Solved: Better LinkedIn Retargeting in Cambridge (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your LinkedIn retargeting troubles. It's a common problem, and frankly, the way most people approach it is fundamentally flawed, especially for B2B.

You mentioned getting stuck with "retargeting strategies in Cambridge". The core issue probably isn't the geography; it's the entire approach to what retargeting *is* on a platform like LinkedIn. We need to shift your thinking from just chasing website visitors to building a proper system that nurtures potential customers based on their actual engagement and pain points. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at the "Cambridge" problem first...

Right, let's tackle this head-on. Focusing your entire strategy on "Cambridge" is likely the first mistake. I know that sounds blunt, but it's important. Unless you're a commercial electrician or an office cleaning service that can physically only serve businesses within the CB postcode, thinking hyper-geographically on LinkedIn is a massive waste of the platform's power.

LinkedIn's entire value proposition is its professional data. You can target a Head of Engineering at a 100-person SaaS company, a CFO in the biotech sector, or a Marketing Director at a FTSE 250 firm. You can't do that on any other platform with the same accuracy. That's the gold. Targeting "people in Cambridge" is using a surgical tool like a sledgehammer. You're ignoring the incredibly detailed professional data in favour of a crude geographical filter.

Think about it: who is your ideal customer? Is their defining characteristic that they work in Cambridge? Or is it that they are a 'Head of Operations' in a logistics company with 50-200 employees that's struggling with supply chain visibility? I'd bet its the latter.

The standard approach to retargeting is to place a pixel on your website and show ads to everyone who visits. This works fine on Facebook for an e-commerce brand with 50,000 website visitors a month. For a B2B company with maybe 1,000 visitors a month, your retargeting audience is tiny. LinkedIn requires a minimum audience size of 300 matched members to even run ads. Many B2B businesses never even reach this consistently. Even if you do, it's not a big enough pool to get any real momentum or data from.

So, we need to completely reframe the problem. The goal isn't to retarget "people in Cambridge". The goal is to identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) regardless of their location (unless it's a genuine business constraint), and then build a system to engage and retarget *them* based on their professional profile and their interactions with your brand on LinkedIn itself.

I'd say you need to define your customer by their nightmare, not their demographic...

This is the most critical piece of work you need to do before you spend another pound on ads. Forget the bland, generic profiles like "SMEs in the tech sector". That tells you absolutely nothing useful and leads to ads that sound like they've been written by a committee. You need to get uncomfortably specific about your customer's biggest professional pain point.

Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. It's a career-threatening, budget-draining, keep-them-up-at-night nightmare. Your job is to understand that nightmare better than they do.

Let's make this real.

• Instead of: "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees."
  Think: "A Head of Compliance at a fintech scale-up who is terrified of a regulatory audit because their transaction monitoring is a mess of spreadsheets. They know a single mistake could cost them their licence and their job."


• Instead of: "HR managers in manufacturing."
  Think: "An HR Director at a 500-employee factory who can't fill skilled roles fast enough. Her best engineers are being poached by competitors, production is slowing, and the CEO is blaming her for missed targets."

See the difference? The first is a sterile demographic. The second is a human being with a real, urgent, and expensive problem. When you understand the nightmare, you can craft a message that hits them like a thunderbolt. Your ad stops being an interruption and starts being a lifeline.

Once you have this 'Nightmare ICP' defined, you can use LinkedIn's targeting with incredible precision. You're not just targeting "HR Directors". You're targeting HR Directors at companies in the 'Manufacturing' industry with 201-500 employees, and you're hitting them with an ad that speaks directly to the pain of skilled labour shortages. If some of them happen to be in Cambridge, great. You can add that as a geographic layer. But the primary targeting levers are job function, industry, and company size, because that's what defines their professional context and their problems.

This deep understanding of their pain is the foundation for everything that follows. It dictates your targeting, your ad copy, and, most importantly, your offer.

You probably should build a retargeting system that actually works...

Okay, so we've established that just retargeting website visitors is a losing game for most B2B companies. You need a more sophisticated, multi-layered approach. The flowchart above gives you the basic structure. Let's break down how to actually build this inside LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

Your strategy should be based on a simple principle: the warmer the audience, the more direct your ask can be. You need separate campaigns for each stage of the funnel because the goal and the message are different at each stage.

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - The "Attention" Campaign

This is your "cold" traffic. But it's not really cold, because you're using your highly specific Nightmare ICP targeting. The goal here isn't to get a lead or a demo. It's to stop the scroll and provide a moment of genuine value that makes them think, "Huh, these guys get me."

• Audience: Your ICP definition (e.g., Job Title: 'Head of Sales', Industry: 'Computer Software', Company Size: '51-200 employees'). You can layer on Cambridge here if you must, but I'd test it without first.
• Ad Format: Video is king here. A 60-90 second video that perfectly articulates their nightmare and hints at a better way is ideal. It doesn't need to be a Hollywood production; a well-shot piece-to-camera can work brilliantly.
• The "Offer": The content itself is the offer. You are offering a moment of insight or education for free. The only call to action should be to watch the video.
• Why it works: This campaign's primary job is to feed your retargeting pools. You're filtering a large audience down to a smaller group of people who are engaged enough to watch a significant portion of your video. These are your first-party prospects.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - The "Interest" Campaign

This is where real retargeting begins. You're now talking to people who have already shown a flicker of interest. They're no longer strangers. Your goal is to move them from passively consuming content to actively considering a solution by making them a compelling offer.

• Audience: Create custom audiences of people who have:
  • -> Watched 50% or more of your ToFu video ad.
  • -> Visited your LinkedIn Company Page.
  • -> Engaged with any of your posts (liked, commented, shared).
  You combine these into a 'Warm Audience' ad set. This audience is pure gold because they've actively raised their hand to say they're interested.
• Ad Format: Single Image or Carousel ads work well here. You need to be direct and clear about your offer.
• The "Offer": This is CRITICAL. Do not ask for a demo. We'll cover this more in the next section, but you need a high-value, low-friction offer. A free guide, a checklist, a free tool, a short pre-recorded webinar. Something that solves a small piece of their problem for free. This is where you drive them to a landing page to capture their email.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - The "Decision" Campaign

This is your final push. These are the hottest prospects you have. They've watched your content, they've visited your landing page, maybe they've even started filling out a form. Your goal is to give them the final nudge they need to convert.

• Audience: Create custom audiences of people who have:
  • -> Visited your landing page (from your MoFu campaign) but didn't convert.
  • -> Opened your LinkedIn Lead Gen Form but didn't submit. This is a hugely powerful and under-utilised audience!
• Ad Format: Single Image or even a short video testimonial. The message here is about trust and urgency.
• The "Offer": Now, and only now, you can be more direct. Show them a case study. Offer them a free, no-obligation strategy call or audit. You've earned the right to ask for their time because you've already provided so much value. I've had B2B software clients get their cost per lead down to $22 using this kind of structured approach on LinkedIn, which is fantastic for reaching senior decision-makers.

This system works because it aligns with a natural buying journey. It builds trust and demonstrates expertise before asking for anything significant in return. It also solves the "small audience" problem by creating new, highly-engaged retargeting pools directly on the platform itself, rather than relying solely on website traffic.

You'll need an offer they can't ignore...

I've mentioned this a few times, but it deserves its own section because it's probably the number one reason B2B ad campaigns fail. Your offer is more important than your targeting, your ad copy, or your budget. The most common failure point I see is the "Request a Demo" button.

Let's be brutally honest. Nobody wants to "request a demo". It's a terrible offer. It translates in the prospect's mind to: "Sign up to have my valuable time wasted by a salesperson who is going to try and shoehorn their product into my workflow." It is incredibly high-friction (I have to schedule time, talk to a person) and, initially, very low-value (I don't know if it's even relevant to me yet).

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. It must provide a piece of undeniable value, for free, that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve their whole problem for a fee.

Here are some examples of high-value, low-friction offers that work:

• For a Marketing Agency: A free, automated website audit that shows their top 3 SEO opportunities.
• For a FinOps SaaS: A "Cloud Waste Calculator" that estimates how much they could save on their AWS bill.
• For a Corporate Training Company: A free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Giving Effective Feedback'.
• For a B2B Advertising Consultancy (like us): A free 20-minute strategy session where we audit a failing ad campaign.

The pattern is clear: you give away a piece of your expertise, automated in a tool or packaged as content, to prove your value. This is what you should be driving your MoFu traffic to. Once someone has used your free tool or read your incredibly insightful guide, they are infinitely more likely to be receptive to a more direct offer like a strategy call in your BoFu campaign. You have to earn that call, not demand it upfront.

We'll need to calculate what a great customer is *really* worth...

This is where we connect all the strategy to the financials. Many businesses get obsessed with lowering their Cost Per Lead (CPL). The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is found by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Understanding your LTV is liberating. It stops you from making short-term decisions (like turning off a campaign because the CPL is "too high") and allows you to invest confidently in acquiring the right kind of customers who will be profitable in the long run. If you know a customer is worth £15,000 to you, does paying £300 for a highly qualified lead from a C-level decision maker on LinkedIn still seem expensive? No, it looks like a bargain.

I've built a simple calculator below to help you estimate your LTV. Play around with the numbers – especially the churn rate. You'll see how a small improvement in customer retention can have a massive impact on the LTV, which in turn justifies a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC).

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This has been a lot of information, I know. It's a fundamental shift away from simple retargeting towards building a proper demand generation engine. Here’s a summary of the actionable steps you should take, which we've found works for our B2B clients again and again.

So, why get expert help?

Executing this kind of strategy properly takes expertise and, more importantly, time. There are a lot of moving parts: defining the audiences, scripting the video, writing the ad copy for each funnel stage, creating the landing pages, building the free asset, and then constantly monitoring and optimising the campaigns.

This is what we do all day, every day. We've run countless campaigns for B2B businesses, from SaaS startups to established service firms, and have seen what works and what definitely doesn't. For instance, in one campaign for a B2B software client, we were able to reduce their Cost Per User Acquisition from over £100 down to just £7 by restructuring their campaigns and fixing their offer. And as I mentioned earlier, we’ve used the kind of structured funnel I’ve outlined to generate highly qualified leads for B2B decision-makers on LinkedIn for just $22 a pop.

Getting it wrong can mean burning through thousands of pounds with very little to show for it. Getting it right can build a predictable and scalable pipeline of your ideal customers.

If you'd like to chat through how this strategy could be specifically applied to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can take a look at your current setup and give you some more tailored advice. It's a good way to see if we'd be a good fit to help you implement this properly.

Hope this helps give you a new way to think about the challenge!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh