My 2019 Pubcon South presentation on LinkedIn Ads and B2B Lead Generation best practices. How to's that LinkedIn might not tell you.

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Using LinkedIn Ads for B2B
Lead Generation
Presented by: Tad Miller – VP Client Services
@ Marketing Mojo

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About Me
• Vice President of Client Services @ Marketing Mojo
– Charlottesville, Virginia
• My wife Janet Driscoll-Miller & I have ran the agency (originally
known as Search Mojo) for 13 years
• Worked on both SEO and Online Advertising for the duration of
my career
• For B2C, B2B, Non-profits, large & small…

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Why Believe Me?
• I stopped counting at $50,000,000 years
ago on how many dollars of online
advertising I’ve managed for my clients…

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The narrative backstory…
In which our hero gets his ass kicked

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Once upon a time…
• We just had a baby…Let’s quit our jobs,
move to a strange new place and start a
new search marketing business over our
garage from scratch!

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Big Failure? Right?
NO actually not…
Within a year we
were doing SEO and
PPC for Mazda USA
and Toyota Certified
Used Vehicles

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Life is
Good &
Search Ads
Can Do
ANYTHING!
• With gigantic search marketing budgets
you learn faster, can test faster and make
a huge impact with small changes
• I became amazingly over-confident in my
ability to succeed with search ads

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Enterprise
B2B Kicked
My Ass

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Sell This
• Saas “Social Media Management”
platform
• Minimum 1 year contract
• Starting at $10,000 a month

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This man searches
for “Social Media
Management
Software”
• Jerry lives at home
with Mom & Dad. His
Christian Rock Band has
a big following on
Facebook & Twitter. He
needs help to manage
the Band’s Social Media
presence.

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This woman
searches for
“Social Media
Management
Software”
• She’s the Chief Marketing
Officer of Xerox

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There’s No Simple Way to Stop Jerry
• Jerry is going to click on your search
ads and fill out your lead gen forms…a
lot
• Jerry Happens…

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Awkward
Client
Interaction…
• Very few qualified leads
• Very high cost per lead
• Very high cost per click
• Very low lead-form conversion rate

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No happy ending for us…
THERE WAS NO
ONLINE AD
ALTERNATIVE
THE CLIENT WAS
BOUGHT BY GOOGLE
FOR ~ $150 MILLION
GOOGLE TOOK OVER
THE ADVERTISING

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Later…LinkedIn
Self-Serve Ads
• We immediately
recognized it’s value

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It Worked So Well, We Renamed the Company
• We started out as just a search agency (SEO + Search
Ads)
• LinkedIn ads & the power of demographic targeting in
Social broadened our services and forced the name
change on us from Search Mojo to Marketing Mojo

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The 5 Keys to LinkedIn Ads Success
For B2B Lead Generation

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STEP 1: DEVELOP
A CUSTOMER
PERSONA
Who Should See Your Ads?

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Who is This For?
Show Ads to THIS GUY!

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Develop a
Customer Persona
• This doesn’t have to
be that hard
• We aren’t doing TV
commercials
• This isn’t really
consumer focused at
all

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Focus on B2B
Relevance to
the Platform
• No Hobbies
• No Interests
• No “Likes”

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Who Does
the Best
Sales Person
Want to Talk
To?

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Cyber-Stalk the
Customer List on
LinkedIn
• Does the title on the
Customer List match?
• What skills?
• How much experience?
• Education/Certifications?

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The Account-Based
Thing
• There should be a list of
targeted companies
• Find your own “List” on
search

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Do a Customer
Intake Form
• Use the demographic
targeting options of
LinkedIn Ads as the basis
to ask questions to all
the relevant parties of
how the customers fit
the targeting options

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It’s Just As
Powerful to
Exclude as Include
• Getting answers on who you
don’t want ads shown to is
vital
• Exclude existing customers
• Non-Decision Makers?

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STEP 2: GEAR
CONTENT TO WHAT
THE PERSONA
TARGET WANTS
Knowing is half the battle

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Create Content the
Customer Wants
• White Paper, E-book,
Webinar with content so
valuable it’s worth
getting an inevitable
sales call

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Oh Yeah, Did I
Mention…
• LinkedIn Ads
performance is
Super-human for
promoting content
marketing assets

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The Technique: Groundhog Day Them

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Gear Content to
What the Persona
Target Wants
• Learn 19th Century French
Poetry, how to play the
piano, ice sculpture…
• Write Ads for Them
• Create Downloadable
Content for Them

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Why Create the Persona First?
Content written for a
persona tends to work
better when advertising on
LinkedIn Ads than a persona
written after the fact…

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Back to the Personas

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Persona Questions:
What Do The
Customers Want?
• How does the
product/service/content give
customers what they want?
• How does the
product/service/content solve
their specific problems?

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What do customers
NOT want?
• It’s obviously best not to
produce content that repels
customers
• What are the customer pain
points they want to solve or
avoid

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Back to the Content

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Use Persona-
Geared
Value
Propositions
on Landing
Pages
22% Conversion Rate
FOMO
Value

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Ads Promise to
Solve Problems
or Give Solutions
• Value propositions get clicks
when targeted to the people
that find them valuable

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STEP 3: LAYER
YOUR AD
TARGETING
Don’t Listen to the LinkedIn “Best
Practices”

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Hey Teacher
Leave Them
Kids Alone
• Warning: Don’t listen to bad
advice

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LinkedIn’s
Audience
Creation
Advice
Read Me If You Want to Advertise
Better on LinkedIn

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Audience
Size 60,000
to 300,000
Read Me If You Want to Advertise
Better on LinkedIn

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Scale of What?
• Scale of Ad Impressions?
• Scale of Reach to an Audience of 300,000+ ?

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NOPE!
• If your goal is lead
generation you should
IGNORE this advice

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LinkedIn Said Not to Do That…I’m scared.

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Isn’t This
Breaking the
Rules?
Oh my this is a clear violation of
best practices, we are going to
get in trouble…

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How about
under 10,000
Audience Size?
Ad Impressions
Ad Clicks
Ad Conversions

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How About 6+
Simultaneous
Targeting Options?
Yeah, that works to.

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Layered
Targeting Works
Really Well
• Just don’t be
redundant with it
• Two different options
that target the same
thing serves no point

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Exclusions Are
Targeting Too
• Additionally excluding the “close
but not relevant” works really
well
• I’ve even done campaigns that
only use exclusions

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Relevance > Reach
• Reach & Scale is for
Consumer Brands
• B2B lead generation is
about targeting
• Awareness only matters
for the target market

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We are Small
January 30, 2019

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The Most
Bad-Ass B2B
Ad Channel
on the
Planet
• But with B2B only 4.6% of the Digital Ad
Market where will LinkedIn’s Growth
Come From?

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Marketers That
Need 300,000+
Consumer, Programmatic, Brand Awareness…

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LinkedIn’s Content Shows the Direction
Catering to the “Brand Awareness” Audience is a big push

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STEP 4: BID LOW AND
SEE IF YOU CAN SPEND
YOUR DAILY BUDGET
Reach, Awareness & Ad Impressions
Aren’t Winning – Leads Are

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Haggle

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LinkedIn Ads
Bidding
• Don’t fall for “FOMO” – Fear of Missing
Out
• Use Math and Reason not Ego or Fear to
Bid

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What Is Your
Lead-Gen
Goal?
• To get as many qualified leads as possible
for your budget

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The Budget
Is Limited
Very few B2B
Advertisers have
“large” online
marketing budgets

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They Hate That
You are going to get e-mails…

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If Your Competition Jumped Off a Bridge…
If you can spend your daily budget at $5.00 bids why bid $9.00 to $16.00 ?

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What Does
Bidding More
Get You?
Fewer Clicks, More Ad
Impressions and no
difference in audience
quality

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On A Limited
Budget: More
Clicks @ $5.00
CPC than $16.00
More Clicks means more leads and
lower cost per lead
Math !

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No One Is Going To Jail for
Violation of LinkedIn “Best
Practices”
They are just recommendations

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STEP 5: FIGHT
AD FATIGUE
WITH IMAGES
The Side-Effect of Small Audience Size
is Quick Ad Fatigue

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Side Effects

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Preventing Ad-
Burnout
Hyper-targeting down your
small audience wears them
out fast if they keep seeing
your ad

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Only 4 to 6
weeks Per Ad
Image
No one wants to see the
same crappy stock image
everyday…

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There Isn’t a 20%
Text Rule on Images
• This isn’t Facebook. You
can do images with more
than 20% text

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Overlay, Filter, Zoom, Alter Crappy Stock Photos

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Change Color When Switching

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Wrap Up
1. Develop A Customer Persona
2. Gear Content to What the Target Customer Persona
Wants
3. Layer Your Ad Targeting (Ignore the LinkedIn Best
Practice)
4. Bid Low and See if you can spend your Daily Budget
5. Fight Ad Fatigue to Small Audiences with different
Images

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Thanks
• Twitter: @jstatad @marketingmojo
• www.marketing-mojo.com