May 14, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode, Danny sits down with LinkedIn Ads expert AJ Wilcox to dive into his marketing journey, his views on mentorship, and his laser-sharp insights into B2B advertising on LinkedIn.
AJ shares how a passion for teaching and authentic connection laid the foundation for B2Linked, an industry-leading agency for LinkedIn Ads.
He discusses the power of mentorship, from hiking with his boss’s boss to mentoring rising marketers in Utah, and shares the advertising strategies that generate real ROI.
Episode Highlights:
- AJ explains why he left SEO and Google Ads behind to become a LinkedIn Ads specialist focused on high-quality B2B leads.
- He shares how weekly mentorship hikes evolved into a career-boosting tradition for local digital marketers.
- Learn the essential elements of effective LinkedIn targeting and why deeper funnel strategies outperform surface metrics.
- Discover the benefits of combining mentorship with marketing expertise—AJ shares his advice for building both.
- AJ compares native LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms vs. landing pages, and how to pick the right tool for your campaign goals.
Episode Links:
🔗 LinkedIn: AJ Wilcox
🔗 B2Linked Agency
🎙️ The LinkedIn Ads Show Podcast
Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor:
- Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com
- Instagram: @thedmmentor
- Linkedin: @thedmmentor
- YouTube: @thedmmentor
Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family:
- Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations.
- ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Danny Gavin (00:05):
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.
I'm your host, danny Gavin, and, together with industry leaders
and marketing experts, we'llexplore the meeting point of
mentorship and marketing.
We'll discover how theseconnections have affected
careers, marketing strategiesand lives.
Now get ready to get human.
Hello, I'm Danny Gavin, founderof Optage marketing professor
(00:38):
and the host of the DigitalMarketing Mentor.
Get ready to get human?
A series that breaks down thecomplexities of LinkedIn to
simple tips for B2B marketers.
With over a decade ofexperience in performance
marketing, aj has spoken atconferences and industry events
across the globe, sharing hisexpertise in driving results
through innovative LinkedInadvertising strategies.
Today, we're going to talkabout mentorship and, of course,
marketing and advertising onLinkedIn.
(00:59):
How are you doing, aj?
AJ Wilcox (01:01):
Doing awesome.
Danny, Thank you so much forhaving me on.
It's an absolute honor.
Danny Gavin (01:04):
Yes, we met each other in San Diego a couple
months ago and I'm like dude, Ineed to get AJ on the podcast.
So I'm really glad you're here.
For people who don't know, aj'sliterally the LinkedIn guru he
really is.
When people need someone, theycall him.
I think in some ways, this is acompliment, but it's also hard.
Anyone else who wants to becomea LinkedIn guru it's hard
(01:26):
because AJ's there.
But you're awesome and in lifeyou're even better.
You're so friendly and awesome,so it's just so nice to have
you here today.
AJ Wilcox (01:36):
Well, I'm turning bright red, thank you.
One thing I'm really bad atsales, but what I'm really good
at is creating content andteaching, and I've just.
Our company has turned now.
You know, b2linked is now over10 years old.
From the inception of thecompany, I went okay, I'm not
going to go and generate leadsfor myself by selling.
I'm going to go and create abunch of content and just teach
(01:59):
everyone everything I know forfree, and it pays dividends.
You know, 10 years later, wehave more inbound leads coming
in than we can handle honestly,and I love it.
So I think it's a salesstrategy.
But it's also part of mypersonality.
I can't not teach and sharewhat I know.
Danny Gavin (02:15):
And it's such a good example of by sharing
instead of holding back, thatactually can help you instead of
harm you.
And I still have people todaysay, hey, should we share that?
I'm like, yeah, actually it's agood idea, because usually
people don't want to do thingsthemselves.
They'll be like, ah, okay,that's a really good idea, but
maybe I'll get you to do it.
So, talking about education,let's start off with where did
(02:37):
you go to school and what didyou study?
AJ Wilcox (02:38):
So I went to school at BYU it's Brigham Young
University here in Utah.
When I went I didn't know whatI wanted to do.
I had served a two-yearreligious mission where I lived
in Ukraine speaking Russian.
So I kind of thought in theback of my mind like, hey, maybe
with these newfound languageskills maybe I could do
something with internationalbusiness.
But I ended up sitting in on aclass as I was learning about
(03:00):
the business program, where youget to choose a focus inside the
major, learning about thebusiness program where you get
to choose a focus inside themajor and I sat in on a
marketing class and I'm a bigcar guy Like I love anything
cars and the professor he wasthe marketing professor and he
had worked in automotive hiswhole career.
So all of these examples wereabout BMW, mercedes, audi and
(03:20):
Jaguar and I was like this isgreat.
He had me hanging on every wordand what I found is I
absolutely fell in love withmarketing.
Danny Gavin (03:28):
And that was when I decided like okay, I'm going
into the marketing track here.
First, a shout out to BYU,because it happens to be a
really good football school andtheir quarterback is, he's
Jewish, which helps.
That's a whole other story foranother time, which is pretty
cool.
Looking back at your time,there were there outside of like
that first professor.
Were there any otherexperiences outside or inside of
(03:50):
the classroom that pretty muchled you to where you are today?
AJ Wilcox (03:53):
One thing that was interesting I used to watch Star
Trek with my dad.
He was a big Trekkie growing upand on Saturdays when I'd just
go sit on the couch next to himand we'd watch, he's a finance
guy, he's not a marketer, butwhen the commercials came on, he
started quizzing me and he'dsay hey, who do you think this
commercial is talking to?
Who do you think their audienceis and what sort of action do
(04:16):
you think that they want them todo?
Is it just to remember this?
Is it they want them to go andfind him at the store and
purchase?
And so when I heard marketingwas an option, I didn't know
what else I wanted to do.
But I remembered watching adswith my dad back years ago and
went like, oh, I enjoyed that.
(04:36):
Maybe that's something I couldlook into, and that was one of
the inspiring factors.
Danny Gavin (04:42):
Wow, that's really, really cool.
It makes me think of sometimeswhen I go to basketball games
with my kids and there's like,let's say, the Kiss Cam or the
Dance Cam and it's likesponsored by a certain company,
and then afterwards I ask them,hey, do you know who that was
sponsored by?
And like most of the time theyhave no clue because they didn't
even realize.
But that's like a fun trick toplay.
But talk about Star Trek.
(05:03):
What a fun trick to play.
But talk about Star Trek.
What is your favorite series?
Do you have like a specificthat you like?
Yeah, I really liked.
AJ Wilcox (05:08):
What's it called Voyager?
Okay, I really liked Voyager.
That was my favorite.
With my dad, I watched all theway through the Next Generation
Deep Space Nine and Voyager andI really love the whole series.
I love how prescient it isabout what technology would be
(05:31):
like in the future and I lovedhow inclusive it was and how it
always taught a great messageabout how to be a better human,
and that's something I think TVmay have lost to this point is
having the good moral that everyepisode teaches you.
Danny Gavin (05:37):
No, I agree.
So I guess we're right.
I think we're about the sameage.
So I also grew up through thosethree series and, yeah, going
back now and looking at like thenext generation episodes, so
obviously it's not as cool as itwas when we were kids.
But, like you said, themessaging and what you're
learning right, it's just sad,like that just doesn't exist in
TV nowadays.
Yeah, so, aj, how would youdefine a mentor?
AJ Wilcox (05:59):
I don't think a mentor has to be something that
is like an official relationshipwhere you've both agreed.
I would follow people in mycareer and just I really cared
about their thought processesand how they taught and how they
thought, and my goal was justto learn as much as I possibly
could from them.
A lot of times, this is justsomeone that you call a friend,
(06:19):
or mentorship is just payingreally close attention to what
someone that you idolize isdoing.
Danny Gavin (06:25):
Yeah, I just had that conversation today with
someone about.
For me personally, some of mybiggest mentors aren't
necessarily the people that Isaid, hey, do you want to be my
mentor?
But it's like they gave me thathope that, oh, I could get
there some way someday as well.
I always wonder who they had,because some of the guys that
I've looked up to they were liketrailblazers.
(06:47):
So I think it's a lot harderfor them.
So I always say, ooh, I'm luckythat at least I had you to look
up to Talking about some ofyour most influential mentors.
Let's first talk about your dad.
I know you just spoke about himand obviously he must be such a
big part of your life, but we'dlove to know why do you
consider him one of your mentors?
AJ Wilcox (07:02):
Yeah, ever since a young age, my dad has been my
best friend and it was so funny.
I think back to high school.
All of my friends thought thatmy dad was a better friend to
them than I was.
I specifically remember cominghome from a date and having all
of my friends just hanging outwith my dad and I was like, hey,
you guys, you're waiting for me.
(07:23):
And they're like, no, we'rehere hanging out with your dad,
thanks for coming.
So maybe it's a statement aboutlike how cool I was in high
school, but another like howawesome my dad was and how much
he cared about me as a son andabout our group of friends.
And he did his entire career inin finance.
He worked in banks, which isnot what I wanted to do.
(07:44):
I think I would probably goinsane, but he's my confidant.
Every time I go to make a bigdecision, I run it by him and,
for instance, when I createdthis company, b2linked, I went
to him and said, hey, I've beenrunning the largest LinkedIn ads
account in the world for twoand a half years.
I know more about this platformthan anyone.
(08:04):
I think I might be able tostart like a consultancy or an
agency where I could do this forother companies and his answer
was oh, being an entrepreneur,that's really risky, like you
probably shouldn't do it, and Ididn't take his advice.
I obviously went and createdthe company, but someone who's a
mentor.
It doesn't mean you have toalways take their advice, but it
(08:27):
does mean you have to careenough to say I want to hear
both sides of the story, likelet's have a conversation about
whether or not this is a goodidea.
Danny Gavin (08:34):
Yeah, so my dad is very similar in the sense that,
like all the young people alwaysgravitate to him In some ways.
I found that a littleintimidating growing up because
it was like, ooh, he's so cool,what am I supposed to do?
So to me it's a little bit of achallenge, but so many people
don't have that father figure intheir life that they can speak
with and have that, and you'revery lucky to have that and I'm
(09:00):
sure that you don't take it forgranted.
AJ Wilcox (09:02):
No, in fact, I've gone through a divorce, so my
kids live in a blended familyand have this situation.
I am so grateful that I grew upin a home where my parents were
together and I feel like it wasreally an idyllic kind of
upbringing, and so now I knowI'm going to compensate extra
(09:22):
well for my kids.
I'm going to compensate extrawell for my kids and I want to
show them the same kind ofbehaviors that I learned from my
dad.
I got such a good example.
I want to try to share thatwith them as much as possible.
Danny Gavin (09:36):
Let's move on to Alex MacArthur.
I believe he was your boss'sboss's boss.
AJ Wilcox (09:48):
But let's talk about Alex.
Yeah, so when I was in mysecond job after college, I was
working in a search engineoptimization agency and this was
my boss's boss's boss, like yousaid.
But he was a really cool guyand I liked the way he thought,
I liked the way he presented andhe didn't make it feel like
there was a huge power distance.
So I was actually really goodfriends with my boss and my
(10:08):
boss's boss and they were goodfriends with him and so over
time it wasn't actually at thatsame company, but after we all
kind of moved on and went otherplaces, he and I we connected
over this love of hiking.
I live in Utah where I have,within a 20 minute drive I have
about 20 different hiking trails.
We go on and and I knew Alex waskind of a an outdoorsy kind of
(10:31):
guy and so I just said, hey, youwant to go hiking on a Saturday
morning?
And he said yes, so we went andit turned into something where,
like it's a tradition everySaturday morning, we went and
over the course of the next likeyear and a half, he and I going
, we got to know each otherreally well and we got really
invested in each other's careers, how do we help each other?
(10:53):
And he would give me so muchgood advice.
And then, you know, it camewinter and he went hey, our
hikes kind of have to stopunless we do snowshoes.
And so we went out and gotsnowshoes and kept it going so
we could hike all year round.
And what was so much fun aboutthis is I understood the value
of what I was getting out ofthat mentorship of me, learning
(11:16):
from him that I started invitingall of these younger digital
marketing guys who were in thearea hey, every Saturday morning
we hike, come with us.
And then I got the opportunityto pass on exactly what Alex
gave to me and I could help themin their careers.
And they're all now likefabulously more successful than
I'll ever be, and I get to claima little part of that.
(11:38):
I'm really happy for them.
Danny Gavin (11:39):
Yeah, I would say the best result within a
mentorship relationship is whenthe people who you're mentoring,
when they get even better thanyou right, when you see that
amazing success, it's, yeah,it's so rewarding.
Tell me about your ownmentorship style.
So, whether that's like withyour team members or some of
these young digital marketers,how do you mentor them?
AJ Wilcox (11:58):
I really try to first of all be a friend because
someone doesn't care.
They won't care about advicethat I give them unless they
know that that advice comes froma good place.
So genuinely, I mean I'm out tobe a friend with everyone that
I come across.
It's not going to feel fake,but I do.
I want to learn about them, Iwant to become their friend so
(12:21):
that when I give advice theycare, and I also want to make
sure that someone that I'mchoosing as a mentor that they
care enough about the advice,because I can't tell you how
frustrating it is when you knowsomething great for someone and
you offer helpful advice andthey turn it down.
I know I shared how I did thatto my dad probably a lot, but
(12:44):
I've taken his advice on a lotof other things to compensate.
It's really important as amentee that you do actually
honor that person's feedback sothat they'll want to keep it
going.
Danny Gavin (12:55):
Yeah, it's like a balance right, because on one
hand, you want to give peopleadvice but you also want them to
make their own decisions, andsometimes you can see where the
problem comes up, where you gotsome advice, you didn't take it
and you made the mistake.
And then you come back to themand be like, ooh, I should have
listened to you.
So I think, being as the mentor, you kind of have to be patient
, right.
But you're right.
(13:15):
If you have someone and youkeep helping them and they don't
listen and they keep messing up, it could be that you're just
the wrong match.
AJ Wilcox (13:22):
And you can now pick someone else as a mentee who
does care and wants it more towho does care and wants it more,
and you'll now get to influencemore and more careers.
Danny Gavin (13:31):
Going down the path of LinkedIn ads outside of this
really big client that you hadand dealing with LinkedIn ads.
What inspired you most aboutdoubling down into LinkedIn?
AJ Wilcox (13:41):
What I loved.
You know, I came from thisworld of search engine
optimization where if I made anadjustment, I wouldn't actually
see the fruits of that for likefour to six months, especially
if you're working on made anadjustment.
I wouldn't actually see thefruits of that for like four to
six months, especially if you'reworking on like an enterprise
level, national kind of site.
And that was so frustrating.
So I learned Google ads at thetime because, hey, it's the same
(14:02):
keyword that I was optimizingtowards, but because I'm putting
dollars behind it, by the endof today I can tell you whether
that was a good investment ornot.
So I got really into that.
But when I stumbled intoLinkedIn ads, it was totally
different.
It's not keyword based, it'sbased off of who someone is
professionally.
And I noticed when I went intothe last employer I worked for
(14:25):
it was a SaaS company and I wasdoing all of the same SEO
activities.
I was doing all the same Googleads activities, even getting
into the display network andother areas of marketing.
The sales team came to me abouttwo weeks after I started and
said, aj, we're fighting overyour leads, keep it up.
And I went like, oh, what arethese leads they're talking
(14:47):
about.
I went and looked in our CRMand every single lead that they
had mentioned came from ourLinkedIn ads campaign and I went
oh, this is something that Idon't even know what I'm doing
here.
I better spend more time andattention.
And so I kept investing andinvesting until the point where
I finally said, hey, I calledmyself an SEO guy before I
(15:08):
started.
I'm gonna give SEO to an agencybecause I want to focus 100%
here on LinkedIn ads, and thatwas the way it worked.
I gave away Google ads as well,so I could be 100% focused on
LinkedIn.
What I loved so much about it is, if I generate a lead from
someone who typed a keyword,they were searching for it and
(15:29):
then they fill out the form.
I know that they have intent,because they were searching for
what I'm offering, but I didn'thave any way of qualifying who
they were.
Are they looking for a freekind of option?
Are they just looking forinformation, or are they looking
for an enterprise-level tool?
That's what I was working with.
It's like, okay, all these leadsthat Google ads are bringing in
(15:54):
, they're all what I would callthe mom and pops and tire
kickers.
They were just very small dealsizes, but with my LinkedIn ads
I could say I only want totarget you if you have this
level of seniority in this roleat a company with more than 500
employees in this sector andbecause of that, every lead that
I generated, everyone who seesthe ad.
(16:16):
They're a perfect fit for whatwe do and that was something I
couldn't ever do with a keywordlevel marketing like Google ads.
That's why I fell in love withLinkedIn is access to qualifying
an audience way better than Icould and way differently, way
more differently than I could onany other channel.
Danny Gavin (16:34):
For those, who don't know much about LinkedIn
ads.
When someone comes to you andsays, hey, I'm really torn.
I've got LinkedIn ads, I've gotmeta ads.
I know meta ads are a lotcheaper.
You could pretty much targetalso, you know what.
Would you tell them?
What would be the maindifferences between LinkedIn ads
and meta ads?
AJ Wilcox (16:52):
Meta and LinkedIn.
They both target by audiences,by who someone is.
The difference is meta doesn'tactually know who you are
professionally.
They know what you'reinterested in and the kinds of
things that you interact with,but they don't know you
professionally.
Linkedin, on the other hand,they have a monopoly, as far as
(17:14):
I'm concerned, on yourprofessional data.
They know every job you'veworked at.
They know your title, what sizeof company those are, which
industry.
They know the skills thatyou've listed on your profile
and the groups that you're amember of.
They know all of this stuff.
So, yes, meta is probably abouta third of the price per click,
meaning that if you're gettingsome kind of a lead let's say
you know someone to sign up fora webinar your cost per
(17:36):
conversion is going to be abouta third on meta as it is on
LinkedIn.
But what we found with a clientrecently?
We analyzed their meta spendand their LinkedIn spend and we
found that, even though thecosts were a third on meta by
the time we walked them all theway through a proposal and a
closed deal, linkedin's traffic.
(17:59):
It costs three times more, butthe sales team had to throw out
90% of the meta leads.
They only had to throw out anddisqualify, like 5% of LinkedIn.
And so now, even though thecosts are higher on LinkedIn, we
ended up with an ROI that wastwo and a half times higher than
meta was.
So your upfront costs are noteverything.
(18:21):
It's so much more about thequality that you get out of the
backend.
Danny Gavin (18:25):
And I think that we can't stress that enough,
especially when you're dealingwith service based businesses,
where it's not about the initiallead form right of the back end
.
And I think that we can'tstress that enough, especially
when you're dealing withservice-based businesses, where
it's not about the initial leadform right, but it's about what
happens afterwards.
If you're not looking what'shappening down the funnel and at
the end and then bringing thatback to your campaign, then
you're missing the whole point.
So it's awesome that you havealthough you maybe didn't set up
(18:46):
that A-B test right, but youhad it and it's the proof's in
the pudding.
That's so cool.
AJ Wilcox (18:51):
Yeah, and honestly, this is one of those things
because we weren't running themeta ads Right.
This was an A-B test that wasset up because we're trying to
show our value and if the clientkeeps saying, hey, the costs on
LinkedIn are about three timeshigher than we're paying on meta
, we get really discouraged,like, oh man, there's nothing we
can do about how much LinkedIncharges.
(19:11):
But after finding the results,we had this new love and
appreciation for our LinkedIntraffic, just because it has a
leg up on any other channel interms of quality.
Danny Gavin (19:22):
So this is a little bit of an advanced more of an
advanced question.
But in the world of Bing ads orMicrosoft ads, you have the
ability to use LinkedInaudiences.
So do you ever work with paidsearch people with your LinkedIn
sort of data knowledge in orderto craft kind of a winning paid
search campaign, at least onthe Microsoft side?
AJ Wilcox (19:42):
Yeah, like you mentioned, microsoft has this
targeting because they ownLinkedIn.
But to my knowledge, they onlyrolled out three targeting
facets.
So we have I think it's companyname, company size and I think
we might have like job function.
Danny Gavin (19:56):
So thin, it's very thin.
AJ Wilcox (19:58):
Yeah.
And so if I ever have anaudience that I could define by
those three things like yeah, Iwould definitely suggest go set
that up in Microsoft, becauseyou're going to get access to
the right people but you'll getcheaper display inventory.
So I love it, but because it islimited, it's not like page one
of my playbook.
Danny Gavin (20:17):
So that's a really good segue into what are some of
the effective targetingstrategies you recommend
businesses looking to reachtheir ideal audience on LinkedIn
.
There are so many differentknobs that you can turn.
How do you usually approach?
AJ Wilcox (20:28):
it Anytime a client tells me this is the audience we
want to go after.
What I'm paying attention toare two different aspects.
I want to understand who is theprofessional, his or herself,
and then I also want tounderstand what type of
organization are they at Like?
Let's say, if you tell me thatyour ideal target audience is
CFOs but your product costs,let's say, $5,000 a month, I'm
(20:56):
going to tell you your audienceis not CFOs of a five person
company.
They're not going to have thebudget for for your product or
service.
So I think of the professionaltargeting being their role.
And there are five differentfacets that I like to use here.
Job title is the one thateveryone goes to first because
it makes the most sense.
Here, job title is the one thateveryone goes to first because
it makes the most sense.
Job title is also because ofthat it's the most competitive
and you're probably going to paya bit higher of a click cost by
(21:19):
using it.
The next one I really likeusing job function, which is
their department, with a levelof seniority built onto it, with
a level of seniority built ontoit.
So if it's CFOs, I can say jobfunction, finance and seniority,
c-level, or CXO, as LinkedIncalls it, and I've just gotten
that same person.
There's also skills withseniority.
(21:40):
I could do a really high levelIT kind of skill if I want to
hit that same CTO or CIO ohsorry, I think we were talking
finance want to hit that sameCTO or CIO?
Oh sorry, I think we weretalking finance.
If I do high-level financeskills with a seniority, I can
get CFOs and that's a wideraudience I'm probably going to
end up paying less per click for.
(22:01):
And then there's also groups.
I could target just CFO groups,for instance, and hit the same
person.
So that just allowed me tonarrow in and I can decide which
one of those or if multiple ofthose make sense given the
audience and the budget.
But now I've just designed whowas the individual.
Then, on the company side, Iget to shoot for things like a
(22:23):
size of company.
So I'll use number of employeesMost of the time.
That's my favorite one.
I can narrow down by theirindustry and I can even narrow
down by specific company names.
So those of us in marketingthat we know what account-based
marketing or ABM is, where wewant to show ads just to members
of specific companies we can dothat on LinkedIn and by
(22:47):
combining those two aspects theprofessional and the type of
organization they work at nowyou've got a really solid target
that you just can't get on anyother way.
Danny Gavin (22:57):
Yeah, it's bulletproof, yeah, so what
metrics should marketers focuson when measuring their success
with LinkedIn advertising?
AJ Wilcox (23:03):
This one's difficult because I think most new
advertisers they say hey, here'sthis audience of ideal people
that would make great customersfor us.
Let's show them ads that sayhop on a free demo, talk to my
sales rep.
And what we know is someone whodoes not know like and trust
your organization already.
They are not ready to talk toyour sales department.
(23:24):
It's like proposing marriage onthe very first date.
You might be a great marriagecandidate, but you're gonna
scare them away by asking toomuch too soon.
So what I do is I break myaccounts into a three-stage
funnel strategy and at the topof the funnel I call this my
stage one.
Here I just want to get theirattention, I want to make some
sort of an impact on them, andthe very best way I've found to
(23:48):
do this is with very personalkinds of content where I'm
sharing a tip, a trick, astrategy, an industry update
that you might be interested in,and I'm not asking for anything
in return, I'm just givingvalue.
Then, once you've interactedthere, then I can show you
something that's a little bitdeeper, a little bit more
engaging.
And then, when you've engagedthere now I'm like okay, you've
(24:11):
had at least two stronginteractions with our brand.
Now I've more or less earnedthe right to ask you for like
hey, you look ready?
Like, do you want to talk tosomeone in sales?
So I have very different metricsthat I care about in all three
stages of the funnel.
At the top, what I care about isI want really high engagement
rates to show me that peoplethat I'm showing the ads to they
(24:34):
care.
If they're videos let's say it'sa 20 to 40 second video where
I'm giving a tip I want to see acost per 50% view and a 50%
view rate and a completion ratethat all tell me people stuck
around they cared about what Ihad to say.
If it's, let's say, a documentad, I want to see that people
are engaging, they're thumbingthrough the document, that they
(24:55):
got 25, 50% of the way through.
If it's a single image ad, Icare about my click-through rate
and my engagement rate.
I can compare those toLinkedIn's benchmark of like
0.5% would be a LinkedInbenchmark average, so about half
of a percent.
If my click-through rate orengagement rate are
significantly higher than that,then I go okay, I'm providing
(25:18):
value.
Then, at the bottom of thefunnel, I care more about what's
my cost per conversion, myconversion rate.
You know my click-through ratesand engagement rates there as
well, so it just depends on howfar someone is through the
funnel where I start to careabout the different metrics that
they might be interacting with.
Danny Gavin (25:35):
So I got two questions.
So number one would be whenyou're presenting this to the
client, obviously you'rethrowing in soft metrics, which
makes sense at the top and midfunnel, but maybe they're used
to being like everything needsto show direct ROI.
What would you say?
The breakdown is People, butyou have to, like, educate them
or they, like already know thatthis is the deal.
AJ Wilcox (25:54):
I would say the vast majority of advertisers that we
talk to need to be educated.
So I tell them this on the veryfirst discovery call of working
together.
That's like a hey, by the way,going right for the kill does
not work 95% of the time andthis is the strategy that you're
going to want to follow.
If they go, hey, sorry, we dogated content and have BDRs
(26:18):
follow up immediately on thoseleads and try to close them.
Okay, we could help you withthat, but you might be better
off on your own following thatstrategy.
But come back when you want athree-stage full educational
nurture that's going to turninto a long-term lead generating
machine.
Danny Gavin (26:32):
I'm sure it's hard to push away people, but in the
long run you know what works andtherefore, if they're not going
to buy into the system, itmakes sense to push them away.
AJ Wilcox (26:40):
And we invest so heavily in our clients that
bringing someone on who sticksaround for three months and then
leaves is not good for uslong-term.
I would so much rather makesure that the relationship is
right, that we have a long-termpotential relationship here so
that we can keep investingeverything we have into our
accounts.
I would rather push someoneaway because I don't want to
(27:00):
have a hard conversation inthree months.
Danny Gavin (27:02):
So, with the third stage, or the third funnel,
what's your opinion on lead genforms, which would mean people
coming onto LinkedIn and fillingout the form directly, for
sending people to a website orto a landing page where they'd
have to fill out the form there?
AJ Wilcox (27:14):
Yeah, so big differences here.
Linkedin made a native leadgeneration form built right into
their ads, and what's so coolabout it is when it pops up,
they've pre-filled all theinformation about the prospect
that LinkedIn knows, and so it.
Especially if someone's on amobile device, which 80% of the
people on LinkedIn are.
It's so easy.
(27:34):
You don't have to type in youremail address for the 50th time
that day with your big thumbs.
It's so easy to hit that formand submit.
But there's no integration witha calendar.
If your goal is to get someoneon a call with sales, I've found
that if you use these lead genforms, you have a really high
conversion rate upfront, whichis great, but then you need to
(27:56):
get them to take the next stepand convert again, which is
schedule a time on this salesreps calendar.
So what I've found is actually,if I send them to a landing
page form first, there's alittle bit more friction here.
First of all, the page is goingto take a little bit longer to
load, and we know some peopleare very impatient when they
click on an ad.
(28:16):
If they bounce before the pagefully loads, then they're gone.
You paid for the click, butthey never ended up seeing
anything To combat this.
I would highly suggest any sortof improvement you can make on
your landing page.
Load time is totally worth theinvestment there.
Now you have a form on yourwebsite.
We know it's going to not haveas high a conversion rate
(28:39):
because it's not auto-filledthat kind of sucks but at the
same time, when traffic is on mywebsite versus staying on
LinkedIn, it is worth so muchmore to me and I appreciate it
because when someone's on thewebsite they could click around
to the about us, they could readmore about our products.
If it's the same cost per clickeither way, I would prefer them
(28:59):
being on my website.
And then, you know, the extranail in the coffin here for me
is I can build a scheduler appright into the lead form.
So if someone is saying, yes, Iwant to meet with someone in
the same form, they can choosethe date and time and send it
out.
So it's only one conversion.
Rather than the lead gen formwe'd be asking for two.
(29:21):
So controversial opinion,because if you look at cost per
lead, you're going to say, oh,the lead forms are a third of
the cost or maybe even less, butI actually get a lower cost per
meeting booked and lower costper meeting shown.
I like show up using my ownlanding page forms rather than
LinkedIn's lead forms.
(29:41):
Take those into account and see.
I think both are a good option,but if you want meetings, I'd
go your own landing page forms.
Danny Gavin (29:48):
It's tough, but everything that you're saying
makes so much sense To me.
It's just like you actuallyhave to sell it to the client,
right, yeah, but obviously youdo a great job doing that, so
it's fine, but it does.
It makes so much sense andthat's the idea, like, I think
everything in life is like along short path and then a short
long path right, and that is,if you take the shortcut, in the
(30:10):
end it's going to be long.
Something might seem long,right, it might be a three-stage
funnel and you're sending themto the website, but the bottom
line is that's the short path,because you are going to get the
right people at the end of that.
AJ Wilcox (30:20):
So I love it, that's right?
Danny Gavin (30:21):
Sure, you have a million of these, but what are
some of your top common mistakesthat you see businesses making
with LinkedIn ads?
How can people avoid them inthe future?
It's really cool.
AJ Wilcox (30:31):
I do a lot of audits on accounts and there are five
mistakes in targeting that I seeI have not yet audited an
account that didn't make atleast one of these mistakes.
So the first is the geographictargeting that you choose.
Linkedin defaults to somethingcalled recent or permanent
location, and I always switchthat to be just permanent
(30:53):
location because recent location, if I'm targeting the US, it's
going to capture people who fitthe criteria otherwise, who are
visiting during the summer fromEurope or from Asia, and so all
of a sudden, like clients in thesummer, will start saying, hey,
why are we getting leads fromthe Philippines?
It's like, well, they visited,and LinkedIn calls recent six
(31:17):
months.
So they could have visited upto six months ago, which is kind
of crazy.
So set your geographictargeting to permanent and you
get rid of that.
The next one is after you setyour targeting, as you scroll
down, there's a little box thatLinkedIn auto checks called
enable audience expansion.
We'll put it this way youalready pay a premium to
advertise on LinkedIn because wewant to reach very specific
(31:40):
professionals.
Leaving that box checked justenables LinkedIn to throw other
audiences that you haven'tdefined in there.
It's never a good idea.
Always, always uncheck that boxchecked just enables LinkedIn
to throw other audiences thatyou haven't defined in there.
It's never a good idea.
Always, always, uncheck thatbox.
Then, as you keep scrolling,you get down to placements and
LinkedIn will auto select aplacement called the LinkedIn
audience network, which soundsgreat in theory of hey, I want
(32:02):
to target my LinkedIn people,but everywhere around the web
and on different apps, but whatwe find is very low quality
traffic coming from there and,surprisingly, a lot of bot
traffic.
Linkedin tries really hard notto charge you for the visits
that they can tell our bots, butthey can't catch everyone.
And, aside from that, it'llspend 95% of your budget on the
(32:25):
audience network.
That's lower quality and itsteals all the budget from your
just LinkedIn traffic, which weknow is super high quality.
So I uncheck that to begin with.
Then, finally, you get down tothe bidding and budgeting
section, and LinkedIn is verygenerous with themselves.
They select the option thatmakes them the most money,
that's, maximum delivery bidding.
(32:46):
We find that when someone usesmax delivery bidding, they're
usually going to pay between $20to $40 per click on each one of
their ads, which is insane.
The average that our clientsare paying is like $7 to $8 per
click in North America, so youcan get traffic for a lot lower.
So the way around that is, youpick the third option it's
(33:09):
actually hidden.
You have to click showadditional options to get manual
bidding and then the manual bidthat they recommend.
When you choose that, they'llgive you a little box that says
let us bid 50% more whenever wethink that someone is a really
high value kind of audience.
Uncheck that, because LinkedInthinks that 70% of their clicks
(33:31):
are higher value than what youbid, so you'll just end up
paying more.
Then they'll give you thisrange where they say we suggest
that you bid $27 and otherpeople like you are bidding 20
to 90 per click, which isabsolutely insane.
Ignore all of that.
Put a low number like seven or$8 in here, because the very
worst thing that can happen asyou launch this campaign if
(33:53):
you're not bidding enough forLinkedIn to see it being
worthwhile to actually show yourads, they just won't show
enough of them to spend yourbudget.
So in every two, three businessdays you can go in and just
incrementally raise that biduntil all of a sudden you start
spending what you actually wantto spend and if you follow that
(34:13):
you're not paying too much andyou're paying just enough that
LinkedIn sees it to be worththeir while to spend your entire
budget during the day.
Danny Gavin (34:22):
It's like finding the same.
We should use car example,right, but two cars that are
exactly the same, but one justhas this fancy logo on it, and
because of that you're going tobe paying so much more.
Same sort of concept, exactly.
Have you ever used LinkedInadvertising for B2C?
AJ Wilcox (34:36):
Yeah, there's quite a few B2C uses that LinkedIn ads
actually shines for.
Okay, and they may not be theones that we think about.
Recruiting is technically a B2Cactivity.
True, the ones that we thinkabout Recruiting is technically
a B2C activity, but, as you know, linkedin kind of was built as
a job platform, so it stillrules for that.
Also, higher ed is a B2Cactivity as well, like an MBA
(34:57):
program looking for candidates.
Those both are really big onLinkedIn.
But we also see that the largerautomotive manufacturers are
advertising on LinkedIn.
You can go into the ads libraryand you can see what Mercedes
and BMW and Jaguar are allshowing on LinkedIn ads.
I even saw McDonald'sadvertising on LinkedIn.
I have no idea why.
(35:17):
That seems crazy.
Someone had an extra bit ofbudget for their end of year,
but I got hit with a McDonald'sad Wild.
Danny Gavin (35:25):
Yeah, and I've seen it for some higher end like
jewelry type of companies aswell, which is really
interesting.
So obviously we see B2Cadvertising, but have you seen
campaigns that have worked well?
I don't know if you've run anyspecifically, I was saying from
that perspective, not like thehiring education perspective.
AJ Wilcox (35:41):
Yeah, especially those in finance, Like when
you're looking to target peoplewho are potential investors if
they're a real estate investor,for instance, and you're showing
them projects.
We've seen success there.
We've even seen securities.
We advertised a new stock Idon't know what to call it.
Maybe we call it a mutual fund.
(36:02):
We were targeting people who wealready know are institutional
investors, showing them thatfund.
That's worked well.
Anything where I would call it ahigh lifetime value can result
out of the bottom.
So something like jewelry yeah,you get someone to buy a
$20,000, or get someone to buysomething, or partner with
(36:22):
something that ends up bringingthem lots more opportunities, or
partner with something thatends up bringing them lots more
opportunities.
We've actually done this forproducts where we'll target the
purchasing, the buyer teams atthe larger supermarkets of like
a hey, here's this product, andit gets the product in front of
them to where they're much morelikely to respond when someone
reaches out and says hey, do youwant to carry this product?
(36:43):
So we do see some of this.
But I will honestly say 95% ofthe advertising we do on
LinkedIn is B2B, but there areuses for what I would call, like
you said, high-end.
Danny Gavin (36:55):
B2C.
That's fair.
And with recruiting, obviouslyyou can go through LinkedIn's
platform to do a job posting.
You're mentioning that alsotypical pure LinkedIn ads.
You can use that for recruitingas well, and it would be a good
idea.
AJ Wilcox (37:08):
I actually like using LinkedIn's marketing platform
for recruiting more than I likeusing their recruiting platform.
They've moved to where jobpostings are like a one-click
apply and man companies hatethis.
Like HR people, they now have300 resumes a day coming in that
they have to then vet andthere's no way of knowing who's
(37:29):
being serious and who justclicked the button.
But if I'm using the marketingside, I can put an ad together
that says hey, look, how awesomethis job is.
This is about our culture andthis is why we're interested in
you.
When they click that, we takethem to a full job application
of like a cover letter, uploadyour resume and we're going to
(37:50):
get higher quality candidates,higher quality applicants coming
through, and then we also getto make sure that they are much,
much more qualified.
So usually we can beat a costper applicant that the HR team
is already doing throughLinkedIn Recruiter.
Danny Gavin (38:06):
What advice do you have for businesses when it
comes to budgeting for LinkedInads?
So like what ideally shouldtheir monthly budget be at a
minimum?
Or if there's like a idealsecret sauce of how much money
in general they should invest ona monthly basis.
AJ Wilcox (38:18):
I wouldn't recommend running ads on LinkedIn unless
you have a budget of at least$5,000 a month.
That would be if you'retargeting North America, which
is LinkedIn's most competitive.
Like I'll say, north America inEnglish yeah, I wouldn't budget
less than $5,000 a month.
If this is Europe, if this isother languages, costs are going
to come down because it's notas competitive and so you could
(38:39):
scale your budget down if youneeded to.
But I would say it's usuallyaround that $5,000 per month
where, by the end of the month,you can look and see like, yes,
I see signs of life, thisappears to be working or it
sucks and something needs tochange.
If you're not spending enough,you may not actually see, you
may not be able to tell whetherit's working or not, and so you
(39:01):
just have to end up advertisingfor longer just to see and
dragging things out.
Danny Gavin (39:05):
Do you have a success story from one of your
clients that illustrates thepower of LinkedIn ads?
I know you mentioned one beforeAny other stories that you'd
want to share with the audience.
AJ Wilcox (39:14):
I had a client come to us and they were a product
I'd never worked with before.
It was a commuting service thatflew people in a helicopter so
think of it as like an Uber,with helicopters instead of cars
.
Flew people in a helicopter sothink of it as like an Uber,
with helicopters instead of cars.
And they came to me and said wewant to target busy executives
who maybe live in Orange County,california, and commute to LA
(39:36):
and vice versa.
And I told them right up frontI was like there's no way this
is going to work.
We know they need to know, likeand trust the brand first.
We can't just ask them to pullout their credit card.
And and this you know growthmanager in in San Francisco was
like well, let's just test andsee.
I was totally blown away.
It worked.
These rides like each way inthe helicopter was like 200 to
(39:59):
250 bucks and people, like crazy, were pulling out their credit
card and commuting in ahelicopter to and from meetings.
I thought it was crazy.
So I'll share my best practices, what tends to work and what
doesn't, but it doesn't meanthat there aren't reasons to
break those best practices.
Basically, what it comes downto is don't be afraid to test.
(40:23):
Don't go all in on one thing ifyou haven't tested to see if
there's something that mightmake it a little bit more
efficient.
Danny Gavin (40:29):
So, with 2025 and AI, one or two tips when people
are approaching LinkedIn adsthat you think people should
keep in mind, specifically whereeverything is going.
AJ Wilcox (40:37):
Yeah, we know, especially because Microsoft is
a huge investor in open AI andchat GPT.
We see them very quicklyrolling out AI features into the
LinkedIn ads platform and Ijust want to say, like, when
everyone else is going towardsAI and things are all written
the same and they sound the sameand they sound like a bot.
(41:00):
Rotem, you are going to standout more and more when you are
making a human connection.
So in 2025, make your ads aboutmaking a human connection.
So in 2025, make your ads aboutmaking a human connection, not
having everything be much moreefficient because a bot created
it, and I think you're going todo a better job of standing out.
Danny Gavin (41:15):
Awesome.
All right, it's time for ourlightning round.
I'm going to mention a topicand I want you to tell me what
you think about, or your best ofthat.
Item Number one cars Aston.
AJ Wilcox (41:24):
Martins are my absolute favorite brand.
Super fast and performant, butthey look like sex on wheels
Gorgeous.
Danny Gavin (41:31):
Are you a James Bond fan?
AJ Wilcox (41:33):
I am probably because of Aston Martin, yeah, cool.
Danny Gavin (41:36):
Love it All right Music.
AJ Wilcox (41:38):
I love the piano.
I love drums, guitar, bass.
All of these things I'll playwithin my free time.
No one's ever going to pay tohear me play because I suck at
them, but my brain just lovesmusic and understanding how to
replicate the sounds that I'veheard.
Danny Gavin (41:55):
Well, I'm a guitarist and love to jam, so
hopefully next time I'm in Utahwe can jam.
Please do.
That'd be great.
Cool Robotics and programming.
AJ Wilcox (42:04):
I absolutely love robotics.
I'm not good at it, but Ifigured out a while back that
you could Cool Robotics andprogramming around and we'll
find people who do light showson their houses, where you drive
up, you tune your radio to astation that they say and then
(42:32):
you get to see the lights allbounce to the music.
My goal for this next year isto do that myself.
So I've been putting the piecestogether and understanding the
programming.
I'm trying to hold myselfaccountable.
This year I'll have at least asmall display up and I want to
understand how this works fromsoup to nuts.
Danny Gavin (42:47):
So, aj, where can listeners learn more about you
and your business?
AJ Wilcox (42:50):
You're obviously into podcasts if you're listening to
this, so tune in to theLinkedIn ad show.
Every episode I go really deepinto some area or topic on
LinkedIn ads.
But follow me on LinkedIn andin fact reach out to me.
Like, customize the note onLinkedIn for the connection and
say you heard me on Danny's showand I would love to be
connected to you.
(43:11):
If you don't customize, I don't.
I get a lot of invitations andI don't accept them unless I
know what they are.
Also, our website, b2linkedcom.
If you want to check outanything that we do, consider
reaching out and doing adiscovery call with me.
I'd love to talk to you aboutyour LinkedIn ads.
Danny Gavin (43:28):
Awesome.
Well, aj, thank you so much forbeing a guest on the Digital
Marketing Mentor.
This was so awesome, so manycool points and details.
Thank you for being a guest onthe Digital Marketing Mentor and
thank you, listeners, fortuning into Digital Marketing
Mentor.
We'll speak with you next time,thank you.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.
I'm your host, danny Gavin, and, together with industry leaders
and marketing experts, we'llexplore the meeting point of
mentorship and marketing.
We'll discover how theseconnections have affected
careers, marketing strategiesand lives.
Now get ready to get human.
Hello, I'm Danny Gavin, founderof Optage marketing professor
(00:38):
and the host of the DigitalMarketing Mentor.
Get ready to get human?
A series that breaks down thecomplexities of LinkedIn to
simple tips for B2B marketers.
With over a decade ofexperience in performance
marketing, aj has spoken atconferences and industry events
across the globe, sharing hisexpertise in driving results
through innovative LinkedInadvertising strategies.
Today, we're going to talkabout mentorship and, of course,
marketing and advertising onLinkedIn.
(00:59):
How are you doing, aj?
AJ Wilcox (01:01):
Doing awesome.
Danny, Thank you so much forhaving me on.
It's an absolute honor.
Danny Gavin (01:04):
Yes, we met each other in San Diego a couple
months ago and I'm like dude, Ineed to get AJ on the podcast.
So I'm really glad you're here.
For people who don't know, aj'sliterally the LinkedIn guru he
really is.
When people need someone, theycall him.
I think in some ways, this is acompliment, but it's also hard.
Anyone else who wants to becomea LinkedIn guru it's hard
(01:26):
because AJ's there.
But you're awesome and in lifeyou're even better.
You're so friendly and awesome,so it's just so nice to have
you here today.
AJ Wilcox (01:36):
Well, I'm turning bright red, thank you.
One thing I'm really bad atsales, but what I'm really good
at is creating content andteaching, and I've just.
Our company has turned now.
You know, b2linked is now over10 years old.
From the inception of thecompany, I went okay, I'm not
going to go and generate leadsfor myself by selling.
I'm going to go and create abunch of content and just teach
(01:59):
everyone everything I know forfree, and it pays dividends.
You know, 10 years later, wehave more inbound leads coming
in than we can handle honestly,and I love it.
So I think it's a salesstrategy.
But it's also part of mypersonality.
I can't not teach and sharewhat I know.
Danny Gavin (02:15):
And it's such a good example of by sharing
instead of holding back, thatactually can help you instead of
harm you.
And I still have people todaysay, hey, should we share that?
I'm like, yeah, actually it's agood idea, because usually
people don't want to do thingsthemselves.
They'll be like, ah, okay,that's a really good idea, but
maybe I'll get you to do it.
So, talking about education,let's start off with where did
(02:37):
you go to school and what didyou study?
AJ Wilcox (02:38):
So I went to school at BYU it's Brigham Young
University here in Utah.
When I went I didn't know whatI wanted to do.
I had served a two-yearreligious mission where I lived
in Ukraine speaking Russian.
So I kind of thought in theback of my mind like, hey, maybe
with these newfound languageskills maybe I could do
something with internationalbusiness.
But I ended up sitting in on aclass as I was learning about
(03:00):
the business program, where youget to choose a focus inside the
major, learning about thebusiness program where you get
to choose a focus inside themajor and I sat in on a
marketing class and I'm a bigcar guy Like I love anything
cars and the professor he wasthe marketing professor and he
had worked in automotive hiswhole career.
So all of these examples wereabout BMW, mercedes, audi and
(03:20):
Jaguar and I was like this isgreat.
He had me hanging on every wordand what I found is I
absolutely fell in love withmarketing.
Danny Gavin (03:28):
And that was when I decided like okay, I'm going
into the marketing track here.
First, a shout out to BYU,because it happens to be a
really good football school andtheir quarterback is, he's
Jewish, which helps.
That's a whole other story foranother time, which is pretty
cool.
Looking back at your time,there were there outside of like
that first professor.
Were there any otherexperiences outside or inside of
(03:50):
the classroom that pretty muchled you to where you are today?
AJ Wilcox (03:53):
One thing that was interesting I used to watch Star
Trek with my dad.
He was a big Trekkie growing upand on Saturdays when I'd just
go sit on the couch next to himand we'd watch, he's a finance
guy, he's not a marketer, butwhen the commercials came on, he
started quizzing me and he'dsay hey, who do you think this
commercial is talking to?
Who do you think their audienceis and what sort of action do
(04:16):
you think that they want them todo?
Is it just to remember this?
Is it they want them to go andfind him at the store and
purchase?
And so when I heard marketingwas an option, I didn't know
what else I wanted to do.
But I remembered watching adswith my dad back years ago and
went like, oh, I enjoyed that.
(04:36):
Maybe that's something I couldlook into, and that was one of
the inspiring factors.
Danny Gavin (04:42):
Wow, that's really, really cool.
It makes me think of sometimeswhen I go to basketball games
with my kids and there's like,let's say, the Kiss Cam or the
Dance Cam and it's likesponsored by a certain company,
and then afterwards I ask them,hey, do you know who that was
sponsored by?
And like most of the time theyhave no clue because they didn't
even realize.
But that's like a fun trick toplay.
But talk about Star Trek.
(05:03):
What a fun trick to play.
But talk about Star Trek.
What is your favorite series?
Do you have like a specificthat you like?
Yeah, I really liked.
AJ Wilcox (05:08):
What's it called Voyager?
Okay, I really liked Voyager.
That was my favorite.
With my dad, I watched all theway through the Next Generation
Deep Space Nine and Voyager andI really love the whole series.
I love how prescient it isabout what technology would be
(05:31):
like in the future and I lovedhow inclusive it was and how it
always taught a great messageabout how to be a better human,
and that's something I think TVmay have lost to this point is
having the good moral that everyepisode teaches you.
Danny Gavin (05:37):
No, I agree.
So I guess we're right.
I think we're about the sameage.
So I also grew up through thosethree series and, yeah, going
back now and looking at like thenext generation episodes, so
obviously it's not as cool as itwas when we were kids.
But, like you said, themessaging and what you're
learning right, it's just sad,like that just doesn't exist in
TV nowadays.
Yeah, so, aj, how would youdefine a mentor?
AJ Wilcox (05:59):
I don't think a mentor has to be something that
is like an official relationshipwhere you've both agreed.
I would follow people in mycareer and just I really cared
about their thought processesand how they taught and how they
thought, and my goal was justto learn as much as I possibly
could from them.
A lot of times, this is justsomeone that you call a friend,
(06:19):
or mentorship is just payingreally close attention to what
someone that you idolize isdoing.
Danny Gavin (06:25):
Yeah, I just had that conversation today with
someone about.
For me personally, some of mybiggest mentors aren't
necessarily the people that Isaid, hey, do you want to be my
mentor?
But it's like they gave me thathope that, oh, I could get
there some way someday as well.
I always wonder who they had,because some of the guys that
I've looked up to they were liketrailblazers.
(06:47):
So I think it's a lot harderfor them.
So I always say, ooh, I'm luckythat at least I had you to look
up to Talking about some ofyour most influential mentors.
Let's first talk about your dad.
I know you just spoke about himand obviously he must be such a
big part of your life, but we'dlove to know why do you
consider him one of your mentors?
AJ Wilcox (07:02):
Yeah, ever since a young age, my dad has been my
best friend and it was so funny.
I think back to high school.
All of my friends thought thatmy dad was a better friend to
them than I was.
I specifically remember cominghome from a date and having all
of my friends just hanging outwith my dad and I was like, hey,
you guys, you're waiting for me.
(07:23):
And they're like, no, we'rehere hanging out with your dad,
thanks for coming.
So maybe it's a statement aboutlike how cool I was in high
school, but another like howawesome my dad was and how much
he cared about me as a son andabout our group of friends.
And he did his entire career inin finance.
He worked in banks, which isnot what I wanted to do.
(07:44):
I think I would probably goinsane, but he's my confidant.
Every time I go to make a bigdecision, I run it by him and,
for instance, when I createdthis company, b2linked, I went
to him and said, hey, I've beenrunning the largest LinkedIn ads
account in the world for twoand a half years.
I know more about this platformthan anyone.
(08:04):
I think I might be able tostart like a consultancy or an
agency where I could do this forother companies and his answer
was oh, being an entrepreneur,that's really risky, like you
probably shouldn't do it, and Ididn't take his advice.
I obviously went and createdthe company, but someone who's a
mentor.
It doesn't mean you have toalways take their advice, but it
(08:27):
does mean you have to careenough to say I want to hear
both sides of the story, likelet's have a conversation about
whether or not this is a goodidea.
Danny Gavin (08:34):
Yeah, so my dad is very similar in the sense that,
like all the young people alwaysgravitate to him In some ways.
I found that a littleintimidating growing up because
it was like, ooh, he's so cool,what am I supposed to do?
So to me it's a little bit of achallenge, but so many people
don't have that father figure intheir life that they can speak
with and have that, and you'revery lucky to have that and I'm
(09:00):
sure that you don't take it forgranted.
AJ Wilcox (09:02):
No, in fact, I've gone through a divorce, so my
kids live in a blended familyand have this situation.
I am so grateful that I grew upin a home where my parents were
together and I feel like it wasreally an idyllic kind of
upbringing, and so now I knowI'm going to compensate extra
(09:22):
well for my kids.
I'm going to compensate extrawell for my kids and I want to
show them the same kind ofbehaviors that I learned from my
dad.
I got such a good example.
I want to try to share thatwith them as much as possible.
Danny Gavin (09:36):
Let's move on to Alex MacArthur.
I believe he was your boss'sboss's boss.
AJ Wilcox (09:48):
But let's talk about Alex.
Yeah, so when I was in mysecond job after college, I was
working in a search engineoptimization agency and this was
my boss's boss's boss, like yousaid.
But he was a really cool guyand I liked the way he thought,
I liked the way he presented andhe didn't make it feel like
there was a huge power distance.
So I was actually really goodfriends with my boss and my
(10:08):
boss's boss and they were goodfriends with him and so over
time it wasn't actually at thatsame company, but after we all
kind of moved on and went otherplaces, he and I we connected
over this love of hiking.
I live in Utah where I have,within a 20 minute drive I have
about 20 different hiking trails.
We go on and and I knew Alex waskind of a an outdoorsy kind of
(10:31):
guy and so I just said, hey, youwant to go hiking on a Saturday
morning?
And he said yes, so we went andit turned into something where,
like it's a tradition everySaturday morning, we went and
over the course of the next likeyear and a half, he and I going
, we got to know each otherreally well and we got really
invested in each other's careers, how do we help each other?
(10:53):
And he would give me so muchgood advice.
And then, you know, it camewinter and he went hey, our
hikes kind of have to stopunless we do snowshoes.
And so we went out and gotsnowshoes and kept it going so
we could hike all year round.
And what was so much fun aboutthis is I understood the value
of what I was getting out ofthat mentorship of me, learning
(11:16):
from him that I started invitingall of these younger digital
marketing guys who were in thearea hey, every Saturday morning
we hike, come with us.
And then I got the opportunityto pass on exactly what Alex
gave to me and I could help themin their careers.
And they're all now likefabulously more successful than
I'll ever be, and I get to claima little part of that.
(11:38):
I'm really happy for them.
Danny Gavin (11:39):
Yeah, I would say the best result within a
mentorship relationship is whenthe people who you're mentoring,
when they get even better thanyou right, when you see that
amazing success, it's, yeah,it's so rewarding.
Tell me about your ownmentorship style.
So, whether that's like withyour team members or some of
these young digital marketers,how do you mentor them?
AJ Wilcox (11:58):
I really try to first of all be a friend because
someone doesn't care.
They won't care about advicethat I give them unless they
know that that advice comes froma good place.
So genuinely, I mean I'm out tobe a friend with everyone that
I come across.
It's not going to feel fake,but I do.
I want to learn about them, Iwant to become their friend so
(12:21):
that when I give advice theycare, and I also want to make
sure that someone that I'mchoosing as a mentor that they
care enough about the advice,because I can't tell you how
frustrating it is when you knowsomething great for someone and
you offer helpful advice andthey turn it down.
I know I shared how I did thatto my dad probably a lot, but
(12:44):
I've taken his advice on a lotof other things to compensate.
It's really important as amentee that you do actually
honor that person's feedback sothat they'll want to keep it
going.
Danny Gavin (12:55):
Yeah, it's like a balance right, because on one
hand, you want to give peopleadvice but you also want them to
make their own decisions, andsometimes you can see where the
problem comes up, where you gotsome advice, you didn't take it
and you made the mistake.
And then you come back to themand be like, ooh, I should have
listened to you.
So I think, being as the mentor, you kind of have to be patient
, right.
But you're right.
(13:15):
If you have someone and youkeep helping them and they don't
listen and they keep messing up, it could be that you're just
the wrong match.
AJ Wilcox (13:22):
And you can now pick someone else as a mentee who
does care and wants it more towho does care and wants it more,
and you'll now get to influencemore and more careers.
Danny Gavin (13:31):
Going down the path of LinkedIn ads outside of this
really big client that you hadand dealing with LinkedIn ads.
What inspired you most aboutdoubling down into LinkedIn?
AJ Wilcox (13:41):
What I loved.
You know, I came from thisworld of search engine
optimization where if I made anadjustment, I wouldn't actually
see the fruits of that for likefour to six months, especially
if you're working on made anadjustment.
I wouldn't actually see thefruits of that for like four to
six months, especially if you'reworking on like an enterprise
level, national kind of site.
And that was so frustrating.
So I learned Google ads at thetime because, hey, it's the same
(14:02):
keyword that I was optimizingtowards, but because I'm putting
dollars behind it, by the endof today I can tell you whether
that was a good investment ornot.
So I got really into that.
But when I stumbled intoLinkedIn ads, it was totally
different.
It's not keyword based, it'sbased off of who someone is
professionally.
And I noticed when I went intothe last employer I worked for
(14:25):
it was a SaaS company and I wasdoing all of the same SEO
activities.
I was doing all the same Googleads activities, even getting
into the display network andother areas of marketing.
The sales team came to me abouttwo weeks after I started and
said, aj, we're fighting overyour leads, keep it up.
And I went like, oh, what arethese leads they're talking
(14:47):
about.
I went and looked in our CRMand every single lead that they
had mentioned came from ourLinkedIn ads campaign and I went
oh, this is something that Idon't even know what I'm doing
here.
I better spend more time andattention.
And so I kept investing andinvesting until the point where
I finally said, hey, I calledmyself an SEO guy before I
(15:08):
started.
I'm gonna give SEO to an agencybecause I want to focus 100%
here on LinkedIn ads, and thatwas the way it worked.
I gave away Google ads as well,so I could be 100% focused on
LinkedIn.
What I loved so much about it is, if I generate a lead from
someone who typed a keyword,they were searching for it and
(15:29):
then they fill out the form.
I know that they have intent,because they were searching for
what I'm offering, but I didn'thave any way of qualifying who
they were.
Are they looking for a freekind of option?
Are they just looking forinformation, or are they looking
for an enterprise-level tool?
That's what I was working with.
It's like, okay, all these leadsthat Google ads are bringing in
(15:54):
, they're all what I would callthe mom and pops and tire
kickers.
They were just very small dealsizes, but with my LinkedIn ads
I could say I only want totarget you if you have this
level of seniority in this roleat a company with more than 500
employees in this sector andbecause of that, every lead that
I generated, everyone who seesthe ad.
(16:16):
They're a perfect fit for whatwe do and that was something I
couldn't ever do with a keywordlevel marketing like Google ads.
That's why I fell in love withLinkedIn is access to qualifying
an audience way better than Icould and way differently, way
more differently than I could onany other channel.
Danny Gavin (16:34):
For those, who don't know much about LinkedIn
ads.
When someone comes to you andsays, hey, I'm really torn.
I've got LinkedIn ads, I've gotmeta ads.
I know meta ads are a lotcheaper.
You could pretty much targetalso, you know what.
Would you tell them?
What would be the maindifferences between LinkedIn ads
and meta ads?
AJ Wilcox (16:52):
Meta and LinkedIn.
They both target by audiences,by who someone is.
The difference is meta doesn'tactually know who you are
professionally.
They know what you'reinterested in and the kinds of
things that you interact with,but they don't know you
professionally.
Linkedin, on the other hand,they have a monopoly, as far as
(17:14):
I'm concerned, on yourprofessional data.
They know every job you'veworked at.
They know your title, what sizeof company those are, which
industry.
They know the skills thatyou've listed on your profile
and the groups that you're amember of.
They know all of this stuff.
So, yes, meta is probably abouta third of the price per click,
meaning that if you're gettingsome kind of a lead let's say
you know someone to sign up fora webinar your cost per
(17:36):
conversion is going to be abouta third on meta as it is on
LinkedIn.
But what we found with a clientrecently?
We analyzed their meta spendand their LinkedIn spend and we
found that, even though thecosts were a third on meta by
the time we walked them all theway through a proposal and a
closed deal, linkedin's traffic.
(17:59):
It costs three times more, butthe sales team had to throw out
90% of the meta leads.
They only had to throw out anddisqualify, like 5% of LinkedIn.
And so now, even though thecosts are higher on LinkedIn, we
ended up with an ROI that wastwo and a half times higher than
meta was.
So your upfront costs are noteverything.
(18:21):
It's so much more about thequality that you get out of the
backend.
Danny Gavin (18:25):
And I think that we can't stress that enough,
especially when you're dealingwith service based businesses,
where it's not about the initiallead form right of the back end
.
And I think that we can'tstress that enough, especially
when you're dealing withservice-based businesses, where
it's not about the initial leadform right, but it's about what
happens afterwards.
If you're not looking what'shappening down the funnel and at
the end and then bringing thatback to your campaign, then
you're missing the whole point.
So it's awesome that you havealthough you maybe didn't set up
(18:46):
that A-B test right, but youhad it and it's the proof's in
the pudding.
That's so cool.
AJ Wilcox (18:51):
Yeah, and honestly, this is one of those things
because we weren't running themeta ads Right.
This was an A-B test that wasset up because we're trying to
show our value and if the clientkeeps saying, hey, the costs on
LinkedIn are about three timeshigher than we're paying on meta
, we get really discouraged,like, oh man, there's nothing we
can do about how much LinkedIncharges.
(19:11):
But after finding the results,we had this new love and
appreciation for our LinkedIntraffic, just because it has a
leg up on any other channel interms of quality.
Danny Gavin (19:22):
So this is a little bit of an advanced more of an
advanced question.
But in the world of Bing ads orMicrosoft ads, you have the
ability to use LinkedInaudiences.
So do you ever work with paidsearch people with your LinkedIn
sort of data knowledge in orderto craft kind of a winning paid
search campaign, at least onthe Microsoft side?
AJ Wilcox (19:42):
Yeah, like you mentioned, microsoft has this
targeting because they ownLinkedIn.
But to my knowledge, they onlyrolled out three targeting
facets.
So we have I think it's companyname, company size and I think
we might have like job function.
Danny Gavin (19:56):
So thin, it's very thin.
AJ Wilcox (19:58):
Yeah.
And so if I ever have anaudience that I could define by
those three things like yeah, Iwould definitely suggest go set
that up in Microsoft, becauseyou're going to get access to
the right people but you'll getcheaper display inventory.
So I love it, but because it islimited, it's not like page one
of my playbook.
Danny Gavin (20:17):
So that's a really good segue into what are some of
the effective targetingstrategies you recommend
businesses looking to reachtheir ideal audience on LinkedIn
.
There are so many differentknobs that you can turn.
How do you usually approach?
AJ Wilcox (20:28):
it Anytime a client tells me this is the audience we
want to go after.
What I'm paying attention toare two different aspects.
I want to understand who is theprofessional, his or herself,
and then I also want tounderstand what type of
organization are they at Like?
Let's say, if you tell me thatyour ideal target audience is
CFOs but your product costs,let's say, $5,000 a month, I'm
(20:56):
going to tell you your audienceis not CFOs of a five person
company.
They're not going to have thebudget for for your product or
service.
So I think of the professionaltargeting being their role.
And there are five differentfacets that I like to use here.
Job title is the one thateveryone goes to first because
it makes the most sense.
Here, job title is the one thateveryone goes to first because
it makes the most sense.
Job title is also because ofthat it's the most competitive
and you're probably going to paya bit higher of a click cost by
(21:19):
using it.
The next one I really likeusing job function, which is
their department, with a levelof seniority built onto it, with
a level of seniority built ontoit.
So if it's CFOs, I can say jobfunction, finance and seniority,
c-level, or CXO, as LinkedIncalls it, and I've just gotten
that same person.
There's also skills withseniority.
(21:40):
I could do a really high levelIT kind of skill if I want to
hit that same CTO or CIO ohsorry, I think we were talking
finance want to hit that sameCTO or CIO?
Oh sorry, I think we weretalking finance.
If I do high-level financeskills with a seniority, I can
get CFOs and that's a wideraudience I'm probably going to
end up paying less per click for.
(22:01):
And then there's also groups.
I could target just CFO groups,for instance, and hit the same
person.
So that just allowed me tonarrow in and I can decide which
one of those or if multiple ofthose make sense given the
audience and the budget.
But now I've just designed whowas the individual.
Then, on the company side, Iget to shoot for things like a
(22:23):
size of company.
So I'll use number of employeesMost of the time.
That's my favorite one.
I can narrow down by theirindustry and I can even narrow
down by specific company names.
So those of us in marketingthat we know what account-based
marketing or ABM is, where wewant to show ads just to members
of specific companies we can dothat on LinkedIn and by
(22:47):
combining those two aspects theprofessional and the type of
organization they work at nowyou've got a really solid target
that you just can't get on anyother way.
Danny Gavin (22:57):
Yeah, it's bulletproof, yeah, so what
metrics should marketers focuson when measuring their success
with LinkedIn advertising?
AJ Wilcox (23:03):
This one's difficult because I think most new
advertisers they say hey, here'sthis audience of ideal people
that would make great customersfor us.
Let's show them ads that sayhop on a free demo, talk to my
sales rep.
And what we know is someone whodoes not know like and trust
your organization already.
They are not ready to talk toyour sales department.
(23:24):
It's like proposing marriage onthe very first date.
You might be a great marriagecandidate, but you're gonna
scare them away by asking toomuch too soon.
So what I do is I break myaccounts into a three-stage
funnel strategy and at the topof the funnel I call this my
stage one.
Here I just want to get theirattention, I want to make some
sort of an impact on them, andthe very best way I've found to
(23:48):
do this is with very personalkinds of content where I'm
sharing a tip, a trick, astrategy, an industry update
that you might be interested in,and I'm not asking for anything
in return, I'm just givingvalue.
Then, once you've interactedthere, then I can show you
something that's a little bitdeeper, a little bit more
engaging.
And then, when you've engagedthere now I'm like okay, you've
(24:11):
had at least two stronginteractions with our brand.
Now I've more or less earnedthe right to ask you for like
hey, you look ready?
Like, do you want to talk tosomeone in sales?
So I have very different metricsthat I care about in all three
stages of the funnel.
At the top, what I care about isI want really high engagement
rates to show me that peoplethat I'm showing the ads to they
(24:34):
care.
If they're videos let's say it'sa 20 to 40 second video where
I'm giving a tip I want to see acost per 50% view and a 50%
view rate and a completion ratethat all tell me people stuck
around they cared about what Ihad to say.
If it's, let's say, a documentad, I want to see that people
are engaging, they're thumbingthrough the document, that they
(24:55):
got 25, 50% of the way through.
If it's a single image ad, Icare about my click-through rate
and my engagement rate.
I can compare those toLinkedIn's benchmark of like
0.5% would be a LinkedInbenchmark average, so about half
of a percent.
If my click-through rate orengagement rate are
significantly higher than that,then I go okay, I'm providing
(25:18):
value.
Then, at the bottom of thefunnel, I care more about what's
my cost per conversion, myconversion rate.
You know my click-through ratesand engagement rates there as
well, so it just depends on howfar someone is through the
funnel where I start to careabout the different metrics that
they might be interacting with.
Danny Gavin (25:35):
So I got two questions.
So number one would be whenyou're presenting this to the
client, obviously you'rethrowing in soft metrics, which
makes sense at the top and midfunnel, but maybe they're used
to being like everything needsto show direct ROI.
What would you say?
The breakdown is People, butyou have to, like, educate them
or they, like already know thatthis is the deal.
AJ Wilcox (25:54):
I would say the vast majority of advertisers that we
talk to need to be educated.
So I tell them this on the veryfirst discovery call of working
together.
That's like a hey, by the way,going right for the kill does
not work 95% of the time andthis is the strategy that you're
going to want to follow.
If they go, hey, sorry, we dogated content and have BDRs
(26:18):
follow up immediately on thoseleads and try to close them.
Okay, we could help you withthat, but you might be better
off on your own following thatstrategy.
But come back when you want athree-stage full educational
nurture that's going to turninto a long-term lead generating
machine.
Danny Gavin (26:32):
I'm sure it's hard to push away people, but in the
long run you know what works andtherefore, if they're not going
to buy into the system, itmakes sense to push them away.
AJ Wilcox (26:40):
And we invest so heavily in our clients that
bringing someone on who sticksaround for three months and then
leaves is not good for uslong-term.
I would so much rather makesure that the relationship is
right, that we have a long-termpotential relationship here so
that we can keep investingeverything we have into our
accounts.
I would rather push someoneaway because I don't want to
(27:00):
have a hard conversation inthree months.
Danny Gavin (27:02):
So, with the third stage, or the third funnel,
what's your opinion on lead genforms, which would mean people
coming onto LinkedIn and fillingout the form directly, for
sending people to a website orto a landing page where they'd
have to fill out the form there?
AJ Wilcox (27:14):
Yeah, so big differences here.
Linkedin made a native leadgeneration form built right into
their ads, and what's so coolabout it is when it pops up,
they've pre-filled all theinformation about the prospect
that LinkedIn knows, and so it.
Especially if someone's on amobile device, which 80% of the
people on LinkedIn are.
It's so easy.
(27:34):
You don't have to type in youremail address for the 50th time
that day with your big thumbs.
It's so easy to hit that formand submit.
But there's no integration witha calendar.
If your goal is to get someoneon a call with sales, I've found
that if you use these lead genforms, you have a really high
conversion rate upfront, whichis great, but then you need to
(27:56):
get them to take the next stepand convert again, which is
schedule a time on this salesreps calendar.
So what I've found is actually,if I send them to a landing
page form first, there's alittle bit more friction here.
First of all, the page is goingto take a little bit longer to
load, and we know some peopleare very impatient when they
click on an ad.
(28:16):
If they bounce before the pagefully loads, then they're gone.
You paid for the click, butthey never ended up seeing
anything To combat this.
I would highly suggest any sortof improvement you can make on
your landing page.
Load time is totally worth theinvestment there.
Now you have a form on yourwebsite.
We know it's going to not haveas high a conversion rate
(28:39):
because it's not auto-filledthat kind of sucks but at the
same time, when traffic is on mywebsite versus staying on
LinkedIn, it is worth so muchmore to me and I appreciate it
because when someone's on thewebsite they could click around
to the about us, they could readmore about our products.
If it's the same cost per clickeither way, I would prefer them
(28:59):
being on my website.
And then, you know, the extranail in the coffin here for me
is I can build a scheduler appright into the lead form.
So if someone is saying, yes, Iwant to meet with someone in
the same form, they can choosethe date and time and send it
out.
So it's only one conversion.
Rather than the lead gen formwe'd be asking for two.
(29:21):
So controversial opinion,because if you look at cost per
lead, you're going to say, oh,the lead forms are a third of
the cost or maybe even less, butI actually get a lower cost per
meeting booked and lower costper meeting shown.
I like show up using my ownlanding page forms rather than
LinkedIn's lead forms.
(29:41):
Take those into account and see.
I think both are a good option,but if you want meetings, I'd
go your own landing page forms.
Danny Gavin (29:48):
It's tough, but everything that you're saying
makes so much sense To me.
It's just like you actuallyhave to sell it to the client,
right, yeah, but obviously youdo a great job doing that, so
it's fine, but it does.
It makes so much sense andthat's the idea, like, I think
everything in life is like along short path and then a short
long path right, and that is,if you take the shortcut, in the
(30:10):
end it's going to be long.
Something might seem long,right, it might be a three-stage
funnel and you're sending themto the website, but the bottom
line is that's the short path,because you are going to get the
right people at the end of that.
AJ Wilcox (30:20):
So I love it, that's right?
Danny Gavin (30:21):
Sure, you have a million of these, but what are
some of your top common mistakesthat you see businesses making
with LinkedIn ads?
How can people avoid them inthe future?
It's really cool.
AJ Wilcox (30:31):
I do a lot of audits on accounts and there are five
mistakes in targeting that I seeI have not yet audited an
account that didn't make atleast one of these mistakes.
So the first is the geographictargeting that you choose.
Linkedin defaults to somethingcalled recent or permanent
location, and I always switchthat to be just permanent
(30:53):
location because recent location, if I'm targeting the US, it's
going to capture people who fitthe criteria otherwise, who are
visiting during the summer fromEurope or from Asia, and so all
of a sudden, like clients in thesummer, will start saying, hey,
why are we getting leads fromthe Philippines?
It's like, well, they visited,and LinkedIn calls recent six
(31:17):
months.
So they could have visited upto six months ago, which is kind
of crazy.
So set your geographictargeting to permanent and you
get rid of that.
The next one is after you setyour targeting, as you scroll
down, there's a little box thatLinkedIn auto checks called
enable audience expansion.
We'll put it this way youalready pay a premium to
advertise on LinkedIn because wewant to reach very specific
(31:40):
professionals.
Leaving that box checked justenables LinkedIn to throw other
audiences that you haven'tdefined in there.
It's never a good idea.
Always, always uncheck that boxchecked just enables LinkedIn
to throw other audiences thatyou haven't defined in there.
It's never a good idea.
Always, always, uncheck thatbox.
Then, as you keep scrolling,you get down to placements and
LinkedIn will auto select aplacement called the LinkedIn
audience network, which soundsgreat in theory of hey, I want
(32:02):
to target my LinkedIn people,but everywhere around the web
and on different apps, but whatwe find is very low quality
traffic coming from there and,surprisingly, a lot of bot
traffic.
Linkedin tries really hard notto charge you for the visits
that they can tell our bots, butthey can't catch everyone.
And, aside from that, it'llspend 95% of your budget on the
(32:25):
audience network.
That's lower quality and itsteals all the budget from your
just LinkedIn traffic, which weknow is super high quality.
So I uncheck that to begin with.
Then, finally, you get down tothe bidding and budgeting
section, and LinkedIn is verygenerous with themselves.
They select the option thatmakes them the most money,
that's, maximum delivery bidding.
(32:46):
We find that when someone usesmax delivery bidding, they're
usually going to pay between $20to $40 per click on each one of
their ads, which is insane.
The average that our clientsare paying is like $7 to $8 per
click in North America, so youcan get traffic for a lot lower.
So the way around that is, youpick the third option it's
(33:09):
actually hidden.
You have to click showadditional options to get manual
bidding and then the manual bidthat they recommend.
When you choose that, they'llgive you a little box that says
let us bid 50% more whenever wethink that someone is a really
high value kind of audience.
Uncheck that, because LinkedInthinks that 70% of their clicks
(33:31):
are higher value than what youbid, so you'll just end up
paying more.
Then they'll give you thisrange where they say we suggest
that you bid $27 and otherpeople like you are bidding 20
to 90 per click, which isabsolutely insane.
Ignore all of that.
Put a low number like seven or$8 in here, because the very
worst thing that can happen asyou launch this campaign if
(33:53):
you're not bidding enough forLinkedIn to see it being
worthwhile to actually show yourads, they just won't show
enough of them to spend yourbudget.
So in every two, three businessdays you can go in and just
incrementally raise that biduntil all of a sudden you start
spending what you actually wantto spend and if you follow that
(34:13):
you're not paying too much andyou're paying just enough that
LinkedIn sees it to be worththeir while to spend your entire
budget during the day.
Danny Gavin (34:22):
It's like finding the same.
We should use car example,right, but two cars that are
exactly the same, but one justhas this fancy logo on it, and
because of that you're going tobe paying so much more.
Same sort of concept, exactly.
Have you ever used LinkedInadvertising for B2C?
AJ Wilcox (34:36):
Yeah, there's quite a few B2C uses that LinkedIn ads
actually shines for.
Okay, and they may not be theones that we think about.
Recruiting is technically a B2Cactivity.
True, the ones that we thinkabout Recruiting is technically
a B2C activity, but, as you know, linkedin kind of was built as
a job platform, so it stillrules for that.
Also, higher ed is a B2Cactivity as well, like an MBA
(34:57):
program looking for candidates.
Those both are really big onLinkedIn.
But we also see that the largerautomotive manufacturers are
advertising on LinkedIn.
You can go into the ads libraryand you can see what Mercedes
and BMW and Jaguar are allshowing on LinkedIn ads.
I even saw McDonald'sadvertising on LinkedIn.
I have no idea why.
(35:17):
That seems crazy.
Someone had an extra bit ofbudget for their end of year,
but I got hit with a McDonald'sad Wild.
Danny Gavin (35:25):
Yeah, and I've seen it for some higher end like
jewelry type of companies aswell, which is really
interesting.
So obviously we see B2Cadvertising, but have you seen
campaigns that have worked well?
I don't know if you've run anyspecifically, I was saying from
that perspective, not like thehiring education perspective.
AJ Wilcox (35:41):
Yeah, especially those in finance, Like when
you're looking to target peoplewho are potential investors if
they're a real estate investor,for instance, and you're showing
them projects.
We've seen success there.
We've even seen securities.
We advertised a new stock Idon't know what to call it.
Maybe we call it a mutual fund.
(36:02):
We were targeting people who wealready know are institutional
investors, showing them thatfund.
That's worked well.
Anything where I would call it ahigh lifetime value can result
out of the bottom.
So something like jewelry yeah,you get someone to buy a
$20,000, or get someone to buysomething, or partner with
(36:22):
something that ends up bringingthem lots more opportunities, or
partner with something thatends up bringing them lots more
opportunities.
We've actually done this forproducts where we'll target the
purchasing, the buyer teams atthe larger supermarkets of like
a hey, here's this product, andit gets the product in front of
them to where they're much morelikely to respond when someone
reaches out and says hey, do youwant to carry this product?
(36:43):
So we do see some of this.
But I will honestly say 95% ofthe advertising we do on
LinkedIn is B2B, but there areuses for what I would call, like
you said, high-end.
Danny Gavin (36:55):
B2C.
That's fair.
And with recruiting, obviouslyyou can go through LinkedIn's
platform to do a job posting.
You're mentioning that alsotypical pure LinkedIn ads.
You can use that for recruitingas well, and it would be a good
idea.
AJ Wilcox (37:08):
I actually like using LinkedIn's marketing platform
for recruiting more than I likeusing their recruiting platform.
They've moved to where jobpostings are like a one-click
apply and man companies hatethis.
Like HR people, they now have300 resumes a day coming in that
they have to then vet andthere's no way of knowing who's
(37:29):
being serious and who justclicked the button.
But if I'm using the marketingside, I can put an ad together
that says hey, look, how awesomethis job is.
This is about our culture andthis is why we're interested in
you.
When they click that, we takethem to a full job application
of like a cover letter, uploadyour resume and we're going to
(37:50):
get higher quality candidates,higher quality applicants coming
through, and then we also getto make sure that they are much,
much more qualified.
So usually we can beat a costper applicant that the HR team
is already doing throughLinkedIn Recruiter.
Danny Gavin (38:06):
What advice do you have for businesses when it
comes to budgeting for LinkedInads?
So like what ideally shouldtheir monthly budget be at a
minimum?
Or if there's like a idealsecret sauce of how much money
in general they should invest ona monthly basis.
AJ Wilcox (38:18):
I wouldn't recommend running ads on LinkedIn unless
you have a budget of at least$5,000 a month.
That would be if you'retargeting North America, which
is LinkedIn's most competitive.
Like I'll say, north America inEnglish yeah, I wouldn't budget
less than $5,000 a month.
If this is Europe, if this isother languages, costs are going
to come down because it's notas competitive and so you could
(38:39):
scale your budget down if youneeded to.
But I would say it's usuallyaround that $5,000 per month
where, by the end of the month,you can look and see like, yes,
I see signs of life, thisappears to be working or it
sucks and something needs tochange.
If you're not spending enough,you may not actually see, you
may not be able to tell whetherit's working or not, and so you
(39:01):
just have to end up advertisingfor longer just to see and
dragging things out.
Danny Gavin (39:05):
Do you have a success story from one of your
clients that illustrates thepower of LinkedIn ads?
I know you mentioned one beforeAny other stories that you'd
want to share with the audience.
AJ Wilcox (39:14):
I had a client come to us and they were a product
I'd never worked with before.
It was a commuting service thatflew people in a helicopter so
think of it as like an Uber,with helicopters instead of cars
.
Flew people in a helicopter sothink of it as like an Uber,
with helicopters instead of cars.
And they came to me and said wewant to target busy executives
who maybe live in Orange County,california, and commute to LA
(39:36):
and vice versa.
And I told them right up frontI was like there's no way this
is going to work.
We know they need to know, likeand trust the brand first.
We can't just ask them to pullout their credit card.
And and this you know growthmanager in in San Francisco was
like well, let's just test andsee.
I was totally blown away.
It worked.
These rides like each way inthe helicopter was like 200 to
(39:59):
250 bucks and people, like crazy, were pulling out their credit
card and commuting in ahelicopter to and from meetings.
I thought it was crazy.
So I'll share my best practices, what tends to work and what
doesn't, but it doesn't meanthat there aren't reasons to
break those best practices.
Basically, what it comes downto is don't be afraid to test.
(40:23):
Don't go all in on one thing ifyou haven't tested to see if
there's something that mightmake it a little bit more
efficient.
Danny Gavin (40:29):
So, with 2025 and AI, one or two tips when people
are approaching LinkedIn adsthat you think people should
keep in mind, specifically whereeverything is going.
AJ Wilcox (40:37):
Yeah, we know, especially because Microsoft is
a huge investor in open AI andchat GPT.
We see them very quicklyrolling out AI features into the
LinkedIn ads platform and Ijust want to say, like, when
everyone else is going towardsAI and things are all written
the same and they sound the sameand they sound like a bot.
(41:00):
Rotem, you are going to standout more and more when you are
making a human connection.
So in 2025, make your ads aboutmaking a human connection.
So in 2025, make your ads aboutmaking a human connection, not
having everything be much moreefficient because a bot created
it, and I think you're going todo a better job of standing out.
Danny Gavin (41:15):
Awesome.
All right, it's time for ourlightning round.
I'm going to mention a topicand I want you to tell me what
you think about, or your best ofthat.
Item Number one cars Aston.
AJ Wilcox (41:24):
Martins are my absolute favorite brand.
Super fast and performant, butthey look like sex on wheels
Gorgeous.
Danny Gavin (41:31):
Are you a James Bond fan?
AJ Wilcox (41:33):
I am probably because of Aston Martin, yeah, cool.
Danny Gavin (41:36):
Love it All right Music.
AJ Wilcox (41:38):
I love the piano.
I love drums, guitar, bass.
All of these things I'll playwithin my free time.
No one's ever going to pay tohear me play because I suck at
them, but my brain just lovesmusic and understanding how to
replicate the sounds that I'veheard.
Danny Gavin (41:55):
Well, I'm a guitarist and love to jam, so
hopefully next time I'm in Utahwe can jam.
Please do.
That'd be great.
Cool Robotics and programming.
AJ Wilcox (42:04):
I absolutely love robotics.
I'm not good at it, but Ifigured out a while back that
you could Cool Robotics andprogramming around and we'll
find people who do light showson their houses, where you drive
up, you tune your radio to astation that they say and then
(42:32):
you get to see the lights allbounce to the music.
My goal for this next year isto do that myself.
So I've been putting the piecestogether and understanding the
programming.
I'm trying to hold myselfaccountable.
This year I'll have at least asmall display up and I want to
understand how this works fromsoup to nuts.
Danny Gavin (42:47):
So, aj, where can listeners learn more about you
and your business?
AJ Wilcox (42:50):
You're obviously into podcasts if you're listening to
this, so tune in to theLinkedIn ad show.
Every episode I go really deepinto some area or topic on
LinkedIn ads.
But follow me on LinkedIn andin fact reach out to me.
Like, customize the note onLinkedIn for the connection and
say you heard me on Danny's showand I would love to be
connected to you.
(43:11):
If you don't customize, I don't.
I get a lot of invitations andI don't accept them unless I
know what they are.
Also, our website, b2linkedcom.
If you want to check outanything that we do, consider
reaching out and doing adiscovery call with me.
I'd love to talk to you aboutyour LinkedIn ads.
Danny Gavin (43:28):
Awesome.
Well, aj, thank you so much forbeing a guest on the Digital
Marketing Mentor.
This was so awesome, so manycool points and details.
Thank you for being a guest onthe Digital Marketing Mentor and
thank you, listeners, fortuning into Digital Marketing
Mentor.
We'll speak with you next time,thank you.
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