Create a LinkedIn Ads Funnel

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In this episode of The LinkedIn Ads Show, host AJ Wilcox dives into strategies for nurturing cold audiences on LinkedIn to prepare them for meaningful engagement and high-conversion offers. If you've struggled with converting cold traffic into sales-ready leads, this episode walks you through how to build a multi-stage funnel using LinkedIn Ads retargeting features.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Why Cold Audiences Need Nurturing:

   • Most cold audiences (95%) aren’t ready to engage with sales reps or bottom-of-funnel offers.
   • Nurturing involves multiple retargeting stages to move prospects down the funnel, warming them up to higher-friction calls to action.

2. Building a Multi-Stage Funnel:

   • Stage 1 (Cold Traffic): Use LinkedIn’s native audience targeting to reach cold audiences who align with your ideal customer profile.
   • Stage 2 (First Retargeting): Retarget website visitors, company page visitors, and ad engagers from Stage 1. Apply targeting "guardrails" like seniority, job function, or industry to refine the audience.
   • Stage 3 (Hot Traffic): Retarget prospects from Stage 2 who have engaged meaningfully. These are primed for bottom-of-funnel offers like demos or sales calls.

3. Best Practices for Funnel Organization:

   • Use a campaign naming convention like S01, S02, S03 to clearly identify funnel stages in your account and ensure they’re sorted alphabetically.
   • Exclude retargeting audiences from the previous stage to avoid overlap and ensure prospects graduate down the funnel.

4. Retargeting Audience Management:

   • Create retargeting audiences based on specific engagements (e.g., video views, document interactions).
   • Combine smaller audiences (e.g., website visitors + company page visitors) to ensure they hit the 300-member minimum for ads to serve.

5. Budget Considerations:

   • A multi-stage funnel works best with a monthly budget of $5,000 or more, though smaller budgets are possible with longer ramp-up times.

6. Testing and Optimization:

   • Run bottom-of-funnel offers in earlier stages as a test to gauge audience readiness.
   • If Stage 3 doesn’t yield high conversion rates, adjust ad messaging to clearly communicate value and reduce friction.

7. Recent LinkedIn Updates:

   • LinkedIn Wire Beta: Advertise as pre-roll videos on high-trust publisher content like Bloomberg and Forbes.
   • Holiday Ad Tips: Lower competition during th