TLDR;
- Don't slice the pie too thin: Splitting a small budget across multiple regional campaigns in the UK usually kills performance because LinkedIn's algorithm needs data to optimise.
- London is expensive: Expect to pay a premium (sometimes 30-40% higher CPCs) for London traffic compared to Manchester or Leeds.
- Use the "Exclude" function: Instead of targeting 10 different cities, target the UK and exclude rural areas if you need to save budget.
- Check the "Permanent Location" setting: Ensure you aren't paying for people just passing through Heathrow.
- Use the interactive calculator below: I've built a tool to help you see if your budget can actually support a regional split strategy.
So, you're trying to figure out how to target specific professional hubs in the UK without blowing your budget on LinkedIn ads. It's a classic headache, really. I see this all the time with clients who want to be "laser-focused" (sorry, had to use that word, though I hate it) on specific cities but don't quite have the deep pockets to run twenty separate campaigns.
The United Kingdom is a weird beast when it comes to B2B advertising. You've got London, which acts like a massive gravitational black hole sucking up all your budget if you let it, and then you've got the rest of the country which is incredibly diverse but often cheaper to reach. The trick isn't just picking cities from a list; it's understanding how LinkedIn's auction works in these different geographics.
Tbh, most people get this wrong. They set up a campaign for "Manchester", one for "Leeds", one for "Bristol", and one for "London", stick £20 a day on each, and then wonder why their cost per lead is through the roof and they've only got three clicks a week. I'm gonna walk you through how to actually structure this so you don't waste your money.
The "United Kingdom" Trap
First off, let's talk about what happens if you just target "United Kingdom" as a whole. It's the default, right? And for many, it's the safest bet. But here's the issue: if you are selling a high-end financial service, or maybe a specialised SaaS product for media companies, your audience isn't evenly distributed. They are clustered.
If you leave it wide open, LinkedIn will naturally serve your ad where it can get the cheapest inventory or the highest volume. Sometimes that works. But often, you end up spending a chunk of your budget on users in areas that might not be your commercial priority, while missing out on the competitive auctions in Central London because your bid wasn't aggressive enough.
However, the opposite mistake is worse: Hyper-segmentation. If you slice your audience too thin, the algorithm can't learn. We worked with a Medical Job Matching SaaS where we successfully reduced the CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) from £100 to £7. We achieved this by ensuring our audience pools were large enough for the algorithm to optimize efficiently. If we had fractured that audience into tiny micro-locations with small user counts, the campaign likely would have stalled. If you're looking for an expert guide on LinkedIn ads in Cardiff, you'll see that you often need to broaden your horizons a bit to get the algorithm to actually do its job.
Defining Your UK Hubs
Before you touch the settings, you need to map out where your money actually is. In the UK, we generally see a few distinct tiers of professional hubs.
Tier 1: London & The South East
This is where the money is, generally speaking. Finance, Tech, Legal, Corporate HQs. It's also the most expensive inventory. If you are bidding here, you are competing with everyone.
Tier 2: The Major Regional Cities
Manchester (Media, Tech, Retail), Leeds (Legal, Finance, Healthcare), Birmingham (Manufacturing, Services), Edinburgh (Finance), Bristol (Tech/Creative). These are fantastic hubs. The CPCs (Cost Per Click) are often lower than London, and the intent can be just as high.
Tier 3: The Rest
Smaller cities and rural areas. Now, don't ignore these. With remote work being what it is, your ideal CEO might be sitting in a cottage in the Cotswolds or the Lake District. This is why strict geo-fencing can sometimes shoot you in the foot.
If you are trying to figure out if you should focus heavily on the capital, you might want to read more about LinkedIn Ads ROI in London specifically, because the metrics there are totally different to the rest of the UK.
The Budget Problem: Minimum Spends & Fragmentation
Here is the hard truth about LinkedIn Ads: It hates small audiences and small budgets. The minimum daily budget per campaign is roughly £8-£10 (depending on exchange rates and account currency). But practically, if you want results, you need significantly more than that.
If you have a total budget of £100/day—which is a decent starting point for a small B2B push—and you try to split that into 5 campaigns (London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow), you are allocating £20/day to each. That is maybe 2-3 clicks in London. That is not enough data for LinkedIn to learn anything. Your campaign will stall, your frequency will stay low, and you'll burn cash without seeing conversions.
I've built a little visual aid below to help you understand the cost difference across regions. This is based on aggregated data we've seen from running UK B2B campaigns.
Relative Cost Per Click (CPC) by UK Region (Indexed)
Strategy 1: The "London vs. The Rest" Split
If you have a moderate budget (say £1500 - £3000/month) and you absolutely know you need to target London but also want to capture the rest of the UK, don't split it into cities. Split it into two campaigns.
Campaign A: Greater London
Here you accept higher CPCs. You might want to bid slightly higher manually to ensure you win auctions. This is where you might find your Fintech, big law, and corporate HQ leads. If you're specifically targeting decision makers here, check out our guide on targeting UK decision-makers on LinkedIn to get the job titles right.
Campaign B: UK (Exclude London)
This campaign targets the whole of the UK but excludes Greater London. This allows you to scoop up cheaper traffic from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, etc., without London eating 90% of the budget. It balances your cost per lead (CPL).
This works because it consolidates your data. Instead of fragmenting "The Rest" into tiny city campaigns, you group them into one decent-sized pool that the algorithm can actually optimise against.
Strategy 2: The "Hub Inclusion" Method
If your budget is tighter, or your product is extremely niche (e.g., only relevant to maritime law in port cities or media in Salford and London), you might use the inclusion method.
In the location settings, instead of "United Kingdom", you literally type in the specific metropolitan areas:
- Greater London
- Greater Manchester
- West Midlands (includes Birmingham)
- West Yorkshire (includes Leeds)
- Edinburgh & Glasgow
This creates one campaign that ONLY targets these hubs. It ignores the rural areas. This is good for "staying within daily budget" because you aren't wasting impressions on people who live in the middle of nowhere (though as I said, remote work makes this risky). The downside is you might miss that one huge prospect who lives in a quiet village in Derbyshire.
One critical setting to watch here: Location Type.
LinkedIn gives you "Recent or Permanent Location" or "Permanent Location". Always, and I mean always, choose Permanent Location for B2B. Otherwise, you end up paying for ads shown to tourists or people commuting through King's Cross who don't actually work in your target market. We've seen this issue tank campaigns before—if you suspect your location settings are off, have a read of this case where we solved a LinkedIn ad campaign with no location specified correctly.
Is your budget realistic for a Regional Split?
I've whipped up a calculator here to help you check this. Be honest with the inputs. If you spread yourself too thin, your campaign will never exit the "Learning Phase" (though LinkedIn doesn't call it that explicitly like Meta, the principle is the same).
Regional Budget Feasibility Calculator
Audience Size and The "Too Narrow" Warning
One of the biggest issues with targeting UK hubs is that the audiences get small, fast. If you overlay "Senior VPs of Engineering" (Job Title) AND "SaaS Industry" (Industry) AND "Leeds" (Location), you might end up with 450 people. LinkedIn will technically let you run this (sometimes), but the CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) will be astronomical. You'll be paying £150+ CPM just to annoy the same 450 people repeatedly.
In these cases, you have to loosen the constraints. If you must target a specific city like Leeds, broaden the job titles to "Function: Engineering" + "Seniority: Senior/Director/VP". Or, keep the job titles strict but broaden the location to "West Yorkshire" or "North of England". You need to give the algorithm room to breathe.
We've written a detailed breakdown on mastering UK LinkedIn ads where we discuss finding high-quality leads without suffocating your campaign reach. It's worth a read if you find yourself constantly hitting that "Audience too small" error.
Creative Strategy: Does Location Matter?
Here's a thought: Do you actually need to target regions technically, or can you do it creatively? Sometimes, the best way to target a hub isn't by restricting the ad delivery, but by calling it out in the ad copy.
You can target the whole UK, but run an ad image that says "The #1 IT Support for Manchester Businesses". People in Manchester will click it. People in London will ignore it. This self-qualifies the audience. It allows you to keep the campaign broad (cheaper CPMs) while still attracting the local clients you want. The click-through rate (CTR) might be lower overall, but the costs usually balance out favorably compared to a hyper-expensive, tiny geo-targeted campaign.
You can apply this strategy to any major hub. For instance, if you were targeting Leeds, instead of just restricting the location, you could use creative that features local landmarks and language. If you're interested in that specific market, check out our guide on LinkedIn ads in Leeds.
Advanced Budget Management: Manual Bidding
If you are determined to run a "United Kingdom" campaign but are terrified of London draining your wallet, you can use Manual Bidding to control costs.
By default, LinkedIn uses "Maximum Delivery" (Automated bidding). It will bid whatever it takes to get your budget spent. In London, "whatever it takes" is a lot. By switching to "Cost Cap" or "Manual Bid", you can set a limit. You can say, "I am not willing to pay more than £5 per click."
What happens? You will likely lose most of the auctions in Central London (where the clearing price might be £9), but you will win auctions in Birmingham, Newcastle, and Glasgow where the price is lower. This effectively filters your geography by price, without you having to manually exclude cities. It's a slightly blunter instrument, but it protects your ROI. For a deeper dive on profitability, our UK guide to scaling LinkedIn ads profitably covers bidding strategies in more detail.
Summary of Recommendations
So, to wrap this up, don't overcomplicate it. Unless you have a budget of £5k+ per month, creating a separate campaign for every major UK city is a suicide mission for your marketing dollars. You need data density.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Scenario | Recommended Strategy | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Low Budget (<£1500/mo) | Target "United Kingdom" & Exclude "London" (or just run UK wide) | Maximises audience size for algorithm learning. Lowest CPMs. |
| Mid Budget (£1500-£4000/mo) | Split: 1 Campaign for London, 1 Campaign for Rest of UK | Controls the high costs of London while capturing volume elsewhere. |
| High Specificity Needed | "Hub Inclusion" (List specific cities only) | Ensures zero waste in rural areas, but requires higher CPC bids. |
| Niche Product | Broad Geo Targeting + "Self-Qualifying" Creative | Uses copy to filter users, keeping technical targeting broad for cheap delivery. |
Look, getting the geography right is just one piece of the puzzle. You also need to nail the offer, the creative, and the landing page experience. If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed by the setup or just want a second pair of eyes to check you aren't about to light £1000 on fire targeting the wrong people, it might be worth getting some expert help.
If you want to stop guessing, consider booking a free consultation with us. We can look at your specific hubs, your budget, and tell you exactly how we'd structure it to get the best bang for your buck.
Hope this helps!
