Industries · B2B SaaS
Value-Based Bidding for B2B SaaS: Bid on Customer Value, Not Signups
A demo request from a 400-person company and a free signup from a two-person team both count as one conversion. Your pipeline knows they are not the same. Estimate what each new lead is likely to be worth from your own closed deals, and give the ad platforms that signal instead of a flat count.
Why lead counts fall short
Why a count of signups misses what your pipeline is worth
SaaS lead forms collapse very different buyers into the same event. A demo request from a mid-market company with a live project, a free-trial signup from a student and a pricing enquiry from a team already on a competitor all arrive as one conversion, and bidding that counts conversions will buy more of whichever is cheapest.
The difference shows up weeks later, in your CRM. Some segments reach a qualified opportunity far more often; some sign contracts several times the size of others. Those are exactly the facts the ad platforms never see unless you send them.
Probability and size move separately
Small teams may convert often at a low price; larger companies convert less often at a much higher one. Expected value needs both, not whichever is easier to count.
A free signup is not worthless
Some product-led signups become paying accounts. Pricing them from your own history, rather than at zero or at full price, is what keeps bidding from over- or under-valuing them.
Contract value is not lifetime value
The product prices on the amount your CRM records for a won deal, such as first-year or annual contract value. It does not predict renewals, expansion or lifetime value.
The funnel
From signup or demo request to closed-won customer
- Signup or demo request
- Qualified opportunity
- Closed-won customer
Known when the lead arrives
What a new lead can be priced from
- Company size
- Use case
- Requested plan
- Company industry
- Stated purchasing timeline
Learned later
What the history is trained on
- Whether it became a qualified opportunity
- Whether it closed, and when
- The contract value recorded on the won deal
Only what the form or enrichment gives you at arrival can price a new lead. What the sales team learns later is what the history is trained on.
How it works
From your sales history to what the ad platforms see
- 1
Bring in your history
A CRM export or a HubSpot connection: leads with their outcomes, won, lost or still open.
- 2
Find what relates to value
Each field known when a lead arrives is tested against your closed deals. Only the ones that clearly moved outcomes are kept.
- 3
Estimate each new lead
Its expected value: how likely leads like it are to become customers, times what those customers were worth.
- 4
Send the value
To Google Ads or Meta, as a conversion value on the lead. Sending changes no bid by itself.
- 5
Judge it on real outcomes
Compare closed deals before and after your campaigns start optimising on the values, never the values we sent.
Worked example
Three leads, three different values
Expected lead value = the estimated chance of becoming a customer × the expected value of that customer.
Value basis: First-year contract value. Using the amount recorded on the closed-won deal. If your CRM stores annual recurring revenue instead, that is the basis, and the values mean the same thing in those terms.
Demo request, 200 to 1,000 employees
- Use case: team-wide rollout
- Timeline: evaluating this quarter
18% × $24,000
$4,320
estimated value of this lead
Pricing enquiry, 51 to 200 employees
- Requested plan: Growth
- Timeline: within six months
9% × $9,000
$810
estimated value of this lead
Free signup, 1 to 10 employees
- No timeline given
- Personal email domain
4% × $3,600
$144
estimated value of this lead
Illustrative example, not customer results.
All three are one conversion to an ad platform that is told nothing else. Priced, the first is worth thirty times the third, and bidding can act on that.
How the product actually estimates this
It does not score each lead on its own. It starts from your overall close rate times your average won deal, with any deal above three times the median counted at that cap, then applies a multiplier for each field that clearly moved outcomes in your history, and rescales so the average estimate matches what your leads were actually worth. Fields that do not clear the evidence thresholds are left out and listed. The formula above is the same idea in one line.
What data you need
Your CRM already has most of it
- Lead or deal creation dateWhen the signup or demo request arrived, so each lead is judged against its own cohort.
- Won, lost or openClosed-lost matters as much as closed-won: the model learns from both.
- Contract value on won dealsAnnual or first-year contract value, consistently one or the other.
- Firmographics captured at signupCompany size, industry, plan or use-case fields from the form or enrichment, as they stood at arrival.
- Matching informationGoogle's click ID or the lead's email for Google; email or phone, plus Meta's own cookies, for Meta.
What matters most is reliable outcomes and enough of them. The report checks your own file and names anything it could not price, rather than applying a one-size minimum.
How activation works
Estimating, sending and optimising are three steps
The product estimates each lead's value and sends it. Your campaigns use it only once you set them to optimise for value, a change you make in the ad platform, and the platform decides when an account qualifies.
Google Ads
Sends each new lead's estimated value to a conversion action in Google Ads, matched on the click ID or on email through Enhanced conversions for leads. A value only changes bidding once your campaigns use a value-based strategy such as Maximize conversion value.
Switching a live campaign, step by stepMeta
Sends a ValuedLead event with the value through the Conversions API for leads from your website forms. Meta bids on values only once an ad set qualifies for value optimisation; until then it counts leads.
How the Meta route worksThe full method, from pricing a lead to measuring the result, is in the complete guide. Leads that reach your CRM without a click ID are covered in the click ID guide.
How to judge success
Measured in outcomes, not in the values we sent
Pipeline created per lead
Qualified opportunities and their value, from leads that arrived after the switch.
Closed contract value per lead
What won deals were actually worth, divided by the leads that produced them.
Acquisition cost per customer
Ad spend against closed-won customers, not against signups.
A rise in the conversion value your ad platform reports is not proof: it is repeating back the values we sent. The product's evaluation compares closed deals before and after the switch, with leads from other sources as a control.
Questions
B2B SaaS, specifically
Our sales cycle is three months. Does that rule this out?
No. Values are estimated the moment a lead arrives, from leads like it that have already resolved, so the length of the cycle does not delay the signal. What it delays is proof: judging whether the switch worked needs about one and a half sales cycles of closed deals.
We run both product-led signups and sales-led demos. One model or two?
One model, fitted on all of them, with the lead type as one of the inputs. If signups and demos really do convert at different rates and sizes, the model prices that difference; if they do not, it says so rather than inventing one.
Can we price on predicted lifetime value?
Not from this product. It prices on the realised amount your CRM records on won deals. If that field holds a multi-year contract value, that is the basis; the product does not forecast renewals or expansion.
What if our plans or pricing changed last year?
Deals priced under the old packaging still teach the model which kinds of lead convert, but their amounts may no longer match today's contracts. Filter the export to the period that reflects current pricing, or refit once enough new deals have closed.
Which CRM export works?
Any deals or opportunities export that includes both won and lost deals, their creation dates and amounts, plus whatever company fields your form captures. HubSpot can be connected directly; Salesforce, Pipedrive and others work through a CSV.
Check whether your lead data is ready
Upload a CRM export or connect HubSpot. In about five minutes you see which of your fields relate to value, what new leads would be estimated at, and whether your history is enough to send. The file is read in your browser; you are asked for a name and work email before the full report.