Case Study · Advisory Firm

Referrals were running dry. 15 booked calls in the first 30 days.

An advisory founder had built his whole practice on network and referrals, and the well was running dry. He came to us to build an inbound engine he could bank on. Here is exactly what the data shows.

15
Calls booked in 30 days
$186.94
Cost per booked call
$2,804
Total ad spend
149K
Impressions to business owners
01 · The Setup

Deal flow that lived and died on referrals.

The client is the founder of an advisory firm with deep expertise and a strong reputation. Every deal came through his network and referrals, which meant the pipeline was unpredictable and slowing down. He came to us to build a reliable inbound engine, so his next conversation never depended on who he happened to know.

What we built

A complete LinkedIn deal flow system. Optimized founder profile. A high-converting landing page with the calendar embedded. Audience research locked onto the business owners he wanted to reach. Five Thought Leader Ads written from the founder's expertise, and an exit audit offer that walks an owner through what they need to prepare before putting their business on the market.

What we ran

Two campaigns running concurrently. A cold prospecting campaign targeting business owners in his market. A retargeting campaign that picked up every engager and pushed them back toward the exit audit and the calendar.

Daily budget capped between $25 and $150. Manual bidding. Every booked call tracked through the pixel.

02 · The Timeline

Week by week. Compounding.

First booking landed three days after the prospecting campaign went live. Retargeting fired up in Week 2. By Week 4, the system was producing seven bookings in a single week.

Week 1
Launch
2
Booked calls
  • Prospecting live Apr 25
  • First booking Day 3
  • $504 spent
Week 2
Ramp
3
Booked calls
  • Retargeting added May 1
  • 3 bookings in a single day
  • $701 spent
Week 3
Optimize
3
Booked calls
  • Top creative scaled
  • Underperformers paused
  • $851 spent
Week 4
Compound
7
Booked calls
  • Retargeting pool full
  • 3 bookings in one day
  • $666 spent
Week 5
Close
$95
Cost per call (week 4)
  • Reporting window closes May 24
  • System compounding
  • Engine keeps running
03 · The Math

$2,804 in. 15 calls out.

Every number below is pulled straight from LinkedIn Campaign Manager. No averaged blends, no projections, no theoretical models. This is the raw report.

$2,804.07
TOTAL AD SPEND · 30 DAYS

Across both prospecting and retargeting. Apr 25 to May 24, 2026.

15
BOOKED CALLS TRACKED

Pixel conversions firing on the calendar confirmation page.

$186.94
COST PER BOOKED CALL

In a market where B2B leads routinely run $400 to $1,200 per booking.

04 · The Five Levers

Every stage engineered. Every number reported.

The same five levers we pull on every client account. Here is where each one landed.

01 / HOOK
The Hook
12.99%
Engagement rate

First-line rate on every Thought Leader Ad, optimized weekly until the see-more rate held above 12%.

02 / CTR
The Click
19,366
Total clicks driven

At a $0.14 cost per click. Every click landed on a page built to convert, not just inform.

03 / CONV
The Conversion
15
Calls booked

The calendar fired native on the landing page. Confirmation page pixel tracked every booking.

04 / CPM
The Cost
$18.78
Average CPM

Driven down from a starting CPM near $43 through cost-cap bidding and creative rotation.

05 / BRAND
The Asset
149K
Owner impressions delivered

Founder name and face in front of 149,062 business owners. Brand compounding past month one.

05 · What It Means For You

The same system. Built on your firm.

The same five levers. The same engine. Run by the same team that drove these numbers.

Off the referral treadmill

The whole point was a pipeline that does not depend on who the founder happens to know. Inside 30 days, booked calls were arriving from owners he had never met, on a schedule he could finally plan around.

The offer did the work

The exit audit gave owners a low-risk reason to raise their hand before they were ready to sell. That is the difference between an ad people scroll past and an ad that books a call.

Audience, built from zero

Beyond the 15 bookings, 149K impressions ran in front of business owners who had never heard of the firm. Profile views, follower growth, and inbound messages all moved up. The audience and the pipeline get built at the same time.

Repeatable, not one-off

Week 4 produced seven bookings on a smaller budget than Week 3, because the retargeting audience had compounded. The longer the system runs, the cheaper each call gets. Month one is the proof. Month six is the payoff.

06 · Your Move

The same engine. On your firm.

Let us build your deal flow.

Thirty minutes. We will map the owners you want to reach and walk you through the system on your business.

Source

LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Client ad account. Creative performance report exported May 24, 2026.

Window

April 25, 2026 through May 24, 2026. 30 consecutive days.

Campaigns

Thought Leadership Engagement (prospecting) and Retargeting with Thought Leader Ads.

Verification

Anonymized CSV available under NDA on request. Every number on this page is pulled directly from the export.