Solved: Low Conversion Rates Despite Good CPC

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on this. It's a really common problem to have – good clicks but poor conversions – and tbh, it's rarely about the tools and almost always about what happens after that click. The tools just tell you *what's* happening, but you need to figure out *why*.

You've got ads with decent CPCs, which is great. That tells me the initial promise in your ad copy is working. People are interested enough to click. The breakdown is happening on the other side of that click. Let's get into what might be going on and how to fix it.

The Uncomfortable Truth: Your Ads Aren't The Real Problem

I know you're looking for tools, but let's be brutally honest for a moment. No tool is going to fix a fundamental strategy problem. People often blame their ads, their targeting, or the platform when conversions are low. They'll spend weeks tweaking audiences and ad copy, looking for a magic bullet. But you've already said your ad copy is resonating and CPCs are decent. This is a massive clue.

It means you're making a promise that people are interested in, but when they arrive on your landing page, the reality doesn't live up to the hype. The disconnect between the ad's promise and the landing page's proof is where your conversions are dying.

Think of it like this: your ad is the attractive shop window display that gets someone to walk inside. But if they step in and the shop is messy, the prices are confusing, and the staff ignore them, they're going to walk right back out. Your landing page is that messy shop right now. We need to tidy it up, but first, we need to make sure you're selling something people actually want to buy.

We'll need to look at your Offer... It's probably not as good as you think

This is the number one reason campaigns fail. Not the ad creative, not the audience, but the offer itself. I see so many businesses, especially in B2B, that have a weak, generic, or confusing offer. It's often built around what the company *does*, not what the customer *needs*.

You have to stop defining your customer by sterile demographics. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutely nothing useful. It leads to bland, corporate-speak copy that resonates with no one. Instead, you need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare.

What is the career-threatening problem that your ideal customer is facing?

• For a Head of Sales, it's not 'needing a CRM'. It's 'missing quota for the second quarter in a row and seeing their best reps updating their LinkedIn profiles'.
• For a law firm partner, it's not 'needing document management'. It's 'the paralegal missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit'.
• For a CTO, it's not 'needing a devops tool'. It's 'her best engineers threatening to quit because of a clunky, broken deployment process'.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you have that nailed down, your entire offer and message needs to be laser-focussed on solving that one specific nightmare. A lack of a clear, compelling offer built around this pain is the single biggest cause of poor conversion rates.

Let's look at how a vague service can be transformed into a high-converting offer. Many creative agencies sell "brand films". It's vague, commoditised, and focuses on the deliverable, not the outcome. A much stronger approach is to productise the service by focusing on a specific audience and their pain.

See the difference? The final offer is tangible, clear, and directly solves a deep frustration for a specific audience. It's no longer just a "brand film"; it's a solution to the pain of being a talented firm that can't build the customer base it deserves. This is the level of clarity you need on your landing page.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers... The Math That Frees You

Before we even touch the landing page design or copy, let's talk about the economics. Most businesses are obsessed with getting the lowest possible Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Lead (CPL). This is a trap. It leads you to optimise for cheap, low-quality traffic that never converts into paying customers.

The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Your LTV tells you what a customer is actually worth to your business in profit over their entire relationship with you. Once you know this number, everything changes. You stop being scared of a £50 or £100 CPL, because you know that customer will be worth thousands to you in the long run. Let's calculate yours.

Let's use the default example. With an LTV of £10,000, a healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single new customer and still have a profitable business model. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay up to £333 for that single qualified lead. Suddenly that expensive-looking LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem so pricey, does it? It looks like a bargain.

This is the math that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth. Without knowing these numbers, you're flying blind, and you'll always be chasing the cheapest clicks instead of the most valuable customers.

You probably should map the entire journey, post-click

Okay, now that we've covered the strategic foundations of offer and economics, let's get into the tactical side of your question: seeing what's *really* going on. You don't need a fancy, expensive tool for this to start. You need to think like a detective and follow the evidence. The first step is to map out the user journey on your landing page and identify the drop-off points.

For most lead generation or eCommerce sites, the funnel is pretty simple. Here's a visualisation of a typical funnel and where things commonly go wrong.

You need to set up goals in Google Analytics (or whatever analytics tool you use) for each of these micro-conversions. That's your first step. By tracking this, you stop looking at one vague "conversion rate" and start seeing exactly where the leak in your bucket is. Once you know that, you can focus all your energy on fixing that one specific stage.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know your offer is solid and you've identified the main drop-off point, it's time to look at the copy on the page. Your copy's only job is to get the visitor to believe that your solution is the best possible way to solve their 'nightmare scenario'.

Most B2B copy is terrible. It's full of jargon, buzzwords, and feature lists. It talks about "leveraging synergistic paradigms" instead of "stopping you from getting fired". You need to speak like a human, directly to their pain.

Here are two powerful frameworks we use with our clients:

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS): This is perfect for high-touch services.

• Problem: State their nightmare scenario in a way they immediately recognise. "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
• Agitate: Pour salt on the wound. Remind them of the consequences and fears associated with the problem. "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
• Solve: Introduce your offer as the clear, simple solution. "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): Excellent for SaaS or products that create a clear transformation.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current world, with all its frustrations. "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 dream state, the world with your solution. "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 bridge that gets them from Before to After. "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

Notice how none of these examples talk about features? They talk about outcomes, emotions, and solving pain. This is what converts. Ditch the feature list on your landing page and rewrite your headline and core message using one of these frameworks.

And for goodness sake, delete the "Request a Demo" button

Now we get to the final, and often most fatal, flaw in most B2B landing pages: the Call to Action (CTA). The "Request a Demo" button is possibly the most arrogant, conversion-killing CTA ever invented. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 45-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to. It is high-friction, low-value, and immediately screams "I am a commodity vendor".

You MUST replace it with a high-value, low-friction offer that delivers an "aha!" moment. Your offer's only job is to solve a small, real problem for them for free, earning you the right to solve the whole thing later. This is how you build trust and get them to sell themselves on your solution.

What does this look like in practice?

• For a SaaS company: The gold standard is a free trial or a freemium plan (with no credit card required). Let them use the actual product and feel the transformation. A Product Qualified Lead (PQL) who has already seen the value is infinitely better than a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) who just filled out a form.
• For a marketing agency: A free, automated SEO audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities.
• For a data analytics platform: A free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database.
• For a corporate training company: A free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations' for new managers.
• For us, a B2B advertising consultancy: We offer a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free of charge.

You have to give value before you ask for it. Find a way to bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides an instant win for your prospect. This single change can have a bigger impact on your conversion rate than any other tweak you make.

So, what tools should you actually use?

Now that we've covered all the strategic elements, we can finally talk about tools. But you see now why they come last. A tool will only show you *what* is happening; the strategy tells you *why* and *how to fix it*.

1. Web Analytics (e.g., Google Analytics): This is non-negotiable. You need this to track the funnel we visualised earlier. Set up goals for each stage: landing page view, CTA click, form start, form submission. This is your quantitative dashboard. It tells you the numbers and shows you the leaks.

2. Heatmaps & Session Recordings: Once you've identified a major drop-off point in your analytics, tools that provide heatmaps and record user sessions can give you qualitative insights. You can literally watch where people are clicking (or not clicking), how far they scroll, and where they get stuck or confused. It's the closest you can get to looking over their shoulder.

3. A/B Testing Platforms: After you've developed a new hypothesis based on your analysis (e.g., "I believe changing my CTA from 'Request a Demo' to 'Get Your Free Data Health Check' will increase conversions"), you need a tool to test it scientifically. This ensures you're making data-driven decisions, not just guessing.

But remember, these tools are just magnifying glasses. They are useless until you know where to point them. Start with your offer, your ICP's pain, your LTV, and your messaging first. That's where the real wins are.

Your Action Plan

This is a lot to take in, I know. The key is not to get overwhelmed and try to do everything at once. Focus on the highest-leverage activities first. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Working through these steps is how you build a conversion machine that works systematically, not just by luck. It's a proces that requires expertise and a deep understanding of both the psychology of the buyer and the mechanics of digital advertising.

If you'd like an expert eye on your specific landing pages and ad campaigns to accelerate this process, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can dive into your analytics, review your offer, and give you a couple of actionable insights you can implement right away.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh