Hey friend,
Every week I get DMs from Heads of Marketing and demand gen marketers who are frustrated with their paid media strategies.
They've followed the influencers, ran the "proven" playbooks and don’t understand why pipeline is still flat.
I always tell them the same thing. Following a playbook usually means they skip the most important part of what makes an ad stick: the marketing fundamentals.
Fundamentals (to me) are the “boring” part of marketing: talking to customers, hitting on pain points, and being clear about what you do instead of trying to be clever.
Playbooks are optimizations and are great if you need to refine what already works. But what if the fundamentals are off? 🤔
A Quick Lesson On “Boring” Marketing
Before I headed up KB’s marketing team, I managed ads on the client side for years.
One client sticks out in my memory. They spent six months launching visually memorable ads with quirky, interesting hooks. The problem was lead volume sucked and they started telling me that “maybe ads just don’t work” on calls.
At the time, I was reading Dan Kennedy's work on direct-response advertising and suggested we switch up our strategy: Create ads that showcase the product, highlight a clear value proposition, and overcome common objections.
There was resistance because the ads looked boring, but I launched them anyway (it was an ask for forgiveness not permission situation). It worked:
The creative ads generated 10 leads
My “boring” ads generated 69 leads
Guess which strategy we kept using?
Since then, my most successful campaigns have relied on that same formula: communicate clearly, tell the ICP what you do, how you will fix their problem, and why they should trust you to do it.
Focus On Fundamentals (And Forget About The Hacks)
Learning platform mechanics isn’t the best way to improve paid ad performance.
Once you understand the basics (how to set up campaigns, how bidding works, how targeting works), your biggest leverage is being obsessed with marketing fundamentals: targeting, offer, differentiation, and brand.
When the marketers I talked about in this newsletter’s intro come to me for help with ads, they don't say "I don't understand LinkedIn's algorithm well enough." They say:
"Nobody clicks our ads"
"We have low ROI from paid media programs”
“All we have is low quality leads that don’t convert to pipeline”
“We aren’t confident our strategy is working”
These aren't problems you can fix with a playbook unless the fundamentals of the strategy behind the ads are solid.
Here are the four marketing fundamentals I recommend you lock down in your paid ads strategy 👇
Fundamental #1: Clearly State What You Sell (Don’t Be Clever)
I see beautiful B2B ads all over my LinkedIn feed that obviously cost a lot to put together. But 99% of the time, I instantly forget about them because I have no idea what the company actually sells.
Ad content has one job: Get people to connect your brand and product with their urgent problems and needs to be solved. If the ad does not do that, the fundamentals are broken and it’ll be a waste of money.
This is why “boring” ads work so well. Take a look at this ad I ran for a couple months this year:
One of my best performing ads this year. It took me 15 minutes to write.
It ticks the fundamentals of an effective ad:
Relatable problem. I called out the ICP by job title and highlighted a huge pain point they experience (based on real transcripts from our sales calls)
Pain point agitation. I know exactly what the ICP has tried to do to fix the problem. So I called it out.
Showed expected outcome. I told them how to solve their problem and the expected outcome if they followed my advice.
Clear value prop + service anchor. Free marketing plan and CTA at the bottom (it says we are a performance marketing agency at the top and the bottom of the post… no confusion about what I’m advertising!)
Then, I turned the post into a Thought Leader Ad and folded it into a demand generation campaign:
We’ve spent $4,430.44 on it and (so far) it has influenced $480k ARR. That’s 107× ROI, which is one of the best returns you’ll get in the current media buying environment.
I’m showing you this because it’s a perfect example of how the “boring” fundamentals can deliver real pipeline.
Fundamental #2: Target Actual Decision Makers
Arguably the biggest problem with paid media strategies isn’t the creative or offer, it’s the targeting.
When you target broad audiences and non-decision makers, you compete in very saturated ad auctions and LinkedIn's algorithm will penalize you for low engagement. People see your (irrelevant) ads, don't engage, and LinkedIn charges you 10-30% higher CPMs.
This comes down to (again) not getting the fundamentals right:
Who are you trying to sell to with the ad?
What are their problems?
How can you solve them?
When we analyzed our own closed/won deals, the decision maker was usually a senior leader—VP or above. This is now the only group we target and spend money on.
Even then, a marketer at a start-up wearing a ton of hats has very different reasons to reach out to us than a CMO at a $50M ARR SaaS does. Each group must be targeted with completely different ads, pain points, and solutions.
Do your own research using historical sales data to find exactly what job titles your ideal buyers have. Just don’t just pick “manager” or “leader” arbitrarily. Once you have the data, set up detailed targeting:
Build an audience filtered by exact job titles. Use Primer or another third-party tool for this (they are more accurate than LinkedIn's native matching)
Upload to Campaign Manager. Pull this data in as as a matched audience
Add seniority filters based on your own historical data from closed/won deals (e.g. titles like Director, Manager, VP, CXO, Owner)
Add seniority exclusions. Exclude anyone who doesn’t have buying decision power (anyone in non-management roles with keywords like Entry, Training, Unpaid, and Senior
This feels scary because your targeting group shrinks dramatically, but your spend will also start going to people who make buying decisions.
I wrote a more detailed piece on how to tighten up your LinkedIn Ads targeting here 👇
Fundamental #3: Become a Broken Record
Too many marketers are afraid to say the same thing twice, but that’s the whole point of marketing! You want to become memorable for one (or two) things.
I want people to see my name on LinkedIn and instantly know, hey… That’s Patrick. He knows his shit about performance marketing.
Being a broken record is especially important for paid ads, because how often someone sees your ads impacts how effective they are. The goal is to become memorable to your ICP audience through high penetration, high frequency, and repeated messaging.
Instead of designing an 8-step funnel, target one audience with:
50%+ reach penetration (meaning you reach more than half your target audience)
10+ frequency (meaning each person sees your ads at least 10 times in a specific timegrame)
Recurring campaigns every 30-90 days
More touchpoints create more familiarity with your brand, especially if the people who see your ads are out-market. The aim is to keep your brand top-of-mind for when they move in-market and are ready to buy.
Check this piece out for how to build this out for your own marketing strategy 👇
Fundamental #4: CTAs, CTAs, CTAs!
The last fundamental on the list gets me every time. Why are marketers so afraid to add CTAs to a piece of content or an ad?
“They aren’t ready to buy yet, we need to warm them up in a nurture sequence!”
This is a pipe dream. You can’t warm anyone up to buy anything if they are not in the market for it.
However, even “cold" audiences have people are looking around, researching, and bookmarking brands in their memory. This out-market audience might not need your product or service YET, but if they move in-market one day, you need to be on their shortlist to have a shot at being their choice.
The problem is, an algorithm can’t predict when someone moves out-market to in-market. Without CTAs on your ad, how are in-market folks supposed to get on a call with your team? Or test out your product?
Always put a CTA, even if its just an offer to DM you for advice.
Don’t Skip The Fundamentals
The companies running good paid strategies right now have nailed the fundamentals. They tell people what they do and how they solve problems in a clear way—even if it is boring.
If you are a marketing leader who isn’t sure how well you do the fundamental work I’ve talked about, here’s a quick checklist.
Ask your paid media team: "Do we know which job titles become customers?" If they can't answer, that's your first research project. Fix targeting before optimizing anything else.
Review your ad performance from the past 90 days. Are your fundamentals (targeting, message clarity, CTA presence) aligned, or are you just relying on tactics like bid strategies?
Pull your best-performing ads from the past year and look for patterns. I bet your highest-performing ads are also the ones with the clearest language and positioning. Use this to reset team expectations.
Fix one fundamental at a time. Pick the most broken one (probably targeting), fix it, measure impact, then move to the next. Don't try to fix all four at once.
Stop chasing a quick fix to make your paid ad strategy work.
There is no “hack” if you can’t clearly communicate how you will help your ICP.
Hope you've found this useful, catch ya in the next one!
🤘
Patrick
P.S. If you're spending more than $10K/month on ads and your demos aren't ramping the way they should, I can help. I audit accounts regularly and can examine how well you are nailing the marketing fundamentals in your strategy. Hit me up for a quick audit!