Solved: LinkedIn Video Ad Help in Milton Keynes (A Step-by-Step Fix)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts on your LinkedIn video ads. I see you're based in Milton Keynes, but to be brutally honest, when it comes to platforms like LinkedIn, your physical location is far less important than your strategy. The principles that make an ad campaign work in London or New York are the exact same ones that will work for you.

The truth is, most advice on "video ad best practices" is useless. It’s generic fluff that leads to generic, ineffective ads that burn through cash. The real issue isn't about the ideal video length or what music to use. It's about getting three things right: the Message, the Targeting, and the Offer. Get those wrong, and nothing else matters. So, let's forget the generic stuff and look at what actually moves the needle.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

First things first, we need to completely scrap any ideas you have about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) if it looks anything like "manufacturing companies with 50-200 employees in Milton Keynes". This is a demographic, not a customer. It tells you nothing of value and leads to ads that are so broad they speak to absolutely no one. You have to stop thinking about who your customers *are* and start obsessing over what their biggest, most urgent, career-threatening *problem* is.

Your customer isn't a job title; they're a person staring at a problem they can't solve, a problem that's costing them money, causing them stress, and maybe even keeping them up at night. That is their nightmare. And your entire advertising strategy needs to be built around that nightmare.

For example, I remember working with a legal tech SaaS client. Their initial ICP was "law firms". It was useless. We dug deeper. The real ICP wasn't the firm; it was the Managing Partner. And his nightmare wasn't a vague need for "better document management." His nightmare was the visceral fear of a junior associate missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit, and destroying a reputation that took 50 years to build. See the difference? One is a bland category; the other is a story with high stakes.

Your job is to become the world's leading expert on that one specific nightmare. Once you've defined it, you can find the people experiencing it. Where do they hang out online?

• -> What niche podcasts about their industry do they listen to on their commute down the M1?
• -> What industry newsletters (the ones they actually open) are in their inbox?
• -> What software do they already pay for? (e.g., Salesforce, Xero, HubSpot)
• -> Are they in specific LinkedIn Groups related to their profession?

This isn't just market research; it's intelligence gathering. You need to build a dossier on this person's professional life. Doing this work is non-negotiable. If you don't know their nightmare, you have no business spending a single pound on ads trying to get their attention.

We'll need to look at a message they can't ignore...

Once you know their nightmare, you can craft a message that they physically can't ignore. Your video ad isn't a commercial; it's a direct intervention into their problem. The best frameworks for this are brutally simple and effective.

For a service business, you use Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). You don't sell "IT Support Services." You sell relief from technological chaos.

Let's imagine you run a logistics consultancy in Milton Keynes. Your PAS message isn't "We optimise supply chains." It's:

Problem: "Another shipment delayed at customs? Is your warehouse staff spending more time searching for stock than shipping it?"

Agitate: "While you're putting out fires and apologising to angry customers, your competitors are delivering on time, every time, and stealing your market share."

Solve: "We implement a 3-step logistics system for manufacturing firms that cuts dispatch errors by 90% and gets your products out the door. Get the predictable delivery system your customers demand."

For a SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge. You don't sell a "project management tool." You sell the feeling of being in control.

Before: "It's 5 PM. Your team has no idea what the top priorities are, deadlines are being missed, and you're staring at another weekend of catching up."

After: "Imagine every project running on time, your team perfectly aligned, and leaving the office at 5 PM with complete clarity and confidence."

Bridge: "Our platform is the bridge that takes your team from chaos to calm in under a week. See how with a free trial."

This is how you stop the scroll on LinkedIn. Not with flashy graphics, but by describing their current reality so accurately they feel like you've been reading their emails. Here’s a visual breakdown of that flow:

You probably should reconsider your campaign objective...

This is one of the biggest and most costly mistakes I see people make. When you set up your campaign in LinkedIn, the platform asks you to choose an objective. Your choices include things like "Brand Awareness," "Engagement," and "Video Views." It sounds sensible, right? You want people to be aware of your brand. Wrong.

When you select "Brand Awareness," you are giving LinkedIn's algorithm a very specific, and very stupid, command: "Find me the largest number of people inside my target audience for the absolute lowest price."

The algorithm, being a ruthlessly efficient machine, does exactly what you asked. It scours your audience for the people who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because those people's attention is not in demand by other advertisers. It's cheap. You are literally paying LinkedIn to find you the worst possible prospects for your business. It's madness, but I see accounts wasting thousands of pounds on this every month.

The only objective you should care about for direct-response advertising is a conversion objective. In LinkedIn, this means choosing "Lead Generation," "Website Conversions," or a similar goal. When you do this, you're giving the algorithm a much more intelligent command: "I don't care about cheap impressions. Go and find the specific people in my audience who have a history of filling out forms, downloading guides, and requesting demos. I am willing to pay more to reach *them*."

This single change can be the difference between a campaign that burns cash and one that generates qualified leads. Awareness is a *byproduct* of making sales to happy customers, not a prerequisite for it.

I'd say you need to get your targeting right...

So you have your nightmare-focused message and you've selected a conversion objective. Now you need to aim your weapon. This is where LinkedIn's targeting capabilities come into their own, but they're only as good as the intelligence you gathered earlier.

Forget broad strokes. You need to be a sniper. Here's a typical hierarchy of targeting layers I'd use:

1. Job Titles & Seniority: Start with the exact job titles of the people who experience the nightmare. 'Head of Operations', 'Finance Director', 'Chief Technology Officer'. Be specific. You can also layer on Seniority levels like 'Director', 'VP', 'C-Suite'.
2. Company Industry & Size: Now narrow it down to the industries where this problem is most acute. 'Industrial Automation', 'Medical Devices', 'Financial Services'. Combine this with Company Size to match your ideal customer profile (e.g., 50-200 employees).
3. Exclusions: Just as important is who you *don't* want to see your ads. Exclude junior staff, your competitors, and any industries that are a bad fit. This saves you a lot of wasted ad spend.

You can even get more advanced by uploading a list of target companies (Account-Based Marketing). If you know the 100 companies in and around Milton Keynes that you want to work with, you can upload that list and tell LinkedIn to *only* show ads to the 'Heads of Engineering' at those specific firms. It's incredibly powerful.

Here’s what a sample audience build might look like for a hypothetical cybersecurity firm in Milton Keynes, targeting businesses that are prime for ransomware attacks.

You probably should rethink your offer...

This is it. The final, and most common, point of failure. You can have the perfect message and the perfect targeting, but if your offer is weak, the entire system collapses. And the weakest offer in all of B2B marketing is the arrogant and lazy "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us" button.

Think about it from your prospect's perspective. They are a busy, important person. You've interrupted their day with an ad. Why on earth would they commit their valuable time to being sold to by a stranger? They won't. A "demo" is a high-friction, low-value request. It screams "I want to take your time to sell you my stuff". It positions you as a commodity.

Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. It must solve a small piece of their problem for free, right now, to earn you the right to talk about solving the whole thing later. You must give them an "aha!" moment that makes them sell *themselves* on your solution.

If you're a service business, you need to bottle your expertise into an asset.

• -> For an accountancy firm: a free "5-Point SME Cash Flow Health Check" calculator.
• -> For a marketing agency: an instant, automated "Website Grader" that shows their top 3 SEO issues.
• -> For us, as a B2B ad consultancy, it's a free 20-minute ad account audit where we find wasted spend.

You have to give value first. You must solve a real, tangible problem for them at no cost. This changes the entire dynamic. You're no longer a salesman; you're a helpful expert. The trust this builds is immense and makes the subsequent sales conversation a thousand times easier. Your video ad should drive them to *this* valuable offer, not to a boring contact form.

You'll need to understand your numbers...

So, what should you expect to pay for a lead? And how do you know if it's a "good" price? The answer lies in knowing your numbers, specifically your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Most businesses don't know this, so they focus on getting the cheapest lead possible, which is a terrible strategy. The real question is: "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a great customer?"

Let's calculate it. You need three metrics:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a typical customer worth to you each month?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue?
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is simple: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate.

Once you know your LTV, you can make intelligent decisions about ad spend. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. So, if your LTV is £9,000, you can afford to spend up to £3,000 to acquire a new customer. If your sales team converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £300 for that lead.

Suddenly that £50 or even £100 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, scalable growth. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull this all together, here is a summary of the strategic approach you need to take. This isn't a list of "best practices"; it's a repeatable system for generating leads on LinkedIn.

As you can see, a successful LinkedIn video campaign is a complex machine with many moving parts. It requires a deep understanding of strategy, psychology, copywriting, and the technical aspects of the ad platform. Getting just one of these pieces wrong can jeopardise the entire investment.

This is where expert help can make a significant difference. An experienced paid advertising consultant can help you navigate this complexity, avoid the common pitfalls that waste budgets, and implement a robust system for generating a predictable flow of qualified leads. They can bring an outside perspective to identify your customer's true nightmare and translate that into a campaign that delivers results.

If you'd like to have a more detailed chat about your specific situation, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your goals and give you some more tailored guidance. Feel free to get in touch if that's of interest.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh