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Services / LinkedIn and Google advertising

Paid campaigns

Reach the buyers who are not searching yet, and capture the ones who are.

Sponsored content and InMail on LinkedIn aimed at buyer roles, search and display on Google for in-market demand, and landing pages that turn clicks into contacts.

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What we run

Two channels, one purpose.

Each campaign is built to produce contacts your nurture programme can follow up.

LinkedIn

  • Sponsored content. Drives target roles to a form-gated resource.
  • InMail. Direct messages to defined buyer roles and companies.
  • Text ads by vertical. Short ads for desktop that promote a specific service to a specific industry.
  • Audience control. Role, seniority, company and geography, tested and refined each month.

Google

  • Search campaigns. Keyword research, tight ad groups and A/B tested ads for solution and industry terms in each market.
  • Display and retargeting. Keeps your firm in front of people who visited and did not convert.
  • Landing pages. A page for each campaign group, built or specified by us, matching the ad and the buyer's question.
  • Ongoing optimisation. Bids, budgets, search terms and creative reviewed on a fixed cycle.
How it works

A fortnightly cycle you can follow.

Step 1

Plan and set up

Keywords, audiences, budgets, tracking codes and landing pages.

Step 2

Launch

Campaigns go live in the markets and channels agreed.

Step 3

Report

Fortnightly reporting against the metrics we agreed up front.

Step 4

Optimise

Move budget to what produces qualified leads, not clicks.

Our approach

Search first for immediate leads, LinkedIn for reach.

The sequence that worked for a top-5 Indian IT company.

Step 1

Media plan

Budgets split across search, display and LinkedIn, by market and by service line.

Step 2

Search first

Search campaigns to dedicated landing pages in each target market, to generate qualified leads that start the sales engine.

Step 3

LinkedIn to resources

Sponsored content that sends target roles to a form-gated resource, and text ads that promote one service to one vertical.

Step 4

Retarget and nurture

Retarget prospects who engaged, and pass every contact into the nurture programme.

How campaigns are built

Six habits behind every account.

One campaign per market

Separate campaigns and budgets for each country, so cost per click and results can be compared market by market.

Tight ad groups

Keywords grouped by solution and industry, with ads written for each group and tested against each other.

A landing page per group

Built or specified by us to match the ad and the buyer's question, with a form that feeds your platform.

Tracking before launch

Conversion tracking and tagging checked, so every contact can be traced to its campaign.

Audience refinement

On LinkedIn, role, seniority, company and geography are reviewed each month against the contacts produced.

Budget follows results

Spend moves each cycle to the campaigns with the lowest cost per qualified lead.

Reporting

What every report covers.

Each report carries an analyst's comment that compares your results with the industry average and notes where your ads rank.

MeasureWhy it matters
Clicks, cost per click, click-through rate and average position, by marketShows where ads win and where they are priced out.
Cost per leadThe number we optimise against.
Lead-to-SAL ratio by campaignShows which campaigns send leads sales accepts.
Search terms and audience resultsPruned and expanded every cycle.
In practice

What disciplined campaign management looks like.

14%click-through rate in one month across ten markets, against an industry average near 2%
-50%cost per conversion over 16 months for a UK travel company, with budget down 32%
How we run a campaign

Six stages, each with a checklist and a review.

Every campaign follows the same process, so quality does not depend on who is on it.

Step 1

Account audit and planning

A review of any existing account, then a plan for the campaign.

Step 2

Audience and channel selection

The buyers, the keywords and the channels where they can be reached.

Step 3

Creative and landing pages

Ads and landing pages designed and built or specified to match.

Step 4

Execution

Campaigns set up and launched as per the approved media plan.

Step 5

Optimisation

Daily bid and budget management, with a weekly call.

Step 6

Reporting and dashboards

A reporting dashboard set up once, and a report every month.

Channels and tools

Where we run, and what we use.

ChannelWhere
SearchGoogle Search, Bing Search and Yahoo Search
SocialLinkedIn, Facebook, X and YouTube
Display and retargetingGoogle Display Network and remarketing audiences
ToolsRemarketing, landing-page testing, A/B testing, web session recording and competitor analysis
Proof

Paid results for technology firms.

-52%cost per lead from search campaigns in 6 months, top-5 Indian IT company
192qualified B2B contacts from LinkedIn in 2.5 months, same programme
400+B2B leads from the USA and UK for Coforge and NIIT Technologies, cost per lead down 30%
Technology clients across 19 yearsBirlasoftCoforgeAlibaba CloudInnodataEXL ServiceAlgoworksHyTechProIncessant TechnologiesGS1 IndiaOrtele Health
Pipeline review

Tell us who you need to reach.

Send us three target roles and two markets. We will outline the first campaigns and what they should cost per lead.

Book a pipeline review

info@search-value.com
  1. A 30-minute callYou describe your funnel and where it leaks.
  2. A look at your funnel dataRead-only access to analytics and your nurture platform.
  3. First findingsWhat we would change first, and what it should move.
FAQ

LinkedIn and Google ads: questions, answered in detail.

Short answers first. Open any question for the detail.

See all questions →
Do you manage our LinkedIn page and posts?

No. We use LinkedIn advertising to generate and nurture leads. We are not a social media agency.

Do we pay you or the platforms for media?

Media spend goes directly to LinkedIn and Google from your account. We charge for planning and management, agreed in the scope.

Who creates the ad creative?

We write the ad copy and specify the formats. If you need designed assets, we brief your design team or agency.

Is LinkedIn advertising worth it for B2B IT services companies?

Yes, when it is aimed at a defined account list and offers something worth the click. LinkedIn is expensive per click, so it pays only if the audience is precise and the follow-up converts into sales-accepted leads.

LinkedIn lets you target by job title, seniority, company size, industry and named accounts, which suits long-cycle IT services sales. The cost per lead is higher than search, but the quality can be much better when the targeting is tight and the content offer matches the stage of the buyer, for example a benchmark report, a migration checklist or a technical guide.

We usually send LinkedIn traffic to useful resources first and retarget engaged visitors with a stronger call to action, rather than pushing a contact form straight away. See our LinkedIn and Google advertising approach.

Should we start with Google Ads or LinkedIn ads?

Start with Google Ads search if buyers already search for what you sell, because it captures existing demand quickly. Add LinkedIn when you need to reach defined accounts that are not yet searching.

Search ads reach someone with a stated need, so they convert fastest and teach you which messages and terms work. LinkedIn creates demand among a chosen audience. In practice we build a media plan that splits budget by intent: search for high-intent terms, LinkedIn for target accounts, and retargeting to bring both back.

The mix changes with your market, average deal value and how well your tracking connects ad clicks to sales-accepted leads. We review it monthly and move budget to what the CRM data supports, not what the ad platform reports.

Why does sales reject so many of the leads from our paid campaigns?

Usually because the campaign is optimised for form fills, not for qualified buyers: the targeting is too broad, the offer attracts students or job seekers, or the form does not ask enough to qualify the lead.

Fixing it means working backwards from the leads sales did accept. Look at their job titles, company sizes and the searches or audiences they came from, then tighten targeting, add negative keywords, change the offer, and add qualifying fields or scoring. Feed accepted-lead data back into the ad platforms so they optimise for it.

This is exactly what lead-to-SAL ratio measures. When we reported it for a top-5 IT company it rose from 0.22% to 4.12% in twelve months; read our guide to the ratio and the case study.

How much should we spend on paid search and LinkedIn before judging the results?

Spend enough to collect meaningful data for at least two to three months and judge by cost per sales-accepted lead, not cost per click. The right amount depends on your deal size and sales cycle.

A test that is too small never produces a signal; one that is too large wastes budget on untested messages. We usually start with a focused test across two or three audiences or keyword groups, then scale the winners. Early metrics are click-through rate and cost per lead. Later ones, once CRM data arrives, are lead-to-SAL and cost per accepted lead.

For long sales cycles also track assisted pipeline, because paid media often starts conversations that close months later. Our analytics and attribution work connects those dots.

How does retargeting work for long B2B sales cycles?

Retargeting shows relevant ads to people who already visited your site or engaged with your content, keeping you visible while a buying committee researches over weeks or months.

For IT services, a good retargeting plan is segmented: visitors to service pages see a case study, readers of a guide see a related technical resource, and visitors to the contact page who did not submit see a reassurance message. Frequency caps avoid fatigue.

On LinkedIn you can also retarget video viewers and people who opened a lead form. We measure retargeting by assisted conversions and lead-to-SAL, not only by last-click, since its job is to support the conversation.

What is lead-to-SAL ratio?

It is the share of marketing leads that sales accepts as worth following up: sales-accepted leads divided by marketing leads for the same period and source. It is the number we report.

A lead is a form fill or similar capture by marketing. A sales-accepted lead (SAL) is one that sales agrees is worth pursuing. The ratio shows quality, not volume: a small number of well-qualified leads can beat a large number of poor ones.

Tracking it by source, such as SEO, LinkedIn, Google Ads or events, tells you which channels deserve more budget. Our guide to the lead-to-SAL ratio explains how to calculate and improve it.

How do we measure marketing ROI when B2B sales cycles are long?

Track leading indicators that connect to revenue: qualified leads, lead-to-SAL, sales-accepted pipeline and cost per accepted lead by channel, then tie them to closed deals as they arrive.

Revenue in IT services can take six to eighteen months to appear, so waiting for it hides what works. Instead, connect your website analytics to your CRM so each lead carries its source, campaign and first touch. Report the funnel stage by stage and keep the history, so when a deal closes you can see which channels helped.

We build that single funnel report as part of our analytics and attribution work.

Why do the numbers in Google Analytics (GA4) not match our CRM?

They measure different things, from different moments, with different rules. GA4 counts sessions and events in a browser; the CRM counts people and records. Without shared identifiers, they will never match exactly.

Common causes: form submissions not passed to the CRM with source data, ad blockers and consent choices hiding visits, duplicate leads, different attribution windows and offline conversions never recorded. Fix it by capturing campaign parameters and the GA4 client ID in hidden form fields, passing them to the CRM and agreeing one source of truth for lead counts.

The aim is not perfect agreement but a consistent method everyone trusts. We set this up in our attribution work.

How do we design contact forms that convert and stay free of spam?

Ask only for what you need, such as name, work email and company, say when you will reply, test the form regularly and use a honeypot or similar spam protection instead of intrusive CAPTCHAs.

Every extra field lowers completion. Use a topic selector or short optional message to help route the lead. Confirm success on the page and by email, and make sure submissions reach a monitored inbox.

Pass source and campaign data with each submission so you can report lead-to-SAL by channel.

How much does B2B SEO and digital marketing for an IT company cost?

We price as a monthly retainer, a project fee or an embedded pod, and we scope it after a pipeline review once we have seen your funnel. We do not publish a flat price because the right scope depends on your market and goals.

Three factors drive the cost: how competitive your target terms and audiences are, how much work the site needs before it can rank or convert, and how many channels you want us to run. A technical audit and migration plan is a project. Ongoing SEO, paid media and nurture is usually a retainer. If you want a named team that works as part of your marketing group, that is an embedded pod.

Beware of any agency that quotes a fixed price before it has looked at your site and funnel. A short pipeline review gives you a scoped proposal rather than a guess.

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See where your LinkedIn and Google spend leaks.

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