Solved: LinkedIn Ad Copy Problems (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at your question about LinkedIn ad copy. It's a common struggle, especially when you feel like you can't narrow down your audience with things like location. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns.

The short answer is that the problem probably isn't the lack of location data. Tbh, for most B2B campaigns, location is one of the least useful targeting options. The real issue is almost always a bit deeper. It's about shifting your entire mindset from targeting a *demographic* to targeting a *problem*. When you get that right, the copy almost writes itself, and it will resonate no matter where the person is physically located. Let's get into it.

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

Right, let's get this out of the way first. You said you have a "broad, undefined audience". I'd wager that's the root of the entire problem. Forget the sterile Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that most marketing agencies cook up. "Companies in the SaaS sector with 50-200 employees, targeting CTOs" is utterly useless. It tells you nothing of value and leads you to write generic, boring ads that get ignored by everyone, including actual CTOs.

To stop burning cash on LinkedIn, you have to become an expert in your customer's specific, urgent, career-threatening nightmare. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a *problem state*. Your Head of Sales client isn't just a job title; he's a leader staring at a sales dashboard in despair, terrified of missing his quarterly target and having a very difficult conversation with the board. For a compliance software company, the nightmare isn't 'needing better GRC'; it's 'the CEO getting a personal fine from the regulator because of a reporting failure.' That's a real problem. That's a nightmare.

When you define your audience by their pain, location data becomes irrelevant. A Head of Engineering in London who's losing his best developers due to a clunky CI/CD pipeline has the exact same nightmare as a Head of Engineering in San Francisco or Berlin. The problem transcends geography. Your job is to find them where they live *online*, not where they live physically.

Where do they go to talk about these nightmares? What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? What industry newsletters do they actually open and read? What influencers do they follow on LinkedIn? Are they in specific LinkedIn Groups? This is the intelligence that forms your targeting strategy. You target the *source* of their information, not their postcode. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads. It's the difference between shouting into a crowded stadium and whispering a secret in someone's ear.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Once you’ve defined the nightmare, writing the copy becomes a hundred times easier. You're no longer trying to be clever; you're just describing their own reality back to them. Good copy doesn't sell, it creates understanding. The prospect should read your ad and think, "Finally, someone gets it."

There are a few classic frameworks for this, but two are particularly powerful for B2B on platforms like LinkedIn. Forget everything you think you know about writing 'professional' copy. Professional copy is usually just boring copy. You need to be direct and empathetic.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

This is my go-to for high-touch services. It’s brutally effective because it mirrors how we process problems emotionally.

• Problem: State the nightmare directly and in their own language. Start the ad with the pain.
  Example: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
• Agitate: Poke the bruise. Twist the knife a little. Remind them of the consequences of inaction. What happens if this problem continues?
  Example: "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
• Solve: Introduce your solution as the clear, obvious way out of the pain. This isn't about features; it's about the relief you provide.
  Example: "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

This works wonders for SaaS products or anything that creates a tangible transformation. You paint a picture of their current hell, then their future heaven, and position your product as the bridge to get there.

• Before: Describe their current world. A world filled with the problem.
  Example: "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: Paint a vivid picture of the world without the problem. What does it feel like?
  Example: "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going, and waste is automatically eliminated."
• Bridge: Show them how your product is the simple, easy bridge from Before to After.
  Example: "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

Notice that neither of these examples mentions your company name until the end, if at all. Neither of them lists ten different features. They focus entirely on the customer and their journey from pain to relief. This is what resonates. This is what gets clicks from people who actually have the problem you solve. For instance, I remember one campaign we ran on LinkedIn for a B2B software client where we achieved a cost per lead of just $22 by creating highly relevant ads that spoke directly to the decision-makers' problems. It works.

You probably should calculate what a customer is really worth...

Okay, so let's say you've nailed your nightmare-based ICP and your PAS-style copy. Your ads are running, and you're getting leads. The next question everyone asks is: "What's a good Cost Per Lead (CPL)?" Tbh, this is the wrong question. It's a question that keeps businesses small.

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 lies in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire duration of your relationship. Once you know this number, you stop making decisions based on fear and start making them based on data. You stop celebrating a cheap £20 lead that never converts and start getting excited about a £300 lead from a CTO that you know is worth £30,000 to your business.

Here’s the simple maths. You need three bits of information:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month on average?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold). Be honest here.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is straightforward:

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

Let's run an example. Say your ARPA is £1,000, your Gross Margin is 70% (0.7), and you lose 5% of your customers each month (0.05).

LTV = (£1,000 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £700 / 0.05 = £14,000

Suddenly, you have the truth. Each customer is worth £14,000 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is often cited as 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £14,000 / 3 = ~£4,666 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can now afford to pay up to £466 per qualified lead. That £250 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive anymore, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth.

You'll need an offer that actually offers something...

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all B2B advertising, and this definately applies to LinkedIn. It's the offer. Or rather, the lack of one. The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant and lazy Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker who is already drowning in work, has nothing better to do than book a 45-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to.

It's a high-friction, low-value ask. It instantly positions you as a commodity vendor, just another person asking for their time. And it fails. It fails because it offers them no immediate value. The value is locked behind a meeting they don't have time for with a salesperson they don't trust.

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. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the bigger problem for money.

What does this look like in practice?

• For SaaS Founders: This is your unfair advantage. The gold standard is a free trial (no card required) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced.
• For Service Businesses / Agencies: You are not exempt. You must bottle a piece of your expertise into a tool or asset that provides instant value. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. We give away real value upfront. For a data analytics platform, it could be a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top 3 issues in their database. For a corporate training company, it could be a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations' for new managers.

You need to give them a win. A small taste of the result they're after. This builds trust, demonstrates your expertise, and changes the entire dynamic of the relationship. They're no longer a lead to be chased; they're a prospect who has already received value and is now coming to you to ask for more. This simple switch in your offer can be the difference between a campaign that struggles and one that scales profitably.

I know this is a lot to take in. It's a shift from just 'doing ads' to building a proper customer acquisition system. Getting this right involves research, testing, and a deep understanding of both marketing psychology and the specific mechanics of ad platforms. It can be time-consuming and costly to figure out through trial and error.

This is where expert help can make a real difference, not just by implementing these strategies for you but by helping you get to the right answers faster and avoiding common pitfalls. If you’d like to have a chat about your specific business and how these principles could be applied to your campaigns, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at what you're doing now and give you some concrete, actionable advice on the spot.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh