Sheet — 01 / 06 — Survey
001 ·

Growth marketing by industry — 21 verticals, one senior standard.

Every market has its own physics.

01InstrumentThe truth layer first — tracking a CFO can trust.
02TestCapped budgets. Kill-or-scale thresholds set in advance.
03ScaleOnly what proves incremental, net-new revenue.

The discipline never changes. The constants change at every industry line — we measure yours before your budget does.

The Firm — Spec

RGM is a boutique growth marketing agency serving 21 industries. Senior partners with decades inside each vertical run the work directly. We tune unit economics, channel mix, and compliance to your market’s physics — never one playbook ported across categories.

Doc RGM-IND-00 · 21 sheets · Seniors only · Rev 6.11
Verticals surveyed 21 / 21 Senior partners only.

By David Schaefer · · Updated June 2026

Survey the verticals
002
The Argument — Constants Are Local. Sheet — 02 / 06

Why does industry context change growth marketing?

Because the constants change. Click costs, conversion rates, lead costs, and regulatory limits vary as much as sixfold between industries. A cross-industry average describes no one. Build a plan on averages and every decision it touches gets mis-priced — bids, budgets, payback targets, even which channels deserve to exist.

Picture two brands in the same Google auction on the same morning — one sells concert tickets, one signs injury cases. Identical mechanics. Different physics. Hand both to an agency that treats them the same, and the legal budget looks broken while the ticket budget inherits a legal-grade CAC tolerance and overspends with confidence. Both reports look fine. Both plans are wrong.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Three of the most expensive lessons in modern marketing are public record — and all three are stories about market physics beating a borrowed playbook. Open the files.

Field note

The trap has a name. Generalist teams price your market with the constants of the last market they ran. Nothing in their dashboard warns them.

What you see is all there is.
Daniel Kahneman · Thinking, Fast and Slow · on the data you forget you’re missing
FIG. 0R — The Receipts · Three Public Experiments
The move

eBay ran a randomized holdout on its paid search — whole markets went dark while the platform dashboards kept promising the ads were carrying revenue.

The result

Shoppers who would have clicked a brand ad simply clicked the organic listing below it. The economists’ verdict: the measured return on that spend was negative.

The physics

A marketplace with crushing brand gravity has different click physics than a challenger brand. Attribution said yes. The holdout said no. The holdout was right.

< $0 measured return on brand-keyword ad spend in the experiment Vertical — Marketplace / Ecommerce Source: Blake, Nosko & Tadelis — Econometrica (NBER w20171)
The move

P&G audited where its digital impressions actually landed — then cut more than $100 million of spend it judged largely ineffective, in a single quarter.

The result

The company told investors it saw no reduction in its growth rate. The money had been buying impressions, not customers.

The physics

In CPG, distribution and shelf velocity carry the brand. Spend is not a constant of growth — it has to clear the bar your vertical actually sets.

$100M+ digital ad spend cut with no reported change in growth Vertical — CPG Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 2017
The move

Airbnb cut its combined marketing spend by more than half in 2020 — from $1.14 billion to $482 million — with performance ads taking the deepest cut.

The result

Traffic returned to 95% of 2019 levels before spend resumed. Airbnb made the shift to brand-led growth permanent and said marketing will never return to pre-pandemic levels as a share of revenue.

The physics

In travel, the brand is the acquisition channel. A retail-style performance playbook would have rebuilt that spend — and called the recovered traffic its own.

95% of traffic back with performance marketing switched off Vertical — Travel & Hospitality Source: Marketing Week · Airbnb FY2020 results

Three markets. Three different physics. One discipline caught all three — test against a holdout, then believe the holdout. That discipline is the desk standard on every RGM engagement, tuned to your vertical’s constants. The panel below shows how far those constants spread.

FIG. 00 — One Click, Two Markets

Arts & Entertainment $1.63 avg cost per search click
Attorneys & Legal $9.87 avg cost per search click

Same auction. Same ad formats. Six times the physics.

The yield flips too — conversion runs 2.64% in finance & insurance and 16.22% in animals & pets. Cheap clicks are not a strategy. Knowing what your click should cost is. Source: LocalIQ / WordStream by LocaliQ, 2026 · Google + Microsoft Ads, Apr 2025–Mar 2026
003
The Instrument — Read the Spread. Sheet — 03 / 06

What do the benchmarks say about vertical spread?

Across 23 business categories, the 2026 LocalIQ study puts average search CPC at $5.42, click-through rate at 6.64%, cost per lead at $66.69, and conversion rate at 8.18%. Every vertical sits far from at least one of those averages. That distance is your planning error, unless someone corrects for it.

Use the instrument below the way our desk does. Switch the metric. Watch the ranking reshuffle. Legal owns the most expensive clicks, yet converts mid-pack. Finance earns superb click-through and the worst conversion rate on the board. Cheap clicks and expensive clicks both have a job — the question is what your vertical’s click is supposed to do.

Cost per lead fell across industries in 2026 — the first overall decrease in five years, even as CPC and conversion rates rose. Source: LocalIQ / WordStream by LocaliQ, 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks

Desk note

We read spread, not averages. Your plan starts from your category’s row, then gets corrected against your own account data inside the first 90 days. Want to run vertical numbers yourself? The RGM tools library holds the calculators and benchmark references we use on engagements.

FIG. 01 — The Spread · 23 Categories

Interactive · Bars rank all 23 categories by the selected metric · Highest and lowest in green and cyan · Full data in the table below

Search advertising benchmarks by industry, Google + Microsoft Ads, Apr 2025–Mar 2026. Source: LocalIQ / WordStream by LocaliQ, 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks. Cross-industry averages: CPC $5.42 · CTR 6.64% · CPL $66.69 · CVR 8.18%.
Business categoryAvg CPCAvg CTRAvg CPLAvg CVR
Animals & Pets$4.067.49%$31.5016.22%
Apparel / Fashion & Jewelry$4.446.64%$97.514.50%
Arts & Entertainment$1.6312.75%$26.845.91%
Attorneys & Legal Services$9.875.87%$131.635.55%
Automotive — For Sale$2.278.28%$44.266.01%
Automotive — Repair & Parts$4.355.56%$29.9615.51%
Beauty & Personal Care$4.626.75%$39.2510.35%
Business Services$5.876.10%$93.694.85%
Career & Employment$5.815.88%$67.363.05%
Dentists & Dental Services$8.005.66%$72.9710.67%
Education & Instruction$4.817.56%$77.4813.14%
Finance & Insurance$3.399.83%$74.442.64%
Furniture$3.976.57%$106.702.99%
Health & Fitness$6.175.81%$67.366.94%
Home & Home Improvement$8.336.47%$90.928.05%
Industrial & Commercial$5.876.57%$75.198.20%
Personal Services$7.177.16%$54.6012.34%
Physicians & Surgeons$4.766.61%$40.0412.43%
Real Estate$3.227.61%$102.513.70%
Restaurants & Food$2.056.83%$30.578.05%
Shopping, Collectibles & Gifts$4.148.28%$49.404.01%
Sports & Recreation$2.778.75%$44.267.69%
Travel$2.149.32%$44.705.83%
004
The Sheet Index — 21 Verticals. Sheet — 04 / 06

The 21 industries we serve.

RGM serves SaaS, DTC, B2B, ecommerce, fintech, healthtech, edtech, CPG, real estate, legal, automotive, travel and hospitality, food and beverage, fashion, beauty, home goods, luxury, gaming, media and entertainment, nonprofit, and crypto and Web3. Four economic motions cover all 21 — recurring, cart, considered, and regulated.

Each sheet below opens a full vertical brief: the unit economics, the channel mix that clears payback, the rules that bind the category, and the questions buyers in that market actually ask. Select a motion to see which markets share its physics.

Reading the motions

Recurring — payback windows rule. Cart — margin math and fast creative. Considered — long cycles, nurture carries. Regulated — compliance shapes the funnel.

Four motions, one discipline. Highlight a motion to compare its markets.
SHT-01Recurring SaaS

Recurring revenue forgives nothing. The CAC payback window decides which channels deserve budget at all.

Open sheet SHT-02Cart DTC

You own the customer file. Lifecycle revenue decides whether paid acquisition ever truly pays back.

Open sheet SHT-03Considered B2B

Six people sign off on one purchase. The ad starts a conversation your sales team finishes.

Open sheet SHT-04Cart Ecommerce

Blended MER governs the whole machine. Feed quality moves more revenue than ad copy does.

Open sheet SHT-05Regulated Fintech

Every ad gets a compliance read. Teams fluent in FINRA and SEC language ship weeks faster.

Open sheet SHT-06Regulated Healthtech

HIPAA reshapes the funnel. No PHI near a pixel — measurement gets engineered around the rule.

Open sheet SHT-07Recurring Edtech

Enrollment runs on a calendar. Spend that ignores semester rhythm buys clicks at the wrong moment.

Open sheet SHT-08Cart CPG

Retail media decides shelf and search at once. Velocity data is the only scoreboard that counts.

Open sheet SHT-09Considered Real Estate

A 3.70% search conversion rate on six-figure decisions. Nurture does the heavy lifting.

Open sheet SHT-10Regulated Legal

The priciest clicks in search advertising. One signed case pays for a month of them.

Open sheet SHT-11Considered Automotive

The showroom visit starts as a search. Inventory feeds and locality decide who earns it.

Open sheet SHT-12Considered Travel & Hospitality

Long dream, short booking window. Win the planning queries months before the trip is booked.

Open sheet SHT-13Cart Food & Beverage

Local intent, thin margins, two-dollar clicks. The table goes to whoever shows up first.

Open sheet SHT-14Cart Fashion

Drops, seasons, and returns math. Creative ages faster here than in any other cart.

Open sheet SHT-15Cart Beauty

Routine products with subscription economics. Repeat rate is the metric the first sale hides.

Open sheet SHT-16Cart Home Goods

High tickets, long dwell. A $107 lead is cheap when the cart clears four figures.

Open sheet SHT-17Considered Luxury

Scarcity is the product. Reach without discounting — the wrong impression costs more than none.

Open sheet SHT-18Recurring Gaming

Players smell marketing a mile away. Community and creators carry what paid ads cannot.

Open sheet SHT-19Recurring Media & Entertainment

Attention is the inventory. The cheapest clicks anywhere — monetizing them is the hard part.

Open sheet SHT-20Regulated Nonprofit

Donor LTV on grant-cycle budgets. Every dollar answers to a board before it answers to us.

Open sheet SHT-21Regulated Crypto & Web3

Platform policy can flip overnight. Channel mix here is risk management before it is marketing.

Open sheet

FIG. 02 — Sector index · 21 sheets · Motions share math, not playbooks

005
The Method — Calibrate, Then Commit. Sheet — 05 / 06

How does RGM learn an industry?

We start with a benchmark dossier built from sourced public data. We tune unit economics to your real margins and LTV, map the rules, and survey the channel mix. Then capped traction tests let the vertical tell us what’s true. Decades of pattern matching set the starting grid; tests set the route.

  1. Benchmark dossier

    Sourced vertical constants — CPC, CTR, CPL, conversion rate — compiled from public pools before a dollar moves. The spread board above is the public half of this file.

  2. Unit-economics calibration

    Your margins, AOV or ACV, LTV, and a CAC payback target a CFO accepts. Benchmarks tell us the market’s physics; your P&L tells us yours.

  3. Regulatory map

    HIPAA, FINRA and SEC advertising rules, bar restrictions, platform policy — charted into the plan, never patched on after a rejected ad teaches the lesson late.

  4. Channel-mix survey

    Where signal is strongest for this buyer, not where the last vertical happened to convert. A LinkedIn-shaped budget in a TikTok-shaped market fails politely and slowly.

  5. Capped traction tests

    Small budgets, kill-or-scale thresholds set in advance. Budget flows only to what proves incremental, net-new revenue — the vertical gets a vote before the plan gets a budget.

Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign.
Claude Hopkins · Scientific Advertising, 1923 · still the house rule
The dossier — spec

Goes in: sourced CPC, CTR, CPL, and CVR ranges · margin structure · AOV or ACV · LTV cohorts · platform-policy map.
Comes out: a payback target a CFO accepts, and a channel mix with kill-or-scale thresholds set before launch.

006
The Bench — Seniors Only. Sheet — 06 / 06

Who actually runs the work?

Senior partners only. RGM has no junior account layer — the people who scope an engagement run it. Each vertical lead carries decades of operating history in that market (RGM data). Your budget never funds someone’s first contact with your industry.

Most agencies sell you a partner and staff you a pod. The pitch deck is senior; the Monday standup is not. We built RGM the other way. Small on purpose. Senior by rule. Every vertical is led by someone who has lived its cycles — the platform policy shocks, the seasonal cliffs, the margin math that never makes the case study.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it.
David Ogilvy · Ogilvy on Advertising · the staffing model, in one line
The rule

We take on a small number of brands at a time, and we choose work that’s hard. That is the whole selectivity speech.

Verticals served
21Four economic motions · one operating discipline (RGM data)
Brands under management
9National brands across 16 web properties (RGM data)
Annual client retention
96%Clients who renew year over year (RGM data)
Client referral rate
100%Every client has referred new work (RGM data)

Quick answers about RGM’s industry coverage

What changes from industry to industry?
The calibration: unit economics, channel mix, regulatory limits, and creative dialect. A payback window that works in DTC would sink a SaaS plan; a compliance posture built for fintech would over-constrain fashion.
What stays the same?
The operating discipline. Instrument first. Test with capped budgets. Scale only what proves incremental. Every vertical, no exceptions — the method is the constant that makes the variables safe to change.
How senior is the team on my account?
Entirely senior. The partner who scopes your engagement runs it, and your vertical lead has decades of operating history in your market (RGM data). There is no hand-off to a junior pod after signature.
Where should I start?
Open your industry sheet above for the vertical brief, or go straight to the application if the fit is already clear. Either path reaches the same senior desk.
007
Appendix — Questions, Answered. Appendix — A / 01

Frequently asked questions.

What industries does RGM serve?

RGM serves 21 industries: SaaS, DTC, B2B, ecommerce, fintech, healthtech, edtech, CPG, real estate, legal, automotive, travel and hospitality, food and beverage, fashion, beauty, home goods, luxury, gaming, media and entertainment, nonprofit, and crypto and Web3. Each vertical is run by senior partners with decades of operating history in that market.

Why does industry experience matter when hiring a growth marketing agency?

Because the constants differ. In the 2026 LocalIQ benchmarks, average search CPC runs from $1.63 in arts and entertainment to $9.87 in legal services. That is a sixfold spread. An agency without vertical pattern matching prices your market with someone else’s numbers. It learns on your budget.

Does RGM use the same playbook in every industry?

No. The operating discipline stays constant — instrument, test, scale on incrementality. The tuning changes per vertical. Unit economics, channel mix, legal limits, and creative dialect get measured fresh for each market. Capped traction tests then validate the plan before budget scales.

Does RGM work with brands outside these 21 industries?

Yes. The 21 listed verticals are where our pattern matching runs deepest. We accept clients in adjacent industries when the engagement fits our operating model. The benchmark dossier for the new vertical gets built before any media spend moves.

Who actually runs an industry engagement at RGM?

Senior partners only. RGM has no junior account layer — the people who scope the engagement run it. Each vertical lead carries decades of operating history in that market (RGM data). Your budget never funds someone’s first contact with your industry.

How does RGM handle regulated industries like healthcare, finance, or legal?

Compliance is built into the plan, not patched on afterward. That means HIPAA-safe measurement for healthtech, FINRA and SEC advertising rules for fintech, bar advertising restrictions for legal, and platform-policy risk management for crypto. Each limit gets mapped before channel and creative decisions are made.

How long does industry-specific growth marketing take to show results?

Most programs with clean tracking show measurable lift inside the first 90 days. The compounding gains stack up over the next six to twelve months, as tests pile up and budget flows to the channels proving incremental, net-new revenue for your vertical.

What sources back RGM’s industry benchmarks?

From public sources you can check — the LocalIQ and WordStream by LocaliQ benchmark studies, platform-published data, and named research firms. Anything else is labeled as RGM analysis. Every number on this page links to its source. We never present modeled figures as client results.

008
Engagement — By Application Final sheet

Bring us your vertical.

Tell us where the brand is and where it has to go. If we’re the right team for it, you’ll hear from a senior partner — not an SDR.

Initiate [ Apply ]

Applications reviewed by hand. Twelve clients per year, total. If your industry isn’t on the index above, apply anyway — adjacent verticals are considered when the work is right.