Solved: B2B SaaS Conversation Ads for Demo Generation

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your LinkedIn ad strategy. Running conversation ads for a niche B2B SaaS product can be tricky, and frankly, most people get it wrong by focusing on the wrong things.

The core issue usually isn't the ad format itself, but the entire strategy behind it – from who you're targeting to what you're actually asking them to do. Your question about demos and gift cards hints at a much deeper problem that we see all the time. The solution isn't about finding a new trick for conversation ads; it's about fundamentally rethinking your approach to acquiring customers. Let's get into it.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Right, let's tackle the biggest issue first. You've mentioned your ICP is about 60,000 people. I'm going to be blunt: that's not an ICP, that's a list. It's a sterile, demographic-based profile that tells you almost nothing of value. Targeting based on "companies in X industry with Y employees and Z job titles" is why most B2B ads are so generic they become invisible. It leads to messaging that speaks to everyone and therefore resonates with no one.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your ideal customer isn't just a "Head of Sales" at a tech company; he's a leader who's terrified of missing his quarterly target because his team's pipeline is drying up and they're wasting hours on manual data entry instead of selling. That's the nightmare.

For a B2B SaaS product, the nightmare isn't 'needing a better workflow tool'; it's 'watching your best engineer hand in their notice because they're sick of dealing with a clunky, broken process.' Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. When you understand this, your entire approach changes. You stop selling software and you start selling a solution to a migraine.

Once you've truly isolated that nightmare, you can find your audience. Where do they hang out online when they're trying to solve this problem? What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Which industry newsletters do they *actually* open and read? What SaaS tools are they already paying for? Are they members of specific LinkedIn Groups or following certain influencers? This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. Frankly, if you haven't done this work, you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need to understand the maths of B2B SaaS Ads

Before you can even think about what to offer or how much to spend, you need to know what a customer is actually worth to you. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?" The answer is found in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most SaaS founders I talk to either don't know their LTV or they've calculated it incorrectly. Getting this number right is the foundation of any scalable paid acquisition programme. Without it, you're flying blind, probably panicking about a £50 CPL when you could profitably afford one at £500.

Here are the components you need:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount you make from a single customer each month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Be honest here. This isn't just revenue; it's the profit you can reinvest. Let's say it's 80% for a typical SaaS business.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? This is the most critical and often underestimated metric.

The calculation is simple but powerful:

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

For instance, if your ARPA is £400, your gross margin is 80%, and your monthly churn is 5%, your LTV is (£400 * 0.80) / 0.05 = £320 / 0.05 = £6,400.

Now you have the truth. A single customer is worth £6,400 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £6,400 / 3 = £2,133 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £213 for a single qualified lead. All of a sudden, that expensive-looking LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem so pricey, does it? It looks like a bargain.

This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers.

You probably should fix your offer

Now we arrive at the most common point of failure in all of B2B advertising: the offer. Your entire post is about getting "demos". Let me be clear: the "Request a Demo" button is quite possibly the most arrogant and ineffective Call to Action ever conceived.

Think about it from your prospect's perspective. They are a busy, important decision-maker. You are a stranger on the internet. And you are asking them to commit 30-60 minutes of their valuable time to sit through a sales pitch. It presumes they have nothing better to do. It's an incredibly high-friction ask that provides zero immediate value to them. It instantly positions you as just another commoditised vendor, another person trying to take something from them (their time) rather than give them something.

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. It has to be something that solves a small, real problem for them *for free*, right now.

For SaaS founders like yourself, you have an unfair advantage here. The absolute gold standard is a free trial (no credit card required) or a freemium plan. Let them get their hands on the actual product. Let them experience the transformation for themselves. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You aren't generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced and coming to you.

If for some reason you can't offer a trial, you are not exempt from this rule. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value. For a data analytics platform, this could be a free 'Data Health Check' that connects to their database and flags the top 3 issues. For a cybersecurity firm, it could be a free, instant scan of their website that identifies common vulnerabilities. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad accounts completely free of charge. You must solve a small piece of their pain for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing for a price.

Ditch the demo. Build an offer that gives, rather than takes.

You'll need a better way to use LinkedIn Conversation Ads

So, with all that background, let's talk about the actual Conversation Ad format. Now that we've established that asking for a demo is a terrible idea, what *should* you use them for?

You use them to deliver your new, high-value, low-friction offer directly to your nightmare-haunted ICP. You use them to start an actual conversation, not a sales pitch. This is where most advertisers mess it up. They treat it like a cold email, blasting a generic pitch and a link to their calendar. That doesn't work.

Who do you send from?
Never send from your company page. It's impersonal and screams "ADVERTISEMENT". The message must come from a real person. Who? The most credible person possible. This could be your CEO, Head of Product, or a specialist with a title like "Customer Workflow Consultant". It needs to be someone who sounds like they understand the prospect's world and is there to help, not sell. Their LinkedIn profile should be fully filled out and reinforce this expertise.

What's the message?
You use the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. Your initial message should speak directly to the nightmare.

Bad example (what most people do):
"Hi [First Name], I see you're a Head of Sales. My company, SaaS Corp, has an amazing platform that increases productivity. Would you be free for a 15-minute demo next week?"

This is awful. It's all about you and your product. It's selfish.

Good example (what you should do):
"Hi [First Name], quick question - seeing a lot of sales leaders struggling to get accurate pipeline forecasts from their team's CRM data. Is that something on your radar at the moment?"

This does several things right. It's framed as a question. It leads with a specific, relevant problem (the "agitate" part). It doesn't mention your product or company. It's trying to start a conversation.

Your conversation flow should then be built around providing value. If they reply "Yes, that's a huge headache for us," your next step isn't to pounce with a demo link. It's to offer your high-value asset.

Follow-up example:
"Thought so. We actually built a free tool that connects to your CRM and gives you a one-page data health report in about 90 seconds. No sales call required. Happy to send the link if it'd be helpful."

See the difference? You're a helper, a problem-solver. You're giving, not taking. The entire goal of the conversation ad is to get them to accept your free, valuable offer. The offer then does the selling for you.

You'll need a smarter targeting strategy

You asked about using remarketing audiences only. With an audience of 2-5k, you should absolutely be running ads to them. This is your warmest audience. But it's far too small to build a business on. You must go after cold audiences, which you've identified as 60k people.

The key is not to treat that 60k as one big blob. You need to segment it based on the "nightmare" we discussed earlier. Your targeting on LinkedIn should be a combination of firmographics and this new pain-point intelligence.

• Company Lists: Don't just target industries. Use tools like Apollo.io or ZoomInfo to build specific lists of companies that are your absolute perfect fit. Maybe they just received a round of funding, maybe they're hiring for specific roles, maybe they use a technology that your software integrates with. Upload these as a matched audience.
• Job Titles + Seniority: This is standard, but combine it with other layers. Target the decision-makers, not just anyone at the company.
• Group Membership: What specific, niche LinkedIn groups do the people experiencing this pain belong to? Target members of those groups. This is a powerful signal of interest.
• Skills & Interests: Target people who have listed skills related to the problem you solve. For example, if you sell a financial modeling tool, targeting people with "Financial Analysis" or "Valuation" as skills is a no-brainer.

I'd structure my campaigns into tiers. Have a campaign specifically for your warmest remarketing audiences (website visitors, past leads etc.). Then have separate campaigns for your cold audiences, testing different segments. One campaign might target a list of 500 dream accounts. Another might target a broader audience based on job titles and group memberships.

For instance, in one campaign we ran for a B2B software client on LinkedIn, we achieved a cost per lead of just $22. It's not about reaching all 60,000 people; it's about reaching the 1,000 who are in agony and actively (or subconsciously) looking for a solution right now. That requires a more thoughtful approach than just setting a few demographic filters and hitting 'launch'. Your small remarketing pool shows you're getting some traffic, but to really grow you have to perfect your cold outreach, and that starts with hyper-specific targeting.

Finally, a word on incentives

This brings us to your final question about offering a gift card. My advice is simple: don't. It's a cheap tactic that fundamentally undermines everything we've just discussed. If you have to bribe someone to listen to you, it signals one of three things: 1) Your product isn't valuable enough on its own, 2) You're targeting the wrong people who have no interest, or 3) Your offer is weak.

Offering a £25 gift card attracts people who want a £25 gift card, not people who have a £10,000 business problem they need to solve. You will fill your sales team's calendar with low-quality leads who have no intention of buying, and they will waste hours on fruitless calls. It devalues your brand and positions you as desperate.

Instead of spending money on bribes, invest that money in creating a genuinely valuable offer. Build the free tool. Write the definitive guide. Create the diagnostic checklist. When your offer is strong enough, you don't need an incentive. The offer *is* the incentive. The value you provide for free is what earns you the right to their time. That's how you build a pipeline of prospects who are already sold on your expertise before you even speak to them. It's a much more difficult path, but it's the only one that leads to sustainable growth.

There's quite a lot to take in here, and I know I've probably challenged some of your existing assumptions. That's the point. The standard B2B playbook is broken, and getting results on a platform as expensive and crowded as LinkedIn requires a sharper, more strategic aproach.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing this kind of strategy correctly takes expertise, rigorous testing, and patience. It's not about flipping a switch; it's about building a robust customer acquisition engine. If you get the foundations right—the ICP definition, the LTV calculation, and the value-first offer—the tactical execution on LinkedIn becomes much, much easier.

If you'd like to walk through how these principles could be applied specifically to your SaaS product and current campaigns, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can do just that. It's often the quickest way to identify the key leverage points for growth.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh