Solved: Generating leads for business with traction.

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how I'd approach lead generation for your business. It's a common problem – being great at what you do but having no reliable way to get in front of new customers. Having traction already is a massive head start, it means you've got something people actually want, which is more than half the battle.

What I'll lay out below is basically the thinking process we'd go through. Since I don't know the specifics of your business, I'll have to make a few assumptions, but the principles here apply to almost any B2B service, especially in the high-value space that your background as a fund manager suggests you might be in. This is a bit of a brain dump of how to build a proper lead generation engine from the ground up. It's a lot, but getting this foundation right is the difference between burning cash and building a predictable growth machine.

We'll need to look at your ICP, but not how you think...

The first thing most people do is try to define their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) with demographics. They'll say something like "we're targeting companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" or "our customer is a C-level executive". Tbh, that's almost completely useless. It tells you nothing of value and it leads to bland, generic ads that get ignored because they speak to absolutely no one.

To stop wasting money before you even start, you have to define your customer by their pain. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. What is the problem that keeps them awake at 3 am? What's the thing that could get them fired or, conversely, get them a massive promotion? Your ICP isn't a person or a job title; it's a problem state.

Let's imagine you offer some kind of fractional CFO or strategic advisory service. Your client isn't just a "Head of Engineering". She's a leader who is terrified that her best, most expensive developers are about to quit because their workflow is a complete mess and they're frustrated. She doesn't need "consulting", she needs to stop the talent bleed that's threatening her entire product roadmap. Or for a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's the visceral fear of a senior partner missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the entire firm to a malpractice suit and reputational ruin. See the difference? One is a boring category, the other is a career-threatening fire you need to put out right now.

You need to sit down and really map this out for your own business. What is the precise, painful situation your ideal customer is in right before they realise they need someone like you?
-> Is their cash flow a complete guess every month, and they're secretly terrified of a payroll crisis?
-> Are they watching smaller, dumber competators raise huge rounds of funding while their own growth has hit a wall?
-> Have they just lost a massive deal because their internal processes are a shambles and they looked unprofessional?
-> Are they personally on the hook for a compliance issue that could cost millions?

Once you've isolated that specific nightmare, the next step is to figure out where these people live online. This is what makes your targeting actually work. Forget broad strokes. You need real intelligence. Do they listen to niche podcasts on their commute, something like 'Acquired' or 'The All-In Podcast'? Do they actually read and trust specific industry newsletters, like 'Stratechery' by Ben Thompson? What software do they already pay for and trust? Are they active in a HubSpot or Salesforce ecosystem? Are they members of a private community like 'SaaS Growth Hacks' on Facebook, or do they follow specific influencers like Jason Lemkin or Shaan Puri on Twitter?

This isn't just data gathering. This is building the blueprint for your entire advertising strategy. Every ad you write will speak directly to that nightmare. Every targeting decision you make will be based on where they go to solve their problems. If you don't do this deep work first, you honestly have no business spending a single pound on ads. You'll just be shouting into the void. It's the most common mistake we see, and it's responsible for more wasted ad spend than anything else. You've got traction, so you know who these people are. You just need to document their world with a wierd amount of detail.

I'd say you need to nail the offer before you spend a penny...

Right, so you know who you're targeting and what their biggest pain is. The next place nearly everyone falls down is the offer. This is what you actually ask people to do in your ad. And I'm going to be brutally honest: the "Request a Demo" or "Book a Consultation" button is probably the most arrogant, highest-friction Call to Action ever invented. It presumes that your prospect, a busy and important person, has nothing better to do with their time than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It screams "I am a commodity vendor, please join my queue". It positions you as a salesman, not an expert solver of problems.

Your offer has one job and one job only: to deliver a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must solve a small, real problem for them, for free, to earn the right to talk about solving their big, expensive problem for a fee. This is non-negotiable for cold traffic.

If you're a SaaS founder, this is your secret weapon. The gold standard is a completely free trial with no credit card required. Let them get in, use the product, and feel the transformation for themselves. Let them see the data, run the report, or fix the workflow. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a simple formality. You're not generating low-quality "Marketing Qualified Leads" (MQLs) for a sales team to chase for weeks. You're creating "Product Qualified Leads" (PQLs) who are already convinced and are now asking you how they can pay for more.

But you don't have to be a SaaS comapny to do this. You just have to be more creative. You need to bottle a piece of your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that delivers that instant "aha!" moment.
-> If you're a marketing agency, don't say "book a call". Offer a free, automated SEO audit that instantly shows them their top 3 missed keyword opportunities.
-> If you're a data analytics platform, offer a free 'Data Health Check' that scans their database and flags the top 5 critical issues they need to fix.
-> If you're a corporate training company, offer a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'How to Handle Difficult Conversations with Underperforming Staff' that a manager can use immediately.
-> For us, as an agency specialising in B2B ads, our offer is a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. We solve a real problem (wasted ad spend) for free, which earns us the right to talk about a paid engagement.

Think about your own business. What's a small, valuable piece of the puzzle you can give away? Could you build a simple calculator that shows a potential client how much money they're losing due to inefficiency? Could you create a 5-page PDF guide on a very specific, painful topic that nobody else is talking about? Could you productise your initial discovery process into something tangible? I remember one client who was a video production company. They stopped selling "brand films" and started offering a "1-Day Filming Process". It had a name, a fixed process, and clear deliverables. It turned a complex, scary service into something simple, tangible, and less risky to buy. It's all about reducing friction and increasing value. Your offer must feel like a gift, not a trap. Get this right, and your ads will feel like they have superpowers.

You probably should choose your battlefield carefully...

Okay, so we have a pain-based ICP and a high-value, low-friction offer. Now we can finally talk about where to actually run the ads. The choice of platform is critical, and it all comes back to one question: is your ideal customer actively searching for a solution to their nightmare right now, or do you need to interrupt them and make them aware of it?

A) Capturing Active Intent: Google Search Ads

If people are actively looking for what you do, Google Search is almost always the best place to start. These are the highest-intent leads you will ever find. They've literally just typed their problem into a search box. Your job is to be the best answer.

The key here is keyword selection. You must target keywords that show commercial or transactional intent, not informational intent. For instance, if you're that fractional CFO service, targeting a keyword like "what is a fractional cfo" is a waste of money. The searcher is a student or a researcher, not a buyer. But a keyword like "fractional cfo for tech startups" or "part time cfo services near me" is gold. The searcher has a specific need and is looking for a provider. You'd want to do some proper research to build a list of these 'money' keywords.

For most B2B services, especially high-ticket ones, this is the most direct and reliable path to qualified leads. The volume might not be enormous, but the quality should be excellent. We've seen this work for a medical recruitment SaaS company, for example. The principle is the same: find the search query that signals a burning need.

B) Creating Demand: LinkedIn & Meta Ads

What if people aren't searching? This is common for new or innovative solutions where the market isn't educated yet. In this case, you need to go out and find them. This is where social platforms come in.

LinkedIn Ads: This is the go-to for B2B when you know exactly who your customer is by their professional profile. The targeting is its main strength. You can target by:
-> Job Title (e.g., 'Chief Technology Officer', 'Head of Sales')
-> Industry (e.g., 'Financial Services', 'Computer Software')
-> Company Size (e.g., '51-200 employees')
-> You can even upload a specific list of target companies (from tools like Apollo.io or just your own research) and target the decision-makers within them.

This is incredibly powerful but also expensive. You're paying a premium for that data. Here, your ad format is important. You can run Sponsored Content (image or video ads in the feed) and point them to your high-value offer on a landing page. Or, you could test LinkedIn's native Lead Gen Forms, which pop up right in the app. These often get a lower Cost Per Lead (CPL) because they're so easy to fill out, but the lead quality can sometimes be lower as a result. You have to test what works. I remember one B2B software client where we were getting them highly-qualified leads from decision makers for about $22 a pop using LinkedIn, which for their deal size was an absolute bargain.

Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads: People often dismiss Meta for B2B, which is a mistake. It's more difficult, but it can work exceptionally well if you're clever. The demographic targeting is weak for B2B (options like "small business owners" are very broad), but the psychographic and behavioural targeting is where the magic is. Remember that ICP work from the start? All those podcasts, newsletters, and software tools they use? You can often target those as 'interests' on Meta. This is a way to find your tribe. For example, we ran a campaign for a B2B SaaS tool and got their cost per registration down to just $2.38 by targeting interests related to their competitors' software.

The absolute, most important rule on Meta is to only use a campaign objective that optimises for conversions (leads, signups, sales). If you choose "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are literally paying Facebook's algorithm to find you the worst possible audience – people who are cheap to show ads to precisely because they never click or buy anything. It's the fastest way to set your money on fire.

The choice between these platforms isn't either/or. A sophisticated strategy will often use both. Google to capture the people who are looking now, and LinkedIn/Meta to educate the rest of the market and fill the top of the funnel for the future.

You'll need to know your numbers, or you're flying blind...

This might be the most important part of this whole letter. If you don't understand these numbers, you will always make bad decisions about your advertising. You'll either turn off campaigns that are actually profitable, or you'll pour money into campaigns that are silently bankrupting you.

The real question isn't "How low can I get my Cost Per Lead?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a fantastic, long-term customer?" The answer to that question lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's walk through it with a hypothetical example for your business. First, we need three numbers:
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a client pays you each month? Let's say it's a £2,000/month retainer.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for your direct costs of servicing that client? For services, this is often high. Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your clients do you lose each month, on average? This is key. Let's say it's 4% (meaning the average client stays for 25 months).

Now, we do the calculation. It's pretty simple:

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

Let's plug in our numbers:

LTV = (£2,000 * 0.75) / 0.04
LTV = £1,500 / 0.04
LTV = £37,500

In this hypothetical scenario, every new client you sign is worth £37,500 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number changes everything.

A healthy, sustainable business model often aims for a 3:1 ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This means you want to spend no more than a third of your LTV to acquire a customer.

Maximum Affordable CAC = LTV / 3
Max CAC = £37,500 / 3 = £12,500

You can afford to spend up to £12,500 to acquire a single client and still have a very profitable business. Now, let's take it one step further. What's your sales conversion rate? Let's say from the moment someone becomes a qualified lead (e.g., they take your high-value offer) to them signing a contract, you close 1 in 10. Your sales process converts at 10%.

Maximum Affordable Cost Per Lead (CPL) = Max CAC / (1 / Sales Conversion Rate)
Max CPL = £12,500 / 10 = £1,250

Suddenly, that £150 lead from a LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute steal. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and allows you to confidently outbid and outspend more timid competitors who are just guessing. You need to do this calculation for your own business. It will become your North Star for all marketing spend.

Here's a quick demo of the calculation in a table:

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know that's a lot to take in. Building a proper advertising system isn't a quick hack; it's a strategic proccess. If I were to boil it all down into an actionable plan, this is what it would look like. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Following a structured approach like this is how you move from having no leads to building a predictable, scalable engine for growth. It takes work, and there are definately nuances to getting each step right, but this framework is solid.

As you can probably tell, this is a complex process. Getting it right can transform a business. Getting it wrong means burning through a lot of cash with very little to show for it. The difference often comes down to experience – knowing which levers to pull, which metrics to ignore, and how to interpret the data to make smart decisions quickly.

This is what we do, all day, every day, for B2B businesses. We've scaled countless campaigns from zero to a consistent flow of high-quality leads by applying this exact thinking. If you'd like to jump on a call and have us apply this framework directly to your specific business and goals, we offer a free, no-obligation initial strategy consultation. We can take a look under the bonnet together and give you a clear roadmap for what your next steps should be.

Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful for you and gives you a solid direction to move in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh