — it just can't be allowed to optimize toward the wrong crowd.
Same engine, a category that inverts the usual problem. Most B2B tech companies fight cheap junk leads on the way in; a design studio's danger is subtler — your creative is so engaging to peers that the algorithm builds you an audience of designers who can't sign, and the creative is itself a sample of your taste, so a generic lead-magnet ad actively damages a premium studio. On top of that the sale is lumpy: one six-figure engagement pays for a quarter of spend, which makes CPL the wrong scoreboard. So we suppress the peer audience, hold creative to your portfolio's bar, speak to both the champion and the signer, and optimize to scoped inquiries and revenue rather than lead volume. The general page covers the cross-tech playbook; this is the design-studio version.
Paid Ads is the broader paid program for a studio — demand and scoped pipeline across LinkedIn, Meta, and search, including audience strategy, proof-of-taste creative, qualifying funnels, and retargeting. Appointment Funnels is a specific play within paid: a funnel engineered purely to book qualified design calls. Many studios run both — we recommend the right starting point for your stage. If you mainly need booked conversations fast, the funnel is the entry point; if you want a full paid demand channel that reaches buyers and compounds with retargeting, Paid Ads is the program.
Not a generic gated PDF — a design buyer judges your taste from the ad and the offer alike, so a thin lead magnet signals a thin studio. What converts is proof-led and decision-shaped: outcome-led case-study creative that leads with the product result and the risk you removed, a sharply-scoped offer that qualifies (a redesign teardown, a design-system audit, a fit-specific 'product design for [vertical]' conversation), and a landing page that gives the champion something to forward and the budget-holder a business reason to engage. We design offers that filter for real, scoped projects rather than maximize cheap form-fills, because one qualified conversation is worth more than fifty curious clicks.
By measuring the right thing and instrumenting the full path. CPL and click-through are the wrong scoreboard for a studio that sells a handful of high-value, project-based engagements — one scoped six-figure project can pay for a quarter of spend, so optimizing to cheap leads buys the wrong pipeline. We track paid into your CRM through the whole multi-stakeholder cycle — click, scoped inquiry, qualified meeting, won project — and report pipeline and revenue influenced, not impressions. That's how Intelvision's paid demand was tied to a flagship enterprise deal at 28.9x ROAS and Split Development traced 3 won projects and a 34% lead-to-meeting rate to specific funnels. With lumpy deal flow the metric is revenue, and we build the attribution to prove it.
By giving each what convinces them across the campaign, not picking one. A design engagement is rarely a solo decision: a designer or product lead falls for the work and advocates internally, while a founder or VP who cares about velocity, risk, and payback approves the contract. Craft-only creative wins the champion and stalls at budget; ROI-only creative never earns the champion. We structure creative and landing pages so the practitioner sees genuine taste and a process they respect, and the budget-holder gets a clear business reason to take the call — and we use retargeting to carry a multi-month decision across both. That's what turns an internal champion into a signed, scoped engagement.
Paid is the fastest lever when referrals plateau, a major client churns, or you want to test demand for a new vertical or productized offer before committing to a longer SEO build — it buys speed in a way organic can't. The honest caveat is that paid rents demand: it stops the moment you stop spending, where SEO and AI Search build owned demand that keeps paying. So we usually run paid to fill pipeline now while durable channels compound alongside it, and we only spend once the offer, qualifying funnel, and CRM tracking are built to turn a click into a scoped, sales-ready design conversation — because design inquiries are high-consideration, and the offer and qualification matter far more than raw click volume.
Because in this category, fluency and accountability are what make paid pay back. A generalist or freelancer spends your first quarter discovering that your best creative attracts designers who can't sign, that a generic lead magnet undersells a studio judged on taste, and that CPL is meaningless when one project pays for a quarter — then optimizes to clicks with nobody closing the loop to revenue. We start from 60+ B2B tech engagements of pattern recognition — including design-led studios like Artkai and paid programs that produced Intelvision's 28.9x ROAS and Split Development's booked projects — run audience strategy, proof-of-taste creative, funnels, and offline-conversion feedback as one system, and report against your CRM. You're not buying clicks; you're buying a managed revenue channel run by people who already know how design buyers decide.
Ready when you are
Let's talk.
Bring your offer, channels, and revenue goals. We'll show you where the biggest growth constraint is and what to build next.
Danylo FedirkoFounder
For B2B tech companies selling complex expertise to serious buyers.
- B2B tech clients
- 60+
- Revenue generated
- $30M+
