Luke Kuhlman had a problem most experts would kill for. He was really good at what he did. Fifteen years of Google Ads experience. Ran paid search for major healthcare organizations. Built campaigns that moved the needle for agencies and brands across the country.
He'd even built a business around it—Clickco Marketing. A model that gave agencies and brands access to premium paid media talent without the headaches of hiring full-time.
But every time he tried to explain what he did?
People thought he was a recruiter.
"I had cold outreach to someone and they said, 'yeah, we don't need a recruiter.'"
He wasn't a recruiter. Not even close. But something about how he was describing his business kept putting him in the wrong box.
This is the story of how we helped Luke stop fighting that battle. How we found a positioning that the market actually understood. And how we uncovered a niche that was hiding in plain sight—one where Luke had more credibility than almost anyone.
The Starting Point: Expertise Without Clarity
Luke wasn't starting from zero. That's important.
He had:
- 15+ years in paid media (Google Ads specifically)
- A team of vetted U.S.-based specialists ready to deploy
- Case studies and happy clients who could vouch for results
- An offer that worked—flexible, premium, month-to-month
He had all the ingredients. The problem was packaging.
His business model was genuinely different. When a client needed paid media help, Luke didn't just find someone and walk away (like a recruiter). He embedded his specialists directly into client operations. He stayed involved for strategy and quality control. Clients got ongoing support, not a handoff.
But the words he was using—"we place specialists," "fractional talent," "overflow support"—kept triggering the wrong mental model.
People heard "place" and thought recruiter. They heard "fractional" and thought cheap contractor. They heard "overflow" and thought temporary Band-Aid.
None of that captured what Luke actually delivered.
The Recruiter Trap (And Why It Kept Happening)
Here's the thing about recruiters.
They have a reputation. Find someone, make a placement, collect a fee, disappear. No skin in the game after the handshake. Variable quality. No accountability.
Luke's model was the opposite of that.
His specialists became part of the client's team. They used the client's email, joined their Slack, attended their meetings. Luke stayed on for strategy and oversight. If something wasn't working, he was there to fix it.
Two people for less than one full-time hire. Month-to-month flexibility. U.S.-based talent only.
That's a fundamentally different value proposition than "we'll find you someone."
But every time Luke described it, he kept dancing around the edges. Trying to explain what he wasn't (not a recruiter, not a traditional agency) instead of clearly stating what he was.
"The first few words of my headline... it's kind of like you're dancing around being a recruiter."
That's what I told him on one of our early calls. He agreed. The positioning was fighting against him instead of working for him.
The Pivot: Stop Creating a Category. Use One That Already Exists.
Here's what we figured out together.
Luke was trying to carve out a new category. Something between recruiter and agency. A unique space that perfectly described his model.
The problem? Markets don't care about perfect descriptions. They care about understanding.
"Agency" is a mental model people already have. They know what an agency does. They know how to buy from one. They have expectations.
"White label" is a concept agencies understand. They've used white label services before. They know the model.
Luke's business wasn't exactly an agency. It wasn't exactly white label. But it was close enough that using those words stopped the confusion.
"I think people will understand that I'm an agency, even though I didn't really want to be that. And then I white label, even though I didn't really want to call it that. It's just that people understand that."
That was the breakthrough.
Stop fighting for perfect accuracy. Start optimizing for understanding.
Once Luke leaned into "agency" language, everything got easier. Now the conversation could focus on what made him different—instead of what category he belonged to.
What Actually Made Luke Different (Once People Understood the Basics)
With the positioning cleared up, Luke's real differentiators could shine through.
1. Flexibility That Traditional Agencies Don't Offer
Most agencies lock you into 3-month, 6-month, even 12-month contracts. Luke's arrangements are month-to-month.
"We're not locking them in. People don't like to get locked in and want to keep their options open."
For agencies worried about taking on a new partner, this removes the risk. Try it. If it doesn't work, you're not stuck.
2. Pricing That Aligns Incentives
A lot of agencies charge a percentage of ad spend. The more you spend, the more they make. That creates a conflict of interest—they're incentivized to recommend bigger budgets.
Luke charges flat retainers. His recommendations are based on what's actually best for the client, not what increases his fee.
3. U.S.-Based Talent (No Offshore Teams)
Many white label services ship work overseas. Cheaper for them, but it creates problems—language barriers, time zone issues, quality inconsistency.
Luke's specialists are all U.S.-based. Same time zones. Native English. No translation required.
4. Speed
Need someone tomorrow? Luke can have a specialist embedded within 24-48 hours. No lengthy hiring process. No training period. Plug and play.
These differentiators were always there. But they couldn't land until people first understood the basic category Luke was operating in.
The Hidden Niche: Healthcare Was Waiting the Whole Time
This was the biggest discovery of our work together.
We were on a call, digging into Luke's background. Trying to find angles that would separate him from every other Google Ads person on LinkedIn.
Then he mentioned healthcare.
Turns out, Luke had spent years doing paid search for major healthcare organizations. He'd been the entire paid search team for a healthcare system with billions in revenue. He'd managed Google Ads for a national eye care company with 800+ locations.
He had healthcare case studies. Healthcare testimonials. Healthcare expertise that most Google Ads agencies couldn't touch.
And he'd never thought to leverage it.
"How come you didn't do this before?"
"You didn't ask. I guess I wasn't thinking about industry-specific targeting."
Here's why healthcare is perfect for Luke:
The market is underserved. Most marketing agencies don't understand healthcare. The compliance requirements. The patient acquisition dynamics. The way specialty services work. Luke does.
High-value, sticky clients. Healthcare organizations take a while to make decisions. But once they commit, they stay. These aren't transactional relationships. They're long-term partnerships.
Credibility that can't be faked. Luke wasn't some random agency claiming they "also do healthcare." He'd lived inside major healthcare organizations. He'd managed their budgets. He'd delivered results. That credibility is a moat.
We immediately started building a healthcare-specific campaign. Same offer. Same model. But positioned for an audience where Luke had an unfair advantage.
The Systems That Made It Scalable
Before we started working together, Luke's lead generation looked like this:
- Manually scroll LinkedIn looking for people posting about hiring needs
- Hope someone in his network made a referral
- Post occasionally without a clear strategy
It worked. Kind of. But it wasn't predictable. And it definitely wasn't scalable.
Here's what we built:
An automated system that monitors LinkedIn for posts containing keywords like "Looking for paid search," "Hiring Google Ads," "Need a PPC contractor." When someone posts about needing paid media help, they automatically get added to an Airtable for outreach.
The result: Luke stopped missing opportunities. People with active, expressed need got captured systematically—not by chance.
We built multiple campaign types:
- Hiring Signal Campaign — Targets people at companies with active paid media job postings. If a job has been open for 30+ days, that's a pain point.
- Profile Viewer Campaign — When someone views Luke's profile, that's a high-intent signal. We built automated follow-up to convert that interest into conversations.
- Healthcare Campaign — Specific outreach to healthcare marketing leaders and healthcare agencies. Messaging tailored to that industry's specific concerns.
All replies and qualified leads flow into an Airtable CRM. Pipeline stages. Follow-up tracking. Nothing falls through the cracks.
Luke created a custom Google Ads Strategy GPT, a B2B Paid Search Playbook, a cost savings calculator, and healthcare-specific content. Lead magnets that attract the right people. Content that demonstrates expertise. All feeding into the outreach and conversion systems.
The Results: A Pipeline Problem (The Good Kind)
By the end of our engagement window, Luke's situation had completely shifted.
Before: Explaining his business was a constant struggle. Leads were sporadic. Systems didn't exist.
After: Clear positioning that the market understood. Multiple qualified opportunities in pipeline. Infrastructure that captures leads automatically.
"I'm at this point now where, if these things start landing, it's going to be a pretty big fulfillment challenge that I'm going to have to figure out pretty quickly."
That's the good kind of problem.
When your concern shifts from "how do I find clients" to "how do I handle all these clients"—something is working.
What Changed:
Positioning clarity. From "not quite a recruiter, not quite an agency" to "white label Google Ads agency with U.S.-based specialists and month-to-month flexibility."
Niche identification. Healthcare emerged as a territory where Luke has credibility that competitors can't match.
Systematic lead capture. Post scraper, outreach campaigns, CRM tracking—opportunities don't slip away anymore.
Relationship compounding. Here's one of my favorite results: a client from 4-5 years ago proactively reached back out because they'd moved to a new company and wanted to bring Luke with them.
That's what happens when you deliver real value. Relationships compound over time.
What This Means For You
Luke's story has a few lessons that apply to any founder-led service business.
Luke spent a lot of energy trying to explain what made him different from recruiters and traditional agencies. The breakthrough came when he stopped fighting and used language the market already understood.
"Close enough" positioning that people get beats "perfect" positioning that confuses them.
Luke had 15 years of experience. Some of that was in healthcare. He just never thought to leverage it because he was trying to serve "everyone."
The moment we uncovered his healthcare background, the strategy became obvious.
The agency world has trained clients to expect locked-in contracts and percentage-of-spend pricing. Luke offers the opposite—and it resonates because he has the credibility to back it up.
Luke was manually scrolling LinkedIn hoping to find opportunities. Now an automated scraper catches them and queues them for outreach.
The opportunity was always there. Systems just made it possible to capture consistently.
Luke's sales cycle is longer than a typical transactional sale. But clients come back years later. They refer others. They become partners.
LinkedIn isn't about quick wins. It's about building the visibility and trust that feeds relationship-driven sales over time.