EdTech Founder's Guide to Hiring LinkedIn Ads Experts

Finding a genuine LinkedIn Ads pro for your UK EdTech business is harder than it should be. The market is flooded with "B2B gurus" who think selling software to a school is the same as selling it to a fintech startup in Shoreditch. They'll show you flashy presentations and promise the earth, but they'll crumble when you ask about their actual experience navigating the world of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), Continuing Professional Development (CPD), or Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).

The truth is, most of them will burn through your budget targeting the wrong people with the wrong message. They don't understand that an IT Manager at a secondary school has a completely different set of problems—and a different boss to answer to—than a Head of Department at a Russell Group university. Getting this wrong isn't just inefficient; it's the fastest way to kill your startup's momentum. You need a partner who doesn't just know LinkedIn Ads, but knows the very specific, often frustrating, world of UK education. This guide is about how to find that person and avoid the time-wasters.

So, why will most 'experts' get it wrong?

Most agencies work on a template. They have a "B2B SaaS playbook" and they apply it to every client, regardless of niche. This is a recipe for disaster in EdTech. Your sector is unique, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either naive or trying to pull a fast one.

Think about it. The sales cycle isn't a neat, 30-day funnel. It's tied to academic years, budget approvals that can take months, and holidays where everyone disappears. A campaign that looks like a failure in November might just be hitting decision-makers as they plan their budgets for the next financial year in March. A generic marketeer won't have the patience or foresight for this; they'll panic and switch things off just as they're about to work.

Then there's the buying committee. In a typical B2B sale, you might be targeting a Head of Sales. In EdTech, you're often trying to convince a teacher (the user), who needs to convince their Head of Department (the budget influencer), who then needs to get it past the school's Business Manager or IT Director (the final gatekeepers). Each of these people has different priorities, fears, and motivations. A one-size-fits-all ad message will appeal to one and alienate the others. A true specialist knows how to tailor messaging for each stage and stakeholder, its a fundemental part of the job.

If a potential agency can't discuss these nuances with you confidently, they are not the right fit. They're about to waste your money learning your industry on your dime. You're not paying for an education, you're paying for expertise.

How to spot real expertise in their case studies

Every agency will have case studies. Most are useless. They are designed to impress, not to inform. You need to become a forensic investigator and look for specific clues that separate the real experts from the pretenders. Forget the glossy design and focus on the substance.

First, are they showing you relevant work? An amazing campaign for a B2B SaaS company that sells to marketing managers is completely irrelevant to you. It proves they can use LinkedIn's ad manager, but it doesn't prove they can solve your specific problem. I remember one agency we competed against for a client showed off a campaign for a luxury car brand. It's just not the same. You're looking for experience with other EdTech companies, or at the very least, companies selling high-ticket, long-sales-cycle products into the public sector or similarly complex organisations.

Second, look at the metrics. Did they get "10,000 impressions" or a "0.5% CTR"? Who cares. These are vanity metrics. You're looking for business outcomes. How many qualified demos did they book? What was the Cost Per Demo? Better yet, what was the final Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)? And are the results in Pounds Sterling (£)? If they're showing you results in dollars for a US client, it shows a lack of specific UK market experience. The UK market has its own quirks and costs; what works in Ohio won't neccessarily work in Oxfordshire.

Finally, can they explain the 'why' behind the results? A good case study isn't just a list of numbers; it's a story. "We saw the CPL was high when targeting 'Teachers' broadly, so we shifted to target members of the 'National Education Union' group and focused the ad copy on reducing workload, which dropped the CPL by 40%." That's a story of strategic thinking. "We achieved a 5x ROAS" is just a number without context. Ask them to walk you through the journey. If they can't, they probably got lucky, or worse, they're taking credit for someone else's work.

The one calculation that stops you from hiring badly

Most EdTech founders are obsessed with getting the lowest possible Cost Per Lead (CPL). This is a trap. It leads you to approve of campaigns that generate lots of cheap, low-quality leads from students or junior teachers who have no buying power. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a valuable, long-term school or university contract?" The answer is your Lifetime Value (LTV).

Until you know what a customer is truly worth, you're flying blind. Calculating your LTV gives you a North Star for your entire marketing and sales strategy. It tells you exactly how much you can, and should, be willing to spend to win the right kind of customer. Let's imagine you sell a SaaS platform to secondary schools.

• Average Revenue Per School (ARPS): What a typical school pays you per year. Let's say it's £3,000.
• Gross Margin %: Your profit on that revenue after accounting for costs like support and hosting. Let's say it's 85%.
• Annual Churn Rate %: The percentage of schools that cancel their subscription each year. Let's say it's 10%.

The calculation for LTV is: (ARPS * Gross Margin %) / Annual Churn Rate. In this case, that's (£3,000 * 0.85) / 0.10, which equals a massive £25,500 LTV per school.

Suddenly things look different, don't they? A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is often cited as 3:1. This means for a customer worth £25,500, you can afford to spend up to £8,500 to acquire them. If your sales team converts 1 in 10 qualified demos into a sale, you can afford to pay up to £850 per demo. That £50 lead from a junior teacher looks terrible now, whilst a £600 lead that gets you a demo with a Head of a Multi-Academy Trust looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that separates fast-growing EdTechs from the ones that fizzle out. An agency that doesn't talk to you in these terms is focused on the wrong things.

How to make their 'free consultation' actually useful

The free consultation or "audit" call is a standard part of any agency's sales process. 90% of the time, it's a thinly veiled sales pitch where they tell you how great they are and show you a generic PowerPoint deck. This is a waste of your time. You need to take control of this call and turn it into a genuine test of their expertise. You're not there to be sold to; you're there to interview them for a critical role.

A good consultation should feel like a strategy session. They should have done their homework on your business, your website, and your likely competitors. They should ask you smart, probing questions about your customers and your business goals. And they should offer specific, actionable advice, right there on the call. If it feels like they could be giving the same pitch to any company, they haven't done their job.

Come prepared with difficult questions that force them to demonstrate their EdTech and UK-market knowledge. Don't let them get away with vague answers. Here are some you could adapt:

• "Our ICP is a Head of Maths at a state secondary school in the North of England. What three different pain points would you test in ad copy to get their attention?"
• "We're trying to reach decision-makers in Multi-Academy Trusts. Beyond job title targeting, what specific company targeting or group targeting strategies have you used to do this successfully in the UK?"
• "Walk me through the negative keywords you would immediately apply to a campaign for our teacher-focused CPD platform to avoid wasting budget."
• "Given the long budget cycles, how would you structure a retargeting strategy to keep leads warm between September and the main purchasing window in April/May?"

Their answers will tell you everything. A real expert will relish these questions. They'll have thoughts, opinions, and follow-up questions. A charlatan will waffle, give generic advice ("We'd test different creative"), or try to deflect. This is your single best opportunity to see if they can actually think strategically about your unique challanges. Tbh, if someone asks us for references after we've already done a deep-dive strategy session like this, it's a bit of a red flag for us as it shows a lack of trust from the start.

The ultimate test: Propose a paid discovery project

Finally, here's the most powerful move you can make. Instead of jumping into a 6 or 12-month retainer, propose a small, well-defined, paid 'discovery' project. This is the ultimate litmus test. It forces them to put their money where their mouth is and deliver tangible value before you commit to a long-term relationship.

This could be something like:

• A LinkedIn Ads Strategic Roadmap: For a fixed fee (e.g., £1,500 - £2,500), they deliver a comprehensive document. This should include a full audit of your current efforts (if any), deep competitor analysis, detailed persona building for 2-3 key stakeholders, campaign structure recommendations, and example ad copy for testing.
• A 2-Week Campaign Sprint: You give them a small, fixed ad budget (e.g., £1,000) plus their fee to test one specific offer to one specific audience. The goal isn't to get a massive ROAS in two weeks; the goal is to see how they operate. Are they communicative? Do they report clearly? Do they learn from the data and suggest intelligent next steps?

This approach has multiple benefits. It massively de-risks the decision for you. You get a valuable strategic asset or real-world data, even if you don't continue with them. It also filters out the agencies that are just looking for an easy monthly retainer. The best, most confident specialists will welcome this approach. They know that if they do a great job on the small project, the long-term contract is a near certainty. The ones who push back or insist on a long-term commitment from day one are the ones you should be wary of. They're more interested in locking you in than in proving their worth.

What to do next

Hiring the right partner is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Getting it right can be the difference between steady, profitable growth and months of wasted time and money. Don't rush it. Be picky. Use the framework in this guide to rigorously vet every single candidate. Your goal isn't to find *an* agency; it's to find *the right* agency that feels like a true extension of your team.

Running this process takes time, and whilst it will protect you from bad hires, it won't execute the campaigns for you. If you've gone through this guide and realised the depth of strategy required, you might be thinking that getting expert help is the faster path to growth. A good consultant or agency doesn't just run ads; they provide the strategic horsepower, industry experience, and relentless focus on optimisation that's almost impossible to replicate in-house when you're also trying to build a product and run a business.

If you'd like to see what this process looks like in practice, consider booking a free, no-obligation strategy session with us. We'll spend the time digging into your business, your goals, and your customers, and give you actionable advice you can use, whether you decide to work with us or not.