B2B LinkedIn Ads: How To Drive Leads, Conversions, And ROI At Scale

When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) marketing, LinkedIn Ads are a powerful tool.

Just take a look at the numbers:

• LinkedIn Ads deliver up to twice the conversion rate compared to other platforms.
• Audiences exposed to LinkedIn Ads are six times more likely to convert.
• LinkedIn Ads can increase brand awareness by 30% and boost purchase intent by 33%.

While other platforms do offer reach, LinkedIn also offers precision. It puts your message in front of the decision makers, influencers, and stakeholders who matter most to your business.

If you’re selling to other businesses, especially in industries like tech, SaaS, finance, or professional services, there’s no better place to run ads.

This is because LinkedIn users typically visit the platform with a specific professional purpose in mind, such as networking, staying informed about industry trends, or evaluating tools that can help them perform their job more effectively.

As a result, they’re more engaged, in a business-focused mindset, and open to discovering solutions.

In this guide, we’ll explain what LinkedIn B2B Ads are, how they work, which ad formats you should be using, and how to build high-performing campaigns that drive huge results.

B2B LinkedIn Ads are paid advertising placements on the LinkedIn platform, specifically used by businesses to reach professional audiences.

B2B LinkedIn Ads focus on targeting companies, decision-makers, and professionals with purchasing power, making them an excellent tool for brands selling services or products to other businesses.

LinkedIn Ads appear natively across the platform, meaning they show up within users’ feeds, inboxes, and sidebars. This ensures they’re seamlessly integrated into a professional experience.

What makes them unique is that they allow you to tap into LinkedIn’s extensive database of first-party professional information, such as job titles, company names, industry sectors, and seniority levels. This makes it much easier to reach a precise, relevant target audience compared to other paid ad platforms. We’ll discuss this in more detail later.

LinkedIn offers 91% targeting accuracy, allowing advertisers to reach decision-makers effectively.

Below is an example of a LinkedIn ad targeting HR decision-makers, directing them to download a lead magnet:

Unlike platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which rely heavily on interest-based or behavioral targeting, LinkedIn is built around professional identity.

This distinction is crucial in B2B marketing because buyers often make decisions based on their role within a company, their responsibilities, and their industry, not their personal hobbies or lifestyle.

For example, if you’re selling enterprise SaaS to HR managers at fintech companies with over 500 employees, LinkedIn gives you the tools to target that exact persona. You can serve an ad only to people who match those criteria, something that would be almost impossible on other platforms.

Additionally, although LinkedIn ads have a higher average cost per click (CPC) of around $7.26, depending on region and campaign, they provide the best return on ad spend (ROAS) among major platforms, with a ROAS of 113%. This outperforms Google and Meta Ads in B2B conversions.

When building LinkedIn ad campaigns, one of the first strategic decisions you’ll need to make is choosing the right ad formats. LinkedIn offers several unique types of ads tailored specifically for professional engagement. Let’s unpack the main LinkedIn ad formats available:

📣 Sponsored content (native feed ads)

Sponsored content is one of the most widely used ad formats on LinkedIn. These ads appear directly in a user’s feed, mimicking the look and feel of regular posts, except they’re marked as “Promoted.”

This format allows you to serve high-quality ad creatives (your copy and visuals) to the right audience without disrupting their experience.

There are three main types of sponsored content:

• Single-image ads: These ads use a static image paired with copy and a call to action (CTA). This format is great for straightforward value propositions or promoting lead magnets. They have a click-through rate of about 0.56%.
• Carousel ads: Multiple images that users can swipe through. These work well for storytelling, showcasing product features, or step-by-step guides. Carousel ads have a click-through rate of around 0.40%.
• Video ads: Short-form videos that allow you to demonstrate solutions, share customer testimonials, or drive thought leadership. Video posts on LinkedIn receive five times more engagement than status posts, highlighting the power of video creative for ads.

These types of ads are best for brand awareness and lead generation.

Below is an example of a single-image ad that promotes an eBook download, where the B2B buyer’s contact information would be captured for lead nurturing:

📣 Message ads (now called Sponsored Messaging)

This type of ad has an average open rate of 30% and a click-through rate of 3%, making it effective for personalized, direct engagement with prospects.

Formerly known as InMail or sponsored InMail, these ads deliver a direct message to your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox. They allow you to initiate one-on-one-style conversations, making them feel more personal and relevant.

Message ads include:

• Message ads (single CTA): A text-based message with a single CTA button. They’re great for event invitations, downloadable offers, and demo bookings.
• Conversation ads (multiple CTAs): A newer format that lets recipients choose from multiple CTA paths, ideal for segmenting interest and nurturing leads based on intent.

These formats are especially powerful for mid-funnel and bottom-funnel engagement, where personalization can drive better click-through and conversion rates.

As you can see in the example below, message ads can be personalized and are delivered directly to the user’s inbox:

📣 Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads are unique to LinkedIn and are automatically personalized using profile-level data such as the user’s name, profile photos, job title, and company.

These ad creatives update dynamically for each individual, increasing relevance and engagement.

Below are two types of dynamic ads you may see on LinkedIn:

• Spotlight ads: These direct users to a landing page, product, or service by highlighting a specific offering alongside their profile photos. The headline and CTA are customized based on who is viewing the ad.
• Follower ads: These encourage users to follow your LinkedIn page. They are excellent for increasing your organic reach and building a community of relevant decision-makers.

As these ads rely on personalization, they tend to catch the eye quite quickly, especially when someone sees their own profile photos next to your message.

In the example below, you can see that this dynamic ad includes the user’s profile photo and encourages them to join their community:

📣 Text ads

Text ads are LinkedIn’s simplest and most cost-effective ad format. They appear in the sidebar of the user’s feed and consist of a short headline, a brief description, and an optional thumbnail image.

While text ads are less flashy than other ad formats, they can still drive significant website traffic and conversions, especially when paired with strong value propositions and clear CTAs.

Below are some examples of text ads. As you can see, they include an image, headline, and some accompanying copy:

📣 Lead generation forms (ad extension)

Approximately 62% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn produces leads, and ad managers report successful conversions 65% of the time.

Although not technically an ad format themselves, lead-gen forms can be added to most sponsored content and message ads to capture leads without sending users to a landing page.

These forms auto-fill with the user’s LinkedIn profile data, like their name, email, company, and job title, which significantly reduces friction and increases submission rates.

Here is an example of the type of lead generation LinkedIn users would see:

At a high level, LinkedIn Ads work similarly to other digital platforms: you create a campaign, define your audience, choose an ad format, set a budget, and track performance.

However, LinkedIn’s power lies in how precisely it allows you to target professionals and align your strategy with the B2B buyer journey.

Below, we break down the process step by step:

1. LinkedIn Campaign Manager: Your LinkedIn Ads hub

Everything starts in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, which is the central platform for setting up, running, and monitoring your ad campaigns. Campaign Manager guides you through a clear hierarchy:

• Campaign groups: These are your top-level containers, often organized by theme, goal, or client.
• Campaigns: Each campaign is part of a group and contains the core settings: campaign objectives, targeting, budget, bid type, and ad format.
• Ads: These are your pieces of creative, including your copy and image or video, that run within a campaign.

This structure gives you control over testing, budgeting, and performance monitoring. For example, you can run multiple campaigns targeting different personas, each with its own unique creatives and CTAs, all under the same campaign group for easy ad management.

2. Objective-based campaign setup

When creating a new campaign, you’ll first choose an objective, which is what tells LinkedIn what success looks like for you. It also helps the algorithm optimize delivery accordingly.

Objectives are grouped by stage of the funnel:

🎯 Awareness

The brand awareness objective is when you optimize for impressions and reach. This is ideal for launching a new product, positioning your brand, or entering a new market.

🎯 Consideration

• Website visits: Drives traffic to a specific landing page.
• Engagement: Focuses on post reactions, comments, shares, and page follows.
• Video views: Prioritises users most likely to watch your video content.

🎯 Conversions

• Lead generation: Uses LinkedIn’s native lead gen forms to capture user information without leaving the platform.
• Website conversions: Optimizes for actions taken on your site, such as demo requests, downloads, or sign-ups.
• Job applicants: For promoting job openings to qualified professionals.

3. Audience targeting

Targeting is where LinkedIn Ads become truly invaluable. You’re able to build extremely specific audiences based on first-party professional data, including:

• Location: This is required.
• Company attributes: Company name, industry, and size.
• Job experience: Job title, function, seniority, and years of experience.
• Education: Field of study, degree, or school.
• Skills and interests: Relevant to specific roles or technologies
• Member traits: LinkedIn group memberships or device preferences.

You can also include or exclude specific attributes to refine your audience. For example, if you’re targeting HR leaders in tech companies with 200 to 1,000 employees, you can build that exact audience profile.

Additionally, LinkedIn lets you use your own data to build custom audiences, such as:

• Website retargeting: Show ads to people who’ve visited your website.
• Contact lists: Upload a list of emails and target matching profiles.
• Company lists: Target a specific list of named accounts.
• Lookalike audiences: Expand your reach to users similar to your top converters.

4. Budgeting and bidding

Once your targeting is locked in, you’ll choose your budget and bidding strategy. Your budget options include:

• Daily budget: The average you’re willing to spend per day.
• Lifetime budget: A fixed amount over a set date range.
• Combination: Set both daily and total limits.

When it comes to bidding options, LinkedIn operates on an auction system. You can bid manually or let the platform optimize for your chosen objective, such as:

• Cost per click (CPC): Pay only when someone clicks on your ad, which is ideal for driving traffic or generating leads.
• Cost per impression (CPM): Pay per 1,000 views, which is best for awareness campaigns.
• Cost per send (CPS): This applies to message ads, where you pay each time a message is delivered.
• Cost per view (CPV): Used with video views.

As mentioned earlier, bids on LinkedIn tend to be higher than on other platforms, but the quality of the traffic, especially in B2B, is significantly better.

5. Creative development

Now that your audience and bidding are set, you’ll need to upload our ad creatives, which are the content users will see.

This includes your headline, body text, visuals (images or videos), and CTA buttons. The format of your creatives will vary depending on which ad format you’ve selected.

Creative is one of the most important factors in the success of your campaign, so it’s essential to get it right. No amount of smart targeting can make up for a mundane or confusing message.

6. Tracking and measuring campaign performance

Once your LinkedIn ad campaigns are live, you’ll need to monitor and track their performance. Some key metrics to monitor include:

• Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown to LinkedIn members.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on your ad after seeing it.
• Cost per click (CPC): The average amount you pay for each click on your ad.
• Leads or conversions: The number of people who completed a desired action, like submitting a form, downloading a guide, booking a demo, or signing up for a webinar.

Successful LinkedIn advertising isn’t just about picking the right audience or setting a budget. The real results come when you align targeting, messaging, creative, and user experience to guide your prospects through every stage of the buyer journey.

Let's discuss some key best practices to help you get LinkedIn Ads right:

☑️ Crafting ads that capture the right attention

On LinkedIn, you’re not just competing with other ads. You’re also competing with industry news, company announcements, and insightful posts from people users know and trust.

For this reason, your creative needs to grab attention fast while still feeling like it belongs in the feed.

Start by focusing on the outcome your audience cares about. For example, if you’re promoting a SaaS platform that automates invoice approvals, it’s more effective to say “Finance teams are saving 10+ hours a week on invoice approvals” than to talk about features like AI and integrations.

People don’t buy software, they buy time, efficiency, and peace of mind.

Tone also matters. While LinkedIn is a professional platform, overly corporate or jargon-heavy language may be ignored. A conversational, human tone almost always wins.

Below is an example of a B2B LinkedIn Ad that uses a punchy, conversational tone rather than an overly corporate one:

Your visuals should support your message without feeling generic, so skip stock photos and use product screenshots, team photos, or branding graphics that feel authentic and genuine.

Finally, be clear about what you want people to do. Whether it’s downloading your guide, booking a demo, or seeing how a product works, a strong CTA should align with your offer and make the next step obvious.

In the ad below, HubSpot uses compelling copy, an engaging design, and a strong CTA to promote a webinar:

☑️ Direct users to a destination that converts

Your landing page is where interest turns into action or falls apart. One of the most common reasons for underperforming LinkedIn campaigns is sending users to a destination that doesn’t match the promise of the ad.

Let’s say your ad offers a free CFO guide for SaaS companies. If the user clicks and lands on a generic homepage or a bloated form that asks for irrelevant details, trust is broken.

Instead, your landing page should mirror the ad in tone and content. Use similar headlines to reinforce the value of the offer and get to the point quickly.

Form length also plays an important role. As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn’s native lead gen forms reduce friction by auto-filling fields, but if you’re directing users to a website form, keep it as short as possible.

A name, work email, and job title are often enough to start the conversation. For more sensitive actions, such as demo bookings, you can request additional information, but always be clear about the purpose of collecting these details.

Adding trust signals to your landing pages, such as short testimonials or industry awards, can also make a big difference. In B2B, people want to know they’re making a good decision before they hand over their details.

☑️ Build campaigns with the funnel in mind

The best-performing B2B campaigns are designed to guide your audience through a series of steps, from discovery to consideration to decision.

At the top of the funnel, focus on value-rich content that educates or inspires. This could be an industry report, a practical checklist, or a video walkthrough.

For example, if you’re targeting IT managers at retail companies, a guide titled “The 2025 Retail IT Playbook” would be a compelling offer.

As prospects engage, you can use retargeting to serve more specific, mid-funnel content, such as case studies, comparison guides, or product explainers. These help your audience evaluate your solution in the context of their own challenges.

Once someone has demonstrated strong intent, you can proceed to more direct offers, like demo bookings or free trials. These bottom-of-funnel campaigns are most effective when targeting highly specific audiences and delivering personalized messaging.

☑️ Test, optimize, repeat

Even with strong targeting and compelling creative, no LinkedIn campaign is perfect from the start. This is especially true in B2B, where audiences are niche, buying cycles are long, and value propositions can be complex.

Success often comes from systematic testing and continuous optimization.

This is particularly important in B2B, where it can take time to uncover the right mix of messaging, tone, and creative that resonates with your audience.

Many B2B solutions solve multiple problems for different stakeholders, and not every benefit will land equally with every segment.

Below are some ways you can test and optimize your LinkedIn Ads:

Start with A/B testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the simplest way to compare the performance of two variations of an ad element. For LinkedIn Ads, you can A/B test:

• Headlines: Which phrasing grabs attention? Is benefit-driven or curiosity-driven copy more effective?
• Images vs. video: Does a static visual perform better than a quick demo walkthrough?
• CTAs: Does “Get the Guide” perform better than “See How it Works?”
• Value proposition focus: For example, should your SaaS ad highlight cost savings or speed?

Use multivariate testing

If you want to test several variables simultaneously, such as changing your headline, image, and CTA, multivariate testing is the tool you need. This allows you to see how combinations of elements perform better.

However, multivariate testing requires a larger budget and a larger sample size to get statistically significant results. For B2B advertisers on LinkedIn, it’s best used once you’ve validated some core messaging through A/B testing and want to fine-tune combinations for maximum impact.

Monitor performance beyond the click

It’s important to track your campaign performance deeper than just CTR or CPC. In B2B, the real win isn’t just getting a click. It’s getting qualified leads that turn into pipelines.

For example, two ads might drive similar cost-per-click, but if one consistently generates demo requests from decision-makers and the other attracts junior staff with no buying power, the performance gap is much wider.

If you’re using LinkedIn’s lead generation forms, pay attention to job titles, company size, and seniority to gauge lead quality.

LinkedIn Ads are one of the most powerful tools in a B2B marketer's toolkit, but they come with a learning curve.

From navigating the platform’s targeting intricacies to creating high-converting ad campaigns and optimizing performance over time, getting it right takes time, expertise, and experimentation.

Additionally, without a strategy tailored to your business goals and objectives, it’s easy to burn through your budget without seeing meaningful results.

That’s where Kalium can help. We don’t just manage ad accounts. We build full-funnel, results-driven LinkedIn ad strategies designed to drive leads, pipeline, and long-term revenue for B2B brands.

Our team brings the paid social expertise and B2B experience needed to make LinkedIn Ads work for your business.

Feel free to get in touch with us today to book a LinkedIn Ads strategy call to see how we can help you make your campaigns stand out.