LinkedIn Ads Strategy: SaaS Founders' Guide

Most SaaS founders I talk to are burning money on LinkedIn Ads and have no idea why. They've been told it's the holy grail for B2B, so they throw a budget at it, target some job titles, point ads to a "Request a Demo" page, and then wonder why they're getting tyre-kickers and a cost-per-lead that makes their eyes water. The truth is, LinkedIn isn't a magic bullet; it's a precision instrument. If you don't know exactly who you're targeting, what their biggest professional nightmare is, and how to make them an offer they can't refuse, you might as well be setting fire to your cash.

The problem isn't the platform. The problem is the approach. You're likely thinking about targeting, ads, and offers all wrong. We're going to fix that. Forget everything you've read in generic marketing blogs. This is a no-nonsense guide to setting up LinkedIn campaigns for SaaS that actually work, based on what we've seen running campaigns for dozens of B2B software companies.

Why are my LinkedIn ads failing before I even start?

Your campaigns are failing because you've defined your customer by a demographic, not a nightmare. "Companies in the tech sector with 100-500 employees" or "VPs of Marketing" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored by everyone. To stop wasting money, you have to get uncomfortably specific about your customer's pain.

You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive problem. Your ideal customer isn't just a job title; they're a Head of Sales terrified of missing quota because their team's lead data is a mess. They're a CTO who lies awake at night worried their best engineer will quit out of frustration with a clunky internal tool. For a compliance SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing a risk management tool'; it's 'the CEO getting a letter from the regulators with a seven-figure fine attached.' Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you nail this, your entire ad strategy changes. The ad copy writes itself, the targeting becomes obvious, and your offer becomes irresistible. If you haven't done this work, you have no business spending a single pound on ads. For a bit more on this, check out our guide on how targeting nightmares, not demographics, is the key to effective ad copy.

So, how do I actually find this 'nightmare' audience on LinkedIn?

Once you've defined the pain, finding them on LinkedIn becomes a methodical process, not a guessing game. LinkedIn’s targeting is powerful, but only if you use it with precision. Forget broad strokes; we're using a scalpel.

Your starting point is Company and Job Experience attributes. This is your bread and butter.

• Company Industries: Get specific. Don't just target "Information Technology and Services." Target "Computer Software" or "Financial Services" if that's your niche.
• Company Size: This is huge for SaaS. A solution for a 50-person startup is often useless to a 5,000-person enterprise. Be realistic about who your product actually serves.
• Job Titles & Functions: This is where people go wrong. Don't just target "CEO". Target the actual decision-maker *and* the champion. For a technical tool, that might be "Head of Engineering" (decision-maker) and "Senior DevOps Engineer" (champion/user). Combine Functions (e.g., Engineering) with Seniority (e.g., Director, VP) to build a robust audience.
• Member Skills: This is a powerful but often overlooked tool. You can target people based on the skills they list on their profile. Selling a project management tool? Target people with skills like "Agile Methodologies" or "Scrum". This is a great way to qualify your audience's expertise.

But here's where you can get a real edge: Matched Audiences. This is where you upload your own data. If you have a list of target companies (you should), upload it. You can then layer job title and seniority targeting on top. This is the most direct way to get in front of the exact people you want to sell to. I've seen this tactic alone dramatically improve results for clients. For a deeper look into this process, our complete guide to LinkedIn ads for B2B SaaS covers this in more detail.

The goal is to build a few, highly relevant audiences to test. Start with your most specific, highest-intent audience first. Don't create dozens of audiences with minor variations. Create 2-3 distinct audiences that represent different hypotheses about your ICP and test them against each other. This is a core part of how we recommend structuring your ad accounts for scale from day one.

What campaign objective should I even choose?

This is a surprisingly common mistake with expensive consequences. When you set your campaign objective, you're giving a direct command to LinkedIn's algorithm about the type of person you want it to find within your target audience. If you give it the wrong command, you'll get the wrong people.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: if you choose "Brand Awareness" or "Reach", you are telling LinkedIn: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm, being very good at its job, will find the people in your audience who are least likely to click, engage, or ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No one else is bidding for them. You're paying LinkedIn to find you the worst possible prospects for your SaaS.

For a SaaS business, there are only two objectives that matter 99% of the time:

1. Lead Generation: This uses LinkedIn's native Lead Gen Forms. They pre-fill with a user's profile data, making submission incredibly easy. The upside is a lower cost-per-lead (CPL) because of the low friction. The downside is that lead quality can be lower. You need a solid follow-up process to qualify these leads.
2. Website Conversions: This sends traffic to your landing page to get them to sign up for a trial, book a demo, or download a resource. The CPL will almost certainly be higher than with Lead Gen Forms, but the leads are often much higher quality because they've had to make more of an effort. They've seen your website and are still interested.

The best awareness you can get is a competitor's customer switching to your product. That only happens through conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of solving a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. Start with a conversion objective. Always.

Which ad format is going to work?

LinkedIn offers a few ad formats, but you only need to focus on a couple to get started. Don't overcomplicate it. The goal is to find a winning message first, then you can experiment with formats.

Single Image Ads: The workhorse of LinkedIn. They're simple, direct, and great for driving traffic. Your image needs to be eye-catching and your headline/copy needs to speak directly to the ICP's nightmare. This is the best place to start your testing.

Video Ads: These can be very effective for explaining a more complex product or showing it in action. A short (15-30 second) video that clearly shows the "before" and "after" state of using your software can work wonders. They can lead to more qualified leads, as someone who watches a video is more invested than someone who just clicks an image. We've seen this format generate highly qualified leads for our B2B SaaS clients.

Carousel Ads: These are good if you have multiple features or benefits to highlight. You can use each card to tell a part of the story or showcase a different aspect of your product. They can be a bit more work to create but can drive higher engagement.

Conversation Ads (formerly Sponsored InMail): These can feel a bit spammy if done badly, but they can be effective for high-ticket offers or starting a conversation with very senior decision-makers. The key is to make it feel personal and offer genuine value, not just a sales pitch. Tbh, I'd probably avoid these until you've got the other formats working well.

Start with a Single Image Ad and a short Video Ad. Test them in the same campaign to the same audience and see which one performs better. One of our software clients got their CPL down to $22 targeting B2B decision makers purely by testing different image and video creative against a very specific audience.

What do I actually put in the ad?

Your ad copy's only job is to get the right person to stop scrolling and think, "they're talking about me." It needs to speak directly to the nightmare you identified earlier. No one on LinkedIn cares about your "innovative, AI-powered, synergistic platform." They care about their problems.

For a B2B SaaS product, the best framework is Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Describe their current world of pain. Paint a vivid picture of the problem. "Your finance team just spent another week manually reconciling invoices. Your best people are bored, and you're blind to your real-time cash position."
• After: Show them the promised land. What does life look like once they use your product? "Imagine closing the books in a day. You have a real-time dashboard of every penny, and your team is focused on strategic analysis, not data entry."
• Bridge: Your product is the bridge that gets them from Before to After. "Our automated accounting platform is the bridge. Connect your accounts in minutes and eliminate manual work forever."

This structure works because it focuses on the transformation, which is what people are actually buying. They aren't buying software; they are buying a better version of their business, and a less stressful version of their own life. This is the core principle behind writting effective LinkedIn ads that don't waste money.

What's a good offer that isn't 'Request a Demo'?

Now we get to the most common failure point in all B2B advertising. The "Request a Demo" button. It is, without a doubt, the most arrogant and ineffective Call to Action you can use. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another vendor begging for their time.

Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. For SaaS founders, you have a massive advantage here: your product. The gold standard offer is a free trial or a freemium plan (with no credit card required). Let them use the actual product. Let them solve a small piece of their problem for free. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're no longer generating marketing qualified leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating product qualified leads (PQLs) who are already convinced.

I've seen this firsthand with many B2B SaaS clients. Shifting the primary call to action from a high-commitment 'Book a Demo' to a low-friction 'Start a Free Trial' can dramatically lower acquisition costs. It puts the value of your product front and center, letting it do the selling for you. This simple change in offer can be the difference between a failing campaign and a wildly successful one.

If you can't offer a trial, you must bottle your expertise into an asset that provides instant value. A marketing analytics SaaS could offer a free, automated 'Website Grader' that shows the top 3 conversion opportunities. A cybersecurity firm could offer a free 'Dark Web Scan' to see if company emails have been compromised. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the bigger one.

How much is this going to cost me?

This is the wrong question. The right question is, "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a great customer?" The answer is found by calculating your Lifetime Value (LTV). Without this number, you're flying blind, optimising for a low CPL that might be attracting completely the wrong type of customer.

Here’s the simple maths:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average a customer pays you per month?
• Gross Margin %: Your profit margin on that revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate: The percentage of customers you lose each month.

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's say your ARPA is £400, your gross margin is 80%, and your monthly churn is 5%.
LTV = (£400 * 0.80) / 0.05 = £320 / 0.05 = £6,400. Each customer is worth £6,400 to you. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £2,133 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £213 for a single, good quality lead.

Suddenly, that £90 CPL on LinkedIn doesn't seem so bad, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth. Use the calculator below to figure out your own numbers.

How should I structure my campaigns?

Keep it simple. Complexity is the enemy of effective testing. A complicated account structure just makes it impossible to know what's actually working. For most SaaS companies starting out, a simple structure is all you need.

I'd recomend a structure with three core campaigns:

1. Prospecting (ToFu - Top of Funnel): This is where you target cold audiences based on the ICP work you did. Inside this campaign, you create separate ad sets for each distinct audience you want to test (e.g., Ad Set 1: Target Company List + VPs, Ad Set 2: Financial Services + Director+). All ads in these ad sets drive to your low-friction offer. The goal here is to find winning audiences.
2. Retargeting (MoFu - Middle of Funnel): This campaign targets people who have shown some interest but haven't converted yet. You can create ad sets to retarget website visitors from the last 30 days, people who watched 50% of your video ad, or people who engaged with your company page. The messaging here should be different—maybe show them a case study, a different feature, or a customer testimonial. The goal is to nurture their interest and bring them back.
3. Re-engagement (BoFu - Bottom of Funnel): This is for people who got very close to converting but didn't. Think people who visited your pricing page or started a trial sign-up but abandoned it. These ad sets should be very direct, perhaps with a special offer or a message that addresses a common objection. The audience will be small, but highly valuable.

That's it. This structure allows you to control your budget at each stage of the funnel and test variables methodically. Start with a decent budget in Prospecting to gather data, then allocate smaller amounts to Retargeting and Re-engagement as those audiences build up. If your setup is a mess, it could be the reason you are seeing poor LinkedIn ad results, which can often be fixed with better ICP targeting.

This sounds like a lot of work. How do I know if it's really working?

It is a lot of work, and it requires constant attention. The key is to focus on the right metrics. Don't get obsessed with vanity metrics like impressions or even clicks. The numbers that matter are:

• Cost Per Lead/Trial (CPL/CPT): The primary metric for your prospecting campaigns. Is it within the affordable range you calculated with your LTV?
• Lead-to-Customer Rate: Out of all the leads you generate, how many actually become paying customers? This tells you about your lead quality. A low CPL is useless if none of the leads convert.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost (ad spend + sales/marketing costs) to acquire one new customer. This is your ultimate truth metric. Is your CAC significantly lower than your LTV?
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): For every pound you put into ads, how many pounds in revenue do you get back? This is more for e-commerce, but it's still a useful concept for SaaS if you can track revenue back to specific campaigns.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Getting this right isn't a one-time setup; it's a continuous process of testing, learning, and optimising. It requires a deep understanding of the platform, your customer, and the data. Many founders simply don't have the time to become an expert in paid acquisition while also building a product and running a company. That's perfectly normal.

If you've read through this and feel overwhelmed, or if you'd rather have an expert apply these principles to your business, it might be time to consider getting help. We offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can review your current ad accounts (or your plans for one) and provide specific, actionable advice. It’s a chance to get a taste of the expertise that could be driving your growth. Feel free to reach out to schedule a call.

Hope that helps!