MANAGED SECURITY

Cutting wasted LinkedIn spend and bringing in better leads.

A managed security provider was running LinkedIn campaigns, but the targeting had become far too broad. Anyone with “IT” in their job title could see the ads, so a lot of budget went to junior roles, consultants and companies outside the core market. Over six months we tightened the audience, swapped a generic ebook for a practical NIS2 readiness checklist and rebuilt the campaign around questions prospects were already asking.

6 months · LinkedIn Ads · Campaign strategy · Content · Landing page

THE RESULTS

–28%

cost per lead

+35%

leads from priority job roles

+42%

conversion rate of the checklist vs. the old ebook

–23%

spend on non-priority audiences

The challenge.

Anyone in IT could see the ads.

The campaigns treated every IT job title as relevant. That created reach, and a lot of wasted budget along with it.

Leads sales couldn't use.

Sales saw leads from people with no say in security decisions, companies too small for the service and people just downloading content.

A general ebook as the offer.

The cybersecurity ebook got downloads, but reading it said little about wanting to talk to a managed security provider.

Sales had the answer already.

The best conversations came from IT managers and senior tech roles at companies complex enough to need outside security support.

How we approached it.

We compared the campaign audiences with the leads they produced and the ones sales followed up. Then we changed both who we targeted and what we offered them.

Shrink the audience

We narrowed the targeting to people likely to own security decisions: IT managers, heads of IT, IT directors, infrastructure and security managers, and CIOs at smaller organisations. Mainly at companies with 50 to 500 employees in the sectors the client wanted to grow in. Customers, competitors and junior roles were excluded.

Offer something useful

We replaced the ebook with a NIS2 readiness checklist. IT managers could use it to quickly check responsibilities, incident processes, access management, backups, supplier risk and monitoring. It helps even if the reader never becomes a customer, and it attracts people with a real, current need.

Ask better questions

“Strengthen your cybersecurity posture” is easy to scroll past. The new ads asked things like “Would you know who is responsible if a security incident happened tomorrow?” and “Is your IT partner covering security, or just keeping systems running?”, the same questions that came up in sales calls.

What we focused on.

Around the campaign itself, we made sure the click led somewhere useful and that we judged results by what happened after the form.

A simple landing page

Who the checklist is for, what it covers and why it helps. The form only asks what marketing needs at that stage.

A route for ready buyers

Visitors who already knew they wanted help could go straight to "Talk to a security specialist".

More than cost per lead

Every month we checked job titles, company sizes and which leads sales accepted, as well as how cheap the leads were.

Budget to what works

Campaigns producing cheap leads that went nowhere lost budget. The ones leading to conversations got more.

The outcome.

Cost

–28% cost per lead

Without opening up the targeting or chasing cheaper clicks. The campaigns reached fewer people, and more of them fitted the ideal customer.

Sales

Less filtering for sales

Fewer wasted leads came in, so the sales team spent less time sorting through them.

Channel

LinkedIn with a clear focus

LinkedIn became a focused way to reach the companies the business wants to work with.

More use cases.

Different industries, same idea. The right marketing, not more marketing.

RADIO & PRIVATE LTE

How one trade show became 19 qualified sales meetings

Pre-booked meetings, focused stand conversations and fast follow-up that turned one trade show into 19 qualified meetings.

ICT

How an ICT provider got 54% more of the right website traffic

Content, service pages and campaigns built around real customer problems, for an ICT provider with a broad offer.

Your company

Could yours be next?

Got a product that deserves more attention? Let’s write the next use case together.

Less reach. More relevance.

In a specialist B2B market, a bigger audience doesn’t make a better campaign. Often the biggest gain comes from deciding who you don’t want to reach. Tell us where you want to be and one of us will get back to you personally.