B2B Paid Media Strategy: 5 LinkedIn Ad Strategies That Drive Results
Brent Walrath
If you are wondering where to start a B2B paid media strategy, LinkedIn Ads should be one of your first stops. In today’s digital-first sales environment, finding the right leads means going where your audience already spends time. And for B2B brands, that is LinkedIn.
With over 1 billion users and advanced targeting capabilities, LinkedIn provides both a vast pool of potential prospects and the tools to reach them with precision. Unlike cold outreach or generic ads, LinkedIn Ads let you target by job title, company, industry, and more — enabling scalable, data-driven strategies that remove the guesswork from prospecting.
Below, we break down five proven LinkedIn Ads strategies to help you find high-quality prospects online and move them through your sales funnel, ultimately driving better revenue outcomes.
- Utilize Conversation Ads to Qualify Leads
- Reach More with Audience Expansion and Lookalike Audiences
- Install Insight Tag to Retarget Website Visitors
- Use Matched Audiences for Account-Based Marketing
- Build Trust with Thought Leadership Ads
B2B Marketing Strategy Framework: The Ultimate Guide to Business Branding
Learn how to build a strong brand experience with our downloadable guide.
1. Utilize Conversation Ads to Qualify Leads for B2B Deals
Great lead generation does not happen by accident. It starts with smart, strategic outreach that pairs personalized messaging with real product expertise that instills confidence that your solution is the answer to their problem. When you speak directly to a prospect’s role, industry, and challenges, you are not just reaching out; you are showing up with purpose. Tools like LinkedIn’s Conversation Ads take that impact even further.
LinkedIn’s interactive Conversation Ads help you connect with professionals faster by asking qualifying questions and using Lead Gen Forms for seamless lead capture. Once strong leads are identified, it opens the opportunity for you to offer valuable resources that address their pain points, all in a way that feels personal and engaging. The result is a better experience for the people you want to reach, one that lays the foundation for a successful sale.
2. Reach More with Audience Expansion and Lookalike Targeting for B2B Ads Campaigns
Identifying your target audience is the first step toward building a strong, effective sales pipeline. It clarifies who to contact, how to connect with them, and what messaging will resonate. Creating buyer personas is a great starting point, and once that foundation is in place, LinkedIn helps you scale your reach with tools like Audience Expansion and Lookalike Audiences.
These features make it easier to find more of the right people, more efficiently, by leveraging LinkedIn’s vast professional data. Audience Expansion automatically includes users with similar traits to your selected criteria, helping you reach relevant prospects you might have missed. Lookalike Audiences go a step further by analyzing your existing customers or leads and identifying new users who share similar profiles, behaviors, or job roles. Together, these tools reduce guesswork and allow your campaigns to scale without sacrificing relevance.
3. Retarget Website Visitors with LinkedIn B2B Ads
Retargeting helps you get more from your media spend by focusing on warm leads. By re-engaging recent site visitors who did not convert, you are showing ads to people already familiar with your brand, making them far more likely to click, convert, and take action. In fact, retargeted web visitors are three times more likely to click your ad and 70% more likely to convert than those who have not interacted with your brand.
LinkedIn’s ad platform includes an Insight Tag you can install on your website to identify and qualify potential leads. When visitors arrive, the Insight Tag anonymously tracks their activity, without collecting any personally identifiable information, so you can gain valuable insights into your audience. This data lets you build tailored prospecting campaigns, reaching high-potential visitors with personalized ads on LinkedIn and its partner sites, helping you nurture leads and accelerate the sales funnel.
4. Use Matched Audiences for Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing (ABM) focuses on developing meaningful relationships with high-value accounts, rather than targeting individual contacts in isolation. The goal is to engage multiple stakeholders within each account, highlighting the importance of interpersonal skills in driving business growth. These relationships are built through thoughtful conversations, active listening, and a genuine commitment to connection over a quick sale.
LinkedIn’s ad platform allows you to upload contact lists or target account data, enabling you to reach high-value decision-makers directly. Engaging through LinkedIn also demonstrates respect for their time and boundaries, keeping communication within a channel where they expect and are more open to relevant outreach and business-focused messaging. This strategic approach helps reduce noise across multiple platforms and supports more intentional, effective engagement.
5. Build Trust with Thought Leadership Ads for B2B Campaigns
Thought Leadership Ads on LinkedIn promote personal posts from employee profiles instead of company pages. They build trust and credibility by positioning individuals as authentic, knowledgeable voices in their industry. Often used for brand awareness and recruiting, they also present a valuable opportunity to support prospecting and strengthen relationships with potential buyers.
These B2B ads showcase real people behind the brand, making outreach more personal and relatable. This human approach builds trust faster, encourages engagement, and differentiates your messaging from typical corporate ads. As a result, prospects are more receptive and open to meaningful conversations.
B2B Marketing Strategy Framework: The Ultimate Guide to Business Branding
Learn how to create a strategy that generates, qualifies, and converts marketing leads and increases sales.
Access B2B Paid Search Advertising Expertise with EBQ
Finding prospects online requires more than casting a wide net; it demands creating targeted, authentic connections that address your prospects’ pain points. LinkedIn Ads empower you to reach the right audience by combining personalized, relevant messaging with a strategic, data-driven approach. By leveraging these five LinkedIn ad strategies, you can convert clicks into qualified leads and lay the foundation for meaningful conversations that drive results.
If you want to enhance your sales pipeline with modern solutions, EBQ’s Paid Ads Specialists collaborate closely with your stakeholders to ensure your LinkedIn ads target the right prospects, driving effective outreach and maximizing conversion rates. Our team of dedicated professionals seamlessly integrates as an extension of your business, fully committed to achieving your objectives.
About the Author:
As a Revenue Consultant at EBQ, Brent has led over 500 lead generation projects at EBQ, specializing in methodical execution and implementing best practices. With 14+ years of experience, including serving as Chief Revenue Officer, he has refined sales fundamentals and optimized processes for diverse industries, driving success in a dynamic market.
