Hired a $6k/mo Growth Marketer. They burned $10k on ads and we got zero ROI.

After bootstrapping to $5k MRR, we decided it was time to bring in an expert to scale our user acquisition. We hired a highly recommended "Growth Marketer" who promised to "10x our pipeline" using paid ads and a revamped funnel. We agreed to a retainer of $6,000/month (plus ad spend), which was a massive chunk of our runway.

For the first month, they were incredibly active. They set up HubSpot, redesigned our landing page, and launched campaigns on LinkedIn and Google. It looked like they were doing a lot of work.

But at the end of month two, I pulled the data:

• We had spent $10,000 in ad spend (on top of their $12,000 retainer).

• We generated 15,000 clicks, but our bounce rate was 92%.

• We got 45 new free signups, but only 1 paying customer (a $49/month plan).

I was furious. When I confronted the marketer, they blamed our product, saying, "The landing page is converting fine, your onboarding must be broken." But when I looked at their ad targeting, they were bidding on broad, completely irrelevant keywords and sending traffic to a generic homepage, not specific landing pages. They were optimizing for "clicks" and "impressions," not actual revenue.

We just fired them. We are out $22,000 (retainer + ad spend), which set our runway back by months. I realized I hired a "generalist" who knew how to spend money on dashboards but didn't actually understand our niche or how to talk to our B2B buyers.

For founders who have hired growth marketers: What are the actual red flags to look for before giving someone the keys to your ad budget?

Do you require them to work on a performance-based (CPA) model? How do you audit their work to ensure they aren't just buying junk traffic to make their dashboard look good?