LinkedIn Ads: cost and benefit in B2B

LinkedIn is the only large platform where you can target by employer, seniority, company size and industry. That precision carries a price that surprises many.

What the channel actually costs

These figures are not negotiable and are not a sign of poor work. They follow from scarce inventory meeting well-funded demand.

The sum before the first pound

A contact is not a customer. Work it through before you start.

1. How many contacts become qualified conversations? In B2B, 15 to 30 per cent is usual.
2. How many conversations become orders? Usually 20 to 35 per cent.
3. So one order costs roughly 15 to 30 contacts.
4. At £150 a contact that is £2,250 to £4,500 an order.

If your average order value is £3,000, the channel is dead. If it is £40,000, the channel is cheap. That is exactly why the answer to whether LinkedIn pays is always firm-specific.

Targeting: what works and what burns money

The obvious approach, targeting by job title, is the worst. Titles are inconsistent, outdated and often loosely maintained.

Better: function plus seniority, more robust than title because the platform normalises it. Company size plus industry, the single most important filter because it maps buying power. Named account lists, with up to 300,000 company names uploadable, the strongest option for sales teams with a defined target list. Members of particular groups, precise but often too small.

Avoid stacking four or five filters. Each additional filter shrinks the audience multiplicatively. Below 50,000 people it quickly becomes uneconomic.

Platform form versus your own landing page

The embedded form pre-fills from the profile. That lowers the barrier considerably and with it the cost per contact.

The price: the person has never seen your website, does not know your offer in detail and often does not remember the enquiry when you call. Close rates typically run at a third to a half of those from your own landing pages.

A workable compromise is to split: platform form for downloading a technical document, your own landing page for concrete quote requests.

What works in the copy

B2B decisions run on trust and expertise, not discounts. What has proven itself: a concrete figure from a real project without naming the client; a technical document that solves a problem rather than describing a product; an invitation to a technical conversation rather than a product demo; and posts from named people rather than the company page, because they earn more reach.

Avoid stock imagery that looks like a board meeting. It gets scrolled past reliably.

When to stop

After three months and at least 40 contacts you should know how many became conversations. If that rate is below 10 per cent, either the targeting is wrong or the offer does not suit the platform. Both are results you can work with.