-
$3000+ in Ads – No Conversions – Help!
Posted by on November 7, 2025 at 8:10 pmI'm a Software Engineer turned CEO who hired a marketing manager to get our paid and organic ads up and running for my company Free Thinkers Consulting. I have been running google ads and LinkedIn campaigns for three months now and I am just burning money. At first I was just trusting the process but now I need some help because I have ZERO conversions. Never mind a paying customer, I haven't even had someone filling out the form. Here's some notes:
- According to my marketing manager I have a "high" CTR for google
- Overall Campaign CTR:
- CTR: 6.47%
- Total Clicks: 1,179
- Total Impressions: 18,232
- June 1 – October 28th
- I shut down the campaign because of lack of results.
- Total spend $3,389.40
- Overall Campaign CTR:
- My funnel is: User clicks on Ad –> user lands on landing page (https://freethinkersconsulting.com/get-started) –> form is filled out –> customer is redirected to thank-you page
- I have the thank-you page set up to track in google ads Conversion Tracking
- I have the LinkedIn Insight Tag Checker extension confirming that the tracking snippet is active
- My lander is pretty straight forward – CTA – What we do – How we do it – What we've done
- I hired someone to make the lander and I have cross checked with GPT and my marketing manager so don't know why I'm getting zero form fills
- I am actively building out 10 more landers that are more niche and specific in hopes to see some conversion but I have not started the ads yet for fear of the very glaring issue that not even one person filled out their email with what I think is a relatively decent landing page and campaign
- I just set up a new LI campaign and seeing similar decent CTRs and no conversions:
- Spend: $180.07
- Impressions: 5,330
- Clicks: 57
- CTR: 1.07%
- Conversions: 0 recorded
I am at a loss, I have asked my marketing manager and they said "I don't know" so I am turning to you guys. Any insights?
Here is my website: https://freethinkersconsulting.com/ and the lander https://freethinkersconsulting.com/get-started/
And screenshot (I can attach more if needed):
UPDATE:
I appreciate the candid responses SO much. Thank you reddit!
Okay so more details people were touching on:
–> I am posting to my company LinkedIn page and my personal LinkedIn page and YouTube 3-4x a week in hopes of generating some good faith / trust with educational segments.
–> My LI –> https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-porter-a3484551/
–> Company LI –> https://www.linkedin.com/company/free-thinkers-consultingI filmed a client testimonial last week and am going to replace the AI video with this.
Case Studies, client logos, etc. are all on home page or linked on the footer. Sounds like I need to move them to the landing page.
UPDATE 2:
It's clear I need someone who is an expert at landing pages – please feel free to drop any recommendations!
- According to my marketing manager I have a "high" CTR for google
-
1 Reply
-
I mean, did he do any type of keyword research before spending money to see if there’s any demand with the keywords he is bidding on?
-
You didn’t test the form conversion before launching the campaign? Are you receiving organic form fills? Try to isolate the issue to find out if the issue is the form or the conversion tracking.
-
Your landing page goes directly to the form with 0 context, no case studies, no client logos, no trust marks, nothing unique about the company and full of stock photography.
The website is also extremely basic, if I’m hiring a technical consultant id expect a much more savvy website. Not too surprised you haven’t had conversions yet.
Id recommend looking into what makes a successful landing page and studying successful companies in the SaaS space who have figured it out. Lots of work to do here!
-
From what you shared, there is some opportunity to improve (like others have shared) but the most likely cause of waste is keyword selection. Sounds like you need a thorough audit. If your marketing manager said “I don’t know”, I’d be very concerned. If they don’t know why did they approve $3k in spend?
I’ve seen this happen 50+ times and thousands are usually wasted.
Feel free to reach out if you’d like a hand 👍
-
Seems like there is a mismatch between Kws , ads and landing page
-
Is the campaign segmented into ad groups by service type (data migration vs Salesforce setup etc.)? Ideally, you’d build tailored landing pages for each ad group reflecting the service being promoted. Prioritize based on volume.
I’d think there is also some opportunity on the landing page. It feels very generic. I also think the form may have too many fields. Get as little info as needed to follow up, and don’t attempt to prequalify too extensively with the form alone. If lead quality is consistently trash, you can tighten it back up.
I’m also not sure if “45 minute” is helping or hurting. May be worth testing a more generic “Book Your Free Consultation” against more creative CTAs like “Unlock Your Salesforce Potential” or “Let’s Make Salesforce Work For You” for example.
Basically, as far as the form and CTA go, you don’t want people to feel like they are making this big commitment for a demo/consultation, or they are more likely to think “I’ll come back to this when I have more time.”
Edit to add – When an organization adopts Salesforce and feels overwhelmed, there are a lot of emotions at play, especially among those who championed for it. Regret, anxiety, wasted money. Speak to these emotions in the copy. Reassure this concerned visitor that your organization can make them look like a hero for bringing on SF.
-
You’re targeting a cold audience with a bottom-funnel offer on LinkedIn. This rarely works. LinkedIn isn’t a demand capture channel, people aren’t searching for consulting services there.
You need a full-funnel approach. This is what generally works for our clients:
* Start with demand gen content (60-70% budget) – educational videos, thought leader ads, pain points/ benefits ads and case studies.
* Retarget engaged users (30-40% budget) with your consultation offer.
Another blocker is that your landing page is really bad: Zero trust signals, No client logos visible above the fold, no testimonials. You’re asking people to trust you with their contact info without proving you can deliver results. Also, the messaging is generic and the video using fake clips is horrible.
-
I’d actually need a lot more info. How is the campaign setup in terms of bidding? Max conversions, max clicks, manual cpc? Are you appearing on other networks? What kind of keywords are you bidding on and in what format (broad, phrase, exact)
-
The landing page is hilarious. It needs a total revamp. Put some trust into it.
Also, put your face on your company. Start making videos if you want to dominate LinkedIn.
-
1,179 clicks with zero form fills means either your landing page is completely broken or the traffic is completely irrelevant… 6.47% CTR on Google is suspiciously high which usually means you’re targeting way too broad and getting curiosity clicks from people who aren’t actually prospects.
Check your search terms report immediately… you’re probably spending thousands on junk queries that have nothing to do with your actual service.
Also test your form on multiple devices and browsers because if it’s not submitting properly that would explain zero conversions despite decent traffic volume.
For B2B consulting the real issue is probably offer and positioning… most consulting landing pages are generic “let us help you” messaging that doesn’t give anyone a reason to fill out a form right now.
-
You definitely need a better landing page, and maybe need to analyze the campaign set up and keyword targeting.
This is my agency landing page, feel free to dm me if you like us to enhance your website/check the campaign set up. -
What did ChatGPT say? Did you ask it to evaluate your landing page and/or ask for recommendations to improve conversion rates? It actually does quite a good job with both in my experience.
You need to hire someone well-versed in B2B advertising (preferably with lots of experience) because B2B isn’t easy. The person you have isn’t it.
There are a number of things wrong with your landing page and I’m sure with the campaign setups.
Based on the Google Paid Search CTR, I imagine that they’re bidding on Broad Match keywords. I would highly advise against doing so. You need to be very strict with your keyword selection and I would advise using Exact Match – yes, the CPCs will be high for your industry but the traffic will be more relevant and more likely to convert.
You’re likely wasting your money on LinkedIn Ads. If you’re going to use LinkedIn, use a lead magnet (like a whitepaper or ebook) and keep the conversions on LinkedIn itself. I advise using Document Ads combined with a Lead Gen form. It doesn’t sound like your budget is high enough though to justify using LinkedIn at all so I would likely stick with Google Paid Search for now.
-
Brother I understand your frustration. You’ve probably built a great product but you can’t figure out why people don’t convert.
You have to spend way more. But you have to be strategic. This LP is BOFU. You need to build some demand gen first. Get some traction. Post educational stuff, playbooks, walkthroughs, templates etc. Then you have to shift on ABM in LI. Find your audiences. Hunt them down. Put faces and roles behind the numbers.
But more importantly, you have to build authority. This LP is worse than bad. It’s generic af like some vibecoder did in 2 minutes. Build an ironclad domain that has everything. Case studies, testimonials, maybe an ROI calculator, trust badges. Start building an SEO compounding engine.
You’ve probably burned 3k by doing the right things at the wrong time. Marketing is not just about bidding on some KWs after research. It’s a holistic approach that requires effort to come up and create, and time to scale and compound.
-
Sounds like you have an inexperienced marketing manager.
-
Not a huge fan of your landing page. There’s no detail about what your company is and how it can actually help you. It’s hard to really see what your company can do for me as a consumer. It feels very generic and basic. There isn’t really anything on here that makes you stand out from any competition.
Also not a fan of your AI video. There isn’t a lot of public trust in anything AI right now. I also hope the information in your video is otherwise accessible in a different part of your website.
Other than the critique on your landing page, I’d also perform an indepth analysis on your keywords and search terms. Are the right keywords and terms being utilized?
I don’t know if you’ll need 10 more landing pages. I think you should fix up the pages you already have.
SEM can drive clicks to your site, but if no one believes in your site, you’re not going to see any conversions.
Log in to reply.