TLDR;
- Stop targeting vague job titles like "Marketing Manager". It's lazy and you're just burning cash. You need to target the specific career nightmare that your course solves.
- Your ROI isn't just about a low cost-per-click. You need to understand the true value of a student and what you can actually afford to pay to acquire them. Our interactive calculator inside will show you the maths.
- "Enrol Now" is a terrible call to action for cold traffic. You must offer something of value for free first—a mini-lesson, a checklist, a tool—to build trust before asking for the sale.
- The London market is brutal. Generic ads get ignored. Your ad copy must speak directly to the pressures and ambitions of a London professional, using the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework.
- We've included a complete campaign structure flowchart that shows you how to seperate your cold and warm audiences for better results in a competitive market like London.
Right, let's get one thing straight. If you're trying to sell online courses to London profesionals using LinkedIn and you're not getting the ROI you want, the problem isn't the platform. It's almost certainly your approach. The London market is one of the most competitive and expensive on the planet. People here are bombarded with noise, they're ambitious, cynical, and time-poor. Chucking a generic ad in front of them with a "Buy My Course" button is like trying to sell sand in the desert. It’s a waste of time and, more importantly, a massive waste of money.
Most course creators make the same fundamental mistake. They think of LinkedIn as a simple directory. They target "Project Managers" or people in the "Financial Services" industry, write some bland copy about "levelling up your career," and then wonder why their cost per acquisition is through the roof and their bank account is shrinking. You're not selling a course. You are selling a solution to a very specific, very urgent, and often very private career pain point. Until you understand that, you're just gambling.
So, Why Are Your Ads Really Failing in London?
The core of the issue is a failure to understand the mindset of your target customer. You're thinking in demographics, but you need to be thinking in nightmares. A 'demographic' is "a 35-year-old finance director in The City." A 'nightmare' is "a 35-year-old finance director who lies awake at 3am terrified that she doesn't understand the new ESG reporting regulations and that a younger, more qualified rival is about to take her job." Your course isn't about "Understanding ESG." It's about "Securing Your Role as a Finance Leader in a Changing World." See the difference?
When you target broad demographics, you're paying a premium to show your ads to thousands of people for whom your course is completely irrelevant. LinkedIn's algorithm does what you ask it to; if you give it a lazy target, you get lazy, expensive results. You're competing with every other advertiser trying to reach that same "Project Manager" in London, driving the auction price up for a person who probably doesn't even have the problem you solve. It's a surefire way to get a terrible return. Many people conclude that LinkedIn ads are useless, but the real issue is that they target nightmares, not demographics.
To succeed, you have to flip your entire model on its head. Start with the pain, not the person. This is the only way to cut through the noise in a city like London.
"Project Manager"
"Level Up Your Skills"
"Struggling to manage hybrid teams"
"Stop chaotic sprints. Lead your remote team with confidence."
Who Are You Actually Selling To? Finding Your Ideal Student in The City
Right, so we've established that you need to target a pain point. But how do you find the people experiencing that pain point on LinkedIn? This is where you need to become a bit of a detective. Let's take an example. Say you have a high-end course on 'Python for Data Science in Finance'.
The amateur targets 'Financial Analysts' in 'London'. They'll reach thousands of people, including analysts who are happy using Excel, analysts who already know Python, and analysts who have no interest in data science. It's a hugely wasteful approach.
The expert, however, builds a much tighter profile. Their ideal customer is maybe a 'Quantitative Analyst' or 'Risk Analyst' at a specific list of investment banks and hedge funds in Canary Wharf and The City of London. They go further. They look at the skills people in these roles list on their profiles. Maybe they see a lot of 'VBA', 'SQL', and 'Excel', but not 'Python', 'Pandas', or 'Scikit-learn'. This is a massive clue. These are people with the right job title, in the right company, who likely lack the specific skill you teach.
You can then start building your audiences:
- -> Company Targeting: Create a list of the top 50 financial institutions in London and target employees there directly.
- -> Group Targeting: Find specific, niche LinkedIn groups. Instead of the massive 'Finance Professionals' group, look for 'UK Algorithmic Trading' or 'London Financial Modellers'. The members of these groups are far more qualified.
- -> Skills Targeting: You can layer your targeting. For example, people with the job title 'Risk Analyst' who do NOT have 'Python' listed as a skill. This can be a powerfully accurate way to find your exact audience.
This level of detail is what's required to acheive a good ROI. It takes more work up front, but it means every pound you spend is going towards reaching someone who is far more likely to need what you're selling. For a more detailed breakdown of this approach, our London B2B growth guide for LinkedIn dives into these tactics even further.
What's Your Real ROI? The Maths Most Course Creators Ignore
Let's talk about numbers. Most people obsess over metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Lead (CPL). These are important, but they don't tell the whole story. The only metric that truly matters is your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Are you making more money than you're spending? It's that simple.
To figure this out, you need to work backwards. The key is understanding what a customer is actually worth to you, and from there, what you can afford to spend to acquire one. This is the LTV:CAC ratio (Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost), but for a one-off course, we can simplify it to Value-to-CAC.
Let's do some quick maths.
-> Course Price: £2,000
-> Your Profit Margin: Let's say it's 80% after any platform fees or other costs. So your profit per sale is £1,600.
-> Your Target ROAS: A healthy target for a high-ticket course is 4:1. This means for every £1 you spend on ads, you want to get £4 back in revenue.
With a 4:1 ROAS target on a £2,000 course, your maximum allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is £500 (£2,000 / 4). This means you can spend up to £500 to get one person to buy your course and still hit your goal. Suddenly, a £20 CPL for a lead magnet or a £5 CPC doesn't seem so scary, does it? You have £500 of room to play with to convert that person.
Knowing this number changes everything. It stops you from panicking and turning off a campaign too early just because the initial clicks seem expensive. It gives you the confidence to invest properly to acquire the right customers. For instance, one campaign we managed for a course creator drove a 447% ROAS in just one week by getting this maths right from the start. It's the foundation of any successful paid ads strategy.
Are You Selling a Course, or a Career Lifeline? Crafting an Irresistible Offer
Now that you know who you're targeting and what you can afford to spend, you need to fix your offer. The single biggest mistake I see is asking for the sale too soon. A button that says "Enrol Now" or "Buy Now" on an ad to a cold audience is a conversion killer. Your target customer in London doesn't know you, they don't trust you, and you're asking them for £2,000. It's an insane proposition.
You need to earn the right to ask for the sale. You do this by providing genuine value upfront, for free. This is your lead magnet. It's not a wierd gimmick; it's a sample of your expertise that solves a small, specific problem for your ideal customer. It builds trust and demonstrates that you know what you're talking about.
For a London-based audience, your lead magnet must be high-value and directly relevant to their career pressures. Some ideas:
- -> For a Sales Course: A 10-minute video training on "How to Get Past the Gatekeeper at a FTSE 100 Company".
- -> For a Coding Course: A downloadable guide to the "Top 5 Technical Interview Questions Being Asked in London's FinTech Scene Right Now".
- -> For a Leadership Course: A free, interactive self-assessment tool: "What's Your London Leadership Style? (And Why It Might Be Holding You Back)".
Your entire LinkedIn campaign should be focused on getting people to consume this free piece of value. The objective should be 'Lead Generation', not 'Website Conversions'. You run ads promoting this amazing free resource. People click, give you their email address via a seamless LinkedIn Lead Gen Form, and get instant value. The cost for these leads is dramatically lower. From our own experience running campaigns for B2B decision-makers on LinkedIn, we've seen CPLs as low as $22. Once you have their email, you can then use an automated email sequence to nurture them, build more trust, and eventually present the offer for your main course.
This two-step process is non-negotiable for high-ticket courses. Trying to go for the direct sale from a cold ad is like proposing on the first date. You need to warm them up first. If you're finding that even your lead magnet isn't converting, it's definately worth reviewing your landing page, as a poorly designed page is often the culprit when London ads fail to convert.
How to Write an Ad a City Trader Actually Clicks On
Your ad copy is where everything comes together. This is your one chance to grab the attention of a busy, scrolling professional. It needs to be direct, empathetic, and speak to their specific nightmare.
The best framework for this is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).
Problem: State the pain point you identified in a way they instantly recognise.
Agitate: Poke the bruise. Remind them of the negative consequences of not solving this problem.
Solve: Introduce your course as the clear, simple solution.
Let's write one for our 'Python for Finance' course:
Headline: Still using Excel for your financial models?
Body: (Problem) Your models are slow, they break, and you spend hours manually updating data. (Agitate) Meanwhile, younger analysts who know Python are building automated, powerful models in a fraction of the time and getting noticed for the big projects. (Solve) Our 4-week online course, designed for London finance pros, will make you proficient in Python. Stop fighting with spreadsheets and start building the models that get you promoted.
Call to Action: Download our free guide: "5 Python Scripts to Automate Your Financial Reporting".
Notice we're not selling the course in the ad. We're selling the free guide. The ad is sharp, to the point, and speaks directly to the ambition and fear that drives a City professional. It's a world away from "Learn Python today!". When it comes to the ad format, you should test a simple, bold image ad against a short video. Video is great because you can then retarget people who watch a certain percentage of it—they've pre-qualified themselves as being interested. There are a lot of nuances to getting the copy right, and if you're struggling, it's worth digging into the real reasons why LinkedIn ad copy often fails.
Structuring Your Campaigns for the London Market
Finally, you need to bring this all together into a coherent campaign structure. Don't just lump all your audiences and ads into one campaign. You need to seperate your prospecting (cold traffic) from your retargeting (warm traffic). This allows you to control your budget and tailor your message to how familiar someone is with you.
Here’s a simple, effective structure:
Campaign 1: TOFU (Top of Funnel) - Prospecting
- -> Objective: Lead Generation
- -> Audience: Your 'Nightmare' ICPs. Use your company lists, skills targeting, and group targeting here. Exclude anyone who has already visited your website or become a lead.
- -> Ad Creative: Your Problem-Agitate-Solve ads promoting your free lead magnet.
- -> Budget: Allocate around 70-80% of your total budget here. This is for finding new people.
Campaign 2: MOFU/BOFU (Middle/Bottom of Funnel) - Retargeting
- -> Objective: Website Conversions (or 'Lead Generation' if you're sending them to a webinar/consultation)
- -> Audience:
- Website visitors from the last 90 days.
- People who opened or submitted your Lead Gen Form but didn't buy.
- People who watched 50%+ of your video ads.
- -> Ad Creative: This is where you can be more direct. Show them student testimonials, answer common objections, highlight specific modules of the course, and present a clear call to action to "Enrol" or "Learn More".
- -> Budget: The remaining 20-30% of your budget. This is a smaller but higher-converting audience.
For your location targeting, don't just put "London". Be more specific. You can target a 10-mile radius around postcodes for key business hubs like "EC2" (The City), "E14" (Canary Wharf), or "W2" (Paddington). This helps focus your spend on the most relevant areas.
This structured approach ensures you're guiding potential students on a logical journey, from becoming aware of you to trusting you enough to buy. It's the only way to build a predictable and scalable system for selling courses on LinkedIn. We have a complete framework for London ads that stops you wasting money by implementing this kind of structure properly.
Campaign 1: Cold Prospecting (TOFU)
Audience: Your 'Nightmare' ICPs (Company/Skills/Group targeting)
Offer: Free Lead Magnet (Checklist, Video, Guide)
Objective: Lead Generation
Email Nurture Sequence
Provide more value, build trust, handle objections, and introduce the main course offer.
Campaign 2: Retargeting (BOFU)
Audience: Website Visitors, Video Viewers, Leads
Offer: Main Course (with testimonials/social proof)
Objective: Website Conversions
My Main Recommendations for You
This is a lot to take in, I know. If you're going to do anything, focus on these core areas. This is the main advice I have for you:
| Area | Recommendation | Why It Works in London |
|---|---|---|
| Targeting | Stop targeting broad job titles. Identify a specific career 'nightmare' and build niche audiences using company, skills, and group targeting. | Cuts through the extreme noise and high costs of the London ad market by only reaching the most relevant professionals. |
| The Offer | Do not ask for the sale directly. Create a high-value, free lead magnet (mini-course, guide, tool) and run ads to that first. | Builds trust with a cynical and time-poor audience. It proves your value before asking for their money, which is essential for high-ticket sales. |
| Ad Copy | Use the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. Speak directly to their pain points in sharp, direct language. | London professionals are busy and appreciate directness. Empathetic, problem-focused copy gets attention where generic corporate-speak is ignored. |
| Measurement | Calculate your max allowable CAC based on your course price and target ROAS. Focus on this, not just CPC or CPL. | Gives you the financial confidence to weather the high initial costs of advertising in London and invest what's necessary to acquire valuable customers. For more on this see our UK paid ads ROI guide. |
| Campaign Structure | Seperate your campaigns into Cold Prospecting (for the lead magnet) and Warm Retargeting (for the course sale). | Allows you to tailor your message and budget efficiently, guiding prospects through a logical journey instead of just shouting at everyone. |
When to Call in an Expert
Look, you can absolutely try to implement all of this yourself. But the reality is that getting this right in a market as fierce as London is incredibly difficult. It's not a part-time job. It requires constant monitoring, testing, and a deep, intuitive understanding of how the LinkedIn ad platform works. One wrong setting in your campaign can waste thousands of pounds in a matter of days.
Working with a specialist who lives and breathes this stuff day in, day out, is often the difference between a campaign that just about breaks even and one that becomes a predictable, profitable engine for your business. We know the benchmarks, we know the shortcuts, and we know how to diagnose a failing campaign quickly. For course creators in particular, finding an expert can be a challenge, but our guide for finding course experts in London on LinkedIn can help point you in the right direction.
If you're tired of guessing and want a clear, data-driven strategy to improve your LinkedIn ads ROI, it might be time for a chat. We offer a free, no-obligation strategy consultation where we can take a look at what you're doing and give you some honest, actionable advice. Sometimes a fresh pair of expert eyes is all it takes to see what's really going wrong.
