Welcome to the latest episode of At the Forefront: Fintech Conversations!
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In this episode, Forefront Account Manager Lindsey Patterson sits down with AJ Wilcox, Founder of B2Linked, an agency that specializes in LinkedIn Ads. Lindsey and AJ discuss key tactics for building and targeting an audience within a niche B2B industry, how to measure success and emerging trends within the LinkedIn Ads realm.
The discussion opens with a look at B2Linked’s origin story. AJ explains that his career journey began in the SEO and Google Ads space. When he joined a pre-IPO SaaS company, the firm’s CMO introduced him to the world of LinkedIn Ads. Inspired by their potential, AJ made extensive use of LinkedIn Ads to help drive the company to enormous success. After developing relationships with LinkedIn’s internal team, he opened his own agency to help other companies realize the same value.
Next, AJ discusses how LinkedIn Ads enable firms to tailor their message to highly specific B2B audiences via segmentation. LinkedIn is the ideal platform for audience targeting, providing a range of business-oriented criteria so firms can identify the precise profiles they want to reach and create specialized content that resonates with these individuals. AJ stresses that the most important factor in capturing an audience’s attention is the relevance of the content, encouraging listeners to experiment with new ad copy and formats to make the ads as compelling as possible.
AJ then offers some of the best advice he’s learned from working with B2B clients. He advises against pushing a cold audience directly to a demo request, as this often proves ineffective – it’s a big ask of people’s time and attention. To reduce the cost per download, AJ suggests offering an informative piece of content like a whitepaper or a blog post that hits on one of the audience’s major pain points. B2Linked has had success with this approach, on one occasion tripling a client’s click-through rate and doubling its conversion rate.
The conversation then turns to reporting – how should firms measure success with LinkedIn Ads? Because every business is different, B2Linked’s reports are often customized to the individual needs of its clients. AJ shares some of his methods for reporting, which include additional metrics outside of LinkedIn Ads’ platform analytics. For example, LinkedIn’s video ad metrics include view rate and cost per view, which AJ does not find useful. Instead, he uses a 50% view rate metric to capture how many audience members watched at least halfway through the video, providing a better representation of the ad’s true impact.
Lastly, AJ describes some key emerging trends driving LinkedIn Ads, which continues to evolve by adding new ad formats. One format that could be particularly valuable for B2B firms seeking to raise the profile of their executives is thought leadership ads, which can come directly from individuals within a company. More broadly, AJ shares that the top-performing ad formats today are video-based, largely due to user behavior changes on LinkedIn. The platform has evolved from a mere job-seeking platform into a true social network, and “talking head” videos tend to perform well due to their personal, accessible feel. AJ and Lindsey agree that these videos have great ROI, with low production costs and high watch rates.
See below for a breakdown of what was discussed. Happy listening!
Timestamps:
1:20 – AJ’s career journey and B2Linked’s origin story
3:50 – How to cater to a niche B2B audience using LinkedIn Ads
5:40 – Navigating ad campaign challenges
8:30 – Demonstrating the value of LinkedIn Ads using metrics
13:05 – EmergingLinkedIn Ads trends for B2B
