Solved: Poor LinkedIn Ad Results in Oxford? (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on this. The truth is, thinking about "localised best practices in Oxford" for something like LinkedIn video ads is probably the wrong way to look at it, and its a common mistake I see people make. It's not about your location, but about who you're trying to reach, regardless of where they are. Let's get into what really matters.

We'll need to look at your ICP... Your Ideal Customer is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

First things first, let's talk about targeting. This is where most campaigns fall apart before they've even spent a penny. You mentioned looking for customers in Oxford. Unless you're a business that physically serves people in Oxford, like an electrician or a local shop, targeting by city on LinkedIn is a massive waste of potential. The platform's power isn't in geography; it's in its incredible depth of professional data.

Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector in Oxfordshire with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutley nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored. 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 Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

Let's make this real. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of pure frustration with a broken, inefficient workflow. Your prospect in legal tech isn't just a 'partner at a law firm'; his nightmare is missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the entire firm to a malpractice suit that could ruin its reputation. See the difference? One is a bland demographic. The other is a raw, emotional driver for action.

Your job is to isolate that nightmare first. Once you have it, *then* you can translate it into LinkedIn's targeting tools. Who experiences this pain? What are their job titles? What skills do they list? What industry do they work in? What's the size of the company where this problem becomes unbearable? This thought process is the absolute foundation of a successful campaign.

Once you've isolated that professional nightmare, you can find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired'; the industry newsletters they actually open, like 'Stratechery'; the SaaS tools they already pay for, like HubSpot or Salesforce. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need to know your numbers... How High a Lead Cost Can You Actually Afford?

Before you even think about hitting 'launch' on a campaign, there's a critical piece of maths you need to do. Most businesses fixate on getting the lowest Cost Per Lead (CPL) possible. It's a trap. It leads to chasing cheap, low-quality leads that waste your sales team's time and never convert.

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). Knowing this number changes everything. It tells you exactly how much you can, and should, be willing to spend to get a new customer through the door.

Here's how you work it out:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What does a typical customer pay you each month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for the cost of servicing them?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month, on average?

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

Let's say your ARPA is £500, your gross margin is 80%, and your churn is 4% per month. Your LTV would be (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04 = £10,000. Each customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin over their lifetime. Now you have the truth. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means with a £10,000 LTV, you can comfortably afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer.

Suddenly, that £100 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain, provided your sales process can convert them. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads. I've built a small calculator for you below to play with your own numbers.

You probably should focus on the message... A Video Ad They Can't Ignore

Right, so you know who you're targeting (based on their nightmare) and you know what you can afford to pay. Now, what do you actually say in your video ad? The message needs to connect directly with the pain you identified earlier. If it doesn't, it's just noise.

Most B2B video ads are dreadful. They're a boring montage of stock footage, corporate jargon, and a bland voiceover talking about "synergies" and "solutions". They fail because they talk about themselves, not the customer's problem. You need to do the opposite.

For a high-touch service business, you deploy the Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) framework. You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. Your video script would start with a direct question hitting the pain point: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? (Problem). Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? (Agitate). Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth. (Solve)."

For a B2B SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge framework. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief. The video opens on the 'Before' state: "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. (Before). Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated. (After). Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today. (Bridge)."

The first 3-5 seconds of your video are everything. You have to earn their attention. Don't waste it with a fancy logo animation. Hit them with the problem immediately. This is what separates ads that get scrolled past from ads that get clicked. We've had several SaaS clients see really good results with simple, authentic user-generated content (UGC) videos. It doesn't need to be a Hollywood production; it just needs to be real and speak directly to the viewer's pain.

You'll need the right campaign structure... Forget Awareness, Chase Conversions

This might sound controversial, but it's the god's honest truth. When you set your LinkedIn campaign objective to "Brand Awareness," "Reach," or "Video Views," you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, in its infinite wisdom, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card and buy something. Why? Because those users are not in demand by other advertisers. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying one of the world's most powerful advertising machines to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It's madness, but I see it in almost every new account I audit.

Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. For any business that needs to see a return on its ad spend, there are only two objectives that matter:

1. Lead Generation: Using LinkedIn's native Lead Gen Forms.
2. Website Conversions: Sending traffic to a dedicated landing page to take an action.

That's it. Both of these tell the algorithm to hunt for people within your audience who have a history of actually filling out forms or converting on websites. You're fishing in a much better part of the pond. For one client in the environmental controls sector, we applied this exact principle. By shifting their campaign to focus purely on high-intent conversions, we were able to reduce their cost per lead on LinkedIn by 84%. That's the power of telling the algorithm what you actually want.

There's a trade-off between the two, of course. Lead Gen Forms often give you a lower cost per lead because they're so easy to fill out (LinkedIn pre-fills the data). The downside is that the lead quality can be lower because there's less friction and intent. Sending them to a landing page forces them to take more action, which means you'll get fewer leads, but they are often much more qualified and serious. You need to test both to see what works for your sales process.

And a better offer... Delete the "Request a Demo" Button

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of B2B advertising: the offer. Your ad can be perfectly targeted, with an amazing video, but if the call to action (CTA) is weak, the entire thing collapses.

The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy, important decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to. It screams, "Give me your time, and in return, I will try to take your money." It is high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another commoditised vendor begging for attention.

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 give them something valuable *before* you ask for their time or money. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

What does this look like in practice?

• For a SaaS company: Don't offer a demo. Offer a free trial with no credit card required. Let them use the actual product and feel the transformation. The product becomes the salesperson. The goal isn't a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL); it's a Product Qualified Lead (PQL) who is already convinced. We've worked on campaigns that generated over 5,000 software trials just by switching the offer from a demo to a free trial.
• For a marketing agency: Don't offer a "free consultation". Offer a free, automated SEO audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities right now. It's instant, tangible value.
• For a data analytics platform: Offer a free 'Data Health Check' that scans their database and flags the top 3 critical issues affecting their reporting.
• For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy: We offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns and give actionable advice. We provide real value upfront to demonstrate our expertise.

Your video ad should drive to one of these high-value, low-friction offers. The goal isn't to make a sale in the ad; it's to start a relationship by being genuinely helpful. This is how you stand out from the noise and build a pipeline of prospects who actually want to talk to you.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull this all together, here's a summary of the strategic shift you need to make. It's not about finding niche "best practices" for a specific city; it's about implementing a universally effective framework for B2B advertising that is built on a deep understanding of your customer.

Implementing this framework is, of course, easier said than done. It requires a deep dive into your customer's psychology, disciplined testing, and the experience to know which levers to pull when performance isn't where it needs to be. We've helped companies reduce their lead costs by over 80% on LinkedIn simply by restructuring their campaigns around these core principles.

If you'd like to walk through how these strategies could be applied specifically to your business, I'd be happy to offer you a complimentary 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at your current setup and identify the single biggest opportunity for you to start generating better results from your LinkedIn ads.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh