Versiunea în română disponibilă Schimbă în română →
Mugur Marinescu
MUGA Philosophy

How I work. And who I don't work with.

7 minute read · Mugur Marinescu

Performance marketing isn't magic and isn't a platform. It's a fairly simple discipline: figure out who buys, figure out where they look for the solution, put the money exactly there. The rest is noise. This page is about how I apply that in practice, and why I sometimes turn down projects that looked fine on paper.

How I work

How I work is simple. And direct.

I don't dodge subjects. If I see something not working in your account, I'll tell you. If a direction you want to take will cost a lot and deliver little, I'll tell you before I invest the first euro in ads. If we fit, we work together. If not, I'll recommend someone better suited for what you need right now.

This isn't politeness — it's economics. I sell results, not pretty reports. If the results don't show up, your ROI fades, my reputation suffers, and neither of us is happy. I'd rather say "no" at the start and point you in the right direction.

Principles

What I base decisions on.

Three principles. I apply them to every client, no exceptions.

01

The customer avatar is the foundation. The rest is improvisation.

Before spending a single euro on ads, we need to know exactly who buys. Not "who could theoretically buy." Who actually buys: age, situation, motivation, the moment they decide to pay.

A real case, anonymized. A client sells custom-order women's footwear, premium pricing. I went through the CRM, the actual orders from the past 12 months, and what customers say in the comments on Instagram. The real avatar comes out clearly: women between 25 and 35, above-average income, who care about design and pay for something unique. That's the definition. Full stop.

When I showed them the data, the answer was: "but we also have male customers, and women over 45 who buy." Yes, they do. But it's statistical noise. Under 5% of orders. If we allocate the Meta Ads budget to serve those 5% as well, we miss the 95% who pay.

At that point I have two options. Either the client accepts the data and we concentrate budget on the real avatar. Or they insist the avatar "is broader," and then we're already on the wrong road before we even start. I refuse the second case. Not from ego. From experience. I know exactly where it leads: three months later we're spending twice as much for the same number of customers, ROI collapses, I'm the one to blame.

02

Limited budget concentrates. It doesn't scatter.

The most common mistake clients with small-to-medium budgets make: they want to be everywhere. Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, maybe programmatic. "So people see us."

Another real case. A real estate developer with a complex under construction. Budget €8,000/month for ads. He came in with the request: "I want campaigns on Google, Meta, TikTok and Outbrain."

I walked him through the simple math. The highest purchase intent for an apartment shows up when someone actively searches "apartments for sale in [the area where he's building]" on Google. That's the moment the user raises their hand and says "I'm looking right now, I'm ready to talk."

With €8,000 a month, if you put everything on Search plus a few well-controlled Performance Max campaigns on his inventory, you dominate the SERP in that area. Fewer leads per month, but warm leads. Real intent, conversion rates of 8 to 15%.

Scatter €8,000 across five platforms and you have €1,600 each. Below the minimum viable threshold on any of them. On Meta lead ads you get cheap leads, yes. But the conversion rate of those leads into actual customers is under 1%. You're buying data, not customers.

The client pushed for Meta lead ads because "a developer friend does it and gets leads." I turned the project down. Three months later I ran into him by chance. Budget spent, lots of leads, zero sales. Now he's with another agency. Good.

03

Two stores, two strategies. Never a template.

This is the principle that separates real performance marketing from "I run the same ads for all clients and just swap the pixels." Two stores in the same niche can have completely different strategies, depending on what they sell and how the product gets bought.

Two clients, both fashion eCommerce. Similar budgets.

Store 1 sells women's dresses, focused on occasion dresses. The products solve a concrete problem that already exists in the user's head: "I'm going to a wedding and I need a dress." The user is actively searching. Here we concentrate budget on Google Search Ads and Shopping Ads, with clear segmentation by event occasion. Controlled Performance Max. Meta retargeting for people who visit the site but don't buy.

Store 2 sells custom-order women's footwear. The products don't solve an urgent problem. They're impulse purchases, triggered by visual discovery: "those boots are gorgeous, I'm buying them." The user isn't actively searching. You have to meet her where she scrolls. Here we concentrate budget on Meta Ads and TikTok Ads with strong video creative. Very little Google, only for branded search and search retargeting.

Same industry. Similar budgets. Fundamentally different strategies. Because the nature of the purchase is different. Search vs. Discovery. Need vs. Want. That's what real strategy means, not a template applied to everyone.

The €15K Threshold

The €15K threshold. Once more, to be clear.

€15Kmonthly media budget, the threshold
€1,000Tier 1, per month + VAT
20 hrsper month, from, on Tier 1

The most common pushback when I explain the threshold: "but if your strategy works at €5K, can't you do the same for me?"

No, I can't. And it's not about you. It's about math.

I work on a fixed fee based on your account complexity, in four tiers: €1,000/month + VAT (Tier 1), €2,000/month + VAT (Tier 2), €3,000/month + VAT (Tier 3), €4,000+/month + VAT (Tier 4). Full details on the pricing page.

On Tier 1 — €1,000/month + VAT — I can allocate from 20 hours monthly to your account. For clients with media budgets of €15K-€20K/month, the recovery math is feasible: I need to bring you €2,000+/month in savings or additional revenue, which at that budget is realistic through competent optimization.

Below €15K media budget, recovering €3,000+/month through competent optimization is no longer realistic. The absolute budget is too small for there to be that much room to optimize. Regardless of what you'd pay me, I couldn't deliver the result.

That's why I don't work below the threshold. I'm not protecting my ego — I'm protecting your ROI.

Exceptions

The real exceptions.

There are situations where the €15K threshold doesn't apply directly.

01

One-shot audit

A single engagement, from €500 + VAT, scope-dependent. Not a retainer. I clean the account, identify the gaps, give you a written action plan, you execute it. Works for clients who can't sustain a monthly retainer but need an expert eye right now.

02

Fast-scaling startup

Current budget €5K, will exceed €15K within 90 days, validated by a real pipeline (not wishful thinking). Worth starting early with the right setup.

03

Very high margin

Premium B2B SaaS or financial services, where €5K in media generates €50K+ monthly profit. The math works differently here because the absolute margin per client is enormous.

Below threshold

If you're below the threshold.

Three real options, in the order I recommend them.

01

One-shot audit

From €500 + VAT, scope-dependent. Single engagement. You leave with a plan in hand and execute it yourself.

02

Personalized recommendations

Within the time I can offer, I'll give you a list of good freelancers I know personally, or a training plan for your internal team. Send me a short email with your situation. I reply within 48h if I can offer a relevant recommendation.

03

Wait until your budget grows

If we're not a fit right now, focus on ROI before scaling. When you cross the threshold, come back. No hard feelings if you work with someone else in the meantime.

Who I don't work with

Who I don't work with.

Beyond the budget threshold, I turn down projects that show any of the following signals.

  • The client with no clear avatar

    Or worse, the one who rejects the real avatar because "we want to be for everyone." Everyone doesn't buy. A specific someone buys. If we can't agree on that from the first call, we're both wasting time.

  • The client who wants "everywhere"

    Small-to-medium budget, wants Google plus Meta plus TikTok plus LinkedIn plus programmatic. I walk them through the math. If they insist, I refuse. Limited money concentrates.

  • The client who confuses cheap leads with good leads

    A €2 CPL isn't success if the conversion rate of those leads into customers is 0.5%. The math asks for the real cost per acquired customer, not the cost per completed form.

  • The client who wants ads without tracking

    Without clean attribution, optimization is expensive guesswork. I won't make decisions on broken data.

  • The client who wants "the latest trends"

    Generative AI for cheap creative, "reels-only strategy," trending audiences. I do performance marketing, not hype marketing. If a tactic doesn't measure revenue, I'm not running it just because it's cool on LinkedIn this week.

What you get

What working with me looks like.

6active retainers, maximum
90 daysdelivery window, or I leave
0account managers or juniors

If you've read this far, we're probably on the same wavelength. Here's what you get concretely.

Direct access to me. No account manager, no junior. We talk between us, decide together, I execute.

Direct honesty. If a tactic isn't working, I'll tell you. If I see a decision that won't bring the results expected, I'll tell you. If at 90 days I haven't delivered against the objectives we set, I leave without asking for another cent.

Maximum 6 active retainers at a time. That's all I can handle personally without becoming an account manager. When the 6 slots are taken, you go on a waiting list.

And the discipline I apply to every account: clear avatar, concentrated budget, strategy matched to the product, clean tracking, daily optimization. No tricks. No secret formulas.

If that sounds right, apply for a call.

Read to the end and we're on the same wavelength?

Apply for a 30-minute call. On the first call you see exactly if we're a fit.

Apply for a call →