Hey!
Patrick here from Ad Juice.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Squeeze, the newsletter created for B2B marketing operators looking for fresh LinkedIn Ads tactics, proven on real ad accounts.
Today, I’m gonna be show you how to prioritize your LinkedIn Ads setup for maximum pipeline.
You don’t have a creative problem, you have a foundations problem
I’ve audited dozens of LinkedIn Ads accounts over the last 7 years managing accounts. Like most marketers, I used to look straight at the creative.
But, I’d often tweak it, and still not see the volume of pipeline I was proud to present back to clients.
That was until I joined my first real agency that deeply understood performance channels. That’s when I quickly learned creative was dead last in priority list.
See, most B2Bs optimize LinkedIn Ads like this: creative first, then targeting, then budget, and tracking gets totally overlooked. Almost none of it is pulled from real-world data either.
But, B2Bs that generate consistent pipeline from LinkedIn Ads optimize like this: Tracking first, then budget, then targeting, and creative enhancements come once the rest is dialed in.
So, the average B2B who’s dissatisfied with LinkedIn Ads performance has the priority list completely backwards. No wonder that platform isn’t generating pipeline!
Fix Your Tracking First
Without accurate tracking, you can’t make smart optimization decisions. You just won’t know which ads and campaigns generate leads, pipeline, and revenue so you can launch more of them.
In my last role, we were able to hit 2X our pipeline target. The single biggest contributing factor was that every month we’d analyze which campaigns generated the most form submissions, SQLs, and closed deals. We’d push more budget to the best performers, cut the underperformers, and create more content similar to what was already working.
I was only able to do that because we had tracking dialed in.
For most B2Bs, you’ll need to use LinkedIn’s Conversion API for form submissions (also known as CAPI). And, use Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) to send pipeline and revenue data back to your LinkedIn Ads account. This is fairly straightforward if you’re using HubSpot or Salesforce. We were using Dreamdata and were able to use this to take care of our offline conversions as it was basically 1-click and done.
I can’t stress enough how important this step is. It should be #1 on your priority list if you’re not happy with LinkedIn Ads pipeline right now. Halt creative production. Stop tweaking the audience. Whatever it takes to get this checked off.
Now it’s time to optimize your targeting
Once your tracking is locked in and bullet-proof, you can start thinking about targeting.
The biggest mistake I see here is that B2Bs try to target WAY too many people.
Their budget is spread too thin, spend is wasted on thousands of irrelevant users, and reach and frequency are way too low to generate enough recall to build a consistent pipeline engine.
It’s hard to hear, but you have to operate within your constraints. And, that means letting go off audience FOMO and prioritizing the most efficient audiences possible.
Here’s an exercise I’d conduct every quarter in my previous role to make sure our ads were being served to the most profitable audiences, who were the best fit for our services:
Pull a list of all closed/won deals from the past 90 days
Bucket them into segments based on business type
Build a tiered list of segments based on:
Lowest CAC
Highest ACVs
Highest close rates
With this information, I was able to allocate more spend to segments where I’d generate the most pipeline, with the least amount of investment. And, that enabled us to not only overachieve on the pipeline goal, but also decrease CAC 14% in the process.
Once you have your list, you then need to ensure your in-platform targeting is actually reaching companies with similar firmographics to those segments.
Generally, it’s better to avoid in-platform filters, as they’re pretty generous with their definitions which means ads end up getting served to a lot of irrelevant users.
Here’s my favorite way to build LinkedIn Ads audiences right now:
Pull company lists using Clay based on firmographic data matching my target segments
Upload the company list to LinkedIn Ads
Layer LinkedIn’s job filtering targeting over the company list to target job titles that match contacts who actually submitted forms on the website
DON’T exclude pipeline from these ads. Pipeline is your most valuable audience and you want them to keep seeing ads until they’re closed.
DO exclude existing customers from your ads. Especially if budget is limited.
Here are a few other ways you can build audiences that I’ve seen work well too:
Build out a contact list using Primer. This will automatically sync to your ad account so you can set it and forget it. It has similar targeting filters to LinkedIn, but I’ve found it to be much more accurate. The benefit is, if you need to tweak any targeting criteria, it’ll also automatically sync that to your campaigns when you update the audiences.
Send an in-market audience with Vector. I’ve not actually tested this method yet, but it is on my radar for experiments this year. That said, many marketers I respect love the tool, so I’d recommend testing it if you have need to only go after in-market audiences.
Plan your budget based on data, not guesswork
Now that you know who to target, and how to target them, it’s time to work out if you actually have enough budget to generate pipeline from your audience.
To do this, you’ll need to calculate how much it costs to hit 10 frequency and 80% audience penetration over 90 days based on your audience size and your uCPM. uCPM is a new name I invented that means Cost per 1,000 Member Accounts Reached, because let’s face it, that’s a mouthful. uCPM stands for unique CPM, and it’s important to base audience calculations on this, not on CPM, because CPM doesn’t tell you how much it costs to reach unique users, only how much it costs to get impressions. But, we don’t just want impressions, we want reach.
You can find all of this information in the LinkedIn Ads platform, then, once you have it, you can use this prompt in your preferred AI tool to get the calculation:
I want to calculate the total cost of a campaign over 90 days.
Here are my inputs:
Audience size: [INSERT AUDIENCE SIZE]
uCPM (cost per 1,000 member accounts reached): [INSERT uCPM]
Target audience penetration: 80%
Target frequency: 10 impressions per member
Please calculate:
The number of members to reach (audience × 80%)
The total impressions required (members reached × 10)
The total 90-day cost (total impressions ÷ 1,000 × uCPM)
The approximate daily cost (total ÷ 90)
The approximate monthly cost (total ÷ 3)
Show the workings and present the final figures clearly.At this stage, many companies realize they don’t actually have enough budget to meaningfully reach their audience. That leaves you with a few options:
You can try requesting more budget, using the numbers above as rationalization to your exec team to show them why the current budget won’t work for the segments they want to target. Requesting more budget is usually tricky, and often gets declined. So, if this fails, you’ll need to try one of the options below.
Shrink your audience size. To do this, you’ll want to progressively eliminate segments based on your tier list. This is why it’s so important to create. Cut segments from lowest upwards until the audience size matches the budget you have available. If the budget still isn’t enough, you can try the final option.
Now, you’ll want to create a sub-segment within your priority segment. This could be a set of specific industries, job titles, or geographies. Repeat the process above removing sub-segments from your targeting until your audience size matches the available budget.
This process is really, really important. Because, if you’re unable to hit those reach and frequency targets, you’re less likely to noticed by in-market buyers who become pipeline this quarter, and less likely to be remembered by out-market buyers who become pipeline in the next quarter. Essentially, you’re giving LinkedIn your budget, but it’s not gonna give you any pipeline in return.
Finally, it’s time to build out your creative
Now that you’ve got all the fundamentals out of the way, it’s finally time to start thinking about your ad creative.
As with all the steps above, you don’t want to base this on guesswork either.
Here’s a process I like to run every time I’m taking over a new account, and then every quarter after that:
Pull sales call transcripts from all your closed/won deals over the previous 90 days. Ideally, this should be the very first sales call. That’s when the pain is most uncomfortable, so you’ll learn what’s really the problems attracting prospects to book calls.
Feed all of these transcripts into your preferred AI platform and ask it to analyze them for consistent themes that come up repeatedly. Then, organize those themes into a tiered list based on what comes up most often.
Once you have that information, you can build what I call a Modular Ad Messaging Matrix. This is a simple spreadsheet that gives you a drag and drop modular system for creating ads that slap. Here’s the columns you need:
Prioritized list of pain points
Associated products and services
Unique POVs on each pain point
Outcome prospects can expect with your product or service
(Optional) I also like to add 3 to 4 additional columns with different creative angles I can test for each pain point
Now that you have your modular ad matrix, you can start building ads, ensuring that everyone hits this checklist. You just scan across your matrix, and you know exactly what elements need to be in the ad:
Leads with a pain point
Associates your product and brand to the pain point
Adds your unique POV on how to solve the problem
Showcases an outcome prospects can expect if they decide to buy
Here’s an example based on my messaging matrix I’m using for Ad Juice:
In terms of which ad formats to prioritize, I generally recommend the following system based on what I’ve seen drive the lowest CAC and most efficient pipeline:
Thought-leader ads. Unquestionable GOAT’d format on LinkedIn Ads right now. Single image and video variations boths work well.
Ungated document ads. Ungating them allows you to reduce uCPM and get more distribution, which is way more valuable for pipeline generation.
CTV/video. These are a great choice since CTV is non-skippable inventory which is proven to increase recall. As an added bonus, they also have lower uCPMs since many B2Bs are afraid to test them.
Single image ads. Generic branded content won’t work though. If you’re going to run these, you really need to create engaging images that stop the scroll.
Conversation ads. They’re hit and miss. Some B2Bs see great results, others not so much. If you are going to run them, you’ll need a seriously hard-to-say-not-to offer.
Spotlight/text ads. I love running this for retargeting since they’re super low uCPM allowing you to get a lot more ad impressions in for very little.
That’s all team!
That’s it from me for this week.
A lot to chew on, but I have no doubt you’ll see a big spike in pipeline, relatively quickly, if you implement this process.
Catch ya next week!
P.S. Wanna have me run your LinkedIn Ads for you? Hit this link to book a 30 minute strategy call where I’ll ask a few questions about your biz and strategy, then send across an in-depth 90 day roadmap to get your account generating consistent pipeline.