A new client comes through the door, yay! It’s usually a fast-moving B2B tech company, say cybersecurity or fintech. After some polite intros, they hit us with the usual: “Our ads aren’t converting, our campaigns aren’t performing.” That’s the most common complaint we hear. And we can say with complete honesty, it’s rarely just the ads that are broken.
Because by the time we’ve poked around their campaigns, clicked through the landing pages, and tried to understand what the actual offer is, it becomes painfully clear. It’s everything. Everything’s broken. The landing page feels like it was written by a bored intern. The offer is a recycled “best practices” webinar featuring two guys who haven’t smiled since 2016. The CTA wouldn’t sell water in a desert. And the visuals look like someone typed “cybersecurity, but friendly” into Midjourney and hit publish without checking twice.
So no, your ads aren’t broken. Your whole campaign is just… invisible.
This blog is based on the conversation I had with the one and only Eden Bidani. You can either read through or watch here:
When B2B marketers say their ads aren’t converting, what they usually mean is that demo requests are non-existent, SQL targets are a distant dream, and the pressure is piling on. We see this every week, especially with CMOs and marketing leads in Series A startups or lean tech teams. And that’s no surprise when you realize the average B2B conversion rate sits around 1–3%, and that’s if your funnel’s halfway decent.
But conversion doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s not about a single ad or channel or clever CTA, but about the entire campaign: what’s being promised, who it’s promised to, and how that promise is supported across the funnel. Ads are just the start. If the landing page, the offer, and your brand experience don’t hold up, you’re sending people back out the door faster than you can say “attribution model.”
And the brutal truth is this, if your ad looks like every other cybersecurity marketing agency’s ad or fintech SaaS promo, then no one’s going to click. If I can take the logo off your creative and not tell who you are, you’re not standing out. And I actually did that exercise to prove the point when I spoke about creative messaging & testing:
If you’re stuck in a loop of refreshing LinkedIn ad dashboards and wondering why nothing’s landing, it’s time to zoom out. Don’t obsess over click-through rates. Look at the campaign. Look at the message. Look at your buyer’s headspace.
Building campaigns is so much more than writing ads. This is where smart B2B demand generation work separates itself. Because an ad is just one quick touch in the journey. It’s the multi-touch, multi-channel campaigns that actually connect the dots. Ads lead to landing pages, landing pages lead to content that continues the story. The story ends with someone booking a demo, or at the very least remembering your brand. And there’s a few things you can do to help them.
Yes, I’m saying it again, because it still isn’t being done enough: talk to your customers. That’s it. That’s the game-changer. If you want better campaigns, better messaging, better ads, you have to stop guessing and start listening.
And if you’re a startup without customers yet, you still don’t get a pass. Go lurk. Reddit, GitHub, Discord, Substacks, Slack groups, YouTube comments. Anywhere your ICP vents their frustrations, shares opinions, or swaps solutions, you should be lurking. It’s not creepy. It’s competitive intelligence.
What you’ll uncover is not just their pain points (that you may know very well by now), but more of a language. The real words people use when describing what drives them nuts at work. The way they talk about their problems. The metaphors they lean on. This is gold. It's also how you start writing ads that don't sound like ads. They sound like… empathy?
There’s another thing I also want to get straight: your product is not the main character in your ads. Your customer’s life is. That annoying 10-step workaround they’ve built in Google Sheets because their current tool can’t handle workflows…. that’s your hook. Show them the three hours they’re wasting each day. Paint the picture of what life looks like without that stress. Only then does your “all-in-one” platform become relevant.
Your audience doesn’t care that you’re "AI-powered" or "built for scale" unless it directly relates to their day-to-day misery. You have to meet them where they are. Show them that you understand what they’re dealing with. Then you can suggest your tool as the path to something better 😉
AI is not a replacement for a copywriter, especially in a tech startup marketing. AI is a tool. Sure, you can use it to help generate ad variations or get out of a creative rut. We all do it. But if you don’t already know what you’re doing, AI won’t save you. And worse, you’ll end up copying what your competitors are already running, because they used the same tool, with the same prompt, and probably got the same output.
One thing AI can’t really do well is to judge. It can’t tell you what message will land with your audience. It doesn’t know what campaign actually worked for your niche. It doesn’t know when you’ve crossed the line from clever to cringe. And most importantly, it doesn't care. That’s your job. So use it wisely. Let it help, but never lead.
Us marketers like to overcomplicate stuff, don’t we? But you really don’t need long copy and cinematic visuals. In fact, it’s usually the opposite: the shorter, the better. Folks are looking for authenticity, not perfection. So all you need is one clear idea, expressed simply and memorably. Let’s look at some examples that Eden shared with me:
Here, Grammarly’s “You thought your email was fine” ad works because it reflects a common, painful truth, so well known to every marketer and SDR out there. You sent the email, you thought it was great, and... silence. That tiny line makes you panic for just a second. And they don’t even have to explain what the product does, cause you already get it.
Proposify’s ad is even better. A sign that says “Your proposal has the wrong prospect name” hits every B2B salesperson and marketer in the gut. The visual, headline, and copy all work together. It’s not a groundbreaking creative, but it’s cohesive, and it’s real. Plus, if you’re on Instagram, you know very well who they got the idea from.
Consistency is key. Each element of the ad, be it image, headline, copy, should reinforce one idea. And no, it doesn’t make it repetitive. You only have a few seconds of attention, so don’t try to say five things. Say one thing well.
Voice of the customer and standout positioning may sound like nice-to-have, but they are absolutely non-negotiables. If you want high-impact campaigns, you have to start by understanding the world your buyers live in, and how your product makes that world a little bit better.
At Envy, we build full-funnel inbound and outbound campaigns for B2B tech companies that need results. If your team is small, your budget is tight, and your growth goals are brutal, we can help you cut through.