LinkedIn ads can seem costly, but with the right setup, they can outperform other platforms. Here’s are a couple of tips.
Many marketers treat LinkedIn like Facebook — click a few default settings, launch a campaign, and wait for leads. But LinkedIn’s defaults are designed for big enterprise budgets, not smaller B2B players. Its default “audience expansion” features can send our ads to irrelevant people and waste budget fast. To make LinkedIn work, it’s important to narrow the focus: specific audiences built from real customer profiles.
Traditional company ads still have a place, but experts seem to prefer “Thought Leader ads” — boosted posts from individuals rather than brands. These perform better because people on LinkedIn want to hear from other people. A genuine case study or expert insight works better than a company announcement ever will. It feels authentic and human, and that’s what LinkedIn’s dwell-time metrics now reward.
The lesson for B2B marketers is to stop thinking of LinkedIn as a broadcast channel and start treating it as a professional network. The platform’s costs are high, but the value per click can be high too, provided the message is right.