December 13, 2024 • 19 mins
Today we talk with AJ Wilcox who has been the largest advertiser on LinkedIn over the years and has expertly managed over $150 million in LinkedIn advertising campaigns. We discuss what to do to be successful advertising on LinkedIn in 2025.
Learn about AJ's journey from his initial discovery of LinkedIn's advertising potential 14 years ago to managing the platform's largest spending account.
Despite LinkedIn ads reputation for being very expensive, AJ passionately highlights LinkedIn's unmatched quality, making it a powerhouse for B2B advertisers targeting specific job titles and industries. Hear about his innovative approach using "personal video" content, where authentic, insightful videos crafted by company thought leaders create outstanding engagement and cost-effective results. With tools like Descript, AJ demonstrates that personal inkedIn video ads can be done for a very low cost.
Get ready to be captivated by the magic of thought leadership ads, as we contrast them with traditional company posts. Since last year these ads have transformed engagement on LinkedIn by leveraging user-generated content and external influencer posts. AJ discusses strategic targeting techniques and how customer endorsements can boost authenticity and trust. As we venture into 2025 and beyond, AJ shares expert strategies to navigate the evolving landscape of LinkedIn advertising, offering insights on overcoming rising costs while capitalizing on LinkedIn's powerful business-targeting capabilities.
Check out AJ's podcast The LinkedIn Ads Show
Connect with AJ on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Eden (00:01):
Today we have an exciting topic.
We are talking about how to winwith LinkedIn advertising, and
we have the perfect guest tohelp us talk through this.
He's managed over $150 millionof LinkedIn advertising
campaigns AJ Wilcox welcome tothe show.
Eric, thanks so much for havingme.
AJ Wilcox (00:20):
I'm stoked to be here.
Eric Eden (00:23):
So why don't we start off by you taking just a
minute or two to explain alittle bit more about who you
are and what you do?
AJ Wilcox (00:30):
Yeah, you bet.
So I stumbled onto LinkedIn ads.
This has been now 14 years agowhen, at a previous position, I
had just been hired, I was thefirst digital marketing team
member at a pre IPO SaaS companyand I remember going to meet
with the CMO on my first day andtalking about the SEO and
Google ads and Google displaythat I was going to be doing
(00:52):
those were kind of myspecialties and she said all
that sounds great, go ahead andexecute it.
But oh, by the way, we juststarted a pilot with LinkedIn
ads, so see what you can do withthat.
And I jumped in basically withthe same strategies that I used
for Google ads at the time,because I didn't want to look
stupid to my new boss.
And within about two weeks, thesales team came up to me and
(01:13):
was saying hey, aj, we'refighting over your LinkedIn
leads, keep it up.
And I went Ooh, there'ssomething to this.
So over the next two and a halfyears, I grew that, I continued
to investing, grew it to becomeLinkedIn's largest spending
account in the world and aftertwo and a half years of running
the biggest account, I hadLinkedIn's product team asking
(01:33):
for advice and asking questionsand had them on speed dial and I
went okay, there have to bemore than just this one company
that would kill it on LinkedInads.
And so, just over 10 years ago,I started B2Linked, and we're
an ad agency based out of thestate of Utah.
That LinkedIn ads is all we do.
We were kind of the originalsin the space and I absolutely
still, to this day, I loveeverything about LinkedIn ads.
Eric Eden (01:58):
That's pretty awesome.
You've made that channel really, really sing.
That's great.
I think when you have salescoming to you saying we're
fighting over your leads, that'sthe best case scenario, right.
AJ Wilcox (02:10):
That's just amazing.
Eric Eden (02:12):
I think the reputation of LinkedIn ads has
been over the years that they'regood but they're expensive.
Yep, Is that what you've seenacross your clients and managing
things you manage.
Is that true?
AJ Wilcox (02:26):
Yeah, I've seen it over the entire 14-year history
of me and LinkedIn ads.
From the very beginning,linkedin ads set a minimum bid
threshold of $2 per click, whileat the same time you could get
Google ads for about a dollar aclick and you could get Facebook
clicks for about a third of acent a piece.
So in comparison to the otherchannels, linkedin has always
(02:47):
been more expensive and thatcontinues to this day as
competition has continued togrow and the platform's grown.
The average cost per click inNorth America on LinkedIn is
like $10 to $16.
And you can imagine, you know,meta might be down in like the
$4 to $5 range for a B2B kind ofoffer.
Google is who knows where for aB2B kind of offer.
Google is who knows where, justdepends on on what kind of niche
(03:08):
.
But yeah, they, they havealways been expensive.
But where LinkedIn wins andthis is the reason why it's,
it's a monopoly it's the onlyoption for B2B advertisers
because there's no otherplatform that owns your
professional data like LinkedIn,has it up to date, has the
depth of knowledge about it.
(03:28):
So if you're in B2B, your goalis to sell a specific kind of
software to a specific kind ofuser, linkedin is the only
channel where you can narrowdown to that job title at that
size of company in this industry.
And so, even though it'sexpensive upfront, what you
realize is because you'rehitting the right people.
The lead quality is easily fivetimes higher than it would be
(03:52):
from something like meta, and ifyou're looking all the way down
the funnel, your cost per leadmight be high on LinkedIn, but
when you get to the cost perlet's say cost per proposal or
cost per closed deal all of asudden LinkedIn looks way better
than the other channels,because the quality was so much
higher.
Eric Eden (04:11):
Yeah, quality matters a lot, so we're ready to
be inspired.
Tell us what it looks like tolive the dream.
Tell us a story about some ofthe most successful marketing
you've done with LinkedInadvertising.
AJ Wilcox (04:25):
Yeah, it's an awesome question.
It's one that I have so manyideas in mind that I've got to
try to narrow this down, so I'mgoing to share one example of
this.
But the same principles haveapplied time after time.
This is easily repeatable.
So we have a client who theyhave invested heavily in what I
call personal video.
(04:46):
So if you tell someone, go andcreate video ads that are going
to run on LinkedIn, they mayhave all kinds of things in mind
.
They may have like oh, we haveto go to a studio and pay tens
of thousands of dollars, or weneed to go and create an
animated explainer video, andthose things are all good, but
they also cost quite a bit andthey're difficult to actually
(05:08):
get done.
If I tell a client we want oneof these, we might not get it
for six months.
But what is really killing iton LinkedIn right now is what I
call personal video, and that'swhere, if you have an internal
thought leader maybe it's thefounder or head of marketing,
head of sales they hold up theirphone to their face.
They give a quick tip, a trick,a strategy, an industry update
(05:31):
that their customers should know, just something really
interesting and of free valueand we use Descript, which I
know you use as well.
For 12 bucks a month and thefree phone in your pocket, you
can create little snippets ofyou know 20 to 40 second video
ads that are really engaging.
When you see a person's face onyour screen, you care about
(05:54):
what they're saying and we canoverlay subtitles on top is
great for the 80 plus percent ofviewers of the ads who don't
have sound turned on and they'regetting the gist of the message
.
And then, within the last yearand a half, linkedin released a
new ad format called ThoughtLeader Ads, where you can
promote not only a company'spost but an individual's as well
(06:16):
.
So what we did in this case isand I'll explain why we do this
we created Thought Leader Adsfrom the founders and major
thought leaders within thecompany, where it was them in
the video they post about whythis is so interesting and why
people should pay attention, andthen we're able to use these in
(06:37):
ads.
Now the reason why this is sogroundbreaking is, I think most
LinkedIn advertisers will tellyou everyone wants sales
conversations, they want demos,they want sales ready leads.
But if you go to a coldaudience who's never heard of
you before and you say talk toour sales rep, get a demo.
You might see some clicksbecause people are kind of
(07:01):
curious but they're not ready tomeet with your sales team yet.
They need more nurturing, theyneed to know, like and trust you
before they're willing to hopon a call.
So the goal then is we knowthat the eventual goal is
getting them on the phone withsales.
What experiences do they needto have before that, in kind of
a funnel structure before itstarts, before the audience is
(07:25):
nurtured and ready for that, andwe decided that the best way to
do that would be to create athree-stage funnel where the top
two stages were all thesepersonal video, and once you
watched at least 50% or 75% ofone of these video ads, then you
graduate down to the next stageand finally, by the third stage
(07:45):
, we know that you've had atleast two significant
interactions with the brand andthen we've earned the right to
then ask you like it looks likeyou might be interested.
Do you want a demo?
And what was so cool in this?
Three-stage funnels and we runsome that are five-stage funnels
.
Linkedin doesn't make it easyto set up, so it was quite a bit
(08:06):
of work and it does take a goodamount of budget to put in the
top to get three stages of wherethe bottom stage is spending
enough that it's worthwhile.
So we're talking here this isprobably $15,000 of data
collected dumped in the topbefore we got a bottom of the
funnel result that we couldshare.
(08:27):
But what's so cool?
We were measuring conversionrates at we call it stage one,
stage two and stage three, andwe were measuring costs cost per
click, cost per conversion andwhat we found is by the third
stage our conversion rates werefive times higher than they were
in the second stage and costswere less than half like a cost
(08:49):
per click.
And all of that to say like, ifyou're getting a cost per
conversion of like $900 in thestage two, by stage three you'd
be paying less than like $150per lead for the same kind of
call to action.
So that is recently one of thestories that I'm most excited
(09:11):
about.
Took a lot of work and we put alot into it.
But it wasn't costly things, itwas more strategic things that
we were able to put into it andget a really solid result that
the sales team is just singingour praises right now.
Eric Eden (09:25):
Now that is really remarkable and LinkedIn has been
investing a lot in the videoand sort of pushing video
because of the success thatTikTok and Instagram Reels has
had.
But I'm curious in particularto the thought leadership ads.
Is there a magic that makesthem the best ad form on
(09:52):
LinkedIn today?
The magic?
AJ Wilcox (09:54):
is, if you show someone a post from a company
they've never heard of, they areso likely to keep scrolling.
The average click-through rateof a company post is like half
of 1%.
And then if we say exactly thesame thing as an individual, as
a human, and then promote thatas a thought leader ad, we see
(10:14):
click-through rates or evenengagement rates between like 3%
and 12%.
We see click-through rates oreven engagement rates between
like 3% and 12%.
So we're talking orders ofmagnitude more interesting to
users and I think that really isthe magic.
When you promote something froman individual.
You see an individual you don'tknow in your newsfeed.
You stop for a minute and go.
Who is this person?
Should I know them?
Do I know them?
(10:35):
Should I be listening to whatthey have to say, whereas if you
were only relying on what thecompany is saying, companies are
just not getting that muchtraction or attention.
Eric Eden (10:45):
It seems like this trend is going to even further
continue and amplify in 2025.
That seems like the directionthis is going.
Is that right?
AJ Wilcox (10:55):
Definitely, and there are some more improvements
that LinkedIn can do on thesethought leader ads to make them
even better.
They so this ability launchedin 2022 that we could do thought
leader ads, but we were stuckwith only promoting posts from
our own employees.
Oh, sorry, it was in 2023.
In 2024, they gave us theability to promote posts from
(11:16):
people outside of ourorganization.
So now you can do like UGC,user-generated content of one of
our customers just posted let'spromote that or an external
influencer that we're workingwith maybe we can promote their
post.
So that's been really cool.
But right now, the biggestweakness is that these thought
(11:36):
leader ads are very limited.
You can only promote a post asa thought leader ad that is
either a single image, no image,text only or video, and so if
you have an individual who postsa poll or a document or any
other format that tends to workreally well, you can't promote
it.
We're also stuck using only theobjective where you have to pay
(12:01):
.
You don't have to pay nearly asmuch, but you pay a little bit
for every kind of interaction onthe ad, not just the ones that
are taking you to a landing pagethat you care about, and so if
they give us that ability to doto run these on.
My favorite objective is thewebsite visits objective.
We're we're going to be able topay, and I hope LinkedIn does
this.
(12:21):
We'll be able to pay only whensomeone clicks on the link that
we care about that takes them toour site, or you might be able
to apply a lead generation formto the ad, which you can't do
now.
I'm hoping those enhancementscome.
Eric Eden (12:35):
You'd think that they would make these
advertising enhancements.
It seems like the LinkedIndivision of Microsoft.
Their revenue is over $16billion a year and directionally
half of that is advertising anddirectionally half of that is
advertising.
Do you think if they can crackthe nut on some of this stuff
that they'll get more peopledoing more advertising on the?
AJ Wilcox (12:56):
platform?
Absolutely.
I've seen what I considerexponential growth.
I don't know the exact numbersbecause I'm not internal,
obviously, but for the first 10years that I was focused on
LinkedIn ads it was very slowgrowth.
It took a lot of time formarketers to think like, hey,
what other channel should Iconsider?
Hey, maybe this LinkedIn ads,even though it's expensive,
(13:17):
maybe the targeting is going tobe worth it.
And just in the last three years, three, four years I've seen
exponential just a spike, wheremore and more companies, even if
they've tested them before andthey weren't successful, they're
coming back again becauseLinkedIn is the only platform
where you can have this level ofbusiness targeting.
And as they do, as we see allof this adoption happen, we're
(13:39):
seeing costs rise for alladvertisers because it's an
auction platform and we do.
We see some advertisers are nowpaying $20 plus per click,
which is kind of crazy.
But if there's that many peoplebidding for and fighting for
that audience segment, thenthat's what it is.
But I see this continuing torise, more and more advertisers
(14:01):
getting more and more value outof LinkedIn in limited tests and
then saying, okay, let's bringmore budget.
Eric Eden (14:09):
And then saying, okay, let's bring more budget.
So for the thought leadershipads, can you do the targeting
application to them as well andtarget certain industries, types
of companies, job functions,Like you can do pretty precise
targeting with the thoughtleadership ads right.
AJ Wilcox (14:21):
Exactly All the same targeting you can do with the
other ones.
You're just putting a personalpost in front of people that
they care about more.
It's a formula for success, forsure.
Eric Eden (14:32):
I've heard a lot of people doubling down on the
strategy you said of usingthought leadership ads with
customers and with influencers,well-known people I haven't
really heard celebrities yet,but I wouldn't be surprised to
see that.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprisedto see that.
Yeah, but it's interesting thatI think customers would
(14:52):
probably be one of the mostpowerful amplifiers, because
people take those endorsementsprobably even more so than
influencers, right?
If, like I'm a customer, I'veused it, it's been great, people
will listen to that and believethat a lot more.
So the authenticity of thatseems pretty money to me.
AJ Wilcox (15:10):
I agree.
Yeah, you have a post from theCEO or head of sales.
Of course she's going to saywonderful things about the
platform and the product you'reselling, but a customer, I think
, just adds all that extralittle bit of trust factor actor
(15:34):
.
Eric Eden (15:34):
Now you have a podcast about LinkedIn
advertising and you've done morethan 150 episodes right?
Yeah, totally, and so you are adeep expert on this topic.
We could probably talk for manyhours about this, but going
into 2025, what are a couple ofthings that you broadly
recommend to clients to do ifthey want to be successful doing
LinkedIn advertising in thenext year?
AJ Wilcox (15:56):
First thing I would say is start ignoring LinkedIn's
own recommendations.
I say the recommendations thatyour rep gives you and the
platform give you while you'reinside.
They are very expensiverecommendations if you can get
where I'm headed with that Iagree.
There are five settings that Icould rattle off that right from
the default of where they'reset in the campaign.
(16:17):
If you uncheck them or changethem, you're doing really good.
You can get your costs probablyless than half of what most
advertisers are paying or whatyou'd be paying otherwise.
So I would say top number onestrategy is make sure you get
your costs in line.
Don't overpay for the trafficyou're getting just because
LinkedIn says, hey, you shouldbid like this or bid high,
(16:37):
because it's all bunk andthey're not lying.
They just don't know.
The next is invest in personalvideo because it's so cheap to
create and it is so effective asan advertising tool.
People love to see someone'sface.
It builds trust and especiallywhen that face is giving short,
quick value bites, it's amazing.
And I think third part is ifyou just show these like bottom
(17:02):
of funnel kinds of offers tocold traffic, you may get a lead
or two, but it's going to beexpensive and so much of the
time they're going to ghost thesales rep.
It's not worth it.
So think about building atleast a two-stage funnel where
you can nurture people firstbefore you're going right for
the kill, and I think you'll seea lot more success in 2025
(17:23):
doing that.
Eric Eden (17:25):
Awesome.
I think those are three reallygreat pieces of advice to change
the game in the next year withLinkedIn advertising.
So I'm going to link to yourwebsite and your LinkedIn in the
show notes so people can get intouch to learn more.
Is there anything else youwanted to share today that I
(17:45):
didn't ask about LinkedInadvertising?
AJ Wilcox (17:48):
Maybe what I can suggest is the strategies for
how to do bidding on LinkedInthat get you the lowest costs
guaranteed.
That's episode 89 of my podcast.
That's called the LinkedIn adshow, so I can send you a link.
You can put that in show notes.
But if you're going to listento one episode of the LinkedIn
ad show, make it that one.
It's the most popular episode,for good reason.
It saves people a lot of money.
Eric Eden (18:11):
Awesome.
I will link to that in the shownotes and thank you so much for
being with us today.
We appreciate your stories,your tips and your insights.
Aj, Thank you very much.
AJ Wilcox (18:21):
Hey Eric, thanks so much for having me on.
Invite me back anytime for around two.
Today we have an exciting topic.
We are talking about how to winwith LinkedIn advertising, and
we have the perfect guest tohelp us talk through this.
He's managed over $150 millionof LinkedIn advertising
campaigns AJ Wilcox welcome tothe show.
Eric, thanks so much for havingme.
AJ Wilcox (00:20):
I'm stoked to be here.
Eric Eden (00:23):
So why don't we start off by you taking just a
minute or two to explain alittle bit more about who you
are and what you do?
AJ Wilcox (00:30):
Yeah, you bet.
So I stumbled onto LinkedIn ads.
This has been now 14 years agowhen, at a previous position, I
had just been hired, I was thefirst digital marketing team
member at a pre IPO SaaS companyand I remember going to meet
with the CMO on my first day andtalking about the SEO and
Google ads and Google displaythat I was going to be doing
(00:52):
those were kind of myspecialties and she said all
that sounds great, go ahead andexecute it.
But oh, by the way, we juststarted a pilot with LinkedIn
ads, so see what you can do withthat.
And I jumped in basically withthe same strategies that I used
for Google ads at the time,because I didn't want to look
stupid to my new boss.
And within about two weeks, thesales team came up to me and
(01:13):
was saying hey, aj, we'refighting over your LinkedIn
leads, keep it up.
And I went Ooh, there'ssomething to this.
So over the next two and a halfyears, I grew that, I continued
to investing, grew it to becomeLinkedIn's largest spending
account in the world and aftertwo and a half years of running
the biggest account, I hadLinkedIn's product team asking
(01:33):
for advice and asking questionsand had them on speed dial and I
went okay, there have to bemore than just this one company
that would kill it on LinkedInads.
And so, just over 10 years ago,I started B2Linked, and we're
an ad agency based out of thestate of Utah.
That LinkedIn ads is all we do.
We were kind of the originalsin the space and I absolutely
still, to this day, I loveeverything about LinkedIn ads.
Eric Eden (01:58):
That's pretty awesome.
You've made that channel really, really sing.
That's great.
I think when you have salescoming to you saying we're
fighting over your leads, that'sthe best case scenario, right.
AJ Wilcox (02:10):
That's just amazing.
Eric Eden (02:12):
I think the reputation of LinkedIn ads has
been over the years that they'regood but they're expensive.
Yep, Is that what you've seenacross your clients and managing
things you manage.
Is that true?
AJ Wilcox (02:26):
Yeah, I've seen it over the entire 14-year history
of me and LinkedIn ads.
From the very beginning,linkedin ads set a minimum bid
threshold of $2 per click, whileat the same time you could get
Google ads for about a dollar aclick and you could get Facebook
clicks for about a third of acent a piece.
So in comparison to the otherchannels, linkedin has always
(02:47):
been more expensive and thatcontinues to this day as
competition has continued togrow and the platform's grown.
The average cost per click inNorth America on LinkedIn is
like $10 to $16.
And you can imagine, you know,meta might be down in like the
$4 to $5 range for a B2B kind ofoffer.
Google is who knows where for aB2B kind of offer.
Google is who knows where, justdepends on on what kind of niche
(03:08):
.
But yeah, they, they havealways been expensive.
But where LinkedIn wins andthis is the reason why it's,
it's a monopoly it's the onlyoption for B2B advertisers
because there's no otherplatform that owns your
professional data like LinkedIn,has it up to date, has the
depth of knowledge about it.
(03:28):
So if you're in B2B, your goalis to sell a specific kind of
software to a specific kind ofuser, linkedin is the only
channel where you can narrowdown to that job title at that
size of company in this industry.
And so, even though it'sexpensive upfront, what you
realize is because you'rehitting the right people.
The lead quality is easily fivetimes higher than it would be
(03:52):
from something like meta, and ifyou're looking all the way down
the funnel, your cost per leadmight be high on LinkedIn, but
when you get to the cost perlet's say cost per proposal or
cost per closed deal all of asudden LinkedIn looks way better
than the other channels,because the quality was so much
higher.
Eric Eden (04:11):
Yeah, quality matters a lot, so we're ready to
be inspired.
Tell us what it looks like tolive the dream.
Tell us a story about some ofthe most successful marketing
you've done with LinkedInadvertising.
AJ Wilcox (04:25):
Yeah, it's an awesome question.
It's one that I have so manyideas in mind that I've got to
try to narrow this down, so I'mgoing to share one example of
this.
But the same principles haveapplied time after time.
This is easily repeatable.
So we have a client who theyhave invested heavily in what I
call personal video.
(04:46):
So if you tell someone, go andcreate video ads that are going
to run on LinkedIn, they mayhave all kinds of things in mind
.
They may have like oh, we haveto go to a studio and pay tens
of thousands of dollars, or weneed to go and create an
animated explainer video, andthose things are all good, but
they also cost quite a bit andthey're difficult to actually
(05:08):
get done.
If I tell a client we want oneof these, we might not get it
for six months.
But what is really killing iton LinkedIn right now is what I
call personal video, and that'swhere, if you have an internal
thought leader maybe it's thefounder or head of marketing,
head of sales they hold up theirphone to their face.
They give a quick tip, a trick,a strategy, an industry update
(05:31):
that their customers should know, just something really
interesting and of free valueand we use Descript, which I
know you use as well.
For 12 bucks a month and thefree phone in your pocket, you
can create little snippets ofyou know 20 to 40 second video
ads that are really engaging.
When you see a person's face onyour screen, you care about
(05:54):
what they're saying and we canoverlay subtitles on top is
great for the 80 plus percent ofviewers of the ads who don't
have sound turned on and they'regetting the gist of the message
.
And then, within the last yearand a half, linkedin released a
new ad format called ThoughtLeader Ads, where you can
promote not only a company'spost but an individual's as well
(06:16):
.
So what we did in this case isand I'll explain why we do this
we created Thought Leader Adsfrom the founders and major
thought leaders within thecompany, where it was them in
the video they post about whythis is so interesting and why
people should pay attention, andthen we're able to use these in
(06:37):
ads.
Now the reason why this is sogroundbreaking is, I think most
LinkedIn advertisers will tellyou everyone wants sales
conversations, they want demos,they want sales ready leads.
But if you go to a coldaudience who's never heard of
you before and you say talk toour sales rep, get a demo.
You might see some clicksbecause people are kind of
(07:01):
curious but they're not ready tomeet with your sales team yet.
They need more nurturing, theyneed to know, like and trust you
before they're willing to hopon a call.
So the goal then is we knowthat the eventual goal is
getting them on the phone withsales.
What experiences do they needto have before that, in kind of
a funnel structure before itstarts, before the audience is
(07:25):
nurtured and ready for that, andwe decided that the best way to
do that would be to create athree-stage funnel where the top
two stages were all thesepersonal video, and once you
watched at least 50% or 75% ofone of these video ads, then you
graduate down to the next stageand finally, by the third stage
(07:45):
, we know that you've had atleast two significant
interactions with the brand andthen we've earned the right to
then ask you like it looks likeyou might be interested.
Do you want a demo?
And what was so cool in this?
Three-stage funnels and we runsome that are five-stage funnels
.
Linkedin doesn't make it easyto set up, so it was quite a bit
(08:06):
of work and it does take a goodamount of budget to put in the
top to get three stages of wherethe bottom stage is spending
enough that it's worthwhile.
So we're talking here this isprobably $15,000 of data
collected dumped in the topbefore we got a bottom of the
funnel result that we couldshare.
(08:27):
But what's so cool?
We were measuring conversionrates at we call it stage one,
stage two and stage three, andwe were measuring costs cost per
click, cost per conversion andwhat we found is by the third
stage our conversion rates werefive times higher than they were
in the second stage and costswere less than half like a cost
(08:49):
per click.
And all of that to say like, ifyou're getting a cost per
conversion of like $900 in thestage two, by stage three you'd
be paying less than like $150per lead for the same kind of
call to action.
So that is recently one of thestories that I'm most excited
(09:11):
about.
Took a lot of work and we put alot into it.
But it wasn't costly things, itwas more strategic things that
we were able to put into it andget a really solid result that
the sales team is just singingour praises right now.
Eric Eden (09:25):
Now that is really remarkable and LinkedIn has been
investing a lot in the videoand sort of pushing video
because of the success thatTikTok and Instagram Reels has
had.
But I'm curious in particularto the thought leadership ads.
Is there a magic that makesthem the best ad form on
(09:52):
LinkedIn today?
The magic?
AJ Wilcox (09:54):
is, if you show someone a post from a company
they've never heard of, they areso likely to keep scrolling.
The average click-through rateof a company post is like half
of 1%.
And then if we say exactly thesame thing as an individual, as
a human, and then promote thatas a thought leader ad, we see
(10:14):
click-through rates or evenengagement rates between like 3%
and 12%.
We see click-through rates oreven engagement rates between
like 3% and 12%.
So we're talking orders ofmagnitude more interesting to
users and I think that really isthe magic.
When you promote something froman individual.
You see an individual you don'tknow in your newsfeed.
You stop for a minute and go.
Who is this person?
Should I know them?
Do I know them?
(10:35):
Should I be listening to whatthey have to say, whereas if you
were only relying on what thecompany is saying, companies are
just not getting that muchtraction or attention.
Eric Eden (10:45):
It seems like this trend is going to even further
continue and amplify in 2025.
That seems like the directionthis is going.
Is that right?
AJ Wilcox (10:55):
Definitely, and there are some more improvements
that LinkedIn can do on thesethought leader ads to make them
even better.
They so this ability launchedin 2022 that we could do thought
leader ads, but we were stuckwith only promoting posts from
our own employees.
Oh, sorry, it was in 2023.
In 2024, they gave us theability to promote posts from
(11:16):
people outside of ourorganization.
So now you can do like UGC,user-generated content of one of
our customers just posted let'spromote that or an external
influencer that we're workingwith maybe we can promote their
post.
So that's been really cool.
But right now, the biggestweakness is that these thought
(11:36):
leader ads are very limited.
You can only promote a post asa thought leader ad that is
either a single image, no image,text only or video, and so if
you have an individual who postsa poll or a document or any
other format that tends to workreally well, you can't promote
it.
We're also stuck using only theobjective where you have to pay
(12:01):
.
You don't have to pay nearly asmuch, but you pay a little bit
for every kind of interaction onthe ad, not just the ones that
are taking you to a landing pagethat you care about, and so if
they give us that ability to doto run these on.
My favorite objective is thewebsite visits objective.
We're we're going to be able topay, and I hope LinkedIn does
this.
(12:21):
We'll be able to pay only whensomeone clicks on the link that
we care about that takes them toour site, or you might be able
to apply a lead generation formto the ad, which you can't do
now.
I'm hoping those enhancementscome.
Eric Eden (12:35):
You'd think that they would make these
advertising enhancements.
It seems like the LinkedIndivision of Microsoft.
Their revenue is over $16billion a year and directionally
half of that is advertising anddirectionally half of that is
advertising.
Do you think if they can crackthe nut on some of this stuff
that they'll get more peopledoing more advertising on the?
AJ Wilcox (12:56):
platform?
Absolutely.
I've seen what I considerexponential growth.
I don't know the exact numbersbecause I'm not internal,
obviously, but for the first 10years that I was focused on
LinkedIn ads it was very slowgrowth.
It took a lot of time formarketers to think like, hey,
what other channel should Iconsider?
Hey, maybe this LinkedIn ads,even though it's expensive,
(13:17):
maybe the targeting is going tobe worth it.
And just in the last three years, three, four years I've seen
exponential just a spike, wheremore and more companies, even if
they've tested them before andthey weren't successful, they're
coming back again becauseLinkedIn is the only platform
where you can have this level ofbusiness targeting.
And as they do, as we see allof this adoption happen, we're
(13:39):
seeing costs rise for alladvertisers because it's an
auction platform and we do.
We see some advertisers are nowpaying $20 plus per click,
which is kind of crazy.
But if there's that many peoplebidding for and fighting for
that audience segment, thenthat's what it is.
But I see this continuing torise, more and more advertisers
(14:01):
getting more and more value outof LinkedIn in limited tests and
then saying, okay, let's bringmore budget.
Eric Eden (14:09):
And then saying, okay, let's bring more budget.
So for the thought leadershipads, can you do the targeting
application to them as well andtarget certain industries, types
of companies, job functions,Like you can do pretty precise
targeting with the thoughtleadership ads right.
AJ Wilcox (14:21):
Exactly All the same targeting you can do with the
other ones.
You're just putting a personalpost in front of people that
they care about more.
It's a formula for success, forsure.
Eric Eden (14:32):
I've heard a lot of people doubling down on the
strategy you said of usingthought leadership ads with
customers and with influencers,well-known people I haven't
really heard celebrities yet,but I wouldn't be surprised to
see that.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprisedto see that.
Yeah, but it's interesting thatI think customers would
(14:52):
probably be one of the mostpowerful amplifiers, because
people take those endorsementsprobably even more so than
influencers, right?
If, like I'm a customer, I'veused it, it's been great, people
will listen to that and believethat a lot more.
So the authenticity of thatseems pretty money to me.
AJ Wilcox (15:10):
I agree.
Yeah, you have a post from theCEO or head of sales.
Of course she's going to saywonderful things about the
platform and the product you'reselling, but a customer, I think
, just adds all that extralittle bit of trust factor actor
(15:34):
.
Eric Eden (15:34):
Now you have a podcast about LinkedIn
advertising and you've done morethan 150 episodes right?
Yeah, totally, and so you are adeep expert on this topic.
We could probably talk for manyhours about this, but going
into 2025, what are a couple ofthings that you broadly
recommend to clients to do ifthey want to be successful doing
LinkedIn advertising in thenext year?
AJ Wilcox (15:56):
First thing I would say is start ignoring LinkedIn's
own recommendations.
I say the recommendations thatyour rep gives you and the
platform give you while you'reinside.
They are very expensiverecommendations if you can get
where I'm headed with that Iagree.
There are five settings that Icould rattle off that right from
the default of where they'reset in the campaign.
(16:17):
If you uncheck them or changethem, you're doing really good.
You can get your costs probablyless than half of what most
advertisers are paying or whatyou'd be paying otherwise.
So I would say top number onestrategy is make sure you get
your costs in line.
Don't overpay for the trafficyou're getting just because
LinkedIn says, hey, you shouldbid like this or bid high,
(16:37):
because it's all bunk andthey're not lying.
They just don't know.
The next is invest in personalvideo because it's so cheap to
create and it is so effective asan advertising tool.
People love to see someone'sface.
It builds trust and especiallywhen that face is giving short,
quick value bites, it's amazing.
And I think third part is ifyou just show these like bottom
(17:02):
of funnel kinds of offers tocold traffic, you may get a lead
or two, but it's going to beexpensive and so much of the
time they're going to ghost thesales rep.
It's not worth it.
So think about building atleast a two-stage funnel where
you can nurture people firstbefore you're going right for
the kill, and I think you'll seea lot more success in 2025
(17:23):
doing that.
Eric Eden (17:25):
Awesome.
I think those are three reallygreat pieces of advice to change
the game in the next year withLinkedIn advertising.
So I'm going to link to yourwebsite and your LinkedIn in the
show notes so people can get intouch to learn more.
Is there anything else youwanted to share today that I
(17:45):
didn't ask about LinkedInadvertising?
AJ Wilcox (17:48):
Maybe what I can suggest is the strategies for
how to do bidding on LinkedInthat get you the lowest costs
guaranteed.
That's episode 89 of my podcast.
That's called the LinkedIn adshow, so I can send you a link.
You can put that in show notes.
But if you're going to listento one episode of the LinkedIn
ad show, make it that one.
It's the most popular episode,for good reason.
It saves people a lot of money.
Eric Eden (18:11):
Awesome.
I will link to that in the shownotes and thank you so much for
being with us today.
We appreciate your stories,your tips and your insights.
Aj, Thank you very much.
AJ Wilcox (18:21):
Hey Eric, thanks so much for having me on.
Invite me back anytime for around two.
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