⌘ Freelance B2B ad operator
I'm a hands-on ad builder, not a strategy consultant.
My name is Mika Lind. I run B2B digital advertising that delivers qualified leads to sales.
I'm a Finnish freelance ad operator. I've been doing B2B advertising for around eight years. I've worked in-house as a marketer, as a Senior Specialist at a digital advertising and analytics agency, and for years as a freelancer. Over the years I've worked with more than thirty companies, from Finnish SMEs to international groups with hundreds of millions in revenue.
I live and work from wherever there's good connectivity, usually Finland in summer and elsewhere the rest of the year. My clients are typically Nordic B2B companies with an in-house marketing team or at least one person responsible for content and brand. My job is to handle the advertising and the measurement and analytics that go with it.
Me as a freelancer
What I'm like as a freelancer
Agencies offer broad expertise and as many meetings as you want; I offer focused digital-advertising expertise and relief from meetings. Strategy consultants deliver slide decks but disappear when it's time to implement.
I plan the advertising strategy and run with it based on what you tell me, and I react depending on how the market responds to what we put out. In this work you rarely need to build elaborate strategies, because they end up in the trash pretty quickly anyway. As long as I get from you the things that don't change often, namely your target audience and advertising goals, I know how to plan and build the rest.
My aim isn't to be yet another calendar invite for you either. You probably have plenty of those already.
I've been doing this long enough to know that results don't shift much in a month, especially for B2B companies, so why would you pay €1,000/month for me to spend 4–5 hours preparing for a meeting where we sit and talk about how nothing has changed?
At the start of an engagement there's of course a lot of communication and a few meetings to get logins, permissions, audiences, and the purpose of the advertising sorted out, but after that I meet with most of my clients every 3–6 months.
The advertising runs, you can always see in the report how things are progressing, and I email you whenever there's something worth your attention. This has worked very well, and many clients have ultimately thanked me for not having to spend so much time on it.
Principles
How I think about advertising
- 01
Long-term partnership, not a short project
Advertising is a machine built over months, and optimizing it takes years. It isn't a few-weeks sprint. Seasonal services and products are a separate matter, but for B2B companies in particular, where buying decisions usually involve multiple people and sales cycles are long, weeks-long campaigns achieve little besides spending money.
Ad-platform algorithms also don't have time to learn much from short campaigns. The more conversions and the better the signals, the better the platform's algorithm focuses.
On LinkedIn, where the target audience matters more than the algorithm, the length of buying decisions and the reality that most of the audience isn't buying right now both show up clearly. In 6 months you get some sense of how things are going, but only after a year can you draw bigger conclusions. That doesn't mean advertising isn't being optimized throughout. It is, but some signals respond faster and others take longer.
- 02
Measurement before advertising
The old saying ”you can't optimize what you can't measure” applies especially to digital advertising. Running digital advertising without working conversion measurement is pure waste of money.
”Measurement” is also a slightly misleading term, because it's really about measurement and navigation. Without conversion tracking, the ad platform's algorithm is completely blind to your advertising goals and will always take the path of least resistance. That way you get thousands of junk visitors to your site who leave again with 99.9% probability.
Conversion tracking ensures the ad platform knows what we want from the advertising and forces it in the right direction. There's plenty more to the work beyond that, but this is the foundation I never compromise on.
- 03
Less is more
One channel done well usually produces more than five done mediocrely. I don't recommend splitting budget across many channels before the budget is large enough to support it. For a B2B company it often makes sense to start with Google Ads search advertising, because that's where the existing demand for your service or product lives, and your audience is searching there for a solution to their problem.
I'm saying this even though my pricing is based on the number of channels and ad accounts. What matters most is that we do things sensibly. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is good for building the brand and creating new demand, and it also lets you target the audience you know is important to you. So together these two are the best combo, but it isn't worth advertising on both if you only have budget for one.
- 04
Straight talk, no jargon
I make a habit of telling you honestly what works and what doesn't. I also don't hide failures or challenges, because we learn from both, as long as we measure the right things and understand the details. An open line of communication between us tends to lead to the best collaboration, where we both get help from each other with ideas and problem-solving.
Working together
Let's get to work.
Let's start with a conversation. Tell me about your company and the current state of your advertising, and we'll see how I can help you.
Get in touch →