Hey friend,
I’ve talked to way too many marketers this year who feel like they’ve hit a ceiling with LinkedIn Ads.
They’re doing everything "by the book" like optimizing for clicks, refining targeting and tweaking creatives without any major improvements.
That's exactly what happened to a $1B+ client I worked with last year. They had 200+ high-value target accounts, but no matter what I did, we couldn't reach more than half of them.
So, I pitched them something else.
“Why don’t we stop optimizing for clicks and conversions, and start optimizing for reach?”
This right here 👆 is considered bad practice on paid social. But, I had a hunch LinkedIn’s algorithm was prioritizing distribution to the most active users, which meant 50%+ of the audience wasn’t even seeing the ads.
We rolled out the strategy across the account.
3 months later and we'd reached 98% of those 200+ target accounts AND increased CTR from 0.5% to 2%+.
Even better results than we expected. It worked because:
1. We calculated budget using real CPM data so we knew we had enough to reach 80% of our audience with 10+ frequency every 90 days.
2. We promoted product-led content that tackled key pain points target decision-makers faced that made them more likely to click.
3. Using different objectives meant we could force the algorithm to push content to more accounts.
4. Because we understood our audience better than the algorithm, we created content that increased CTR without needing to optimise for clicks and limit reach.
We're now using a similar process on our own account to reach 80%+ of our audience with 4%+ CTRs.
The reason I’m telling you this is because the best way to succeed on LinkedIn Ads is to understand how the algorithm really works.
The strategy I shared above wasn't just a one off win. It's a repeatable framework any B2B can apply to reach more accounts and generate more pipeline with LinkedIn Ads if you get that understanding right.
Tomorrow, I'm teaching this exact 4-step playbook in a live session with Steffen Hedebrandt, CMO at Dreamdata.
We'll show you the math, the strategy, and how to apply it to your own account.
See you there!
🤘
Patrick