LinkedIn Ads Useless? Target Nightmares, Not Demographics

Let's get one thing straight. Most businesses are burning money on LinkedIn Ads and have no idea why. They treat it like a digital billboard, throwing up a logo and a generic message, hoping for 'brand awareness'. This is a fast track to an empty bank account. The uncomfortable truth is that LinkedIn isn't a billboard, it's a precision tool. If your campaigns are failing, it’s not the platform's fault. It’s because your approach is fundementally broken. You're probably targeting the wrong people with the wrong message and an even worse offer. The good news is, it's fixable. But you need to unlearn everything you think you know about B2B advertising.

So, why are my LinkedIn ads so useless?

The number one reason your LinkedIn ads are useless is because you're targeting demographics, not nightmares. Forget the sterile profile your last marketing agency built: "B2B SaaS companies, 50-200 employees, UK-based". It tells you nothing of value. It leads to bland, generic ads that resonate with absolutely no one. You end up with sky-high costs and a handful of rubbish leads from people who will never, ever buy from you. If this sounds familiar, it's because you're addressing a job title, not a person with a career-threatening problem.

To stop wasting cash, you have to become an expert in your ideal customer's specific, urgent, and expensive pain. Your target isn't a "Head of Sales". It's a Head of Sales who is terrified of missing their quarterly target for the second time in a row and is seeing their top performers poached by competitors with better tech stacks. She isn't thinking about "CRM solutions"; she's worrying about her job. Your ICP isn't a demographic; it's a problem state. Once you get this, everything changes. It's the real reason most of the guides you read online are useless; they focus on the buttons to click, not the psychology of the buyer.

This is also why your costs are so high. When your message is generic, your ad is irrelevant to 99% of the people who see it. LinkedIn's algorithm notices this lack of engagement (clicks, comments, shares) and penalises you with a lower relevance score, which in turn drives up your costs. You're paying a premium to show a bad ad. It's a vicious cycle. People often ask if it's their wrong audience or messaging causing high costs, and the answer is almost always: both.

Okay, how do I find my actual customers then?

Once you've defined your customer by their nightmare, finding them becomes a lot easier. You stop thinking about just their job title and start thinking about their world. Where do they go for information? What do they trust? This is where you build your targeting blueprint.

Think about it. That Head of Sales with the pipeline problem, what's she doing on her commute? She's probably not browsing LinkedIn aimlessly. She might be listening to a niche sales podcast like 'SaaS Sales Leadership'. What newsletters does she actually open and read? Maybe it's 'Stratechery' or a specific industry briefing. What software tools does her company already pay for? HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach. These are not just brands; they are powerful targeting interests.

On LinkedIn, you can get incredibly specific. You can layer these attributes to build a picture of your ideal buyer. Start with the basics, but use them intelligently.

Let's say you're selling a data enrichment tool. Here's how you might build your audience:

This is just the start. You can get even more advanced by uploading a list of target companies (Account-Based Marketing). Tools like Apollo.io or ZoomInfo can help you build these lists, which you then upload to LinkedIn. This lets you target decision-makers at the exact companies you want to work with. This level of precision is why a proper B2B LinkedIn Ads strategy is so powerful.

If you're operating in a specific region, like the UK, you have to consider local nuances. The language, the business culture, even the companies that are dominant in certain cities all matter. You can't just run the same ads you'd run in the US. We've put together some thoughts on what works for a specific LinkedIn strategy for the UK market which you might find helpful.

The main thing to remember is to test. Create multiple ad sets with slightly different targeting combinations. Let them run for a bit, see which one brings in the best quality leads (not just the cheapest), and then double down on what works. Getting this right is the foundation for everything else.

What on earth should my ad say?

Once you've found your audience, you need to say something they actually care about. Your ad copy is not the place to talk about your company's history or list every single feature. Nobody cares. Your ad's only job is to stop them scrolling and make them think, "That's me. They understand my problem."

To do this, you need a framework. Here are two that work incredibly well for B2B.

For Services: Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)
You don't sell 'fractional CMO services'. You sell the end of chaos and the start of predictable growth. You sell a good night's sleep to a stressed-out CEO.

• Problem: Start with the pain they feel every day. "Are your marketing efforts a random collection of tactics with no clear ROI?"
• Agitate: Twist the knife. Make the problem feel more urgent. "Are you watching competitors with a clear strategy pull ahead while you're stuck guessing what might work next month?"
• Solve: Present your service as the clear, logical solution. "Get board-level marketing strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build the plan that delivers predictable pipeline growth."

This approach works because it mirrors the prospect's internal monologue. It shows empathy before it shows a solution. If you find you're getting low engagement on your ads, it's almost certainly because you're leading with the 'Solve' and skipping the 'Problem' and 'Agitate' parts.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current world of pain. "Your AWS bill just landed. It's 40% higher than last month, and your dev team has no idea why. Another fire you have to put out."
• After: Show them the promised land. A world where that pain is gone. "Imagine opening your cloud bill and actually smiling. You see exactly where every pound is going, and waste is automatically flagged and eliminated."
• Bridge: Position your product as the vehicle that gets them from Before to After. "Our platform is the bridge to cloud cost sanity. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

The key here is focusing on the transformation, not the features. The feature (e.g., 'cost anomaly detection') is just the mechanism. The benefit is the transformation (e.g., 'no more surprise bills').

Too many companies, especialy in technical fields, get this wrong. They'll sell high-ticket lab equipment by listing specs. "Our new mass spectrometer has a 0.001% margin of error." So what? You have to state the consequence. "A 0.001% margin of error means your lab can publish results with unshakeable confidence, securing more grant funding and attracting the top-tier talent that other labs can only dream of." That's how you sell.

What should I ask them to do? (Hint: Your offer sucks)

This is probably the most common point of failure in all of B2B advertising. You've done the hard work. You've identified the right person, you've written a compelling ad that speaks to their soul... and then you send them to a landing page with a "Request a Demo" button.

Let me be blunt: "Request a Demo" is the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action ever invented. It presumes that your prospect, a busy and important person, has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to by a junior sales rep. It screams "I want your time, and I'm offering nothing of value in return until you give it to me". It instantly positions you as a commodity vendor, not a trusted partner. You need to delete that button.

Your offer’s only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It has to be low-friction and high-value.

If you're a SaaS company, you have an incredible advantage. The gold standard offer is a free trial or a freemium plan. No credit card required. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the transformation from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state for themselves. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're no longer generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced. This is exactly why so many campaigns for new products fail; they gatekeep the value. We constantly see that the offer is the problem for many campaigns, including those for new apps and more established B2B SaaS platforms. The offer is the problem.

If you're not a SaaS company, you are not exempt from this rule. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

• For an agency: A free, automated website audit that reveals the top 3 SEO opportunities.
• For a data analytics firm: A free 'Data Health Check' that flags the biggest issues in their database.
• For a corporate training company: A free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Managing Difficult Conversations' for new managers.
• For us, a B2B advertising consultancy: A free 20-minute strategy session where we audit their failing ad campaigns and tell them exactly what's wrong.

The goal is reciprocity. You give them something genuinely helpful, and in return, you earn their trust and attention. This one change can completely transform your results, drastically improving the quality of your leads and the number of demos that actually happen.

What's the best ad format to use on LinkedIn?

The question of the 'best' ad format is a bit of a trap. The right format depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve and who you're talking to. There is no single silver bullet. However, some are definitely better than others for specific goals, particularly lead generation.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the main players:

Sponsored Content (Single Image, Carousel, Video Ads):
These are the ads that appear directly in the LinkedIn feed. They're the workhorse of most successful LinkedIn campaigns. - Image Ads: These are great for grabbing attention quickly. A strong image combined with a killer headline (using the PAS or BAB framework) can be incredibly effective at stopping the scroll and getting your message across instantly. They're quick to make and easy to test. - Video Ads: Video gives you more time to tell a story and build a connection. They can be brilliant for demonstrating a complex product or for building more trust before asking for the click. The leads you get from video ads are often better qualified because they've spent more time with your message. - Carousel Ads: These let you showcase multiple images or cards in a single ad. They can be good for telling a step-by-step story, highlighting multiple features of a product, or featuring different testimonials.

Lead Gen Form Ads vs. Landing Page Ads
This is a big one. With any sponsored content ad, you can either send people to a landing page on your website, or you can use a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form. A Lead Gen Form is a pop-up that appears within LinkedIn and pre-fills the user's contact information (name, email, job title, etc.).

Tbh, for most B2B lead generation, I usually start with Sponsored Content ads and test both Lead Gen Forms and a dedicated landing page. You might find that the higher cost for a landing page lead is worth it because they convert to customers at a much higher rate. I remember one B2B SaaS client where we saw CPLs of about $22 using landing pages, which sounds high, but their sales team loved the leads. You have to test to see what the right balance is for your business. Deciding on the objective and mechanics is a critical part of figuring out what the best ad format is for your specific goals.

Other Formats (Text Ads, Conversation Ads):
- Text Ads: These are the small ads you see at the top or on the side of the LinkedIn page. They can be cheap, but their click-through rate is often very low. I don't tend to use them much for lead gen. - Conversation Ads (formerly Sponsored InMail): These land directly in a user's LinkedIn inbox. They feel more personal and can be effective for high-value offers or event invitations, but they can also feel intrusive if the message isn't perfect. They are essentially paid cold outreach. They can work, but you need to be very careful with your messaging.

This all sounds expensive. What will it actually cost?

Yes, LinkedIn is expensive. Let's not pretend otherwise. If you're looking for £0.50 clicks, go to Facebook. But on LinkedIn, you're not paying for clicks; you're paying for access to a specific, high-value professional audience. The question isn't "How cheap can I get a lead?" The real question is "How high a cost per lead can I afford to acquire a fantastic new customer?"

The answer to that question lies in a simple but powerful calculation: your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Most businesses don't know this number, and it cripples their ability to grow. Once you know your LTV, you can make intelligent decisions about ad spend.

Here’s how you calculate it. You need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average a customer pays you per 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 straightforward:

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

In this example, every new customer you acquire is worth £10,000 in gross margin over their lifetime. This is the truth. Now, a healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer (£10,000 / 3).

Let's take it one step further. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer (a 10% lead-to-customer rate), you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead (£3,333 / 10).

Suddenly, that £150 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and allows you to focus on acquiring high-value customers. From our experience, we've seen campaigns for B2B decision-makers deliver leads for around $22, which is an absolute steal when you understand the potential LTV.

If your campaigns are underperforming, especially after a big event like a funding round, it's often because there's a disconnect between spend and the underlying business maths. We've helped companies fix exactly this kind of underperformance by focusing on these core metrics.

This is my main advice for you:

Do I need an expert to do this for me?

Look, you can absolutely try to do all of this yourself. The principles I've laid out are the foundation of any successful B2B advertising campaign. But knowing the principles and executing them perfectly under pressure are two very different things. It takes time, it takes a lot of testing (which costs money), and it takes a deep understanding of the platform's quirks.

An experienced consultant or agency isn't just someone who knows how to click the buttons in the Ads Manager. They've seen hundreds of accounts. They know which benchmarks are realistic. They can diagnose a failing campaign in minutes because they've seen the same mistakes over and over again. They can help you avoid the costly 'learning phase' and get to results much faster. We've helped many companies who felt they needed expert help with their LinkedIn campaigns after trying and failing on their own.

It's not about just generating leads; it's about building a predictable, scalable engine for customer acquisition. That's a complex machine with a lot of moving parts. If you're serious about growth and want to make sure every pound you spend on LinkedIn is working as hard as it possibly can, it can be a very smart investment to bring in someone who has built that machine many times before.

If any of this resonates and you'd like a second pair of eyes on your strategy, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation where we can review your campaigns and give you some actionable advice. It's a good way to see if professional help could be the right next step for your business.