LinkedIn thought leader ads and ICP exclusions

What are thought leader ads?

A Thought Leader Ad is a LinkedIn post written by a person, not a company Page, that the company pays to show to a chosen audience. LinkedIn says you can sponsor posts from company employees, industry experts, customers or content creators, and the ad is always tied to your company Page.^[1]

The appeal for B2B is simple. Buyers on LinkedIn follow people more readily than logos, and a post from a named engineer or customer reads as an opinion rather than a pitch. The ad shows the author's name and photo, and the post itself is the creative.^[2]

How do you set one up?

The flow runs through Campaign Manager and needs the author's consent at each post:^[1]

1. Create a campaign with the Brand Awareness, Engagement or Video View objective.

2. Choose the single image ad or video ad format, to match the post.

3. Search for the member, pick the post, and send a request to sponsor it.

4. The author gets a notification and approves or denies the request.

5. Once approved, select the post as the ad creative and launch.

Some posts cannot be used. LinkedIn does not allow a post with several images, a poll or a document to be promoted, and you cannot add a headline or introductory text to the post. There is no call-to-action button, although links in the original post stay clickable. Any edit to the post has to come from its author.^[2]

Do they lower cost per lead?

Not on their own, and it is worth being clear about why. Thought Leader Ads run on awareness, engagement and video view objectives, so they are not built to collect form fills.^[1] A campaign judged only on cost per lead will make them look expensive.

Their job is earlier in the buying process: making the right people at the right accounts familiar with your experts before sales or a lead form asks for their time. LinkedIn's own page quotes advertisers who saw better click-through and lower cost per click, but it publishes no measured benchmark, so treat any figure you read elsewhere as a claim to test in your own account.^[1]

A fair way to judge them is to compare the accounts reached by Thought Leader Ads with similar accounts that were not, and look at the meetings and opportunities each group produces over a full sales cycle.

Which posts make good ads?

The posts that work as ads are usually the ones that already work as posts. We look for three traits:

• A point of view. A specific opinion on a problem your buyers have, written in the author's own words, not a product announcement.

• Proof the author can stand behind. A lesson from their own work, a mistake they fixed or a method they use. Never a client claim the company cannot show.

• One clear next step. Because the ad has no button, the post itself should say where to go, for example a guide or an event page.

The author matters as much as the words. A post from someone your buyers would recognize as a peer, such as a head of engineering for a technical product, does more than a post from a senior title outside their field. Building that bench of authors is part of employee advocacy.

How do exclusions protect the budget?

Even a strong post wastes money when it reaches people who will never buy: students, job seekers, competitors, existing customers or companies outside your target market. Exclusions remove them before you pay for the impression.

LinkedIn lets you upload a company list as a Matched Audience. A list can hold up to 300,000 companies or 20 MB, must have at least 300 rows to upload, and must match at least 300 members to run in an active campaign; LinkedIn recommends 1,000 companies or more for targeting.^[3] Each row can identify a company by name, website, email domain, LinkedIn Page URL or stock symbol.

Useful lists to exclude:

• Current customers, unless the campaign is for expansion.

• Competitors, so your experts are not training their teams.

• Disqualified accounts, such as companies below your minimum size or in markets you do not serve.

• Open opportunities owned by sales, when sales prefers to lead those conversations directly.

Excluding job functions, seniorities or locations narrows the audience further.^[4] Check the audience forecast after each change, because too narrow an audience limits delivery.

How do you measure the effect?

Measure at the account level, not the ad level:

1. Export the companies reached by Thought Leader Ads each month.

2. Match them to accounts in your CRM.

3. Compare meetings, opportunities and pipeline value against a similar group of accounts that were not reached.

4. Retarget people who engaged with a lead generation campaign, and route those leads to the right owner in real time.

Read the results over at least one sales cycle. Engagement in week one says little about pipeline in quarter two. Our B2B PPC service and the wider digital marketing pillar cover how paid social fits next to search and email, and our guide to finding wasted ad spend shows the checks to run each week.