Linkedin Advertising
There is a secret whatsapp group where B2B SaaS CMO's share Linkedin advertising results. We convinced several members to share the data below for the first time publicly.
If you're new to Linkedin Ads:
- Use the Linkedin Ad Library to study ads your competitors are running
- Get to know all Linkedin Ad Unit types
In this post you’ll:
- See inside 8 Linkedin Ad accounts that spent over $1m last year
- Get the playbook to close new $20k deals from Linkedin fast
- Understand the 4 audiences every advanced Linkedin Ad Spenders uses
- See the differences in ad creatives and copy to drive cost per click under $1.00
- When you finish, you’ll have a clear plan to adding $1m of new ARR fast
8 Case Studies to Copy:
- We spent $24k to generate 523 demo's booked with a 60% show up rate (understory)
- We spent $130k to generate 51,047 clicks and $1m in closed sales (Hey Digital)
- We spent $135k on Linkedin Cold Layer and Retargeting to close $528,000 in new ARR (Grouts)
- We spent $73k on Linkedin Thought Leader ads to get 17,771 clicks and a 5 month CAC Payback (Paragon)
- We spent $904k to generate 272,873 clicks to grow our B2B HR SaaS (TripleDart)
- We spent $81.26 to get 131 clicks, a 9.24% CTR, and $23,850 in closed sales (Inbox Pirates)
- We spent $117k to get 18k clicks and $350k in closed sales (GetUpLead)
- We spent $203k to generate 506 leads, converted 100 into sales at a $50k/yr price point (Impactable)
All of these case studies rely on building 4 Linkedin Audiences:
- Initial Cold Layer
- 90 Day Retargeting Layer
- 90-180 Day Digital Nurture
- 30 day high intent retargeting
Top 6 B2B SaaS Linkedin Ad Agency's
If you want to test Linkedin, but don't want to do it yourself, us one of these agency's:
- UnderStory, starts at $5k/mo
- Hey Digital, starts at $6kmo
- Grouts, starts at $4k/mo
- Triple Dart, starts at $4.5k/mo
- GetUpLead
- Impactable, starts at $849/mo
Lets get into the case studies.
How to Get 523 Demo's With Target Accounts For $46
Understory Agency worked with its B2B SaaS Client to book high quality demo's for as cheap as possible. The results below were shared by agency owner Ali Yildirim.
In this case study, you’ll learn:
- Do gift cards really work?
- Why you shouldn’t take demo’s on Mondays
- How to consistently spend $46 to book meetings with your target customers
Context:
- Software Product: A powerful AI assistant for Sales, Finance and Marketing Leaders.
- Customer Target: CROs, CFOs, and CMOs
- Annual Contract Value: $3,000
- Spend: $24,167
Top 4 Strategies:
- Put your headline in the ad graphic. We qualified users before they clicked by highlighting the title we were looking for in the creative itself. Something like “ChatGPT for CROs”
- The Graphic should be specific to the Customer Target. In each creative we demonstrated a highly specific use case to the persona we were targeting such as a search they might be interested in as a CRO/CMO/CFO etc.
- $50 Giftcards worked. We tested a $50 gift incentive which increased conversion rates by 300% while retaining quality.
- CTA to booking link. In order to maximize conversions we sent people directly to a calendar link where they can book a time. We excluded Mondays which had a 20% higher no show rate which further optimized conversion rates.
Results:
- 500+ meetings booked across 4 months
- 80% show rate and qualification rate
- Average cost of $46.21 per meeting booked.
Case Study: How Paragon Generated 17,000 Clicks in 15 Days at a $4.12 CPC
Paragon sells software that enables companies to launch integrations faster. Brian Yam is CMO and has kindly agreed to share his real campaign metrics with us.
From June 1-15th 2024, he spent $73,285.70 on Linkedin Ads and generated 17,000 clicks which resulted in over $153k in closed deals.
Introducing Brian Yam:
Product: Paragon is an embedded integration platform that enables B2B SaaS companies to ship and maintain native SaaS integrations with 70% less engineering.
Customer Target: Product managers/leaders and engineering leaders (director +)
Annual Contract Value: $20,000
Spent: $73,285
Key strategies:
Retargeting website visitors with customer validation, relevant value props, and objection handlers
Engine of content for distribution across the funnel (top of funnel + high intent content)
Shifted away from lead gen - driving users directly to content
Account segmentation is critical (control budget distribution across accounts)
Thought Leader ads from team members drives high engagement and great TOF awareness
Consistent ad creative experimentation + iteration is key for optimizing campaign performance
Ad units used:
Thought Leader Ads
Key results:
Impressions: 1297035
Clicks: 17,771
Click Through Rate: 1.37%
Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM): 56.50
Cost per click (CPC): $4.12
CAC Payback: 5 months (average annual contract value of new deals equalled 2.5x CAC)
Paragon Retargeting performance from first 15 days of JUne:
Paragon Aggregate performance from first 15 days of June across all Linkedin paid:
Case Study: $904k Spend, Shiyam, TripleDart
A B2B SaaS company that sells software to HR teams hired TripleDart to manage $904,195 in Linkedin Ad spend between May 2023 and June 2024 (the last 12 months).
This guest section is written by Shiyam, CEO of Triple Dart.
Introducing Shiyam:
- Product: HR Tech, Series C
- ICP: Director+ People team, Finance & Legal
- ACV: $20,000
- Spent: $300k per Quarter on linkedin ads
Content/Strategy:
- ABM for Selected accounts
- Prospecting/Retargeting - Integrated campaigns for Demand gen
- TL ads for Execs
- G2 + linkedin ads - Competitor campaigns
- Conv ads for incentives, networking event passes and gifting
- 1:1 for high value accounts
Linkedin Ads Console Data:
Dashboard with full funnel performance:
Budgeting for LinkedIn Ads is always a challenge. Here's how we have to tackle
Two Campaign Groups:
1. Cold Prospecting or Demand Gen - 60% of total budget
2. Retargeting - 40% of total budget
These Campaign Groups consist of three funnels:
Funnel 1 - Awareness & Brand Recall
Audience: Target Account list or ICP-based native targeting
Goals: Reach 80-90% of the audience with a frequency of 5+ across different campaigns. Introduce our company, services, and value proposition.
Assets: Funding News, Company Videos, Founder's 1-Minute Loom, Thought Leadership Blogs
KPIs: Website Visits, CTRs, Accounts Engaged, Video Watch Rate
Path: Homepage and Blogs
Budget: 10%
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Funnel 2 - Content-based MoFu
Before starting Funnel 2, refresh Funnel 1 audience or acquire a new list/audience.
Audience: Engaged users from Funnel 1
Goal: Engage the vetted audience with our content
Assets: Playbooks, Ungated Reports, Gated Reports, Webinars
KPIs: Valid Gated Content Submissions, Leads from Targeted Lists
Path: Lead Generation Forms only
Budget: 25%
-------------------------
Funnel 3 - Direct Acquisition
Audience: Engaged users from Funnels 1 & 2, Ad engagers, form opens, downloaded gated forms, Frequency 5+ or Days 30+ eligibility
Assets: Job-to-be-Done (JBTD) based ads, Conversational ads, Integrated product-based ads
KPIs: Meeting bookings, Signups, Get Quote, High-intent form fills
Path: 50% Lead Generation Forms, 50% Direct LP Testing
Budget: 25%
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The remaining 40% is allocated to Retargeting, which consists of two buckets: First-party website data and CRM data.
Retargeting
Audience:
1) Non-converters from Funnels 1-3
2) High-intent page visitors from other sources (organic, paid search competitor traffic, core terms, referral traffic)
3) Low-intent but high-value users (e.g., blog scroll depth 70%, 2 pages visited, session duration > 2 minutes)
Assets: Case Studies, Testimonial Floaters, G2, Gartner, Forrester badges & Awards, Integration News, Efficiency/Cost savings messaging
Path: Create new landing page for returning users and add a microsite link to case studies, customer testimonial videos, etc.
Budget: 20%
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Lastly, Pipeline Marketing focuses on helping our SDRs move users' lifecycle stages from lead to MQl, MQL to OPP, or Closed Lost to MQL.
Assets: Company News, Product Launch Updates, Integration
Updates, Upcoming Events, FOMO ads, Funding News
KPIs: Sales Replies, Lifecycle Stage Movements, Webinar and Event Registrations
This structure will works for most of the B2B brands. Ideal budget to execute this structure is $10k - $15k monthly budget for linkedin.
Linkedin Media Plan:
We started with the above media plan 12 month ago and scaled it over $100K monthly budget in about 6 months.
What worked for us:
- Running an air cover for list of companies and maintaining frequency over 5+ per company
- We used MetaData to do Frequency capping at company level to avoid higher impression per company
- Integrated campaigns for invite only dinners, personalized gifting, incentive based campaigns using conversational ads for the demand capture users who clicked competitors ads from paid search
- Always on G2 campaigns for the leads in the pipe and also for their closed customers based on G2 intent data
- Meme ads, Funding news, Video Podcasts content for Top of funnel
- TL ads from founders/exec profiles to selected companies
Contact Us:
Managing over $10MN ads budget active on LinkedIn Ads per year for our clients gives us an edge in spotting trends and algorithm updates faster than in-house teams or boutique agencies.
Looking for LinkedIn Ads or performance marketing assistance? Check out our website or schedule a call with me directly. Our ad management packages start at just $4500/month.
We’re pleased to offer an opportunity analysis for your LinkedIn Ads or discuss how we can help you maximize your marketing budget.
Linkedin Ads Routine Checklist by TripleDart: Daily/Weekly/Monthly
The best way to stay consistent with something is to build it into a routine.
1️⃣ Daily
- Review reporting and campaign performance
- Manually review any new conversions for quality
- Review attribution touchpoints that impacted the new conversions.
If a campaign was recently launched:
- Review the following demographics and add exclusions that make sense:Job function Job titleompany Company industry Job seniority Company size Location Country/RegionCounty
- Check the budget to make sure you haven't misappropriated
- Review bidding based on the campaign objective
- Ensure UTMs are being pulled through into GA
2️⃣ Weekly
- Compare spend the monthly / quarterly budgets to ensure things are on track
- Create new audiences based on intent data
- Review the following demographics and add exclusions that make sense: Job function, Job title, Company, Company industry, Job seniority, Company size, Location, Country/Region, County
- Review ad frequency so you can accurately plan for new creative
- Review reach to ensure audience size is in line with budget.
- Adjust budgeting if necessary
- Review retargeting audiences to ensure they’re building
- Review reporting and campaign performance
- Expand or contract audiences based on objectives, reach, and budget
3️⃣ Monthly
- Review reporting from prior month & determine if you need to make any strategic shifts. Here are some things you should be reviewing: Ad frequency, Conversions, Consumption metrics (e.g. watch time, time on page, etc.), CTR, Creative learnings, Quality score (if using sponsored image ads)
- Swap creative
- Add retargeting layers to cold audience
- Pause underperforming ads
- Add notes to your change log for changes and experiments
-Add new experiment ideas to the queue.
⚓ Setting Up Pilot ABM Campaign From Scratch using linkedin ads: A Practical Approach
Step 1: ABM Program Objective Definition
An enterprise company can setup 3 main goals (2 to 4 months target) for the ABM team, which is:
i) Lead Generation
ii) Pipeline improvement
iii) Cross-sell & Up-sell for existing accounts
Note: Pick 1 goal for the pilot and try to work on that
Step 2: Account Selection
It's crucial to determine the ICP & conduct thorough research to pick the right accounts for ABM. To determine the right accounts, we can consider the following factors:
🏢 Firmographics: We can select accounts based on factors such as revenue, industry, company size, number of users, and location. Tools like Clay, Zoominfo or Apollo can help with this.
🚏Technographic: We also need to examine the tools and technology being used by the company & their expiration date. Builtwith or Slintel can provide these details with 70-80% accuracy.
Finally, we should manually verify if the selected companies have the intention to be targeted.
The goal of step 2 is to choose accounts that align with the company's objectives by taking into account all the above factors.
Only pick Lesser than 500 accounts to run this campaign.
Step 3: 1:Many awareness campaigns for selected accounts
The focus of 1:Many campaign would be to create brand awareness towards our target audience (product aware + Solution aware)
Where to run 1:many awareness campaigns:
- LinkedIn ads (account & contact level)
- Email campaigns - add leadfeeder/Factors in the website to understand to which company is visiting your website.
- Sending connection requests from SDR profile to Target Account buying committee. Use Lemlist for linkedin and Email outreach
Step 4: 1:few Highly interacted persona campaign
Before coming to 1:few campaigns, we must do a lead scoring to understand how many accounts from our target accounts are resonating with our campaign.
In 1:few campaigns, we will create and promote content assets based on Job to be done
Content for 1:few campaigns:
- Blogs that relate to pain points of a specific industry (non-gated + trackable with leadfeeder)
- Industry-specific case studies (gated or ungated)
- Webinar or any thought leader content
- demo ads (gated)
Success criteria: Come closer to personas that engage with your content. Check what works and what doesn’t and take action.
Step 5: 1:1 campaigns
Reaching this stage signifies that we have identified our top 30-50 accounts, selecting those with the highest scores from among the rest.
At this stage, we conduct a thorough analysis of each account & decision-maker, researching their pain points and existing competitors to create battle cards.
We will run gift based campaigns where we will send them $200 gift coupon to attend a meeting with us.
Tools needed to run this : Linkedin ads & Salesnavigator, Factors.AI, Hunter.io, Apollo.io, lemlist ZoomInfo @walaxy
ABM Results:
Case Study: Roman Grouts.Online
A B2B SaaS company that sells compliance automation software hired Grouts Online to scale LinkedIn ads from $10,000 to $42,000 monthly budgets, bringing over $528,000 in the direct pipeline and $905,654 in the influenced pipeline. (Feb 2024 to June 2024)
Background:
Product: Compliance automation software
Customer Target: CISO, CTO, Director of Compliance, Security Officers
Annual Contract Value: $20k
Spent: $133k (Feb 2024 to June 2024)
Background:
The company had trouble measuring if linkedin ads were working. They only promoted a freemium offer and wanted to target bigger customers on linkedin.
We've optimized the strategy for PLG campaigns, improving the lead volume by 4.6x compared to the previous period.
For midmarket campaigns, we've built a full funnel strategy to build awareness in the ICP audience and build trust through retargeting.
Steps:
Cold Layer: We set up a Product Led Growth campaign for Freemium offer for small start-ups (10-50 employees) to get a free security audit.
Cold Layer Larger: We segmented the larger companies into Demand Gen campaigns for SMB and Midmarket segment (50-200, 200-5000 employees)
Retargeting: Once we had customers attention, we kept it through Multi-channel Retargeting campaigns to nurture engaged audiences (Google Display, Meta, Reddit). This group visited the company website in the last 180 days.
High intent retargeting: Those who visited the company website in the last 30 days
On top of these, we leverage low-cost Linkedin Ads campaigns like follower ads in cold layer. And spotlight ads and text ads in retargeting.
Measuring these tactics becomes more challenging, so we leverage multiple ways to measure results and impact of the campaigns.
We have this 4-step measurement framework:
4 Steps to Measure Attribution with needing an Engineering Degree:
Self-reported attribution: Add the “How did you hear about us?” field to your contact forms. Let users type text, don’t force them to pick a dropdown item. Only ask this after the lead requests a demo.
Organic and Paid Direct leads. Capture UTM Parameters to your CRM. You'll see direct demo requests or free trials with UTMs from the Ads. Make sure you use UTMs correctly.
Post-view website conversions: Install the Linkedin conversion pixel on your website to track form submissions. Set up the conversion window to make sure you're giving credit in a reasonable period. We recommend 30 day click and 7 day view conversion. Credit new leads to the last campaign that influenced them before the click.
Influenced pipeline. We use a LinkedIn attribution tool called Fibbler to uncover insights about campaigns' impact beyond the direct results which are limited.
Bonus: Multichannel Retargeting
We generate a lot of traffic, and it is important to bring exposure beyond LinkedIn ads.
To reach the audience that came from LinkedIn ads and other sources, we launched campaigns on Google Display and added social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram to reach an audience on these platforms and remind them about the brand.
Conclusion
B2B SaaS companies pay Grouts.Online $4k/mo to manage their Linkedin Ads. Reach out to me on Linkedin or book a call here to discuss your situation. We'll plan a free audit of your account and make a roadmap to improve your results in the next 3 months.
Case Study: How I Closed $23k in Sales By Spending $80 on a Thought Leader Ad
Intro: Bharadwaj Giridhar runs Inboxpirates Consulting - A GTM B2B SaaS Consulting company. We primarily run email outbound, linkedin outbound, linkedin organic thought leadership, linkedin thought leadership ads, and paid google search ads.
We are an agency that sells $6k plans. We don't have a huge budget so we needed to find creative ways to get customers from Linkedin. This case study explains our post which closed $23k in sales.
Background:
Product: We are a marketing agency
Goal: Convince customers to pay us $6k/mo to manage their marketing
Strategy: High engagement linkedin organic posts that we turn into thought leader ads
Average annual contract value: $10,000
Target Customer: CXOs, Head of Growth, Directors of Demand Generation, Marketing Heads, Heads of GTM
Results:
Post impressions: 43,322
Post likes: 246
Post comments: 72
Thought leader ad spend: $80
Meetings Booked: 14
Revenue Closed: $23,850
Showing proof upfront
Hooks still matter on Linkedin and they love revenue numbers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take accountability on that number.
This is the same for a HR tech, Cybersecurity, Staffing company we ran the campaigns for.
Get the KPI, promise on a number that’s big, prove it.
Here are some of our best winning hooks:
- If hired as Head of Growth of a B2B company to hit $1M as soon as possible, here's what I'd do in my first 90 days- 41k+ organic impressions (this was the post we ran the ad on)
- Just using hooks will not get you viral on linkedin, but re-hooks will. (How we used this to get 191k impressions) - 60,000+ organic impressions. (so meta)
- I grew my LinkedIn to 10K followers which got me about $35,000+ in pipeline revenue for 2023. - 10,078 impressions.
- I’m delighted to announce we’ve closed over $10,000 in sales. Here are 10+ people to help you go from zero to hero in cold emails! 👇- 11,076 impressions
- How I went from being broke at 22 to helping close a $30k deal at 24. - 10,306 impressions organic
The brands we focus on usually have lower budgets, have subject matter expertise and sell tools with measurable outcomes. If this organic-focused, ad-amplified strategy (along with ICP focused ads, and outbound play) seems interesting, read the full case-study here or visit our website to book a call here.
Case Study: $117k Spent to Close $350k in Sales
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamelben/
Background:
A risk assessment SaaS hired us to get higher quality leads from Linkedin and lower costs.
Target Customer: Health and safety professionals
Results:
Impressions: 5,583,243
Clicks: 18,082
Conversions: 35
Average conversion value: $10,000
Total spent: $117k
Strategy:
We split ad budget between Top of funnel (20% of spend), Bottom of funnel (70%), and Remarketing (10%)
At the top of the funnel, videos ads reached our ICP cheaper than any other ad unit. This grew our retargeting audience fast.
At the bottom of the funnel, we sent traffic to our website form and used the native Linkedin email opt in form. Our website form generated 34 conversions. Linkedin native generated 94.
All of our ad units looked "ugly" like a meme. They were B2C style and generated cheaper clicks from our ICP.
If you want a proactive team of senior-level experts to manage your LinkedIn ads campaigns and strategy, check out our LinkedIn ads service packages or contact us online. No minimum ad spend or long-term commitment is required.
Case Study: $130k Spend, Dylan, Hey Digital
Background:
A B2B SaaS company that sells a mobile app marketing platform used Hey Digital to manage $130k in Linkedin Ads.
This guest section is from HeyDigital CEO, Dylan who describes how he ran the campaign to generate 14 closed deals with an average ACV of $75k/year.
Introducing Dylan:
Background:
Product: End-to-end solution for mobile app marketing: optimization, attribution, reporting and analytics, serving worldwide.
Target Customer: Marketers looking to get download for their mobile apps
Annual Contract Value: $75,000/year
Results:
Spent: $130,000
Impressions: 10,925,072
Clicks: 51,047
Conversions: 3,871
Conversions: 3201
Click trough rate (CTR): 0.47%
Closed deals: $1m (14 at $75k each)
Strategy:
We generated Demand using 5 campaigns focused on job titles, lookalike audiences, and ABM
We captured demand using 4 campaigns focused on Demos, Trust building, and nurturing
We split retargeting campaigns based on last 90 day and last 30 day website visits
Ad units used:
Spotlight and Text Ads
Single Image
Document Ads
Carousel
Content/Strategy:
Approach: knowing that the ICP audiences can be in various stages of their mobile app development and marketing, we’ve crafted a strategy to accompany the key users from their early days in mobile app development and marketing through valuable content to the very mature and large companies through ABM efforts. Then retargeting interested users to boost demo bookings.
Demand Generation
Being cost-effective and not wanting to over-spend our marketing budget on awareness, we’ve set a goal to collect leads that could be nurtured even at the demand generation level. That’s why we have focused our efforts on lead-magnet ads as well as video view, traffic and some ABM campaigns. The lead-magnets included downloadable resources, i.e. high-quality guides and ebooks; along with webinars through LinkedIn’s on-platform lead forms, document and website conversion campaigns.
We have also dedicated a share of the budget to running traffic campaigns to high-quality landing pages where both the ads and landing pages are focused on the following angles: pain points and the cost of not using the product, key benefits of the product and use cases.
To supplement the awareness we’ve also introduced video campaigns in the mix, targeting the same audiences and running a video views campaigns focusing on the key features of our client’s product.
Lastly, to support the inbound activities for enterprise-level accounts, we have introduced ABM campaigns, targeting a list of target countries and using both traffic and video view campaigns to generate the demand among them.
For our client this has proven to generate over 2,000 leads in the first half of 2024 with a spend of €67,000. The Lead to MQL rate being around 48%.
Demand Capture
For the demand capture our goal was to turn the already interested and product-aware users into demo bookings as well as nurture users already in the pipeline. For this reason we’ve chosen to do demo-focused retargeting campaigns on LinkedIn with demo-focused creatives, highlighting business results, cost of not using the product. The objective of these campaigns was website conversions. We chose to segment campaigns by key GEOs and also the time since the last visit to the client’s website - 30 and 90 days.
To supplement this, we have added a campaign focused on building trust through to use social proof elements like successful case studies and client testimonials utilizing website traffic objective.
Lastly, for those who still weren’t convinced, we’ve introduced Nurturing campaigns using Spotlight and Text ads on LinkedIn. As one of LinkedIn Ads limitations is not being able to show ads only on certain devices, these two campaign types helped ensure that our client’s ads are visible on the devices users are most likely to convert.
Lastly, we have recently started supplementing demand capture campaigns with Conversational ads, focusing on new industry reports and new published features. The goal of this campaign is to establish and maintain close relationships with the warm audiences.
In the first half of 2024 this strategy was able to generate over 960 MQLs and 14 closed deals each with an average ACV of 75,7k.
If you’d like to test out our services we only onboard 2x new SaaS companies each month.
Currently our fees start from $6K/mo and include full ads and creative management. Click here to learn more or use this link to book a short call.
