TLDR;
- Your focus on "Milton Keynes" is likely the biggest mistake. For B2B on LinkedIn, you should be targeting by job title, industry, and company size, not a specific town.
- You need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their urgent, expensive problem (their 'nightmare'), not by their demographics. I've included a flowchart to show you how.
- Your video ads are probably failing because your offer is weak. Ditch the "Request a Demo" button and create something of genuine value, like a free tool, audit, or a valuable piece of content.
- The key to profitable ads isn't a low cost-per-click, it's understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). I've included an interactive LTV calculator so you can figure out how much you can really afford to spend to get a new customer.
- Video isn't always best. You need to be testing different ad formats like simple image ads against your videos. You might be suprised by what works.
Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out.
Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your LinkedIn ads. It’s a common problem, people put money into LinkedIn, especially video ads, and get very little back. Tbh, the issue is rarely the video itself, but a few other things that need sorting out first. It's easy to burn a lot of cash on there if your foundations aren't right.
Let's get into it.
We'll need to look at your targeting... because it's probably wrong
Right, let's be blunt. The fact you mentioned "Milton Keynes" tells me your focus is in the wrong place. Unless you're a commercial electrician or a cleaning service that can only serve businesses within a 10-mile radius, targeting a specific town on LinkedIn for B2B services is almost always a waste of time and money.
Think about it. Who is the decision maker you need to reach? Is it a Head of Finance? A CTO? A Marketing Director? Do all the best ones live and work exclusively inside Milton Keynes? Of course not. They work for companies that might be based there, but the decision makers themselves could be working remotely from anywhere in the UK. LinkedIn's power isn't in its geographic targeting; that's for Facebook Marketplace. Its power is in its professional data: job titles, company industries, company sizes, specific skills.
You're not selling pizza, you're selling a business solution. Your target market isn't a place, it's a person with a specific, painful problem. This is the first and most important shift you need to make. Forget demographics and think about nightmares.
What I mean by 'nightmare' is the urgent, expensive, career-threatening problem that keeps your ideal customer awake at night. Your ICP isn’t “a company with 50-200 employees in Milton Keynes”. It’s “a Head of Operations at a UK-based logistics firm who is terrified of her warehousing software failing during the Q4 peak, costing the company millions and maybe even her job”. See the difference? One is a bland demographic. The other is a story packed with emotion and pain.
When you define your customer by their pain, your entire ad strategy changes. Your video ad stops being a boring corporate overview and starts being a direct message that speaks to their specific hell. This is how you stop the scroll.
Here’s a rough process for how you should be thinking about this:
Step 1: The Wrong Way
Demographic Focus: "I want to target businesses in Milton Keynes with 50-200 employees."
(Vague, low-intent, generic)
Step 2: Getting Warmer
Job Title Focus: "I'll target Heads of HR in the UK at tech companies with 50-200 employees."
(Better, but still missing the 'why')
Step 3: The 'Nightmare'
Problem Focus: "My ideal customer is a Head of HR struggling with high staff turnover after a merger."
(Now we have pain and urgency)
Step 4: The Right Way
Pain-Based ICP: "My ICP is a Head of HR at a recently-merged UK tech firm who is losing their best engineers and is under pressure from the board to fix it."
(Specific, emotional, actionable)
Once you have this 'nightmare' scenario, you can build your LinkedIn targeting. You'd layer company size, industry (e.g., Computer Software), and job titles (e.g., Head of People, Chief Human Resources Officer). The Milton Keynes location becomes almost irrelevant. You might add it as a loose filter, but the core of your targeting is now built on solid, professional data that actually matters.
I'd say you need to fix your offer... before you spend another quid
So, you've nailed down your ICP's nightmare. Your video ad perfectly describes their pain. They click on it. And where do they go? I'm willing to bet it's a landing page with a "Request a Demo" or "Book a Call" button. This is the second biggest mistake you're making.
The "Request a Demo" button is the most arrogant, high-friction call to action in B2B marketing. You're asking a busy, important person to give up 30-60 minutes of their time to be sold to by a stranger. It presumes they have nothing better to do. It offers them zero value upfront and positions you as just another commodity vendor begging for their attention. It's no wonder your conversion rates are terrible.
Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. An 'aha!' moment that makes the prospect sell *themselves* on your solution. You need to stop asking and start giving. For B2B, this means bottling up a piece of your expertise and giving it away for free. We've seen this work time and time again for our clients.
Here are some ideas for offers that actually work:
- → A Free Tool: If you're a finance consultancy, offer a free "Cash Flow Projection Calculator". If you're in cybersecurity, a "Business Phishing Risk Score" tool. Something interactive that solves a small, tangible part of their problem instantly.
- → A High-Value Asset: Not a fluffy ebook. A detailed, data-backed report, a template they can actually use (e.g., 'The Ultimate Board Reporting Template for SaaS CFOs'), or a short, impactful video course on a very specific topic.
- → An Automated Audit: For a marketing agency, a free SEO audit that finds their top 3 keyword gaps. For a data analytics firm, a 'Data Health Check' that finds broken data points in a sample file they upload.
The point is to give them a win. Solve a small problem for free to earn the right to talk to them about solving the big one. For our own consultancy, our best offer is a free 20-minute ad account audit. We find wasted spend and missed opportunities. The value is immediate, and it proves our expertise without any hard selling. The best part? This approach naturally pre-qualifies your leads. The only people who will download 'The Ultimate Board Reporting Template' are the people who have to do board reporting. You've filtered out all the noise.
Your video ad becomes ten times more powerful when it promotes an offer like this. The call to action isn't "Book a call with us". It's "Get your free, personalised Cash Flow Projection now". The first is a chore; the second is a gift.
You probably should rethink your video ad strategy... and test other formats
Now we can actually talk about the video ad itself. People get obsessed with video because they think it's more engaging. It can be, but often it's just a more expensive way to be ignored. If your video is just a generic montage of stock footage, smiling actors in an office, and your logo at the end, you're better off just setting your money on fire.
Your video ad must use a proven copywriting framework to be effective. It needs to tell a story that hooks them in the first 3 seconds. Forget selling features. You need to sell a transformation. Here are two frameworks that work well:
- Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS): You state the problem, you pour salt on the wound by describing how much it sucks, and then you present your solution as the relief.
- Before-After-Bridge (BAB): You paint a picture of their current "hell" (the Before state), show them the "heaven" they want (the After state), and position your product/service as the Bridge to get them there.
Let's take our Head of HR ICP and apply the PAS framework to a video ad script:
| Video Ad Script Example: Problem-Agitate-Solve | |
|---|---|
| Problem | (Visual: A stressed-looking person staring at a spreadsheet of names) Text on screen: Losing your best engineers after the merger? |
| Agitate | (Visual: Quick cuts of an empty desk, a frustrated team meeting) Text on screen: Now you're facing project delays, plummeting morale, and the board is asking questions you can't answer. Every resignation email feels like a personal failure. |
| Solve | (Visual: A calm, confident team collaborating. A graph showing retention rates going up.) Text on screen: Stop the churn. Our 'Post-Merger Integration Playbook' gives you the exact framework to retain top talent. Get your free copy now. |
Most importantly, you need to stop assuming video is the best format. We've run many campaigns where a simple, static image ad with powerful copy outperforms a fancy video ad on Cost Per Lead (CPL). Why? Because an image ad delivers its message instantly. There's no need to wait for a play button or watch for 15 seconds. The viewer gets it in a second and decides whether to click.
You MUST test different formats within the same campaign. Run your video ad. But also run a simple image ad with a strong headline. Run a carousel ad that breaks down your offer into 3-4 steps. Track the CPL for each one. Don't let your ego about having a "nice video" get in the way of what actually gets you leads. The data will tell you the truth.
You'll need to understand your numbers... so you know what a lead is actually worth
This brings me to the final, and maybe most critical point. People get fixated on getting the CPL as low as possible. A low CPL is nice, but it's a vanity metric if the leads are rubbish. The real question you should be asking is: "How much can I afford to spend to acquire a high-quality customer?"
The answer is in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you're flying blind and you'll always be too scared to spend what's necessary to win. A £100 CPL on LinkedIn might seem terrifyingly high. But if that lead turns into a customer worth £20,000 over their lifetime, you've just printed money. For instance, I remember one campaign we ran on LinkedIn for a B2B software client where we generated leads from decision-makers at a $22 cost per lead. A figure like that is a huge success when you consider the high value of the deals on the back end.
Here's how you can do a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation for your LTV:
- Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a typical customer pay you per month or per year?
- Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold).
- Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?
The basic formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
This number tells you what a customer is actually worth to you in profit. Once you know that, you can work backwards to figure out what a lead is worth. 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 customer.
Use this calculator to get a feel for your own numbers. It might just change your entire perspective on your ad budget.
Interactive LTV & Affordable CPL Calculator
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
So, to pull this all together, getting your LinkedIn video ads to work isn't about finding some secret "best practice for Milton Keynes". It's about getting these core strategic pillars right first. It's tough work, and it requires a big mindset shift away from just "running ads" towards building a proper customer acquisition system. This is what we focus on with our clients.
| Area to Fix | Problem | Actionable Solution |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Targeting | You're focusing on a geographic location (Milton Keynes), which is ineffective for most B2B. Your audience definition is too broad. | Redefine your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on their specific, urgent 'nightmare' problem. Build your LinkedIn targeting around job titles, industries, and company sizes that map to this pain point. |
| 2. The Offer | Your call to action is likely a high-friction "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us", which provides no upfront value and has low conversion rates. | Delete that button. Create a 'value-first' offer: a free tool, a high-value downloadable asset (template, playbook), or an automated audit that solves a small piece of your ICP's problem instantly. |
| 3. Ad Creative | Your video ad is probably a generic corporate piece that doesn't resonate. You're also likely not testing other ad formats. | Rewrite your video script using a framework like Problem-Agitate-Solve. Crucially, run split tests of your video against simpler, static image ads and carousel ads. Let the Cost Per Lead data decide the winner, not your ego. |
| 4. Metrics | You're probably obsessed with a low Cost Per Click or Cost Per Lead, without knowing what a customer is actually worth to you. | Calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Use this to determine a target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and an affordable Cost Per Lead (CPL). This empowers you to invest confidently to acquire the right customers. |
Getting all of this right is a lot of work, and it's easy to get lost in the weeds. It takes constant testing, analysis, and strategic adjustments. This is where getting some expert help can make all the difference, saving you a huge amount of time and wasted ad spend.
If you'd like to go over your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your campaigns and give you a clear roadmap. It might be useful to get a second pair of eyes on things.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
