Paying to find out
The usual B2B ad campaign goes like this: write an ad, pick an audience, spend the budget, then find out whether anyone cared. It's a perfectly good way to learn things. It's just an expensive one.
Let your posts do the testing
Your team's posts already reach people for free. Some of them land: the right job titles comment, someone sends a message, a person from a company you'd love to work with follows the author. That's useful information, and it cost you nothing.
So flip the order. Let organic posts find the ideas that work, then put money behind those.
Why it works better
The promoted post looks like what it is: a real person at your company saying something useful. That's a very different thing to a banner. In the 2025 Edelman–LinkedIn research, 64% trust thought leadership over product sheets and brochures when judging what a company can do. An ad carrying a real opinion borrows that trust. A product ad has to earn it from scratch.
How to run it
- Post regularly from your founder and team. You can't pick winners without a steady supply of posts.
- Look at who responds, not how many. Ten comments from the right people beat a hundred from your peers.
- Promote the best posts to the companies you want to win. Upload your target account list and aim the ads at it.
- Follow up with the people who engaged. Mention the post they saw, and the conversation starts warm.
Who pays for what
You pay LinkedIn directly, from your own ad account, so the spend and the data stay yours. An agency's fee should cover the thinking, the creative and running the campaigns.
Where we come in
In our GTM program, posts and ads run as one step. Get 50 free leads to see which accounts are worth targeting.