In the B2B world, paid media is not about volume; it is all about precision targeting.
Many B2B companies get paid media wrong. Not through lack of effort or budget. They simply apply consumer marketing logic to business audiences and wonder why the results disappoint.
The fundamental problem? Consumer campaigns can afford to think in terms of reach. Casting a wide net, letting statistical probability do the work, measure cost per acquisition, optimise, repeat. B2B paid media plays by different rules. You are trying to reach the specific individuals who can sign off on a purchase, and depending on your market, there might only be a few hundred of them in the entire country.
Google Ads remains excellent for capturing existing demand. Someone searches “enterprise CRM comparison” and you are there with an answer. Brilliant. Meta can deliver results, particularly for products with broader appeal. But when you need to find the head of procurement at a mid-sized manufacturer? Or the CFO quietly evaluating new financial systems? Those platforms were not designed with that use case in mind.
Google Ads and Meta still have their place, but if you are selling to anyone in the C-suite, LinkedIn is where these people spend their professional time. Where they are reading industry updates, checking competitor activity, and yes, also clicking on ads that speak to problems they are actively trying to solve.
LinkedIn fills a gap that nothing else quite manages.
Why LinkedIn Ads Work for B2B Advertising
Here is the thing about LinkedIn that is easy to overlook: it is the only major platform where users actively seek to maintain accurate professional information about themselves.
On Facebook and Instagram, job titles are frequently inaccurate. LinkedIn is different because careers depend on it. Someone who claims to be a finance director on LinkedIn is significantly more likely to actually be one. That sounds obvious, but the implications for advertising are significant.
When you select a job title on other platforms, you are relying on inferred data. The platform watches browsing behaviour, tracks app usage, notes purchase patterns, and then uses that data to make educated guesses about who someone might be. Sometimes those guesses are remarkably accurate, but you want better accuracy for successful B2B campaigns.
LinkedIn sidesteps inference entirely. Users provide their job title, employer, industry, skills, and complete career history voluntarily. They keep it current because an outdated profile is a professional liability.
The statistics reflect this difference. LinkedIn’s own research suggests the platform generates 80% of B2B leads from social media. That figure comes from LinkedIn itself, so treat it appropriately. But even accounting for self-interest, the gap between LinkedIn and everything else is striking.
What is more telling is that 40% of B2B marketers rate LinkedIn as their most effective channel for quality leads. Not quantity. Quality. That distinction matters greatly when your sales team does not have time chasing prospects who were never going to buy.
The same research indicates LinkedIn delivers a cost per lead 28% lower than Google Ads for B2B campaigns. Again, LinkedIn’s data, but the finding aligns with what we see in practice.
LinkedIn Ads Targeting: Reach the Right Buyers
The targeting options go considerably deeper than most platforms allow. You are not limited to broad demographics or interest categories. You can build audiences based on how people actually work.
The available criteria include:
- Job title and function (CFOs, marketing directors, IT leads, procurement managers)
- Company size and industry sector
- Seniority level, from middle management through to board level
- Specific skills listed on profiles
- Years of experience in the current role or overall
- LinkedIn Group membership
- Named companies for account-based campaigns
- Educational background and qualifications
The targeting can get remarkably specific. Layer job function, company size, industry, and a couple of skill filters, and you might end up with an audience of forty or fifty people. Not a general persona sketched on a whiteboard. Actual individuals who match exactly what you are looking for.
That precision cuts both ways. Highly specific audiences are small, which limits scale and can push costs higher. There is a balance to strike between precision and reach that depends entirely on your economics. If your average deal value is £50,000, paying more per lead for precisely the right people makes obvious sense. If you are selling a £500 annual subscription, the maths changes considerably.
Matched Audiences extends targeting further. Upload your existing customer list and find those same people on LinkedIn. Retarget visitors who browsed your pricing page but did not enquire. Build lookalike audiences from your highest-value accounts. The mechanics are familiar from other platforms, but the underlying data quality is noticeably better.
One pattern is observed repeatedly: initial assumptions about who converts are often wrong. Check your demographic breakdowns regularly. The data will tell you what is actually happening, which is frequently not what you expected.
LinkedIn Ad Formats That Generate Leads for B2B
LinkedIn offers several ad formats. Not all deserve equal attention.
Sponsored Content remains the workhorse for most B2B campaigns. These ads appear in the main feed, looking much like organic posts but with a “Promoted” label. Single-image ads are the simplest to produce and test. Document ads let you offer gated content directly within LinkedIn, removing the need for external landing pages. Video can drive better engagement, though production costs add up, and mediocre video underperforms good static images.
Lead Gen Forms merit particular attention. These native forms auto-populate with user profile data. Someone clicks your ad, a form appears with their details already completed, and one tap submits it. The friction reduction is dramatic.
LinkedIn reports these forms convert at five times the rate of external landing pages. Independent analysis from Sopro puts conversion rates around 13%, compared with 2-3% for average landing pages. Even accounting for variation, that is a meaningful difference.
The trade-off is data ownership. Leads captured through LinkedIn forms live in LinkedIn’s system initially. You will need to either download them manually or configure CRM integrations and check compatibility with your setup.
Message Ads land directly in prospects’ LinkedIn inboxes. Open rates are high, up to 50-60%. The format works well for direct offers like event invitations or demo requests. However, it is easy to overuse, as nobody wants their inbox flooded with sales messages, and recipients can opt out entirely.
Text Ads and Dynamic Ads tend to work better for awareness than direct response. Lower cost but also lower engagement. Useful as a supplement, rarely as a primary format.
Measuring LinkedIn Ads Performance and ROI
Clicks and impressions look good in reports. LinkedIn’s measurement capabilities go deeper, assuming you set them up properly. The Insight Tag is foundational. This code tracks what happens after ad clicks: page views, form completions, demo requests, and content downloads.
Website Demographics shows the professional composition of your site visitors, regardless of how they arrived. Which job functions visit most frequently? What seniority levels? Which industries? This validates targeting assumptions and surface segments you might have overlooked.
Conversion tracking for extended sales cycles addresses a persistent B2B challenge. When deals take six months to close and involve multiple stakeholders, attributing revenue to specific campaigns is genuinely difficult. LinkedIn’s offline conversion tracking lets you upload closed deal data and match it to historical ad exposure. Imperfect, but still useful.
For companies with CRM integrations configured, Revenue Attribution Reports connect advertising investment to pipeline value and closed revenue. The accuracy depends on your data quality and sales process consistency. When it works, it transforms budget conversations.
How to Use LinkedIn Audience Insights
LinkedIn provides an Audience Insights feature that too many advertisers do not take advantage of. A bit of a waste, frankly.
You can analyse the professional makeup of your website visitors, matched audiences, and page followers:
- Job functions and seniority distribution
- Industries and company sizes
- Skills and professional interests
- Top companies represented
- Geographic spread
Beyond campaign refinement, you can validate assumptions about who your customers actually are. Perhaps, they are marketing managers rather than directors. Mid-market companies rather than enterprises. Different industries entirely.
Account-Based Marketing with LinkedIn Ads
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has been stretched by many vendors that claim to enable it. Most marketers claim to be doing it. Few can explain precisely what it involves.
At its simplest, ABM inverts the traditional marketing funnel. Instead of generating large volumes of leads and hoping some turn out to be valuable, you identify specific companies you want to win and concentrate resources accordingly. Quality over quantity, taken to its logical conclusion.
LinkedIn supports this approach genuinely well.
Upload a target account list and serve ads exclusively to employees at those organisations. Run different ads for different roles within the same company. Build familiarity over time, so when your sales team eventually makes contact, your company name already means something.
The Company Engagement Report becomes particularly valuable here. You can track whether target accounts are actually seeing and engaging with your ads, not just individual leads, but aggregate attention from the organisations you care about.
The research on ABM effectiveness is fairly consistent. SiriusDecisions found that 91% of companies running ABM programmes reported larger average deal sizes, with a quarter seeing increases exceeding 50%. ITSMA research indicates 87% of marketers who measure ROI rate ABM as outperforming their other marketing spend.
Survey data always warrants scepticism. People tend to report results that justify their decisions. But the pattern across multiple studies is consistent enough to take seriously.
However, there is a significant catch.
ABM only works when marketing and sales are genuinely aligned. If your ads target one set of accounts whilst your sales team pursues an entirely different list, you are burning money. If marketing builds awareness at companies where sales have no intention of following up, the investment generates nothing.
The account lists get agreed in a quarterly planning session, everyone nods along, then sales continues calling whoever they were calling before, whilst marketing targets a completely different set of data. Neither team’s efforts reinforce the other.
The coordination has to be real and ongoing. Shared account lists, regular alignment meetings, integrated reporting. Organisational work is as much as campaign work.
LinkedIn Ads Costs and Bidding Strategy
LinkedIn is not inexpensive. Average cost per click typically runs between £4 and £8, sometimes higher for competitive audiences. Cost per lead varies considerably based on offer and targeting: £50-150 for gated content is common, £200+ for demo requests is not unusual.
These figures surprise marketers accustomed to Meta or Display pricing. But comparing raw CPCs misses the point. What matters is cost per qualified opportunity and ultimately cost per customer acquired. A £150 lead that converts to a £50,000 contract represents different economics than a £5 lead that goes nowhere.
That said, unnecessary spending can be avoided.
Bidding strategy matters more than most realise. LinkedIn defaults to Maximum Delivery, which optimises for spending the budget quickly. This tends to be expensive. Manual bidding with cost caps provides more control. Cost-per-result bidding works well once sufficient conversion data exists.
Audience size affects cost. Very narrow audiences typically have higher CPCs due to limited inventory. Modest broadening can reduce costs without materially diluting quality.
Relevance scores influence pricing. LinkedIn rewards engaging ads with better rates. Creative that resonates is just not more effective; it is literally less costly to run.
Frequency requires management. Without intervention, LinkedIn will show your ads to the same people repeatedly. Beyond a certain point, additional impressions waste the budget and risk annoying prospects.
LinkedIn Ads Creative: How to Stand Out
Most LinkedIn advertising looks identical. Stock photography of professionals in meeting rooms. Generic benefit claims. Interchangeable calls to action. It blurs together.
Differentiation does not always require a higher production budget. It requires a willingness to do something different.
Authenticity tends to outperform polish. Real photographs of your team. Genuine customer quotes. Actual product screenshots. Content that feels human rather than corporate.
Specificity beats generality. “Reduce procurement costs by 23%” lands harder than “improve efficiency.” “Join 340 UK manufacturing CFOs” compels more than “thousands of finance professionals.”
The opening line matters disproportionately. On mobile, especially, only the first few lines display before truncation. If those do not create interest, nothing else has a chance to work properly.
Thought leader ads often outperform company content. Promoting posts from named individuals rather than brand accounts typically generates higher engagement. People respond to people more readily.
LinkedIn’s AI Features for B2B Advertising
LinkedIn has invested substantially in machine learning. Campaign recommendations have improved. Audience suggestions surface segments worth testing. Performance alerts identify problems earlier. Predictive Audiences use conversion data to find high-probability prospects automatically.
The integration with Microsoft’s advertising ecosystem creates additional possibilities. LinkedIn audience data can now be applied to campaigns across the Microsoft network, extending reach whilst retaining professional targeting precision.
None of this replaces strategic thinking. Clear objectives, sensible targeting, and creative content that respects your audience’s intelligence are still required. But the platform has become notably better at amplifying good decisions and limiting damage from poor ones.
AI-powered has become a phrase marketing departments use all too frequently. But the improvements in how LinkedIn learns from conversion data? Those are genuine enough to make a practical difference.
Work With AIWIZ for B2B LinkedIn Ads
Running LinkedIn campaigns is straightforward. Running them profitably, consistently, at scale? That proves harder than many expect.
The gap between campaigns that generate activity and campaigns that generate revenue comes down to accumulated expertise: understanding which targeting approaches work for which objectives, recognising when data suggests a change in direction, and knowing the difference between normal variations and genuine underperformance.
It also requires understanding how B2B purchasing works, with multiple stakeholders that may have competing priorities. Extended evaluation periods. Budget cycles and procurement processes. Decisions that stall for months then suddenly accelerate.
Our approach ties campaign objectives to commercial outcomes rather than platform metrics. We build targeting based on who actually converts, not just who you hope might convert. We develop creative that treats your prospects as professionals capable of making their own decisions. We measure what matters to your business and optimise relentlessly against those metrics.
When executed properly, LinkedIn becomes a reliable source of qualified opportunities for your sales team.
If building that capability sounds valuable, we welcome you to have a conversation with our team.