Consulting firms are one of the more awkward audiences in B2B paid media.
They look perfect on paper: senior titles in large companies, often in the same industries you're targeting. That's exactly why they slip in unnoticed.
So they end up in most audiences by default.
Across accounts, we often see them take up 15 to 25% of delivery.
They click, they fill in forms, and on the surface everything looks fine.
The platforms are also very happy to keep finding more of them and spend budget there.
They rarely move beyond inquiry.
They can still influence deals indirectly. In a lot of cases they're probably advising clients who do end up buying. They sit close to the problem.
But that's not the same as converting.
And because of seniority and company size, they're not cheap to reach either.
So you end up paying relatively high CPMs for activity that looks good, but doesn't translate cleanly into pipeline.
That's where it gets a bit uncomfortable
Removing them entirely feels like a mistake. They're too close to the buying process.
Leaving them in core prospecting also feels wrong if they're taking 20% of spend and not contributing directly.
What we've ended up doing is a mix:
- Some clients: separate campaign, controlled budget
- Others: exclude from new logo prospecting
It's more work. More campaigns, more decisions.
But it gives you control over where the spend actually goes.
This isn't just a consulting issue
Large companies tend to crowd out smaller ones. Bigger regions crowd out smaller ones. If you don't split things out, delivery drifts toward whatever is easiest for the platform to serve.
That doesn't always line up with what you actually want.
Sometimes the fix is just separating audiences that behave differently, even if they look similar on paper.
