In B2B marketing circles, LinkedIn often carries an alluring aura of untapped potential, “high-intent professionals, all in one place.” But when it comes to LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads, too many brands mistake the platform’s targeting precision for guaranteed sales-ready leads and pipeline impact.
The reality is Lead Gen on LinkedIn works brilliantly in the right strategic context, and disappoints when misapplied
If your team treats Lead Gen Ads as the default format for every campaign, it’s time to revisit the efficacy of your media strategy. Especially before your once-low Cost Per Leads (CPLs) start climbing alarmingly.
Lead Gen Ads Aren’t a Full-Funnel Solution
Is there an assumption on your team that every LinkedIn campaign should be driving form fills? This is one of the more common mistakes.
Lead Gen Ads are designed for bottom-of-funnel activation, when your target audience has strong in-market intent either for your brand or offerings. They work best when your brand is already Top of Mind to the relevant Buying Committee, and your message/offer simply conveys the desired solution & action without needing significant warm-up.
Too often, we see brands pushing Lead Gen Ads while bypassing any awareness or consideration work, or in the case of startup & small brands, before a prospect even knows who they are or what problems their offering(s) solve. The result? At best, high platform lead volume from junk-quality prospects. At worst, high CPCs and CPLs (with likely still irrelevant users). Along either path, the sales team eventually comes knocking on marketing’s door to vent their frustration.
When Lead Gen Ads Do Work
We’ve found that LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads perform best in two scenarios:
- Established brands with strong brand equity and high trust among their target market.
- Emerging brands with a large total addressable market (TAM), a clearly defined ideal customer profile (ICP), and enough time & budget already spent building Upper Funnel engagement via non-Lead Gen Ads tactics.
In both cases, success depends on clear alignment between the campaign offer and audience intent. If you’re promoting a high-value content asset or driving demo requests among nurtured accounts, Lead Gen Ads can streamline steps to get a qualified user speaking to sales.
Lead Gen ads can sometimes be effective for very low-commitment actions (ex. signing up for an email list or a low-stakes content piece). But if your goal is to get in front of a low intent ICP to build brand trust, introduce your unique value proposition, or educate a new audience segment, hold off on Lead Gen Ads for now.
Targeting the Right Audience Size
One of the most overlooked variables in LinkedIn lead gen performance is audience size.
In activating Lead Gen Ads for a myriad of clients over the years, we’ve found that the sweet spot is typically between 200,000 and 800,000 members for a given campaign line. Go too small, and you’ll likely struggle with lead volume while costs rack up. Go too large, and the risk becomes drawing in more unqualified leads and too low a frequency among the stakeholders that matter.
If your biggest audience (likely ICP) is sub-200K, consider reserving Lead Gen ambitions for specific down-funnel endeavors, like Retargeting, or supplementing with ABM-style tactics. If your audience is 1M+ and highly diverse, revisit the base segment filters and relevant LinkedIn job trait targeting settings to narrow the size down per funnel stage-campaign.
Sales Feedback Is Non-Negotiable
Here’s a truth all B2B media practitioners have to admit: lead gen success doesn’t live in the platform, it lives in the feedback from Sales, which is often referred to as, “the handoff”.
No matter how well your LinkedIn targeting is set up, if Sales didn’t find enough quality leads, your campaigns didn’t work. Period.
To get Lead Gen right, maintain an open and frequent feedback loop with Sales. Regularly ask questions like:
- How many of these leads are high quality, hitting relevant job roles and/or industries?
- Is lead contact info accurate and useful?
- How familiar are these leads with who we are and what we offer?
If the answers point to low lead quality or relevance, don’t wait to revisit your campaign strategy, messaging sets, and targeting setups for a relaunch. And if Sales can’t answer questions like the above beyond ‘not sure’ or ‘I don’t know’, it’s likely time for your company to reset their CRM best practices.
The Form Field Trade-Off
Another critical factor in LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads is what form fields to use..
Too many fields? You’ll throttle lead volume. Too few? You risk collecting junk data or Sales having too little information to get in touch with the prospect in a timely manner.
The ideal form strikes a balance:
- Capture essential qualifiers like name, email, job title, and company. Only add more if Sales absolutely requires it
- Minimize friction by leveraging LinkedIn’s autofill capabilities.
- Consider requiring “Work Email” instead of “Email” to try and minimize personal emails being given, even if it costs some volume
Lastly, many brands forget a crucial step that can result in lost prospects: not planning for collecting the leads. By default, LinkedIn allows advertisers to download their form fill data directly. Our recommendation is to use a direct integration to automate this process and reduce human error opportunities, while avoiding having to handle potential PII directly.
So, Should You Use LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads?
Yes, if you’re using them at the right stage, with the right audience, and with full cross-functional alignment. Lead Gen Ads aren’t a set-it-and-forget-it tactic. They require rigorous targeting, ongoing sales feedback, and constant creative & bidding optimization.
Treat them as a low funnel precision tool in your media mix, not a default setting.
Because in LinkedIn B2B advertising, intent is often just as important as timing.