Solved: Google Ads or LinkedIn? (Intent Is Key)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on the whole Google Ads vs LinkedIn Ads dilemma. It’s a common question, and honestly, most businesses get the answer wrong because they start by looking at the platforms instead of their customers.

I'll walk you through how I'd approach this. It’s less about picking a platform and more about building a stratgey that forces a platform to work for you. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at your customer's intent, not the platform...

Okay, so Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads? Tbh, that's kinda the wrong question to be asking right out of the gate. It's like asking whether you should use a hammer or a screwdriver before you've even looked at what you're trying to build. Both are brilliant tools, but use them for the wrong job and you'll just make a mess and waste a load of money.

The real question, the one that actually matters, is this: Is your ideal customer actively looking for a solution to their problem right now, or are they completely unaware they even have a problem you can solve?

Answer that, and you've answered which platform to start with. Everything else flows from there. One platform is for catching people who are raising their hand for help. The other is for tapping someone on the shoulder who you *think* needs help. They're completly different marketing motions.

Google Ads is an 'intent harvesting' platform. You’re tapping into existing demand. Someone goes to Google and types "accountant for small business Plymouth" or "emergency commercial electrician". They have a problem, they know they have it, and they are actively, right this second, looking for someone to pay to make it go away. This is the hottest lead you can possibly get. They are literally telling you they want to buy. Your only job is to show up and convince them you're the best option.

LinkedIn Ads, on the other hand, is an 'intent creation' platform. It's an interruption. Nobody logs onto LinkedIn to find a new software vendor or hire a consultant. They're there to check their messages, see who got a new job, or read some industry news. You are interrupting their day to say, "Hey, you, Marketing Director at that 100-person tech company... did you know your current workflow is costing you £50k a year in wasted time? There's a better way." You have to first make them aware of a problem they didn't know they had, agitate that problem until it feels urgent, and *then* present your solution. It’s a much harder, longer, and more expensive process.

Choosing incorrectly is financial suicide. If you try to interrupt someone on LinkedIn who is already desperately searching on Google, you've missed them. They'll have hired your competitor before they even see your ad. If you wait for someone to search on Google for a solution to a problem they don't know exists, you'll be waiting forever. Your ads will get zero impressions, because nobody is searching for what you do.

This is the fundemental strategic decision you have to make. To help you visualise it, here’s a simple flowchart that breaks down the thought process.

I'd say you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their pain...

Before you can even answer the question in that flowchart, you need to get brutally specific about who your customer is. And I don't mean the generic, useless fluff most marketing agencies come up with. "Business owners in Plymouth" is not an ICP. It tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state.

Let's make this practical. Imagine you're a fractional CFO service. Your old, demographic-based ICP might be: "SMEs in the tech sector with 20-50 employees." Utterly useless. The ad you write for that is "Expert financial services for tech SMEs." Nobody clicks that. It's boring, generic, and sounds like everyone else.

Now, let's define it by pain. Your *real* ICP is: "The founder/CEO of a 30-person SaaS company who just raised a seed round, is growing headcount by 50% this quarter, and is secretly terrified that they're going to run out of cash in 9 months because their financial projections are just a guess in a spreadsheet."

See the difference? That's not a demographic; it's a nightmare. Now you know *exactly* what to say to them. Your ad isn't about "financial services"; it's about selling a good night's sleep. It's about turning uncertainty into predictable growth. It's about avoiding the catastrophic failure of running out of money after taking investor cash.

This is the work. Do this first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads. You need to know:

• -> What is the specific, quantifiable cost of them *not* solving this problem? (e.g., "wasting £10k/month on inefficient processes")
• -> What is the emotional cost? (e.g., "stress, anxiety, fear of looking incompetent to their board")
• -> What are the "magic words" they use to describe this pain? (e.g., "our cash flow is a black box", "we're flying blind")
• -> Where do they go to find solutions or vent their frustrations? What industry newsletters do they *actually* read (like Stratechery for tech)? What podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Who do they follow on LinkedIn/Twitter?

This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting and messaging strategy. Once you know the nightmare, finding them on Google becomes easy (they'll search for "saas financial modelling template" or "how to manage post-seed round burn rate"). Finding them on LinkedIn also becomes easy (you target CEOs at companies with 20-50 employees in the Software industry who recently announced funding). But without defining the pain, your targeting is just a shot in the dark.

You probably should calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) first...

Right, before we get any further into the weeds of platforms and tactics, we need to talk about the most important metric that 99% of business owners ignore: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you are gambling, not marketing.

The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead (CPL) go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: LTV.

It sounds complex, but the basic formula is simple. Let's walk through it.

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make from a typical customer, per month or per year? Be honest here. Let's say for a service business, a retained client is worth £1,000 per month.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? After you've paid for any direct costs to service that client (e.g., software, your team's time), what's left? Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? If you keep 24 out of 25 clients each year, your annual churn is 1/25 = 4%. Your monthly churn is roughly 4% / 12 = 0.33%. (For simplicity in our example, let's use a higher churn rate of 3% per month, which is more common).

Now, the calculation:

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

Using our numbers:

LTV = (£1,000 * 0.75) / 0.03
LTV = £750 / 0.03 = £25,000

In this example, each customer is worth £25,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime.

This number changes everything. A healthy benchmark for a sustainable business is a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means for every £1 you spend to get a customer, you should get at least £3 back in lifetime gross margin. So, with a £25,000 LTV, you can afford to spend up to £25,000 / 3 = £8,333 to acquire a single new customer.

Let that sink in. £8,333.

Now, let's say your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer. That means you can afford to pay up to £8,333 / 10 = £833 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £150 lead from a LinkedIn Ad targeting a specific director doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality £10 leads from people who will never buy from you. You can confidently go to the most expensive, competitive platforms and buy the best quality traffic because you know exactly what it's worth.

Here’s a calculator so you can play with your own numbers. See for yourself how small changes in churn or average revenue can dramatically change what you can afford to spend on ads.

You'll need to decide: Are your customers searching for you or do you need to find them?

Okay, with a clear ICP defined by pain and a solid understanding of your LTV, you can now make an educated decision about the platform. Let's break down the practicalities of each.

When and How to Use Google Ads

You use Google Ads when your ICP is *problem aware* and *solution aware*. They know they have a toothache, and they know a dentist can fix it. They are actively searching.

Your entire job on Google is to be the most relevent and compelling answer to their specific search query. This is about precision, not creativity.

Keyword Strategy is Everything: Forget broad, generic keywords. They're a waste of money. You need to target 'high-intent' keywords. These are phrases that signal someone is ready to buy, not just research.

• Bad Keyword: "marketing" (Are they a student? A competitor? Just curious? Who knows.)
• Okay Keyword: "marketing agency" (Better, but still broad. Could be looking for jobs, examples, etc.)
• Good Keyword: "marketing agency for tech startups" (Now we're talking. Much more specific.)
• Excellent Keyword: "b2b saas marketing agency Plymouth" (This person is almost certainly a potential customer.)

On Google Ads, we pre-qualify the audience through the keywords they type. By targeting only the phrases that express a specific user need, we ensure our ads are only shown to people who have already raised their hand. For instance, in one Google Ads campaign for a software client, we acquired 3,543 users at a cost of just £0.96 each. It works because you're aligning perfectly with what the user is already looking for.

Your ad copy must then mirror their search query perfectly and present a clear value proposition. If they search for an "emergency electrician", your headline must say "24/7 Emergency Electrician in Plymouth". You then follow up with trust signals: "Certified & Insured," "5-Star Rated," "Call Now For a Fast Quote."

When and How to Use LinkedIn Ads

You use LinkedIn when your ICP is *not* actively searching. Either they don't realise they have a problem, or they don't know a solution like yours exists. You need to interrupt them and create the demand.

LinkedIn's power is not in keywords, but in its incredibly granular demographic and firmographic targeting. You can target people based on:

• -> Job Title (e.g., Chief Technology Officer, Head of Sales)
• -> Industry (e.g., Financial Services, Computer Software)
• -> Company Size (e.g., 51-200 employees)
• -> Specific Company Names (You can upload a list of 100 target companies and only show ads to their employees)
• -> Member Skills, Groups they're in, and more.

This is where your deep ICP work pays off. You're not guessing who to target; you're building a precise profile of your ideal buyer. I remember one campaign for a B2B software client where we used LinkedIn Ads to target very specific decision-makers and achieved a Cost Per Lead of just $22. This shows that even with potentially higher costs, precision targeting can deliver highly relevant leads efficiently. No time was wasted on irrelevant enquiries.

Here’s a simplified view of how you might layer targeting on LinkedIn to find that SaaS CEO we talked about earlier.

And then you'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you've chosen your platform and your targeting, your ad's job is to stop them in their tracks. Generic, feature-led copy gets ignored. Your ad needs to speak directly to the nightmare you identified in your ICP work.

The framework I always come back to is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). It's brutally effective.

1. Problem: Hit them with the exact pain they're feeling. Use their own words. "Is your cash flow forecast just a shot in the dark?"
2. Agitate: Twist the knife. Remind them of the consequences of inaction. "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
3. Solve: Present your service not as a list of features, but as the clear, simple solution to the pain you just agitated. "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

This structure works because it's based on human psychology. We are wired to move away from pain much more strongly than we are to move towards pleasure. Your ad must first resonate with their current pain before it can promise a future gain.

For a B2B SaaS product, you can use a slight variation called Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current, painful reality. "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out."
• After: Show them the promised land. "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated."
• Bridge: Position your product as the simple bridge from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state. "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

The key in both cases is to sell the outcome, not the process. Nobody cares that you use a "proprietary 12-step methodology". They care that you can stop them from having to lay off staff. They don't care about your "AI-powered algorithm"; they care that they can get their weekends back. Speak to the pain, sell the relief.

You'll also need to delete the "Request a Demo" button...

Now we arrive at the most common, catastrophic failure point in all of B2B advertising: the offer. Or rather, the lack of one.

The "Request a Demo," "Contact Us," or "Book a Consultation" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, who you've just interrupted on LinkedIn, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their diary to be sold to. It's high-friction and low-value. It screams, "I want your time and money, but I'm not going to give you anything of value first." It instantly positions you as a commoditised vendor, and it's why so many campaigns fail.

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 must solve a small, real problem for free to earn you the right to have a conversation about solving the whole thing.

What does a great offer look like?

• For a Marketing Agency: Not "Book a call." A great offer is a free, automated website audit that instantly shows them their top 5 SEO keyword opportunities. They get value whether they ever speak to you or not.
• For a Financial Consultant: Not "Free consultation." A great offer is a "Cash Flow Projection Template"—a genuinely useful spreadsheet that helps them get a better handle on their finances today.
- For a SaaS company: A free trial or a freemium plan is the gold standard. Let them use the product. Let them experience the transformation firsthand. The product becomes the salesperson.
• For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy: We don't say "hire us." Our offer is a free, 20-minute strategy session where we audit a company's failing ad campaigns and give them actionable advice they can implement immediately. We provide real value upfront, which builds trust and demonstrates our expertise far more effectively than any sales pitch could.

Your landing page must be ruthlessly focused on selling this one high-value offer. Remove the navigation menu. Remove links to your blog. Remove anything that could distract them. The page should have one purpose and one button. Make it an absolute no-brainer for them to give you their email address in exchange for the value you're providing.

Fixing your offer will have a bigger impact on your advertising results than any amount of tweaking keywords or audiences. A great offer with average targeting will always outperform an average offer with perfect targeting.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This has been a lot of information, I know. It's a fundamental shift from "which button do I press" to "how do I build a predictable customer acquisition system." To make it more concrete, here is a table summarising the step-by-step process I would follow if I were in your shoes.

As you can see, choosing the platform is actually one of the later steps in the process. The strategic work you do beforehand is what determines success or failure. Most businesses skip straight to step 4, pick a platform they've heard of, put up a generic ad, link it to a 'Contact Us' page, and then wonder why they're not getting a return on their investment.

Getting this right is a specialised skill. It takes time, expertise, and a lot of testing to build a system that reliably turns ad spend into profitable customers. It's not just about setting up a campaign; it's about understanding the deep mechanics of your business, your customers, and the advertising algorithms.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at your business, your goals, and help you build a concrete plan of action. Sometimes an expert eye can spot opportunities or roadblocks you might have missed.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh