Why Your LinkedIn Ads Aren't Working  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Why Your LinkedIn Ads Aren't Working - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/07f4155d-e555-4031-b36d-b2de79af0899 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Professional Audience Is LinkedIn's Power** - LinkedIn's primary advantage is its professional audience and detailed self-reported job data. - This makes it uniquely effective for targeting niche B2B professionals by title, company, industry, and size. Transcript: Anthony Blatner The biggest thing about LinkedIn is the audience. Number one, who visits LinkedIn compared to who visits other platforms. It's definitely the professional audience. Everyone starts by creating their LinkedIn usually when they're entering the job market. And so that's where it starts. Some people never updated after that, but a lot of people do along their career path. And it's also evolved into more of a social platform now. A lot of it on the business professional side. So number one is audience. And then number two is just pure how you can target people. Because people start with using it as the resume, their job titles, their companies, those company pages are all, that data is there. It's all filled out, pretty up to date. So having those ways to target people based on job title, company, industry, company size, those options don't exist on almost any other platform. So it's a great way to be able to target those types of professionals. ([Time 0:01:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/833cd9ba-681c-4f0b-b1b5-8f49f637a0ea)) - **Change Default Campaign Settings** - Avoid launching LinkedIn campaigns with default settings because they favor enterprise and platform revenue. - Turn off audience expansion and exclude third-party placements to ensure your budget reaches the right professionals. Transcript: Anthony Blatner People get onto LinkedIn, they try the ads platform, and they will see much higher CPMs and CPCs than other platforms. So when you compare it with Facebook or other advertising platforms, your costs are going to look a lot higher. And then the challenge is most people will just, if they're not familiar with the platform, they're just going to set it up, use the default settings, click launch, just like they would On Facebook or Google. But a lot of those default settings aren't great for your small to medium sized business. They're more built for enterprise businesses. John Jantsch Or for LinkedIn to make a lot of money. Yeah. Anthony Blatner And platforms are in the business of them making money themselves. So a lot of those default settings aren't serving the small to medium-sized business. So we usually recommend changing a lot of those initial settings because somebody might set up a campaign, click launch, and then you then find out your budget didn't reach who you really Wanted it to reach due to audience expansion options. And then it didn't serve exactly where you wanted it to. It served more a third-party website as part of the ad network of LinkedIn because that's the default option. So you spent your money, you didn't reach who you wanted, you didn't serve your ads where you wanted. So of course you didn't get any good results out of it. So that's the most common scenario of what we review accounts. ([Time 0:03:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/31fd6c2e-fb2d-4b9e-b2cd-9963c65e8bf0)) - **Lead With Value For B2B Sales** - Use lead magnets like guides, webinars, or newsletters to start long B2B sales journeys. - Retarget those leads later with demos or consultations to move them toward purchase. Transcript: Anthony Blatner B2B sales takes a long time. So it's not going to be like selling widgets on Facebook, creating an e-commerce store. Someone's probably not going to click and buy right away. So you kind of have to plan for the long game. You might, to start that interaction, you might offer what we call a lead magnet, which is like a guide or report. You might get somebody to sign up for a webinar, sign up for a newsletter. What's that stepping stone to start it on the way to making a purchase? And you might then retarget them to then offer them a demo or a consultation afterwards. So first one is lead with value. Lead magnets lead generation campaigns are always a good way to do that. ([Time 0:05:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/678f2fa0-a6ac-4df0-88ad-3b58a879dd37)) - **Use Thought Leader Ads Not Company Ads** - Boost posts from real people (founders, CEOs) as Thought Leader ads for higher engagement. - Use case-study style posts that teach and include a clear call to action to start meaningful prospect interactions. Transcript: Anthony Blatner The newer one is what we call thought leader ads. And this is just the boosting of posts from, of people on LinkedIn. And so, you know, you'll post on LinkedIn from your profile. And as of maybe about a year ago, now you can boost posts from people. So we just see that these perform so much better than a traditional company ad, because people are on LinkedIn to hear from other people, not to read ads from companies. They're there to hear from other people. John Jantsch So walk me through that a little bit. Is that similar to, would you actually have some sort of arrangement with that thought leader to where they would write a post that's maybe favorable to something you're trying to push? Almost like an influencer would, you know, in other platforms. Anthony Blatner Yeah. And you can set up like, you know, external influencers, but probably step one is you yourself or people in your company or your CEO and founder. That's usually, it's just called thought leader ads. It's the name of the ad unit is. So most companies are going to start with their founder, CEO or themselves. And then, I mean, nowadays, yes, lots of people are setting up arrangements with third-party influencers and doing those kinds of sponsored deals. But yeah, step one is like your CEO, founder. And then there's a lot of content. You think about it a little bit differently, where it's like, what is somebody going to post that their prospect wants to read, and then starts that interaction? So what we see work very well across the board, like in different industries have different things that are going to work and different companies, but across the board, it's like a really Good case study is a great way to kind of start that because people are on LinkedIn to learn from others and learn how they can do better at their job or in their company. So often they want to read successful case studies by similar companies, similar people. So that's a great content format to start with. So if you have really strong case studies, you know, write that as a post and you do have to write it of like, hey, I'm going to teach you something, read this. And then if you are interested in what we did, you can contact me, you can click here to learn more, and then you can kind of continue the journey from there. But we just see that those get so much higher engagement rates and LinkedIn reports on dwell time, which means people are, we get those stats so we can see people are sitting there and Reading that content two to three times longer than a traditional company ad. So it just shows like people are reading this content, they're absorbing it. ([Time 0:06:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/052e2914-e732-4b0b-9e8a-5819bf96fc05)) - **Build Small, Precise Audiences** - Do audience research: inspect top customers' LinkedIn profiles to build precise demographic targets. - Create small, niche audiences and layer skills, interests, or groups instead of relying on broad algorithmic expansion. Transcript: Anthony Blatner Yes, there's a lot of sauces and lots of flavors on LinkedIn, but it starts with number one is that what I told you earlier of, don't do the default settings because default, it says audience Expansion. And like even Facebook and Google try to do the same thing. I think theirs might be a little more clear sometimes. But, you know, on LinkedIn, when you're selling B2B, you usually want to target a very specific professional at a very specific type of company. So when you have when you allow the algorithm to go find similar people, suddenly you've made a couple of hops and are not in the industry and job you want to be reaching. So that's number one. From there, secret sauces are, we usually start with like audience research. Give me a few of your best customers or a few of your target customers. Let's go download their, you know, look at their profiles. How do they categorize themselves? What are the job titles? What are the industries, company sizes? And then we'll build a demographic profile from that of who we want to target. And then the way to kind of take that a step further is to get more niche into what are the skills or interests or groups on top of that. When you do Facebook and Google advertising, often you give it a very big audience and you let the algorithm go find the right person for you. LinkedIn's algorithm isn't as advanced as these other platforms, but we also don't need it to be. We don't want the algorithm to do any work for us. We want to have the campaigns reach exactly who we want. So don't give it very broad, very big audiences. Give it very small and niche audiences of exactly who you want to reach. ([Time 0:08:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0f92e86d-14bb-482b-9343-80061f4112ef)) - **Upload Custom Company Lists** - Upload your own company lists when LinkedIn's taxonomy doesn't match your target industry. - Have sales or BDRs create these lists to guarantee you reach exact companies you want. Transcript: Anthony Blatner There's a lot of third-party data platforms out there that can be useful, but also if you know your industry, you can sit down and write that list yourself or have a BDR salesperson write That list. And then you can upload that to LinkedIn and make sure you're going after the exact companies you want. There isn't always a LinkedIn industry definition for the exact industry you want to reach. And sometimes you have to make your own list. ([Time 0:10:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e42a0742-ecc6-4632-acfe-8dbe7d37b4e5)) - **LTV Determines LinkedIn Viability** - LinkedIn ad costs are higher but justified if customer LTV supports it, typically ~$15K or more. - Thought Leader ads can dramatically lower CPCs and shift the viable LTV threshold downward. Transcript: Anthony Blatner Yeah. And so number one, it does start with having higher costs as a platform. Just you do have to have a high enough LTV for that ROI to make sense in the end. So you're probably not going to be selling kind of small widgets or very cheap services. If you do, you would just stick to the organic side of the platform. You probably wouldn't spend too much on ads or maybe your ads are just retargeting people who are already visiting your website. So you use stuff like that. But yeah, you need to have a high enough LTV for that ROI to make sense. So usually we say you want to have at least 15K of your LTV. So this is more enterprise level software, more, you know, bigger ongoing services. So if you know like, Hey, you know, maybe I do client services and on average your clients sticks with us for a year and we make 20K from that client. Great. If you're, you know lower, 15K or lower, then you just want to be a little more careful of making sure your stats are working out and that you are keeping clients or retaining clients. So that's usually what we say to people. That line, I'd say, is moving a little bit with the new thought leader ads. The other advantage is they get so much higher engagement rate and people sit there and read it to all time like I talked about, which then allows you to get cheaper costs on your ads. ([Time 0:12:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0b040a9c-88bc-49c6-be6c-7258b2255f32)) - **Thought Leader Ads Cut Costs Big** - Use Thought Leader ads to achieve much lower CPCs, sometimes $1–2 or below $1 for top content. - Leverage that cheap engagement to compete with or outperform Facebook results for B2B targeting. Transcript: Anthony Blatner So that's expensive. So yeah, you just need to make sure your ROI is going to work out there with the thought leader ad. If you are getting very high engagement, we see thought leader ads get one to $2 per click. And then you are comparable with a Facebook ad and maybe even better than a Facebook ad. Some of the best ones we're running right now are below a dollar per click and are just crushing the Facebook results that they're getting on Facebook because we have the targeting we Want on LinkedIn. ([Time 0:14:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/91f0ad80-6d2d-41e5-97d6-e1434fdc54ee)) - **Retarget Website And Company Page Visitors** - Install LinkedIn's website pixel and retarget visitors and company page visitors on LinkedIn. - Start retargeting company-page visitors when you already have decent organic traffic there. Transcript: Anthony Blatner Is website retargeting. So yeah, same pixel, very similar to like Meta's pixel. It'll track who visits your website and then retarget those people. And then also people who visit your company page. You can retarget those people as well. Company pages rank very well in Google. So often we'll see, oh, you already have a good amount of traffic to your company page. ([Time 0:14:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/57a88b3c-d5c7-437f-bff5-5940d1aa5743)) - **Prefer Native Forms For Lower CPLs** - Use LinkedIn's native lead forms for lower CPLs when appropriate and to reduce friction for executives. - Use landing pages for Thought Leader ads because native forms are not available for that ad type. Transcript: Anthony Blatner Yeah, so I still, there's still cases for both. I do often recommend the LinkedIn forms because your CPL is going to be better, much better than having somebody click off to a website, submit a form there. And when you're already paying LinkedIn's higher prices, you need that math to make better sense for you. So you do use LinkedIn's forms a lot. Your average executive might not spend too much time clicking off to a website, reading a bunch, finding the form, submitting it. So let's just make that an easy process. But with the thought leader ads, you can't use the native form. So we do still use landing pages a lot with thought leader ads. But then again, the benefit of those, you get cheaper cost per clicks. ([Time 0:15:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7864739e-9dd6-4ec0-a17c-4f049b8c003b)) - **Keep Creative Clear And Targeted** - Keep LinkedIn ad creative clear and direct and state who the ad is for and what you offer. - Avoid overly flashy Facebook-style creative that attracts untargeted, costly clicks. Transcript: Anthony Blatner Number one is you don't want to go too far to the Facebook side of things where like Facebook marketing tends to be very flashy, get someone's attention, draw them in and get the click. On LinkedIn, you want to be more clear and direct. Who is this for and what are you offering? Because even with LinkedIn's good targeting, you still will have an audience and not everyone in that audience is a perfect fit. So you want to reduce the unintentional, untargeted clicks. Again, back to those expensive prices, if somebody isn't a perfect fit, you don't want to just grab their attention and get them to click on something that's not relevant. And then you paid 15 bucks for that click. So you want to make sure you're getting targeted clicks. So we do keep creative a little more clear and direct under who are we talking to? ([Time 0:17:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/682e0760-27a8-4cc3-95c3-8bdd1e628426)) - **AI Is Useful But Can Hurt Authenticity** - AI helps create and test content at scale but hurts authenticity when overused in comments or video. - Human-authentic content remains more trusted for high-ticket B2B decisions. Transcript: Anthony Blatner AI on social is a whole can of worms. I'd say like right now, the thing that LinkedIn does need to figure out is the, there are a lot of AI comments that get left on things. And like, you can just, most of the time you can tell like that's an AI comment, that's an AI comment. I know they're taking steps in the right direction. It's a hard problem to solve because, you know, sometimes it's hard to tell when someone's really commenting. Thanks versus AI. Thanks. But, you know, I think they're, I think they're taking steps in the right direction. They just, that needs to be figured out because there is some fluff and spam with that. And not to say it's any better on Facebook, like if anything, worse Facebook. So there's like the authenticity aspect. And I think, you know, when you're buying something for your business, when you're spending more money, people are going to critique it, analyze it more before they make that purchase. So I don't know, you know, right now, like AI generated videos aren't super useful or effective because there's no authenticity to that. People don't trust that content. So it doesn't work. So it'll be, it's interesting, you know, we'll see what happens. Sure. AI copied, that's helpful for marketers. It's helpful for everyone to, you know, create content. Sometimes you're in niche industries and it takes a lot of time to learn that industry. So you'll use AI to help you write that content or critique your content. That's all beneficial. So very early days. ([Time 0:18:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/338a7cd2-79b5-49cf-a329-db6ff8975d63))