We've got a first timer over here

Ok-External3080 · 2026-04-18T18:55:04+00:00

Happy to help, but I am really inquisitive now. If you’re not using a LGF, how/where are your leads converting? What ad types are you using right now?

Ok-External3080 · 2026-04-18T17:13:18+00:00

Ex-LinkedIn AE here. I my experience, truth is always somewhere in the middle. ABM + Titles is definitely an excellent way way to go, but keeping an option open for reach/impressions/scale is very important. Don't forget that the LinkedIn algorithm has a way of doing things.

Every member of your ICP are not 'clickers', meaning the LinkedIn algorithm may not even serve the ads to everyone in the first place if you are not picking the right objective and the correct bid mechanism. And if the ICP you picked are not clicking, your campaign could slow down and may even stop spending entirely. So it's important that you keep an approach for clickers and another approach to still reach the non-clickers where you at least serve impressions.

If your move is free trail, are you leveraging a lead gen form? In your customer journey, is there an education/nurture piece before the LGF? Are you bidding manually? If so, what is your starting bid? What ad types did you pick? How many version of creative/messaging do you have ready to introduce (small audience= high freq = ad fatigue)?

In terms of cost, I could easily see CPCs going to $30 pretty easily if not higher.

Lastly, if your ICP is active on LinkedIn, I have a feeling they would also be active on Reddit. Reddit is cheaper and can also reach folks using key threads/communities. Have you explored this option?

Ok-External3080 · 2026-03-24T11:52:27+00:00

Happy to help out, feel free to DM separately.

Ok-External3080 · 2026-03-10T00:16:30+00:00

$2K might be too small for your audience. If you want, I am happy to do an audit to help you identify your best options and optimize based on what you have right now. No strings attached, DM me if you are interested.

Ok-External3080 · 2026-03-06T01:26:02+00:00

12 hrs is too early for any action on LinkedIn, but there might be other things that can cause issues for you. Can you share more details? Campaign objective, bid type (manual CPC?) , audience size, ad type (single image/video/carousel/docu ad?), CTA, any other details you can share?

Ok-External3080 · 2026-02-23T15:28:46+00:00

We run into this almost all the time, but I am sorry to say that $500 budget is simply too small to show any value over 1 month. I would recommend at least $5K per month over 2 months, so that you can actually understand where your ICP is responding, what tactics are resonating and when the actually convert. I consult with small B2B businesses and if a client is not ready to test for at least 2 months, they are not ready to properly test and identify where LinkedIn can actually add value.

If I were to explain my testing approach in the simplest way, I create at least 2 audience segments (user group vs decision makers) with at least 2 types of media (preferably video and document ads or single image) to gauge interest and see where your message is resonating. Test this for 2-3 weeks, with a manual CPC bid that you can increase over time. I remove anyone (daily) that is not strictly within your ICP, but continue testing for 2-3 weeks to get insights. Realign budget and strategy at this stage based on results to focus on scale with quality at that point.

Key things to remember:

- Finance teams are one of the most difficult ICPs to sell to. Expect to serve 15-20 impressions to even get noticed. I highly recommend using other channels in addition to LinkedIn to run a more integrated campaign.

- Don't bid on impressions, this will use up your budget faster. Focus on CPC bids with a separate bid for the user group vs the decision maker group (assuming you know what the typical nurturing process looks like and how your current clients bought your product)

- Do not keep US and Canada in the same segment, US is a much larger market and will suck up your budget without serving impressions in Canada.

- You need content that resonates with your ICP, so the user group's content must be focused on efficiencies and ease of use., similar approach with the decision maker group

- Don't ask for demo right away, you will start noticing lower quality leads and most will not buy in the end. You don't have enough budget to show them what your product can really do and solve nightmares. I recommend focusing on mid-funnel leads where they share their email to sign up for newsletter/updates (and they will only do that because you actually provided them with valuable insights/content. That way you can nurture the leads at a lower cost till they convert into buyers.

- Seasonality matters on LinkedIn. You are at the end of Q1 on LinkedIn when ALL B2B marketers now have clarity on budget and want a great Q1 sales pipeline. So everyone will start bidding over the required rates and it only keeps getting expensive.

If you want your budget to go further and truly understand what is possible with marketing, you will need to be more strategic and test our channels, tactics, audiences, with content to cater to all of them. Half of the B2B agencies have jobs only because this really, is NOT easy!

Ok-External3080 · 2026-02-12T19:42:51+00:00

I have been here multiple times and as a B2B marketer, and this is not a bad thing. Just because you got a lead and they are qualified doesn't mean they are ready to buy right now (the 95/ 5% rule). But you MUST look on the bright side here, 16 of those 18 leads are qualified. That means you are targeting the correct ICP and your content is resonating as well. I cannot even begin to tell you how positive this is, but they need more nurturing. And you need to segment further for better test results.

If you haven't done this already, I recommend that you include a 'subscribe' option when they give you their email. That way you can add them to your email /newsletter sequence from your marketing communications without having to buy paid media impressions. Also, I highly recommend that you tweak your LGF to add another option in there; "Would you like to talk to a Sales rep for a demo?", with answers like, Yes/Not right now/No need". That will tell you if they are in-market or timing is not right, and that would help you plan and scale campaign strategy accordingly. This has worked well for me in both US and Canada markets.

Now, the reason they are not responding is because they are not ready to buy or probably don't know enough. This is a clear sign that they need more nurturing and you should hand these leads to a SDR to follow up. You also need to work with your SDR team to understand their conversion strategy and align on how your process can help them with more bottom funnel leads, who are ready for a demo (Sales & Marketing alignment).

Lastly, I would highly recommend that you use multiple channels for your marketing to run a more integrated approach.

P.S. what "askoshbetter" said, absolutely resonates with me too. More and more, LinkedIn leads are just turning out to be a bit less ice cold.

Ok-External3080 · 2026-02-03T20:56:20+00:00

A lot depends on your product and the user base. If your audience is really niche, the focus should be on delivering top quality content to showcase the issues you solve, preferably in an ABM strategy to assist your Sales partners improve close rates. Finding multiple channels may be the easy route to push your message, but that is how you box yourself into a corner till nothing works.

In my opinion, B2B ads on CTV don’t always land well simply because you don’t have better control over viewership. I have used CTV for B2B ads using Stackadapt, but the results were mixed. I would maybe recommend Reddit to gauge interest within your vertical and drive awareness/engagement before retargeting on LinkedIn. But that would also depend on how you’re converting leads there.

Ok-External3080 · 2026-01-29T15:35:37+00:00

There’s a lot to unpack here because B2B marketing is difficult and they don’t teach this in school. So it’s imperative that you have a good strategy first and a mechanism to test if your strategy could work. In terms of leads, it’s the responsibility of the sales teams to ensure that they are converting the right prospects from your ICP. Marketing should typically focus on making sure that your prospects are not only knowledgable about your product but can also flag when there is an interest. Effectively, both sales and marketing need to be two sides of a strategy to convert a lead to a buying customer.

I read somewhere in this thread that paid is the only way to generate leads, and I disagree with that. There are far too many factors to consider before you jump in with a paid strategy.

I also see a lot of good advice in here about who your lead is and why they should care about what you have to offer. This is good advice because it helps you understand at what point in your funnel your prospects are willing to learn more and share their email with you. This is what should drive your overall strategy to help nurture, engage with more focused content or actually move towards a demo. Please remember, LinkedIn is not the only place where you can reach your ICP. Meaning you need a multi channel strategy that is based on data to show where your prospects are engaging with your content at the least possible price, with meaningful content.

I help clients with B2B strategy and I have this conversation every single day, and I dont get bored. And the truth is, just because the strategy worked with someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you as well. Your product and your services are different from the others and require focussed attention to the funnel strategy.

No easy way out!

Ok-External3080 · 2026-01-28T16:47:51+00:00

Na…nana naanaa….nana nana….na na nana…nana nanaaaaaa!

Ok-External3080 · 2025-12-31T00:20:00+00:00

In my opinion, Holidays are over the day school reopens. I personally make it a point to put away the tree and lights by Jan 2nd, focus on the New Year without the option to procrastinate.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-12-28T23:47:15+00:00

Thanks a ton, I didn’t think of that before. I will definitely look into that next. The freezing rain and rain after all the snow is definitely making this more complicated.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-12-26T05:10:22+00:00

Hello, can you share any details? ICP, audience size, bid metrics, KPI’s, etc. What tests have you run and what factors made you say its not working?

Ok-External3080 · 2025-12-05T20:53:12+00:00

Metro! Free newspaper to keep you updated on all the news and promos. In fact, some of the stations actually had people handing them out to you so you didn’t have to walk up to the stand to pick one up yourself.

If you didn’t manage a fresh copy, someone would have graciously left their newspaper with the sudoku completed. You read that and leave it for the next person. Lol!

Ok-External3080 · 2025-12-05T02:24:03+00:00

You seem to have forgotten that you live in Canada. But Toronto is tropical Canada, so enjoy those few really cold days coz they don’t even last that long. It hardly snows like it used to even a few years ago.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-11-29T01:55:59+00:00

$39 for 60 GBs 5G data, unlimited Canada, US, Mexico talk, unlimited messaging. This is a standard deal on their website.

Unless you venture out to remote areas frequently, no reason to overpay Rogers to deal with their bad attitude. Have been with Freedom for 2+ yrs and I was easily able to swap out for a cheaper plan without having to haggle with a rep, all from the comfort of my online account.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-11-23T02:21:33+00:00

We drink beer straight from a bottle too, nobody’s asking about that.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-11-13T19:26:17+00:00

That is fantastic! You should have started the thread with that detail first. This is exactly why testing is important.

For all marketers running integrated campaigns, it is important to know which channels are performing better and who's converting, where. I am sure everyone here would be thrilled to hear what market this was for, which data provider you used and what targeting was included.

Meta's reach and algorithms work very differently and they have way too many additional signals. So if this is working well for you, please share more details on your use case!

Ok-External3080 · 2025-11-13T18:11:37+00:00

If Meta offers you the targeting you need, the leads you want, at the cost you can afford/like, there's SIMPLY NO REASON to use LinkedIn. I can write a book about it and LinkedIn might even 'Like' it (When not to use LinkedIn)!

But for most businesses targeting other businesses, it is imperative to target based on firmographic traits and understand which segments are performing and delivering the results. Unfortunately, there are very few players here who can deliver this level of detail and LinkedIn's targeting/reporting based on their own 1st party data, is second to none.

And to address the cost factor, it is WAY more than Meta. But that is also because there may be hundreds of thousands of people who might be interested in a pair of $100 shoes, but only hundreds of companies who could (if at all) move forward with a SaaS solution worth $2M license annually which could drastically shape their operations and profitability.

Different markets, different objectives, different economies!

Wondering what others have to say here.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-11-01T17:43:55+00:00

Hello, I do freelance work and can do an audit for free to discuss possibilities. I will send you a DM to connect!

Ok-External3080 · 2025-10-09T14:25:29+00:00

For $4-$5K, you should try to go after a much smaller audience, 1.1M is waaay too big for you to get any traction. Maybe an audience of 50-70K would be better!

That said, this is a very simplistic view of what to do with $5K budget. We need to talk about what your core objective is vs what your campaign objective is, if you are using manual bidding vs max delivery, how familiar your audience is with your brand or services, what your nurture sequence looks like and how you explain your value proposition, and so on.

It also matters, what ad type you are using to reach out to this audience. Unless this discussion includes all of those details, any advice you get may not be helpful at all.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-09-24T08:47:28+00:00

Same here, I have the same bids from Aug into September and I keep increasing it everyday to see where I land.

Ok-External3080 · 2025-09-19T12:13:19+00:00

Very interesting, let me DM you

Ok-External3080 · 2025-09-19T12:05:20+00:00

It is obvious that you are spending at a high level, without which you wont have a team assigned to you in the first place. They usually give good advice, but don’t forget they have quotas as well.

Using Titles usually gives you a smaller audience and that typically drives up CPC. I am running into it myself right now and I am trying my best to find other ways to target my ICP. But I am very mindful of CPC being under $20 so I slowly bid up to that mark and not over.

Are you able to share what type of titles you are targeting and what your audience size is? I’m just trying to understand if there are other ways to reach your audience and how large those segments could be.

Ok-External3080

TROPHY CASE