Fractional demand gen for B2B SaaS & ecommerce

Paid acquisition that shows up in the pipeline, not just the dashboard.

Growth and performance marketing leader with hands-on ownership of acquisition P&L, most recently building demand gen from zero inside a PE-backed SaaS company. I have led advertising programs totaling $35M+ a year with recurring $2M+ monthly budgets across paid search and paid social, in SaaS, fintech, ecommerce, healthcare and mobile app environments.

$12M → $35MAnnual media scaled in two years
154%Of private equity board plan, Q2 2026
10Paid channels run concurrently across 7 markets

Whatever the platform, the scorecard is pipeline

MetaGoogle AdsYouTubeTikTokSnapchatPinterestApple Search AdsQuora+ LinkedIn, Nextdoor, Taboola & Outbrain
Book an intro call See the work
Yousuf Ahmadi
Cost per qualified lead
▼ 47% on Meta
▼ 75% on Google Ads
Similar gains on TikTok, Snap & Apple Search Ads
Bookings vs board plan154%

Yousuf AhmadiGrowth & performance marketing leader

A few of the programs I have built and run

Also worked on, agency sideRampClickUpParabolaand many more →

99.6%Attribution accuracy when the methodology was audited against the CRM $0 → $100KMonthly B2B SaaS program built from nothing in six months $1,158 → $615Meta cost per SQL, cut roughly in half through creative testing 1.5x → 6.27xShopify-verified ROAS for a DTC ecommerce brand
01 / Selected work

B2B SaaS is home. The rest is range.

Most of my work is demand generation for software companies: pipeline, SQLs, CAC payback, and a board plan to beat. The healthcare and ecommerce programs are how I know the same system holds at $35M a year and in a category where a lead is a person, not a company.

Hostfully

B2B SaaS

B2B SaaS, private equity backed · Director of Demand Generation · March to August 2026 · five markets

Built demand gen from zero, made Meta creative the growth lever, and beat the board plan every month.

154%Of board plan, Q2130–168% every month
$0→$100KMonthly paid spendGoogle Ads and Meta, built from scratch
~50%Lower Meta cost per SQL$1,158 to $615, from creative
112%NRR among retainedCustomers who stayed, expanded

The problem

No paid program, no attribution, and no way to tie spend to ARR. The account had reported 204,000 results in six months, and 202,000 of them were post engagements. We were paying the platforms to find people who download ebooks, and calling them MQLs.

What I did

  • Rebuilt the conversion events around demo intent and wired attribution into Salesforce from scratch.
  • Built the Meta program as a creative testing engine, not a set of campaigns. Concepts moved from feature-led to problem-led and demographic-led, and the demographic concepts became the top efficiency driver in the post-signal Meta landscape.
  • Killed a Performance Max test that produced no qualified pipeline, moving the budget to high-intent search and improving cost per SQL 25% month over month.
  • Cut weekend delivery after daily analysis showed it consumed 29% of Meta budget and returned 5% of results.
The receipt When the attribution methodology was challenged internally, I audited every paid opportunity in the quarter, showed 99.6% agreement with the CRM's own lead source field, and published a record-level workbook so anyone could verify it independently.
Bookings vs investor forecast

Delivered against board plan, Q2 2026

Plan is the base case of the investor forecast model. Q2 pipeline generation ran at 223% of plan. I also flagged, unprompted, that the gap was narrowing because targets stepped up while absolute bookings held flat.

1,443MQLs, paid total18% to SQL
265Sales qualified36% to won
94Closed won, Q2In Salesforce

The creative engine

Data tells you which ad won. It takes a creative read to know what to make next.

01 · ReadStart from the buyer’s problemSales feedback and disqualification reasons, reviewed by campaign and creative, turned into the pains an operator actually says out loud.
02 · MakeConcepts, not variationsProblem-led and demographic-led angles in statics and video, produced faster with an AI agent for on-brand statics.
03 · TestAlways on, judged on SQLsEvery concept scored on cost per SQL and win rate, never on CTR or cost per lead alone.
04 · ScaleWinners get budget fastLosers get cut and the next round of concepts is briefed from whatever the winner taught us.

Meta, cost per SQL

Before and after the creative program

Before
$1,158
After
$615

~50% lower cost per sales-qualified lead, with demographic-led concepts as the biggest driver. The best-performing asset also produced the strongest SQL-to-won rate of any creative we ran.

02 / How I work

A paid program is only worth what you can prove it is worth.

01
SignalFix what the platforms optimize toward. Everything downstream inherits its quality.
02
CreativeThe highest-leverage variable, run as a testing program rather than a production task.
03
RetentionFollow cohorts past the close. Did the customers you bought actually stay and expand?

I came up on the operator side, not the agency side. That means I have sat in the rooms where a marketing number gets challenged, and I learned early that the only number worth reporting is one you can defend line by line.

My work starts with the signal going into the platforms, because everything downstream inherits its quality. Then creative, which is the highest-leverage variable most teams still treat as a production task. Then the uncomfortable part: following customers past the close to see whether the ones you bought actually stayed.

I have done that in B2B SaaS most of all, and also in fintech, ecommerce, healthcare and mobile apps, on budgets from a standing start to $35M a year. I work fluently across the modern marketing technology stack, including CDPs, data warehouses and BI tools, and I operate at both the strategic and executional level on PPC, SEO and go-to-market alike.

Ad platforms

Meta AdsGoogle AdsPerformance MaxYouTube AdsTikTok AdsSnapchat AdsPinterest AdsApple Search AdsQuora AdsNextdoor AdsLinkedIn AdsTaboolaOutbrainProgrammatic display & CTV

Data, measurement & martech

Meta CAPIGA4Google Tag ManagerBigQuerySalesforceHubSpotShopifyZapierSegment (CDP)TableauPower BIUTM & ValueTrackSession recording & heatmaps
03 / The difference

You are not buying hours. You are buying whose judgment runs your budget.

Agencies solve their margin problem by putting a director on your kickoff call and a coordinator on your account. I keep the client load small, and when a program needs more than one set of hands, the second set belongs to another director-level operator. Senior ownership is the rule, not the pitch.

The agency model

  • A director pitches you. A coordinator two years into their career runs the account.
  • Your budget is one of fifteen that analyst is pacing this week.
  • Channel specialists optimize their channel. Nobody owns your pipeline.
  • Reporting is built to justify the retainer.
  • Strategy arrives quarterly, in a deck.

Working with me

  • The operator on the sales call is the one in your account on Tuesday morning.
  • A deliberately small client load. Your account is never one of fifteen.
  • Senior only, at every level of the account. If a program needs a second operator, it is another director, not a coordinator, and one name stays accountable for pipeline and CAC payback.
  • Reporting built to survive an audit, because mine did, at 99.6% agreement with the CRM.
  • In your Slack and your standups, working off your CRM rather than a screenshot of it.
04 / AI, martech & attribution

The part most marketers outsource, and I do myself.

Media buying is the visible half of the job. The half that decides whether any of it counts is the plumbing underneath, and I build that rather than filing a ticket for it.

01 · Infrastructure

Attribution built from scratch

UTM taxonomy, clean CRM lead flows, campaign-level tracking and offline conversion imports, using aggregate privacy-conscious measurement rather than user-level tracking. At Hostfully none of it existed when I arrived, so I built the whole layer before I optimized a single campaign.

Zero to a full measurement stack in six months
02 · Rigor

Measurement that survives scrutiny

When my attribution basis was challenged internally I audited every paid opportunity in the quarter against the CRM's own lead source field and published a record-level workbook so anyone could check it. I also built the billing cross-reference tying signed contract value to revenue actually billing, which proved the headline number was overstated.

99.6% agreement under audit
03 · AI

AI as throughput, not a shortcut

I built an AI agent that produces on-brand static creative at speed, which expanded how many concepts we could test each week without adding headcount. I use AI the same way in analysis and reporting: to raise the number of questions I can ask of the data, not to decide the answer.

More concepts tested per week, same team

How a paid lead is tracked, click to revenue

99.6% match with CRM lead source
ClickAd platformutm_source=meta&utm_campaign=…
VisitLanding pageUTMs captured in hidden fields
LeadCRM recordLead source + campaign stored
PipelineOpportunitySQL, stage, amount
RevenueClosed wonCross-checked to billing
05 / Capabilities

What I do, hands on keys

Paid media

Meta and Google Ads run day to day, from account structure and bidding to pacing and budget moves.

Advantage+ · Performance Max · high-intent search · dynamic creative · catalog · lookalikes

Diagnostics & recovery

Finding the root cause when performance drops. One example: a Google outage traced to a conversion sync tied to a former employee’s account.

Pipeline diagnosis · conversion integrity · platform troubleshooting

Demand gen strategy

ICP definition, funnel math, and a budget model that connects spend to ARR.

MQL to SQL to won · CAC payback · NRR by cohort · channel mix · board reporting

Creative strategy

Concept testing run to a clear decision, plus briefs a designer can work from.

Problem-led concepting · UGC direction · teardowns · AI-assisted statics

Conversion & landing pages

Landing page builds and testing, set up without pulling engineering time.

LP builds · session recording · heatmaps · AEO and passage extraction

Sales alignment

A logged reason for every missed meeting, reviewed by campaign and creative each month.

Disqualification loops · SDR feedback · lead quality diagnostics

06 / Engagements

How we would work together

Most clients work with me on a retainer, with me running the program end to end. It starts with a teardown of what you have today.

RETAINER · EMBEDDED OPERATOR

A head of demand gen, without the headcount.

I run the function end to end: strategy, media buying, creative and measurement. I’m in your accounts every week and report into whatever forum your leadership already uses. If the program outgrows one operator, the second is director-level too.

Best forCompanies with budget to deploy and no senior demand gen lead in the seat.
Book an intro call

What’s included

  • ✓
    Paid media ownershipSearch and social, from account structure to daily pacing.
  • ✓
    Creative programConcepting, production and an always-on testing cadence.
  • ✓
    Attribution and CRM instrumentationTracking that ties spend to pipeline and revenue.
  • ✓
    Weekly optimizationPacing, bidding and budget reallocation across channels.
  • ✓
    Exec and board reportingMonthly, built on the conservative numbers.
Also available

Consultancy, strategy only. A full diagnostic of your accounts, attribution and funnel, then ongoing direction for your in-house team or agency, without me in the accounts day to day.

07 / References

What people say

Yousuf stands out for one simple reason: he delivers results.

Kevin McReady
Kevin McReadyHead of Demand Generation

After cycling through multiple agencies that couldn’t quite crack the code on our paid search strategy, Yousuf stepped in and immediately made an impact. What impressed me most was his ability to operate at both the strategic level and in the trenches. He didn’t just tell us what needed to happen, he rolled up his sleeves and made it happen.

Within months of working together, Yousuf transformed our paid search from a cost center into a legitimate revenue driver. The results speak for themselves: lower cost per lead, higher lead quality, and campaigns that actually scale efficiently.

If you’re looking for someone who can both architect a winning paid media strategy and execute it flawlessly, Yousuf is your person.

Yousuf is one of the people I count on most. The way he owns our paid media and demand gen strategy gives me total confidence. He brings rigor and calm to a part of the business that could easily feel chaotic.
Jaimie Anzelone
Jaimie AnzeloneVP of Marketing
Before Yousuf I didn’t trust our ad numbers. Google and Meta would tell us one thing and Shopify another. He fixed that first, and from then on every report he sent was the conservative version, which made me trust it more, not less. It felt like having someone in-house who actually cared whether the money was working.
KG
Kelvin GoncalvesMarketing Manager
By the time I stepped in, most of the heavy lifting was already done. The tracking was clean, the platforms were optimizing toward actual booked consults instead of cheap leads, and there was a testing rhythm that kept creative fresh. That foundation is a big reason the account kept performing.
Michael Zola
Michael ZolaPerformance Marketing Manager

If the paid program is not producing pipeline, I can usually tell you why in a week.

Send me access and the last 90 days. The first conversation is a teardown of what you already have, not a pitch.

Book a 30-minute intro

The 90-day teardown

  • ✓
    Conversion signalWhat the platforms are actually optimizing toward
  • ✓
    AttributionWhether spend ties to pipeline in your CRM
  • ✓
    CreativeWhich concepts are carrying cost, and which aren’t
  • ✓
    Budget mixWhere the next dollar should and shouldn’t go
  • ✓
    Funnel leaksWhere qualified buyers drop between click and close
Emailgtamarketers@gmail.com
Calendarcalendly.com/gtamarketers/30min
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/yousuf-a-3806301b2
Based inOntario, Canada · US hours