LinkedIn ads

Who LinkedIn ads are really for

LinkedIn ads make sense in a fairly narrow set of situations, and outside them they burn money quickly. The pattern that works: a business selling to other businesses, a customer worth a lot (often thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a year), and buyers who can be described by job title, industry or company size. Think industrial suppliers, IT and software firms, commercial cleaning and facility services, staffing agencies, consultants, accountants serving companies, and training providers.

For a local consumer business, LinkedIn is almost never the right choice. A dentist, a restaurant or a renovation company will usually get customers far more cheaply from Google and Meta. I'll tell you that on the first call rather than sell you a campaign that can't pay back.

Targeting: the reason to pay more

What you're buying on LinkedIn is precision. You can target people by:

• Job title, function and seniority, such as operations managers at director level and above.
• Company size and industry, for example manufacturers with 50 to 500 employees.
• Company names, from a list of target accounts your sales team already wants to reach.
• Location, down to cities or provinces.
• Website visitors and contact lists, uploaded or tracked with the Insight Tag.

That means a campaign can reach, say, facility managers at mid-sized companies in Ontario and Quebec without paying for students, job seekers or competitors. On Facebook, that's close to impossible.

Offers that work for B2B

Decision-makers rarely buy from a single ad. They need a reason to engage now and something useful for later. The offers that tend to work on LinkedIn are practical: a short guide to a problem your buyers have, a calculator, a case study with real numbers, a free assessment, an invitation to a webinar or an event. A "Contact us for a quote" ad on its own usually gets very few takers at LinkedIn prices.

Lead Gen Forms help because they pre-fill details from the profile. You get a name, a work email, a company and a job title, which is far easier to qualify than an anonymous website form. Those leads should go straight into your sales process; a CRM setup makes the difference between a lead followed up today and one found in a spreadsheet next month.

Language and Canadian specifics

If you sell to companies in Quebec, your ads and landing pages should generally be in French as well. I write and run LinkedIn campaigns in English, so French versions would come from your own team or translator. Under CASL, sending follow-up marketing emails to leads generally requires consent, so the form includes a clear checkbox for that. For companies targeting the federal public sector, procurement rules are usually more relevant than advertising, and I'd be honest about the limits of what ads can do there.

Why a partner, and what stays with me

LinkedIn advertising is a specialty with its own quirks, costs and best practices. I deliver it with a trusted partner who runs LinkedIn campaigns every day. The contract, deadlines and communication stay with me: you sign one agreement, talk to one person, and get reports in the same format as your other channels. If you run Google Search campaigns or Meta ads with me too, everything lands in one picture.

Pricing and next steps

LinkedIn campaigns are quoted individually after a short call, because effort depends on how many audiences, offers and formats are needed. Ad spend is billed by LinkedIn to your company directly, in an account in your name. To read more first, my article on LinkedIn ads for B2B covers costs and common mistakes, and the social media advertising overview compares LinkedIn with the other platforms.