Solved: More Leads from LinkedIn Ads (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I’m happy to give you some initial thoughts on your situation with LinkedIn ads in Coventry. It's a common problem, people often get stuck focusing on just the location and the platform, but the real levers for getting leads are usually somewhere else entirely. It sounds like you're hitting a wall, and that usually means it's time to stop doing more of the same and take a completely different look at the fundamentals.

Let's unpack this a bit.

We'll need to look at your ICP, but not in the way you think...

Right, first things first. Forget everything you've been told about Ideal Customer Profiles that sound like a census report. "Businesses in Coventry" or "SMEs in the West Midlands" is utterly useless information for advertising. It tells you nothing of value and forces you to write generic, wallpaper ads that get ignored.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer not by their demographic, but by their nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, and maybe even career-threatening problem that keeps them awake at night? Your potential client isn't just a job title in a specific postcode; they are a person drowning in a problem that you can solve. You need to become an obsessive expert on that problem.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you're a fractional CFO service. Your ICP isn't "manufacturing firms with 50-200 employees in Coventry." That's a bland description. Your real ICP is the Managing Director of that manufacturing firm who is terrified because his cash flow projections are a complete shot in the dark. He’s staring at a big order he wants to take on, but has no idea if he has the capital to fulfill it without risking payroll in three months' time. He sees his competitors confidently expanding while he's stuck in a cycle of uncertainty. That's a nightmare. That’s a problem state.

Or maybe you sell a specialist bit of software for recruitment agencies. The nightmare isn't 'needing a better CRM'. The nightmare is the agency owner who just lost her best consultant to a rival because their internal systems are so clunky and slow that the consultant couldn't hit her targets and got fed up. The pain is tangible, it costs money, and it causes stress.

You need to sit down and do this work before you spend another pound on LinkedIn. What is the precise, painful scenario your ideal Coventry-based client is living through right before they realise they need someone like you? Write it down. Be specific. The more visceral and real the problem you define, the easier everything else becomes. This isn't just marketing fluff; it's the absolute foundation of a campaign that actually works.

Your task is to switch your thinking from "who" to "why". Instead of a profile, create a problem dossier. Here’s a basic structure to get you started:

Once you have this, you no longer have a vague target audience. You have a mission. You're not just selling a service; you're selling the antidote to a specific, costly nightmare. This clarity is what will seperate you from every other generic advertiser on the platform.

You'll need a blueprint for your targeting strategy...

Now that you have your "nightmare" defined, you can build a targeting strategy on LinkedIn that actually makes sense. The platform's B2B targeting is powerful, but only if you feed it the right inputs. Your Problem Dossier is the blueprint.

Let’s stick with our Coventry-based manufacturing firm example. The MD is worried about cash flow. Who is this person on LinkedIn?

First, the obvious layers:

• Geography: Coventry. Okay, that's the easy part. You might want to expand this slightly to include the surrounding area, say a 25-mile radius, as key decision-makers might live just outside the city but work in it.
• Industry: Manufacturing. Be specific. Is it Automotive, Aerospace, Industrial Machinery? LinkedIn lets you get granular here.
• Company Size: 50-201 employees. This is a good range where they are big enough to have the problem and the budget, but not so big they have a full-time internal team for it already.
• Job Titles: "Managing Director", "Finance Director", "Owner", "CEO", "Chief Financial Officer". Think about who feels the pain and who signs the cheques. Sometimes it's the same person, sometimes not. You might want to test seperate ad sets for different job functions.

But that's just table stakes. Everyone does that. To get an edge, you need to go deeper. This is where you connect the nightmare to their digital behaviour.

• Skills & Interests: What skills might this MD have on their profile? "Financial Strategy", "Business Planning", "Cash Flow Management". You can target based on these. What about interests? They might follow specific publications like 'The Economist' or industry-specific manufacturing journals.
• Groups: Are there LinkedIn groups for "UK Manufacturing Leaders" or "West Midlands Business Owners"? Joining these groups (as yourself, not just to spam) and targeting their members with ads is a powerful tactic. You're reaching a pre-qualified, engaged community.

One of the most effective strategies, which I’ve used for lots of B2B clients, is account-based marketing (ABM). Instead of praying the right people see your ad, you decide who you want to see it. You can build a list of, say, the top 100 manufacturing companies in the Coventry area that fit your profile. You can use tools like Apollo.io or even just manual research to build this list. Then, you upload this company list to LinkedIn and tell it to *only* show your ads to people with your target job titles (MD, FD, etc.) at *those specific companies*. The audience size will be small, maybe only a few thousand people, but it will be incredibly potent. Every single impression is valuable. Your ad spend is hyper-focused and there's zero waste.

I remember one B2B software client we worked on. We were getting okay-ish results with broad targeting, but when we switched to an ABM approach targeting decision-makers at a specific list of 500 companies, their cost per qualified lead dropped significantly. We achieved a $22 CPL for them, which for their high-ticket offer was a massive win.

So, your targeting structure in LinkedIn Campaign Manager might look something like this:

The key here is to move from broad strokes to surgical precision. Don't just target Coventry; target the specific nightmare inside the specific companies you want to work with in Coventry.

I'd say you need to overhaul your messaging...

If your targeting is the "who," your ad creative is the "what." And most B2B ads on LinkedIn are dreadful. They are boring, they are full of jargon, and they talk about features, not feelings. If you've done the work on defining the nightmare, writing compelling ad copy becomes much, much easier.

Your ad has one job: to stop the scroll and make the person reading it think, "That's me. They understand my problem." You need to speak directly to their pain.

A great framework for this, especially for a service business, is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: You state the nightmare you identified. Use a question to hook them in.
• Agitate: You pour salt in the wound. You remind them of the frustration, the cost, the consequences of the problem.
• Solve: You introduce your service not as a list of features, but as the clear, simple solution to the nightmare.

Let’s write an ad for our fractional CFO targeting that manufacturing MD in Coventry:

Ad Copy Example (Image/Video Ad):

Headline: Is Your Growth Limited by Guesswork?

Primary Text:
(Problem) -> Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? Are you passing on big orders because you're not sure you can afford the upfront cost?

(Agitate) -> While you're stuck in spreadsheets, your competitors in the Midlands are confidently raising capital and snapping up market share. Every month of uncertainty is a month you fall further behind.

(Solve) -> Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We help Coventry's ambitious manufacturers build financial dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable, profitable growth. Get the clarity you need to scale.

Call to Action: Learn More

See how that feels different? It’s not selling "fractional CFO services." It's selling a good night's sleep. It's selling confidence. It's selling the ability to beat the competition.

Now, let's think about ad formats. People get obsessed with this, but it's secondary to the message. However, the format should match your goal.

• Image Ads: Great for grabbing attention quickly. Use a strong, relevant image and punchy text. Your message needs to land in about 3 seconds. They are good for driving traffic to a landing page.
• Video Ads: Even better for telling a story and building trust. A short 30-60 second video where you (or a client) talk directly about the problem can be incredibly persuasive. People who watch a good chunk of your video are much more qualified leads.
• Carousel Ads: Useful if you want to break down your process or showcase multiple benefits. For example, slide 1 could be the problem, slide 2 the agitation, slide 3 your solution, slide 4 a testimonial.
• Conversation Ads: These are basically paid InMail messages. They can feel more personal but can also be seen as intrusive if your message isn't spot-on. They are better for starting a dialogue rather than direct lead generation.

I usually start with Sponsored Content campaigns (image and video ads in the feed) for lead generation. Then I'll test a simple image ad against a short video ad, both using the same PAS copy, to see what resonates more with the audience. The key is to test. But test the message first, then the format.

You probably should rethink your offer entirely...

This is probably the most important part of this whole letter, and the bit most people get wrong. You can have the best targeting and the best ad copy in the world, but if your offer is weak, your campaign will fail. And the weakest offer in all of B2B advertising is the "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us" button.

Think about it from your prospect's point of view. They're a busy MD in Coventry. They see your ad. It resonates. They click. And what do you ask them to do? Book a slot in their calendar to be sold to. It's arrogant. It's high-friction and low-value. You are asking for *their* time before you've provided any real, tangible value.

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. You must give them something valuable for free to earn the right to talk to them about the whole solution.

If you're a service-based business, you need to bottle your expertise into a tool, an asset, or a piece of content that solves a small, real problem for them instantly.

Here are some offers that are much better than "Contact Us":

• For a Marketing Agency: A free, automated "Local SEO Health Check" that shows a Coventry business how they rank against 3 local competitors.
• For an IT Consultancy: A free "10-Point Cybersecurity Risk Assessment" checklist for manufacturing firms.
• For our Fractional CFO: A "Cash Flow Projection Template" – a powerful spreadsheet that's far better than the basic ones, which they can download and use immediately.
• For us, as a B2B ads consultancy: We offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit a prospect's failing ad campaigns live on a call. They walk away with actionable advice whether they hire us or not.

The pattern is simple: solve a small problem for free.

Your landing page shouldn't be a brochure about your company. It should be a simple, focused page dedicated to delivering this high-value offer. The only goal of the page is to get them to exchange their name and email for the valuable thing you are giving away. This transforms your ad from an interruption into a gift. And it turns a cold prospect into a warm lead who has already received value from you. The subsequent sales conversation is a thousand times easier.

So, what can you create in the next week that would be genuinely helpful to your ideal Coventry client, that solves a tiny piece of their big nightmare? That's your new offer.

You'll need to understand the numbers behind your leads...

A lot of people come to me and ask, "What's a good cost per lead on LinkedIn?" The honest answer is: it depends. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but rather, "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?"

To answer that, you need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. Let's do some simple maths. This is critical for knowing if your Coventry campaign is actually profitable.

You need three pieces of information:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a typical client worth to you per month or per year? Let's say for your service, a client pays you £1,000 per month.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for your direct costs to service them? Let's say it's 70%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of clients do you lose each month, on average? This can be tricky to calculate if you're new, but you need an estimate. Let's say you lose 5% of your clients each month (meaning a typical client stays for 20 months).

Now, the calculation is straightforward:

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

LTV = (£1,000 * 0.70) / 0.05

LTV = £700 / 0.05 = £14,000

In this hypothetical scenario, each new customer you sign is worth £14,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number changes everything.

A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means for a customer worth £14,000, you can afford to spend up to £4,666 to acquire them and still have a very healthy business.

Now, let's work backwards. If your sales team (or you) can convert 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, that means you can afford to pay up to £466 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £75 or £100 CPL you might see on LinkedIn for a highly targeted lead in Coventry 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 chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring high-value customers, even if the upfront cost seems high.

We ran a campaign for an environmental controls company where we managed to reduce their cost per lead by 84% on LinkedIn, but even before that, their original CPL was profitable because they understood their LTV. Knowing your numbers gives you the confidence to invest properly.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a lot to take in, I know. But getting this right is the difference between a campaign that drains your bank account and one that reliably fuels your growth. Here is the main advice I have for you, boiled down into an actionable plan.

Executing this strategy effectively requires expertise and constant attention. The initial setup is one thing, but the real results come from ongoing testing, analysis, and optimisation—adjusting bids, tweaking copy, testing new audiences, and refining the landing page. It's a significant amount of work, and it's where many businesses fall down.

If you'd like to discuss how to implement a strategy like this for your business in Coventry, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation. We can take a look at what you're doing now and give you some more specific, actionable advice. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds helpful.

Hope this helps you get started.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh