LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn has become an essential platform for B2B marketers, offering a variety of ad formats designed to reach professionals and decision-makers. 

But with so many options, how do you choose the right one for your campaign? 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into LinkedIn's diverse ad formats, uncovering detailed insights and actionable best practices. 

Whether you're looking to increase brand visibility, generate quality leads, or drive traffic to your website, mastering LinkedIn's ad formats can give you a competitive edge in the market.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats
• Single Image Ads
• Video Ads
• Carousel Ads
• Thought Leader Ads
• Text Ads
• Conversation Ads
• Message Ads
• Spotlight Ads
• Follower Ads
• Document Ads
• Lead Gen Forms
• Connected TV Ads
• How to Choose the Right Ad Format
• How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format

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Overview of LinkedIn Ad Formats

Selecting the right ad format depends on your marketing objectives and target audience.

Let’s explore each primary LinkedIn ad format in detail, and reference this article for all ad specs:

Single Image Ads

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Single Image Ads are a staple of LinkedIn advertising.

These ads feature one static image and appear directly in the LinkedIn feed, making them highly visible and engaging.

• High engagement with minimal content.
• Simple to create and easy to manage.

Pro tip: Use images and copy that resonate with your target audience. The best-performing ones often use your Ideal Customer Profile's (ICP) language or even direct words. Remember, in B2B, we are still advertising to people, not to robots! 😃

Video Ads

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Video Ads are perfect for storytelling and driving engagement.

They allow you to share dynamic content that captures attention and conveys your message effectively.

• Excellent for storytelling and capturing attention.
• Engaging format that can explain complex ideas

Pro tip: Video ads excel at both brand building and showcasing testimonials. They are particularly effective for demonstrating product functionality. Make sure to add subtitles, the videos usually autoplay on mute.

Carousel Ads

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Carousel Ads allow you to showcase multiple images or videos in a single ad unit, each with its link.

This format is ideal for highlighting different aspects of a product or telling a story more interactively.

• Interactive format that encourages engagement.
• Multiple visuals to showcase different products or features.

Pro tip: Carousel ads can be used for explaining the product, showcasing use cases and features, or explaining customer success stories in the feed. Ensure you have a consistent flow across all cards.

Thought Leader Ads

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Thought Leader Ads are a powerful way to build brand credibility and engage your audience by leveraging the influence of key figures within your organization.

These ads allow you to sponsor posts from your company's thought leaders, positioning them—and by extension, your company—as industry experts.

• Build Credibility: Sponsoring posts from thought leaders enhances your brand's authority and trustworthiness.
• Engagement: These ads typically receive higher engagement rates as audiences are more likely to interact with content from recognized industry experts.‍
• Content Variety: Showcase a variety of content, from personal insights to industry analysis, that resonates with your audience.

3 tips for implementing thought leader ads:

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• Authenticity: Ensure the content from thought leaders is authentic and reflects their genuine perspectives.
• Consistency: Regularly publish thought leadership content to maintain engagement and visibility.‍
• Interactive Content: Use content that encourages interaction, such as questions or calls to action, to drive higher engagement rates.

For more insights refer to 14 Powerful LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad Strategies Worth Testing. 

Text Ads

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Text Ads are simple yet effective.

They appear on the right-hand sidebar of LinkedIn and are great for driving traffic to your website or landing page.

• Cost-effective and easy to set up.
• Ideal for driving traffic to your website.

Pro tip: Text ads are very effective, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of your target audience. Also, they always help to keep your logo in your ICP’s LinkedIn Feed.

Conversation Ads

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Conversation Ads offer an interactive way to engage your audience by allowing recipients to choose their own path through multiple call-to-action buttons.

This format fosters engagement and ensures high visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.

• Highly engaging format that fosters engagement.
• High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
• Great for generating leads

Pro tip: Create engaging and relevant conversation flows tailored to your audience's needs and interests. The message subject can be a game changer for open rates! Also, try incentivized ads, sometimes they can work miraculously 🚀

Message Ads

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Message Ads are direct messages sent to LinkedIn members’ inboxes, making them highly personal and effective for driving immediate action.

• High visibility in LinkedIn Messaging inboxes.
• Personalized and direct communication.

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Pro tip: Craft personalized messages that speak directly to your target audience’s pain points and offer clear, actionable solutions. Keep the tone to the one that your target audience is using.

Spotlight Ads

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Spotlight Ads are personalized ads that appear on the right-hand side of the LinkedIn feed.

These ads use the viewer's LinkedIn profile data, such as their photo, company name, and job title, to dynamically personalize the ad content.

• Lower CPM and High Ad Recall
• Personalized Ad Content

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Check out LinkedIn Spotlight Ads In 2024: Are They Worth The Investment? to dive deeper into this ad format.

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Pro tip: Spotlight ads are particularly effective for remarketing, allowing you to stay top of mind at a low cost in front of audiences that already know and trust your brand​.

Follower Ads

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Follower Ads help increase the number of followers for your LinkedIn page, promoting your company to a wider audience.

• Effective in promoting LinkedIn pages to acquire followers.
• Increases organic reach on LinkedIn.

Pro tip: Highlight the unique value your LinkedIn page offers to followers. Use eye-catching visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your target audience.

Document Ads

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Document Ads allow you to share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.

You can share whitepapers, e-books, or case studies that members can view and download without leaving LinkedIn.

• Share in-depth content directly within the LinkedIn feed.
• Options to gate content with a Lead Gen Form to capture leads or share freely to build brand awareness.

Pro tip: Offer valuable content that addresses your audience's challenges or interests. Use a strong call-to-action to encourage downloads and interaction with your documents. Some say they prefer Document Ads to Carousel Ads because you can build retargeting audiences for Document ads.

Lead Gen Forms

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Lead Gen Forms are a versatile tool that can be used with various ad formats to capture quality leads directly on LinkedIn. These forms are pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data, making it easy for users to submit their information.

• Captures quality leads with pre-filled forms.
• Provides a seamless user experience.
• Can be used for booking demos, downloading guides and templates, event registrations

Pro tip: Minimize the number of fields in your form to reduce friction. Use pre-filled form fields to make it easier for users to submit their information quickly. Don’t use “work mobile” or “work email” because they are usually not pre-filled.

Connected TV Ads

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Connected TV Ads allow you to reach professional audiences through streaming content.

These ads appear on connected TV platforms and are ideal for reaching a hard-to-reach professional audience in a large-screen environment.

• Reach professional audiences through streaming content.
• High visibility on large screens.

For detailed ad specifications and additional tips, check out 50+ Ad Specs for The Top 10 Ad Platforms.

How to Choose the Right Ad Format

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Choosing the right LinkedIn ad format is crucial for achieving your marketing goals. Here’s a guide to help you align your campaign objectives with the most effective ad formats and measure their performance.

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 What's Your Primary Campaign Goal?

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First, identify your primary campaign goal. Are you aiming to capture demand, create demand, accelerate open cases, or brand awareness?

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How to Measure Performance of Each Ad Format

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Effectively measuring the performance of your ad campaigns is key to optimizing and achieving your marketing goals. 

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Here are the KPIs and bidding recommendations for each ad format:

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By aligning your ad formats with your campaign goals and following these tips for measuring performance, you can create more effective LinkedIn ad campaigns that drive results and maximize your ROI. 

You can read more about Objectives and Bid strategies here.

Hope you found this article helpful! Connect with me on LinkedIn, and reach out with any questions.

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Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

• Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

Want to drive qualified pipeline and revenue from your LinkedIn Ads campaigns? 

I’ve worked with 50+ startups, and managed 7-figure LinkedIn ads budgets for B2B SaaS.

My goal with this article is to show you ten proven tips for improving your LinkedIn ads ROI. 

Irrelevant of the order, all of these tips have equal importance.

Let’s jump into it! 🚀

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Tip #1: Use auto bidding for the first 7 days of a new campaign
• Tip #2: Never use the Audience Network
• Tip #3: Penetrate your audience with the reach objective
• Tip #4: Leverage exclusions for focus
• Tip #5: Job functions give you best visibility and reach
• Tip #6: Always start with even rotation upon launch
• Tip #7: Check your demographics report weekly
• Tip #8: Target mobile devices exclusively with 628 x 1200
• Tip #9: Review your performance by device
• Tip #10: Use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature

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Tip #1: Use auto bidding for the first 7 days of a new campaign

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When launching a new LinkedIn Ads campaign start with automated bidding for the first week. 

The thought process behind this is it will give LinkedIn’s algorithm enough time to learn and give you an average bid of what it takes to win auctions for your target audience. 

After the first week switch to manual bidding and set the bid amount 20% lower than your average. 

This works almost 99% of the time allowing you significant cost per click reductions. 

Once you make the switch keep an eye on your daily spend over the next five days, if you set your bids too low it can negatively impact your visibility. 

The key is to find the optimal bid between cost and maximum visibility (ex: impressions, views). 

Give it a shot and send me a DM on LinkedIn with how much money you save! 🤑

This tip applies to traffic and conversion campaigns. 

Tip #2: Never use the Audience Network

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This one might be a bit controversial, but no matter what you LinkedIn reps say this is a no no.

If you’re not familiar, the LinkedIn audience network is a conglomerate of website partners. 

 This allows you to distribute your content outside of LinkedIn and on their websites. 

Sounds amazing in theory but in practice the problem with the audience network is:

🔴90-95% of your ENTIRE LinkedIn Ads budget is spent on websites outside of LinkedIn 

Which completely destroys the point of running LinkedIn ads in the first place 😂

The LinkedIn algorithm always prioritizes the audience network because it’s cheaper and it’s trying to optimise for the greatest number of impressions for the lowest cost with your budget. 

I’ve personally tested the audience network over multiple quarters with the same exact campaign and the only difference is one is using the audience network and other isn’t. 

The campaign using the audience network had a CTR of 0.03% compared to 1% without. 

You also have no ideas which websites placed your ads as it’s a black box. 

Save your budget and improve your ROI by turning it off.  

Tip #3: Penetrate your audience with the reach objective

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If you’re trying to reach a large audience (ex: target account list) and want to do so in the most cost effective way, leverage the reach campaign objective. 

Obviously if you’re trying driving the most clicks then this tip wouldn’t be applicable. 

Instead in that case you should focus on using the website visits objective. 

The caveat here is if you truly know:

• Your ideal customer profile
• That your content resonates with them 

Then you can make the case that these people will click through anyways regardless of objective,

Through testing I’ve found that if you have great content using reach you’ll actually serve towards more people and generate more net new clicks given the reduction in CPM costs. 

The major benefit of reach is that it is optimised for driving more unique impressions per viewer. 

Pro tip:

Contact your LinkedIn Ads rep to send you a report on audience penetration on a monthly and quarterly basis to see how many unique users you’re reaching in your target audience. 

Tip #4: Leverage exclusions for focus

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Most LinkedIn advertisers underestimate the power of exclusions.

It’s one of those things most  leveraged  but not to its fullest capability. 

Everyone knows you need to exclude the obvious things like competitors, students, customers, etc…

But they haven’t built the habit of checking LinkedIn Demographics Report once per week to find irrelevant titles for exclusion. 

It’s really important to be mindful of multiple current roles when excluding as you can accidentally block your ads from being visible from high value audience members. 

For example, let’s say you only help businesses with more than 1,000 employees. 

Conventional logic would be exclude people who work at companies with < 1,000 employees but what happens when your perfect prospect:

• Volunteers at a nonprofit organization with < 100 employees 
• Started a side hustle that only has with a size of “myself only” 

The answer is, they won’t see your ads. 

Remember that exclusions are always prioritised over inclusions.

When excluding focus on using job titles to refine your audience and prevent accidental conflicts. 

Tip #5: Job functions give you best visibility and reach

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This point is a bit controversial but from my own testing I’ve found job functions give you better visibility and reach than job titles. 

This doesn’t mean you should never use job title targeting, I’ve actually found for certain personas titles work better than functions but if you’re in the following scenario: 

• Targeting a high value account list 
• Promoting ads that speak to a general pain point/benefit
• Your ideal audience has a million variations of the same title

Then you’re better off using job functions to reach as many relevant audience members. 

Here’s some great combinations of job function targeting to test:

• Job functions AND seniority
• Job functions AND  seniority AND member skills OR interest

Make sure you’re checking your demographics report on a weekly basis to find all the irrelevant job titles you’re reaching and exclude them on an ongoing basis. 

This process can take up to two and half months but the goal is to eventually get to the point where you only see relevant titles inside of the demographics report. 

Highly recommend excluding unpaid, training, and entry seniority as a starting point. 

Pro tip:

Study LinkedIn profiles of your best prospects and take note of the member skills, certifications, and schools they’ve listed to find commonalities for targeting. 

Tip #6: Always start with even rotation upon launch

When launching your new campaigns you have the option to choose how to serve your ads.

The thought process behind this is you want to understand which ad will perform the best by receiving enough budget for proper testing. 

Unfortunately if you start with optimising for performance LinkedIn will prematurely assign 40-50% of your budget to one variation of ad while the others only receive what’s remaining. 

In order to avoid this, start with rotating ads evenly for the first 7-14 days when launching a new campaign to serve budget equally and then switch to optimise for performance. 

Tip #7: Check your demographics report weekly

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I’ve hinted at this multiple times across all these tips but it’s so important to driving a return on investment with LinkedIn Ads that it deserves to be its own tip. 

You need to know what’s happening across your account. 

Review your demographics report for:

• Ad performance
• Campaign performance
• Campaign group performance 

This will ensure your budget is going towards reaching the right people and companies. 

Pro tip:

LinkedIn has reporting minimums when using the demographics report in platform, get around this by using a third party data connector to push the data into G-Sheet or Looker. 

Tip #8: Target mobile devices exclusively with 628 x 1200

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LinkedIn has a 628x1200 image ad spec that allows you to only appear on mobile devices. 

If you know that your audience performs well for you on mobile devices you can set up a campaign leveraging this specific image ad dimension to serve exclusively on LinkedIn mobile. 

The same is true for targeting desktop devices with text or spotlight ads. 

Learn more about your audiences device behaviour with Google Analytics 4: 

Tip #9: Review your performance by device

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You can review your performance in LinkedIn by clicking on Breakdown > Impression by Device Type

The AdConversion team analysed 10,000,000+ impressions and found: 

• 85.1% of impressions serve on Mobile App
• 9.6% of impressions serve on Desktop Web
• 5.3% of impressions serve on Mobile Web

That’s 90.4% of total impressions serving on mobile devices! 🤯

Pro tip:

Use the LinkedIn Ads preview to see what your ad will look like when displayed on mobile and optimise your copy to best fit this device over desktop. 

Tip #10: Use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature

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This tip is one that even my most savvy marketing friends aren’t aware of. 

Changing bids, and creating campaigns on LinkedIn is a REAL pain. 

You don’t need to suffer this pain and instead can use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature. 

You can simply just export your ads, campaigns, or groups to make bulk changes. 

Voila, a task that would take hours has been cut down into minutes. 

Learn more about bulk actions  in this article by LinkedIn. 

Hope you found these 10 tips valuable! 👏

Implement the ones that resonate most with you to improve your ROI from LinkedIn Ads.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, if you have any questions or want to connect!

‍

Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

•  Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

Webinars can be amazing generators of pipeline and revenue. 

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They allow you to demo different use cases of your product, highlight success stories, and start actual conversations with your ICP. 

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But it’s hard to get prospects interested when you’re competing against a million different ads popping up in their feed. 

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Below are 4 unique LinkedIn ad strategies that I like to use to stand out and generate more registrations👇

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Strategy #1: Leverage your thought leaders 
• Strategy #2: Boost high-performing social media content
• Strategy #3: Create a LinkedIn event
• Strategy #4: Use incentives

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Strategy #1: Leverage your thought leaders 

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Ask your thought leaders who are participating in the webinar (from your company & other companies) if they’d feel comfortable posting about it. 

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If the answer is yes, draft a sample post for each of your thought leaders so that they don’t have to start with a blank page. 

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Ideally, they should post a couple weeks prior to the webinar date. After 4 or 5 days (once the organic reach has died down), you can boost the post to your ICP. 

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Example from DoWhatWorks

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Strategy #2: Boost high-performing social media content

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If your social media team posts about the webinar and it performs well organically, consider boosting this content and running it as an ad (instead of creating an ad from scratch). The benefit of boosting already high-performing content is the added social proof – prospects will take a closer look if a promoted post has tons of engagement. 

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Example from Uberflip

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Strategy #3: Create a LinkedIn event

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Most webinar ads take prospects to an external landing page, where they have to fill out a form to register. Although this can work well, a great alternative is to create a LinkedIn event (where people can sign up directly on the LinkedIn platform) and promote this event as an ad. 

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The main advantages of this approach are: 

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a) simplified registration (only takes a few clicks)

b) added social proof (event ads show how many people have already registered)

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Example from Make

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Strategy #4: Use incentives

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A lot of companies use incentives for demo request offers, but few are using incentives to promote their webinars. 

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Give prospects an extra reason to register. Maybe by joining they’ll enter a raffle, get a free coffee, or gain access to certain templates. 

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Example from ZoomInfo

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Final Recommendations

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In addition to testing out the strategies above, here are a few final tips to maximize the ROI of your webinar program:

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1. If you’re having trouble getting webinar registrations on your landing page, consider switching to native lead gen forms to minimize friction. 

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2. Don’t just promote your webinar to a cold audience. Think about other groups of people that might be interested in the content (i.e. retargeting audiences, open opportunities, churned customers, closed lost companies, previous webinar attendees, etc.)

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3. If you’re getting started, try different types of webinars to see what resonates most with your audience (and double down on whatever works)

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If you want more tips around event promotion check out this article by Kirk Deis.

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Hope you found this article insightful! 

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Connect with me on LinkedIn, and reach out with any questions. 

‍

Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

•  Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

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Getting demos isn’t easy, especially in B2B SaaS, with long sales cycles, lots of decision makers,  and tons of competition. 

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In this article, I’ll break down the top 14 LinkedIn ads strategies you can use to break through the noise and capture existing demand. 

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(Irrelevant of order all ideas could be worth testing)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

#1: Use testimonials

#2: Name the top companies you work with

#3: Demonstrate why you’re better than competitors

#4: Highlight integrations with partner technologies

#5: Showcase your product

#6: Stand out with humor 

#7: Try hyper-personalized messaging

#8: Use statistics

#9: Leverage incentives

#10: Show how much better life would be with your product

#11: Test ads in different languages

#12: Announce a new product update 

#13: List the features that your ICP would be most interested in

#14: Host a live demo

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#1: Use testimonials  

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Testimonials are one of the most effective ways to build trust and get prospects who are on the fence to take the next step. 

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Example 1: Chili Piper

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Example 2: Sendoso 

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#2: Name the top companies you work with

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By highlighting well-known companies that already work with you, you can gain the trust of senior leaders much faster and accelerate the sales process. 

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Example 1: MarketerHire 

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Example 2: Mutiny 

#3: Demonstrate why you’re better than competitors 

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This approach is powerful, especially when you target prospects who are currently using your competitors. Since they’re already in-market, if they’re frustrated with their current solution, they’ll likely end up switching over (or at least consider it). 

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Example 1: Apollo ​​ 

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Example 2: Apollo 

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#4: Highlight integrations with partner technologies

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This approach is particularly effective if you have a seamless integration with a well-known technology. Do you work well with HubSpot, Salesforce, Sales Nav, Wordpress, etc.? Target a list of companies within your ICP who are using the technology you integrate with, and show them why you’re the best choice. 

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Example 1: Typeform

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Example 2: Typeform

#5: Showcase your product

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Many times, all prospects need to take the next step is to get a glimpse of your software. Also, this is an especially great approach because it sets the sales team up for success – when prospects jump on a demo call, they’ll already have some familiarity with the product. 

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Example 1: HockeyStack 

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Example 2: Loxo 

#6: Stand out with humor 

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B2B leaders are still people. Humor that’s relatable and clearly highlights a pain point works better than corporate jargon 99% of the time. 

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Example 1: Chili Piper 

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Example 2: Cognism

#7: Try hyper-personalized messaging 

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This approach, often referred to as 1:1 ABM, relies on extreme personalization. You specifically call out the company that you’re prospecting into, and maybe you take it a step further and create a personalized video or asset just for them. CTRs will be super high and even if prospects don’t convert on an initial touchpoint, you’ll make sales’s job significantly easier by generating awareness within a target account. 

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Example 1: UserGems

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Example 2: HockeyStack

#8: Use statistics

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This isn’t the flashiest or most exciting strategy, but it works. Numbers give prospects a sense of security that they’ll get a positive ROI if they invest. 

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Example 1: UserGems 

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Example 2: Lavender

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#9: Leverage Incentives

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Incentives are controversial, which is understandable. 

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The concern is that by offering an incentive you lower the quality of your leads. But that’s only true if your targeting is weak. If it’s spot on, incentivized demo ads are amazing generators of pipeline and revenue – they serve as a tiny nudge to encourage leaders to find some time in their calendar. 

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Amazon or Doordash gift cards work well, but you can always get more creative with your offer. 

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Example 1: Metadata 

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Example 2: Cognism

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#10: Show how much better life would be with your product

This approach clearly emphasizes the pain point your product will solve, leading prospects to take action. 

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Example 1: Motion

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Example 2: Workvivo 

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#11: Test ads in different languages

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A lot of B2B SaaS companies are hyper-focused on North America, and their content for Latin America, EMEA, and APAC is just an afterthought. Running high quality ads in the language of the specific region you’re targeting can be a game changer as far as driving pipeline and revenue. 

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Bonus: If you take into account regional differences in consumer behavior and product usage when creating ads for different regions, your content will end up resonating even more. 

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Example 1: Pandadoc

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Example 2: Miro

#12: Announce a new product update

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This is a great way to re-engage people who may have considered your solution in the past but weren’t fully convinced. By showing prospects how much better your product is after the updates, you can convince them to take the next step and request a demo. 

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Example 1: Zoominfo

#13: List the features that your ICP would be most interested in

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As marketers, we’re always told to focus on pain points instead of features. But listing your top features can help prospects fully understand how powerful your product is, encouraging them to request a demo.

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Example 1: Workvivo

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#14: Host a live demo

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Promoting a live demo is a great way to get qualified prospects to see your product without having to go through the traditional (and higher commitment) demo process.

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Prospects who are interested in your product may not be ready to talk to the sales team right away – a live demo can serve as a bridge, moving them further down the funnel. 

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Example 1: Metadata

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Example 2: Motion

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Final Recommendations

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If you’re trying to drive more demos, in addition to testing out these capture strategies, I recommend doing a comprehensive audit of your audiences. Ask yourself: 

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1.  Am I targeting my warmest prospects who have already engaged with my content in some capacity? 

2. Am I reaching prospects with the right company sizes, seniorities, job functions, job titles, and industries? 

3.  Am I excluding the LinkedIn audience network and disabling audience expansion? 

4. Am I making all the necessary exclusions (interns, unemployed, competitors, customers, etc.)? 

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Without precise targeting, even the best strategies will fail. 

‍

Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

•  Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

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Everyone knows that B2B buying has changed. 

People trust people more than they trust companies, making thought leadership ads more important than ever before. 

If you’re looking to use thought leader ads in your LinkedIn ad strategy but aren’t sure how to get started, this article is for you. 

Here are 14 thought leader ad plays and examples you can test. 

Let’s jump into it! 👇

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Play #1: Announce new product features, integrations, and partnerships
• Play #2: Highlight the main problem your product solves + the solution it provides
• Play #3: Highlight a case study featuring your own company
• Play #4: Highlight a case study featuring one of your customers 
• Play #5: Generate buzz before attending an in-person event
• Play #6: Stay top of mind after an event
• Play #7: Promote your own event
• Play #8: Promote an upcoming webinar
• Play #9: Promote your newsletter
• Play #10: Celebrate Customer Wins
• Play #11: Demo different use cases of your product
• Play #12: Share long-form content with insights that your ICP would be interested in
• Play #13: Provide practical advice based on insights from your platform
• Play #14: Leverage social proof from existing customers

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Play #1: Announce new product features, integrations, and partnerships

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🔑 to success: Trust your audience. Target the experts and speak to them like they’re experts. Show them all the cool things they’ll be able to achieve with your product. 

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Example 1: Dreamdata

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Example 2: Gong 

Example 3: UserGems 

Example 4: Dreamdata

Play #2: Highlight the main problem your product solves + the solution it provides

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🔑 to success: After prospects read your content, they should be able to clearly articulate the problem your product solves + the solution it provides. If they can’t, you need to simplify your messaging. 

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Example 1: Apollo

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Play #3: Highlight a case study featuring your own company

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🔑 to success: Show how your team is using YOUR tool to reach YOUR goals – your company can serve as its own case study. 

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Example 1: UserGems

Example 2: Apollo

Example 3: Sendoso

Example 4: Salesloft

Play #4: Highlight a case study featuring one of your customers 

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🔑 to success: Clearly articulate how you’ve been helping an existing customer achieve their goals. 

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Example 1: Lavender 

Example 2: Loxo 

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Play #5: Generate buzz before attending an in-person event

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🔑 to success: Use an ABM list of attendees or ABM list of companies + key job functions to make sure you’re getting in front of the right people. 

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Example 1: HockeyStack

Play #6: Stay top of mind after an event

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🔑 to success: Have an attendee post a recap after an event so that your brand is staying top of mind in the following weeks. The idea isn’t to push your product, but to keep raising awareness within key accounts. 

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Example 1: Sendoso

Play #7: Promote your own event

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🔑 to success: Have your event speakers announce their participation on their personal pages and boost the posts to increase overall reach. This is a win for the speakers and for your company – speakers will feel supported and your event will get more registrations. 

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Example 1: Gleanin 

Example 2: Gleanin 

Play #8: Promote an upcoming webinar

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🔑 to success: Clearly highlight the value of the webinar for your audience – what will they learn by attending? Make sure to tag the speakers to generate more interest. 

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Example 1: Sendoso 

Example 2: Copy ai 

Example 3: DoWhatWorks

Play #9: Promote your newsletter

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🔑 to success: Keep it simple & highlight what people will get out of subscribing. 

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Example 1: Motion 

Play #10: Celebrate customer wins

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🔑 to success: Highlight customers when they win an award or achieve something big. This strategy provides social proof to help with prospecting efforts, but it’s also a great retention play, as it makes existing clients feel supported. 

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Example 1: Sendoso

Example 2: Lavender

Play #11: Demo different use cases of your product

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🔑 to success: Have a senior leader – from your own company or one of your customers – educate prospects on how they can use your product to achieve their business goals. 

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Example 1: Dreamdata 

Example 2: Clay 

Example 3: Clay

Play #12: Share long-form content with insights that your ICP would be interested in

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🔑 to success: Don’t tell everyone how great your product is – instead, show them the insights they could have access to if they used it. Also, make the content industry-specific. For example, content about conversion impact or email subject lines in B2B SaaS will be much more powerful than content about conversions or email in general. 

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Example 1: HockeyStack

Play #13: Provide practical advice based on insights from your platform

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🔑 to success: Don’t provide generic advice that people have heard many times. Instead, give advice that your ICP may find surprising, and always back it up with data from your platform. This strategy is powerful because potential buyers will be grateful for the thought leader’s recommendations AND they’ll also relate the thought leader’s content to your organization (and hopefully be interested in learning more). 

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Example 1: Lavender

Play #14: Leverage social proof from existing customers

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🔑 to success: Promote content from respected customers within your target industry highlighting the use cases and overall impact of your product.

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Example 1: UserGems 

Example 2: Clay

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Putting LinkedIn Thought Leader ads into action

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If you’re excited about thought leadership ads and want to start running them right away, here’s what I would recommend:

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1. Find a few people at your organization that would be great thought leaders. They don’t need to be influencers with 50K followers – they simply need to have a deep understanding of your product and your ICP (bonus if they also enjoy writing).  

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2. Once you’ve selected your thought leaders, choose the top 3 strategies from this playbook that you’d like to begin with. I don’t recommend starting with all 14 strategies at once, since that could get pretty overwhelming. 

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3. Have your thought leaders post a few times per month and boost their content to your ICP.

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That’s all you need to get started. 

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P.S.

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If  you’re starting out with thought leadership ads, I recommend using the engagement objective to build your retargeting audiences in a cost-effective way. 

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And if you want a complete masterclass on LinkedIn ads objectives, ad types, and bidding strategies, I highly recommend checking out this article by Ali Yildirim. 

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Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

•  Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

Most marketers know the LinkedIn Ads library exists. 

And the basics of how to use it (ex: search a competitor and voila you’ll see their ads 🪄) 

You’re going to go beyond the basics in this article and learn. 

5 unconventional ways experts use the library to uncover insights and inspiration.

Let’s dive into it 👇

‍

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Unconventional Way #1: Finding Conversation Ads Copy
• Unconventional Way #2: Identifying Localization Campaigns
• Unconventional Way #3: Studying Competitive Offers
• Unconventional Way #4: Creative Concept Discovery
• Unconventional Way #5: Landing Page Tear Downs

Unconventional Way #1: Finding Conversation Ads Copy

When you open up the LinkedIn Ads Library you can search %FIRSTNAME% to see conversation ad copy examples from competitors and relevant brands.

Here’s how to find conversation ad copy examples step-by-step:

1. Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search for a relevant competitor or brand.

2. Enter %FIRSTNAME% under search by keyword and select your relevant country and date range filters. 

3. From here you can browse all available variations based on your filters 🎉

If you don’t see any conversation ad messages you’ll likely need to adjust your filters or it’s possible your competitors or the relevant brands you’re researching aren’t actively testing this ad format.

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Unconventional Way #2: Identifying Localization Campaigns

Localization campaigns are when you advertise outside your primary language and draft ads, and landing pages relevant to a specific language. 

We’ve seen advertising outside of the English language a reduction in costs by up to 70%. 

If you have the potential to advertise outside of English it’s definitely worth testing. 

Here’s how to identify localization campaigns with the ad library:

1. Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search for a relevant competitor or brand.

2. Filter by all countries and uncheck your current target locations (ex: United States)

3. Browse through the results to identify different localization campaigns (look for ad copy that isn’t in your primary language, example below is an ad in German). 

4. Click view details on the ad to identify the targeted locations. 

Write down any interesting target countries and/or languages your competitors are targeting that you might consider reaching with localization campaigns. 

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Unconventional Way #3: Studying Competitive Offers

Let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS company looking to drive more demo requests. 

You can use the LinkedIn ad library to easily see ads from competitors or relevant brands that are also trying to drive more demo requests. 

The same is true if we’re talking about free trials, webinar registrations, ebook downloads, and anything else you can think of. 

Here’s how to study competitive offers with the ad library:

1. Open up the LinkedIn Ads Library and search your offer in the search by keyword filter.

2. From here you can browse various ad types that mention your offer within the ad copy. 

3. You can repeat this process and narrow down your filters for further granularity. 

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Unconventional Way #4: Creative Concept Discovery

Most advertisers using the library will just look at the ad examples provided and not dig much further. 

Instead what you should do is look for patterns around creative concepts to understand your competitors creative strategy (or the relevant brand in question). 

Creative concept = the format of which the creatives are designed off 

Here’s 10 examples of creative concepts:

1. Before & After
2. UGC
3. Meme
4. Product Mockup
5. Illustration (Drawings)
6. Stats & Research
7. Comedy Skit
8. Animated
9. Behind-the-Scenes
10. AI Generated

Using the library take note of any patterns of creative concepts your competitor/brand in question might be repeating. If it’s significant you might want to consider testing a similar concept. 

Use your best judgement when labelling concepts and look for patterns. 

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Unconventional Way #5: Landing Page Tear Downs

When viewing ads in the library you can  click on the CTA button to open up the associated landing page the ad is driving traffic towards. 

The original UTMs are also still within the URL parameter so you can reverse engineer these to better understand your competitors ad strategy (learn how here). 

With this valuable information you can tear down each page for inspiration. 

Hope you found this article useful! 

See you in the next article or one of our free courses!

‍

Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

•  Scale their ideas
• Level up their careers
• Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)