I was auditing ad account for a new B2B SaaS client that I am onboarding.

They’ve been running LinkedIn ads for last couple of years and invested decent chunk of change but seeing limited results. While other channels (e.g. paid search) are bringing in consistent leads.

That tells me two things. One. The client has a product-market-fit. They are already converting on other channels. Two. LinkedIn ads set up is most likely off. Time to investigate.

Upon looking at account there are no obvious horror stories. No audience expansion, no LAN, no max delivery, no “recent” location. So what is wrong, why is it not bringing in the leads?

When digging into campaign set up, it downed on me.

Complexity.

While the audiences where tight on the surface, 5+ different contact lists where being used in the same campaign. Most money was going towards gated content (industry report). Campaigns running at $50/day budget had 10+ markets included, where US was mixed with multiple smaller markets. One ad campaign had 52 live image ad creatives, where some had almost no impressions and zero clicks.

The brand was trying to do way too much with limited budget. Campaign set up was just too complex. It was not clear what was working as multiple ICPs, geos and industries were mixed into the same campaigns.

So what’s the plan?

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

When you have $5k-$10k/month ad budget, you should only run 1-2 cold campaigns and one retargeting campaign. 2-3 campaigns max. Focus on one geo and one industry at a time, don’t try to test everything at once.

Clean up job profiles, so there is no over-extension from CEO to manager levels. Split out enterprise business (10k+ employees) from mid-sized companies. You get nice, clean ICP you can work with. Saturate the audience with promoted posts, overlay with some image ads showing social proof. That’s it.