Are LinkedIn leads worth the cost? Rethinking your ad strategy to drive real pipeline - with Philip Ilic

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Val Riley: Thanks for tuning in to closing time. The show for Go to market leaders. Val. Um, I'm Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce and Insightly. Today I'm joined by Philip Ilitch. He is a B2B growth expert who specializes in LinkedIn strategy and helping customers drive real pipeline, not just leads. Welcome to the show, Philip.

Philip Ilic: Thanks so much Val. Really excited to get going today. So yeah, thank you for having me.

Val Riley: So let's dig in. This is a topic that's on the mind of marketers all the time. Um, CPL in general, but specifically for LinkedIn. So let's start with the big question. LinkedIn leads are expensive. When marketers say that they're too costly, what should they actually be comparing it to?

Philip Ilic: Yeah, exactly. I mean there is a few different things we can talk about here, but CPL on a kind of metric, um, compared to like a CPL on meta it is more expensive. But when you look at revenue generated or pipeline generated, um, the return on ad spend is actually very, very good. So we can target much higher value people. Um, second parts of this is actually on other platforms, meta, you can't actually reach these people. So if you can reach the exact same people, get the exact same quality, which you pretty much can't. If you notice on meta you might have 10 bad leads to one good. So you've got to really understand whether or not the quality of the leads are good and compare apples for apples. So like is it the exact ICP from the right size company, um, or not. And if it's not then you can't really Compare that to one that is from LinkedIn. So is it expensive? I, I think the best way to look at it is how much revenue is it creating. So we need to look all the way pipeline, all the way to revenue, um, and the cost per demo and whether or not that demo will sat or not and all these kind of other metrics which are down funnel and then we can judge whether or not it's expensive or not.

Val Riley: That's a really great way to frame it because I know sometimes it's hard when you see that, you know the oh this one lead cost us 7, $800 or $1,200. Um, but it really is quality over quantity. Even though sometimes that first number can sting a little bit.

Philip Ilic: Yeah, for sure. And when that lead comes in and then they don't sit the demo, it's even bigger sting. So it's really important to have a really good follow up as well. So a lot of times I work with a bunch of clients all the time and the one thing they do often fail at is the follow up. Um, so they like getting the lead is just the first step. The second part is actually making sure they sit the demo and making sure that follow up happens. And because the leads are more expensive in terms of getting them, it's really important that we take care of every single lead that comes in.

Val Riley: The whole funnel has to be absolutely fine tuned when you are spending that much per lead. So um, let me just take it in a different direction. One alternative to a traditional LinkedIn lead gen ad is like using LinkedIn for content distribution. So getting your message in front of the right audience, um, without immediately asking for a demo, how do you feel about a content distribution strategy on LinkedIn as maybe a lower cost option?

Philip Ilic: Honestly I see LinkedIn more as a content distribution platform than a lead gen platform. In fact I think everyone should because just going straight for the lead going straightforward demo for example it does start your cost to start escalating. If you don't do all this middle funnel, um, content distribution demand gen side and you're just doing demand capture those you'll get a spike in leads and flatline. So you have to do this kind of middle thing. I call it 180 day retargeting demand gen play. And that's mostly content distribution. So we're mostly using FORT leader ads and you can have a video single um image or just literally text and thought leaders one of the best ways to deliver the information your ICP needs. So we have a whole content strategy around that. But basically if you imagine influence pipeline is a ah, is a um metric most people don't even look at when they, most people don't even look at when they run LinkedIn ads. And the two most important metrics are um, directly attributable leads. So that's the demand capture side and then influence pipeline. So when you look at influence pipeline which is through this content delivery motion you'll see that the leads that came in from Google branded brand or direct or unknown actually had X amount of impressions, engagements and clicks. So LinkedIn actually did all this heavy lifting before that lead came in direct from, you know, to the website. So this content distribution play is extremely important.

Val Riley: I wish influenced pipeline had better PR because it is such, it is such a black box and it's so difficult to get uh, non marketers to really understand the impact of it. But it is huge. Um, you sort of stole my next question. It was about thought leader ads. In case folks haven't experienced what a thought leader ad is, can you just kind of describe the process and how come you feel it's more cost, uh, effective than traditional LinkedIn ads?

Philip Ilic: Yeah, for sure. So traditionally about a couple of years ago we didn't have thought lead ads. We only had posts from a company page. So that's the logo plus a kind of a post that looks very corporate. Uh, most people did it quite badly in it's quite hard to do it well and because it is from a company page. So for leader ads are basically from your personal profile and so for example someone who's posting organically regularly, um, you can turn some of those posts into a thought leader ad which is basically just a boosted personal post. Um, the reason why they do so well is people like to buy from people. Um, that familiar face goes a long way. Um, and generally LinkedIn just has better distribution of this. So the engagement rates way higher, the click through rates are higher, the clicks to landing page are higher, the clicks, the landing page uh CPC which is a metric we have to really dig in to find is actually lower. So all of these metrics just are way better and it's one of the best ways to distribute your message in that influence pipeline, um, kind of metric we're looking at the best way to communicate what you do, how you do it, your social proof. Um, in my opinion I pretty much nearly always go 80% 4 lead ads, maybe some doc ads, some single image, but very heavy on four lead ads, especially in the middle of funnel.

Val Riley: So let's dig a little deeper there. Um, if you see a post that's performing well, might organically, might that be a candidate for a thought leader ad or do you typically come to the table knowing we're going to do this as a thought leader ad from the beginning with an organic post like is it which is there a cart before the horse or is it mixed?

Philip Ilic: Honestly if you ready are running an organic strategy that's great because you can test the post in the world before you put any money behind it. I would say one of the metrics to look at is how well it did organically, but it's not the only one. And some people just think, oh, that one did really well. So it's, it must be, that's the one we should do. But if I post something about me and my cat or my dog or something, that's going to do really well. But is it that useful? Um, probably not as useful. So I think we need to also consider that some more bottom of funnel information, maybe some um, specific social proof might be really great to communicate, but it might not, uh, do great organically. But. So we need to come up with a content strategy. Like what does your ICP need to know about you and your product, which is the social proof, the specific features, the specific benefits. Um, we need to come up with content strategy. And the difference between organic and paid, um, is that I think with paid we can be more strategic. We say these are the five or seven posts we're going to boost this month and this is the reason we have like an objective for each. Some are to send clicks to your landing page because you can add the link. Others are literally, we just want people to consume the content. So they're zero click and they're designed in different ways. Whereas the organic stuff is more posting regularly. It's quite a lot of hard work. You got to post three to four times a week from numerous team members. And it's kind of a bit of a grind where with the, with the LinkedIn for lead ads, it's more like, let's just design like five really good ones or seven and then each month we're swapping like a couple out.

Val Riley: Let's talk a little bit more about the relationship uh, between organic and paid because it feels like you can sort of create a bit of a flywheel there where one is, um, helping the other and maybe get some economies of scale. How do you think about the relationship between organic and paid on LinkedIn?

Philip Ilic: Yeah, I see this all the time where people start not only getting their entire team to post at least like 3, 5, 6 people if you can. And it's great because from an organic perspective, whenever your ICP logs in they're going to see someone from the team posting probably maybe numerous different people. So an organic strategy is great. Um, how the flywheel works is we can choose the posts that do really well into ads, but also people are engaging with your ads, end up getting organic content as well. So it just kind of flywheels really, really nicely. Um, I believe an organic with a paid LinkedIn ad strategy just makes complete sense. It really does. Especially that four leader ad link.

Val Riley: Boy, if you have a magic potion for getting more people in your company to post on LinkedIn, I would, I would take 10 vials of that, please. It's, it does feel like it's just difficult for us to convince um, our leaders that this is an important strategy for our company and really has, can really save us a lot of money in the long run. But, but boy, is that a challenge.

Philip Ilic: It's such a challenge. Any tips? I don't know if I've got any tips outside the box. I mean the main tips are creating like turning into a game and a competition, having prizes. I've seen that work for some people. Otherwise it's literally every time now we internally onboard someone new. I'm making it part of the job description. So it's, it's literally part of the job. Yeah, it's like you have to do this. It's not like uh, please do so that's kind of become. So you got to, I think as leaders in your company we need to prioritize it ourselves and we, to communicate to, to everyone else how important this is. So I don't think there's any like trick honestly. It's definitely a grind to make people understand how important it is, but it's also worth it.

Val Riley: Uh, okay, I'm making a mental note of that job description thing. I'm just going to call HR later and say this is a new, a new thing we're implementing. Um, let's talk a little bit about Outbound and how you can incorporate LinkedIn into your outbound strategy. What, what advice do you have there?

Philip Ilic: Again, LinkedIn is what, like the hub. It's a great platform but we also should probably do this organic side which we already spoke about. And the kind of third part of the puzzle is Outbound. Outbounds are really great, um, demand, Capture, play and LinkedIn is creating all these signals. So people are engaging with your posts, people are going to your website, people are um, you know like signing up for staff content and demos. So outbound automation using clay or now you can use Claude and all this other stuff happening but you can basically use all these new tools to basically do really personalized outbound to capture the demand in a better way. So for example signal based outbound and warm outbound. So from a warm outbound perspective, LinkedIn ads, if you go into the companies tab um, or use a bunch of different tools I won't go into now can show you the highly engaged um, or you know very highly engaged and highly engaged companies and those probably you should probably go outbound to and you can um, link LinkedIn ads which is the marketing side with sales and sales basically just passing sales warmed up companies and one so one way we do this is we actually do list based targeting. Um and this is I would say for LinkedIn one of the best targeting types anyway you probably should be doing list based targeting and the goal with that is actually to saturate that list with as much content as possible. So again for that's probably a really great way to do this but you're looking at um, frequency so people are receiving enough of the one content plus numerous bits of content so you want them to get five, six different bits of content at enough times and then they start knowing who you are, what you do, all this different stuff, your social proof. And at that point if outbound goes out to them when they're warmed up, um, the reply rates everything is just much better. So that's warm bound and then there's signals based outbound which works with LinkedIn really really well again so anyone who's commenting engaging probably should get a little outbound message, something very friendly, no sales pitch, nothing like that but just a connection request. Um, for example it's kind of a way to potentially see if people are in market. So if I post about LinkedIn ads which I regularly do and I see a ah, VP of marketing liking my post that they might be in market, they might not but that gives me a signal that they might be thinking about LinkedIn ads because suddenly they're liking my post. So I would definitely go out bounce, um, them just ask them friendly questions, how are you doing? How your LinkedIn ads going? See if it reaches out into conversation. So this is the signals we can look at website visits and a bunch of others. So there's warm bound and signal based outbound which works super well with both LinkedIn ads and the organic strategy.

Val Riley: I think your approach there is super important. I love the term pitch slap where you simply like somebody's post or you find something insightful that they have added to a conversation and the next thing you know they're in Your linked your InMail. You know pitching you and asking for a demo like that really just feels like they've skipped a few steps.

Philip Ilic: Absolutely, yes, definitely don't recommend pitch slapping. Uh, that's one thing you shouldn't do. So Often what I do is just give, um, either start a friendly conversation or I just offer um, something actually genuinely useful for free. Um, and so often I have like a really good playbook, uh, which is a loom based playbook and that's a gif in the chat. So it looks really cool because it's me like talking. Um, and I've had nothing but positive replies and that very, very maybe never, but I'm sure there's been at least one person who's been angry, but nearly never. I'd say most people are actually really grateful and happy to rece receive something on that.

Val Riley: Yeah, I think a loom is a really great approach because they're hearing your voice, they're seeing your face, so it's like they're on a call with you. So you're definitely establishing some rapport there. But they can consume it or not, or move forward or not and feels very low pressure. So that's a great tip for folks to take away from this episode And

Philip Ilic: I think if the bridge makes sense. So if they're liking a post about LinkedIn ads then I'm asking them, giving them more support around what they liked, um, which is related then it makes sense. There's a bridge. If it's completely out the blue and random, then it's like where's this coming from? So yeah, I think the bridge needs to be there.

Val Riley: All right, Philip, that's all the time we have. This has been incredibly helpful episode. Thank you for giving us really actionable tips today.

Philip Ilic: No worries, really. Thank you so much for having me.

Val Riley: Where can people find you if they want to follow you or learn more about your strategies with LinkedIn?

Philip Ilic: Um, you can find. I'm m posting and addicted to LinkedIn so I'm there every single day. So. So, um, Philip Illich P H I L I P and then surname's Ilic. Find me on LinkedIn otherwise yeah, just reach out to me there. I think that's the best place.

Val Riley: Fantastic. Thank you Philip and thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode. Remember, you can get this episode and every episode of Closing Time delivered right to your inbox. Just click the link in the show notes and we will see you next time.

Philip Ilic: Sam.