Spend is under budget. Efficiency isn't.
We're not overspending on LinkedIn — the problem is what the money buys. Across the last 90 days, one campaign did all the converting and six others spent £855 for nothing. The priority on your return is targeting and creative, not budget.
Headline: cost per booked call is 4.3× target
£269 to book a call against a £63 model target. Even our one working campaign runs at £183. The lever is efficiency — tightening who we target and what we put in front of them — before we scale spend.
Two problems, not one
The audience isn't biting
The UK "Replace Cold Calling" variants pull a 0.45% click-through — the bottom of LinkedIn's range. Low CTR at this spend means the audience or the hook is wrong, not the budget. These need fresh creative and tighter targeting, or they should be paused.
Clicks that never book
The Sniper US video campaign earned 53 clicks and booked nothing. That's not a targeting miss — people clicked. The leak is between the click and the calendar: the landing page or offer isn't converting interested traffic.
The evidence — every spending campaign
| Campaign | Spend | Impr. | Clicks | CTR | CPC | Calls | £/call | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broad // Q3 Replace Cold Calling | £1,828 | 23,911 | 259 | 1.08% | £7.06 | 10 | £183 | Scale & tune |
| Sniper US // Video-First ICP | £349 | 5,252 | 53 | 1.01% | £6.59 | 0 | — | Fix funnel |
| Broad // Replace Cold Calling UK | £222 | 10,297 | 46 | 0.45% | £4.82 | 0 | — | Rework/pause |
| R4 // Cold Calling US Broad | £118 | 1,556 | 14 | 0.90% | £8.46 | 0 | — | Pause |
| R4 // Cold Calling UK Broad | £115 | 4,834 | 22 | 0.46% | £5.23 | 0 | — | Pause |
| R3 // Cold Calling US Owner-Led | £51 | 1,001 | 4 | 0.40% | £12.72 | 0 | — | Pause |
| Total | £2,685 | 46,868 | 402 | 0.86% | £6.68 | 10 | £269 |
A seventh campaign (R2 // SDRs) spent £2 on 17 impressions — statistical noise, excluded. Figures are LinkedIn's own conversion pixel.
Before you trust these numbers — confirm attribution
Two of these conversions may not be LinkedIn's
Elite Rewards and Baizel both show as LinkedIn conversions, but they may have originated from email outreach and only touched a LinkedIn ad on the way. LinkedIn's pixel claims last-touch credit, so if these are really email-sourced, LinkedIn's true call count is lower and its real cost per call is higher than £269. We need the actual source per deal before acting on the efficiency numbers.
Over to Zak: confirm the true origin of each recent conversion (Elite Rewards, Baizel, and any others), then plug the corrected split into Growth → LinkedIn Ads / the channel attribution. Once the source is right, the cost-per-call and channel league table are accurate and we can size the targeting/creative fixes against real numbers.
What to work on — in priority order
-
Confirm the source of each conversion first
Check whether Elite Rewards, Baizel and the other recent conversions truly came from LinkedIn or from email outreach, and plug the corrected numbers in. Everything below is sized off accurate attribution — do this before reallocating spend.
Makes the cost-per-call numbers trustworthy -
Pause the six non-converters, reclaim the budget
£855 over 90 days produced zero calls. Stop the bleed first, then redeploy that spend behind what works rather than adding new budget.
Frees ~£285/mo with no downside -
Rebuild UK creative — new hooks, video-first
0.45% CTR says the message isn't landing with the UK audience. Borrow the format from the one winner (video-first) and test 2–3 new angles before spending again.
Targeting & creative — the core ask -
Fix the Sniper click-to-call leak
53 clicks, no bookings. Audit the landing page and offer this traffic hits — the interest is real; the conversion path isn't. This is a funnel fix, not an ad fix.
Recovers already-paid-for clicks -
Tighten the winner toward the £63 target
The Broad campaign converts but at £183/call. Narrow the audience to the best-performing segments and cut the weakest placements to drive cost per call down before scaling budget into it.
Path from £269 blended → £63 target