LinkedIn Ads 101 with AJ Wilcox
If LinkedIn ads have ever felt expensive and intimidating to you, you're not alone. But what if you could actually turn your ad spend into high-quality leads and serious ROI? This week on Rocky Mountain Marketing, I’m sitting down with LinkedIn Ads pro AJ Wilcox—the founder of B2Linked and host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast.
Inside this value-packed episode, AJ shares:
Why LinkedIn ads cost more—and why it’s worth it
Who should actually be running LinkedIn ads (and who shouldn’t)
How to build a powerful three-stage LinkedIn funnel
Common LinkedIn ad mistakes (and how to fix them)
How $5K a month can scale your B2B marketing—if you do it right
Visit AJ Wilcox's social media pages:
Website: https://b2linked.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/
LinkedIn Ads Show Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z88iXkXHKEZ5um04mtpAq?si=7a7d8d248c8e47a8
[00:00:00] Has it ever felt like LinkedIn ads are just well expensive brand awareness with really no real ROI? Well, what if I told you it doesn't have to be that way. Today's guest is here to show us exactly how you can turn those dollars into actual leads.
Welcome back to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Today I'm sitting down with someone that I've seen speak on stage since before Covid, uh, very first time I was introduced to this guest was at Social Media Marketing World. They took the stage and talked all about LinkedIn ads and. Ever since then, I've been dying to get him on the podcast.
He and I have had the opportunity to hang out at Agents of Change event. We've seen each other at Social Media Marketing World again and again. Uh, social Media Week. I mean like we've run into each other and every time I've been like, please come on my show and let's talk about ads. Here he is [00:01:00] everyone.
Today I am talking with the one and only AJ Wilcox. He is a LinkedIn Ads Pro, and he is the founder of be two linked.com, the host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast. So if you like this podcast, give his podcast a listen as well. And he's, he's the guy that's managed over 200 million yes. Million dollars in ad spend and his, uh, company car.
Well, it is a wicked fast go-kart. Yes. So, AJ Wilcox, thank you so much for joining me on the show today, Katie. I'm so excited to finally be here. Thank you. I'm just honored and flattered I. Well, and you're, you know, you're, you live just on the other side of the Rocky Mountains for me. You're over in Utah.
I'm here in Denver, and before I hit record here, we talked to all things root beer. Yeah. So Tommy Knocker Brewery, I'm going to send you some of their root beer here after the show. So, well, and I mean, LinkedIn ads, I, I know that a lot of people, I think maybe meta ads are a little bit sexier. They're may a [00:02:00] little bit easier, let's be honest.
LinkedIn ads. What made you decide to to dive all in, in the the LinkedIn ad space? I, I came from the world of SEO and Google ads, and I actually, this has been about 14 years ago, but I, I got hired into a A B2B SaaS company. Um, it, the, I mean, I didn't know anything about B2B. Everything I had done to that point was B2C.
And, uh, so I kind of waltzed in thinking, okay, well, I'll figure this out, not realizing how different and complex it was. And I kind of stumbled onto LinkedIn ads there just 'cause it's, it's B2B and my boss was like, Hey, you know, check and see like what you think of this. It could work for us. And I ended up growing that to become LinkedIn's largest spending account at the time.
Oh wow. And I mean, it was our most successful channel. It, it blew everything I was doing with SEO away. It blew everything I was doing with Google Ads away to the point where I just, I gave it my full attention and. [00:03:00] After running the biggest account in the world for two and a half years, I went, there have to be more companies than just this one, that LinkedIn ads would be successful.
So just over 10 years ago, I started B two Linked. We're a LinkedIn ads only agency, and uh, and it's been fun. I wondered if I would ever get sick of it and I don't. I still wake up every day super excited about LinkedIn ads. Well, in LinkedIn ads, I mean, I, I think that if, for people that are listening who, who are LinkedIn ads for and who are they not for?
Super important question because what everyone seems to know about LinkedIn ads is they are expensive, and it's true. They've, we've always paid a premium for LinkedIn ads, traffic. And so what you want to keep in mind, we have access to the very best business targeting. So you can target by like someone's job title and their, their role, their seniority, what department they work in, skills, what groups they're a member of, company size, company name, industry, all of that.
But we do, we pay a premium to [00:04:00] be able to access that targeting. So what I've found is if that kind of targeting is valuable to you and you have a lifetime value, when you close a customer of $10,000 or more, it's a total no-brainer. LinkedIn ads are, are going to work. Um, if you have less than that, maybe LinkedIn ads could be too expensive.
Uh, just depending on your tolerance for, you know, where your ROI needs to be. Why, why are LinkedIn ads? You said that the, the, the consensus kind of, the, the messaging is always off. Well, LinkedIn ads are expensive. Are are they more, I mean, I know the answer to this, but are they more expensive than meta ads?
And if they are, why? Yeah, they, they are legitimately more expensive. Um. What I'm finding for meta right now is most for business to business kinds of clicks. They're paying four to $5 per landing page visit. And on LinkedIn we're paying on average, I'll say we, but we get traffic for, for less than other people do, but most are [00:05:00] paying like 10 to $20 per click, so it is legitimately more expensive.
Um, if I had to, to guess why, I think there, there's two reasons. The first makes a lot of sense and, and that's. LinkedIn is not the network that people think to come and spend a lot of time on it. And when people spend time on a platform, it creates more ad inventory, which brings prices down. So if the average person is only logging into LinkedIn like three or four times per month, uh, and they're only loading up five or six ad slots while they're there, it makes it a, a scarce resource that, uh.
As more and more advertisers try to show to them, now they're competing and costs are going up. But even from the beginning, like before competition had sent in, had set in LinkedIn, set a minimum bid threshold on their first ads of $2. So while you could pay less than a dollar for Google, uh, ads clicks at the time and like a third of a cent for Facebook [00:06:00] clicks at the time.
Uh. You had to pay two bucks a click on LinkedIn. So there might be an element of like, Hey, we're the only game in town. You have to pay more, as well as. Like the, the natural economics of it, that it's a scarce resource and people are bidding it up when they find success. Well, and I think that too with LinkedIn, there's, they have something that's very unique that, you know, Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, they really can't compete with.
Yeah. That makes it so ideal. If you're a business and running ads on these, this platform, it's more expensive, but it has something that's very unique, so. Let, let's talk about what that unique feature is. And it's, it's the, the, the knowing. The, the knowing, right? Yeah. It's the fact that when someone creates a profile on LinkedIn, they're telling LinkedIn, uh, where they work.
Uh, they're telling what skills they have, um, what position they have, what positions they've had in the past, and all of those are signals that if you're trying to sell [00:07:00] something to someone, they're all really important to be able to target. And you may find some a BM platform out there that says, oh, we can target by, uh, by job title, or we can target by company name.
But their data set is going to be on average from LinkedIn, uh, older and less accurate. LinkedIn is the network that you go to when you get a promotion or when you change jobs. At the very least you go and change that, like update your profile. So LinkedIn has the most UpToDate data on all of us. They have it on.
I don't know the stat for sure, but it sure seems like 80 plus percent of white collar professionals, at least in North America, have a platform, have a profile. And so I'm looking at it like it really is the only game in town. If you have a very specific kind of business user that you're trying to target, nowhere else can.
Yeah, and I think, I think about meta ads, you know, it, they've gotten, so, it's gotten really hard to. To do [00:08:00] ads on there. So a lot of our clients, um, are home builders and there's the whole discrimination thing and, you know, yeah. You can't, I mean, like I can, I can't target people within a certain age group, even though it, maybe it's for a retirement home.
Like I have to target literally everyone, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, I think that that's something that's really cool about LinkedIn and, uh. You mentioned something too that I thought was really interesting about people not being on the platform as long. It's, it's, it's not necessarily quote unquote an entertainment platform.
Yeah. Like TikTok is. Let's talk about that a little bit more about how people are showing up on LinkedIn and how you can make the kind of content that will, like an ad content that will stop their scroll. Because that you got, if people aren't showing up as much and they're showing up and then they're not spending a ton of time on it.
What kind of content are you seeing that's actually converting the best for LinkedIn ads right now? Yeah, I love the question. So, um, LinkedIn is actually doing a, a much better job now at capturing people's attention. So we're [00:09:00] seeing more and more usage on the platform, more and more people spending more time.
So this all bodes great for us advertisers, um, but no matter who you are and what platform you're on. So much of the name of the game is standing out. Uh, if everyone else is zigging you zag. And that's how we get, uh, disproportionate amounts of attention in marketing, just as, as the principle. So, uh, on LinkedIn for lots of years, every kind of post was very much like suit and tie kind of behavior in very professional and, and that's just boring.
And so we, we found, I mean, this has been 10 years ago, but um, we found. One of our clients was a, a comic book artist on the side, and he just came up with an idea like, Hey, I'm gonna draw this concept of what we do up as a little comic strip and very not professional. We ran that as an ad that was the highest performing ad I've ever seen in my life because, you know, in a, the sea of drabness, his stood [00:10:00] out and made a personal connection.
The same kind of thing holds true now where uh, I tell people like, video is probably the best way to get attention right now and start in the first one to two seconds of the video. They have to see something that's a hook, that's a strong attention grabber. Otherwise, they're in a hurry. They're just gonna move on to the next thing.
So I'm finding video, especially short, little snackable videos, tips, tricks, strategies, industry updates. That seems to be the very best content right now. I. I love that you brought up video because there's the new video feed on LinkedIn. Yeah. And maybe, you know, this is just me being naive. I I, most of the time when I'm on LinkedIn, it's on my desktop.
Uh, I honestly, I don't use social media a ton on my mobile device. When I'm away from the office, I mean, I'm not like, social media is my job, so I mean like when I'm away from the office, I try to not be on it too much. Um, but I know that there is, that's healthy. The, I know that there is the [00:11:00] LinkedIn video feed on LinkedIn.
Are we seeing ads get shown in the video feed or is that still kind of a organic free zone? Or, talk to me about how. The video feed is, is working for ads? Yeah. The new video feed is, uh, this is an attempt from LinkedIn to get people to spend more time to fix the, the problem that I talked about earlier.
And they, they're looking at TikTok where people are spending three hours a day just doom scrolling and watching. They're like, wow, we wanna get a piece of that. So I think that's what we're seeing as of currently. They're trying to keep it organic only, I think, to get people hooked and interested. And then eventually they'll turn on ads.
Um, there might even be some very premium kinds of ads that they can serve them. Um, there's a, a beta with like, I forget what they call it, but it's, um, with giant news sources like Business Insider in New York Times. Uh, they're playing their content [00:12:00] with, with pre-roll ads in front of it. Um, that certain advertisers have been invited to be able to run.
And, and I wouldn't be surprised if those ads start showing up in the video feed right now or, or in the near future. But as of right now, it's, it's pretty safe. Like you just, you can keep scrolling content and not have to be interrupted by an ad. Well, and I think that too, if you're seeing video ads working right now in the feed and Right, right now it's, it is a little bit of that organic play.
The video feed, uh. Maybe if you have a video ad, LinkedIn might maybe test it in the feed. They could, it seems like a no-brainer. I mean, like you could get extra eyes on your content and kind of be ahead of the game. So yeah. What, what do you think about. The video that you're seeing convert the best? Is it, you said that short snackable stuff, I mean, are we talking, uh, a talking head?
Are we talking, uh, like something more professionally done? I, I know that on LinkedIn, it, it [00:13:00] is a professional, you know, network or whatever, but are we seeing that kind of selfie kind of handhold, you know, holding the, the camera sort of, uh, content convert as an ad? I, I will mention. I don't find video ads to convert very well on LinkedIn.
Oh, okay. Okay. They're very much like a nurture and, and educate the prospect and then retarget them later with, with something that's more of an ask that they can convert on. Ooh, I love that. So very much. The kind of video that I'm finding working for getting attention at the lowest costs and priming and educating customers is talking head video and it's starting with a.
With a hook and giving nonstop value. You try to make it quick. I try to do like 30 to 40 seconds to a cold audience. If it's a warmer audience, you can make it a little bit longer and people will put up with it. But that's every time I've tried other kinds of content, like whiteboard videos [00:14:00] or, or like a professionally made studio kind of ad that fades from black to their logo.
I just, I see nothing. It's, it's expensive to run and people don't stick around 'cause it's boring. But a talking head, someone who is teaching you something, giving you real value, uh, we love as humans and uh, people are sticking around and we're getting costs per retarget viewer down to like 9 cents to retarget someone in the next stage down.
Um, which is fantastic. You can build, uh, we build three stage funnels to, to get someone to conversion, and we're finding that video is leading to the very most. Effective building of, of these three stage funnels. I love that you are not like that. You clarified that it's not, you're not making the ask with the video.
Right. It's brand awareness. You're just trying to, Hey, this is who I am, this is what I'm, this is what I educate on, or this is what my business does, and you're keeping them engaged and it's like, here's the value, right. And then you follow up with that next phase of the [00:15:00] funnel. So if someone says, okay, this is great, aj, I, and I know that you have your membership, um, real fast, just tell everyone about your LinkedIn membership, your ads membership here.
And then I'll get to my next question. Awesome. Yeah, so we have a private community. It's called the LinkedIn Ads Fanatics. And, uh, if you wanna check it out, you can go to fanatics dot b2 linked.com. But, uh, what it is, is it's a community where, uh, there's two different tiers. There's a $79 a month and a 2 79 a month, you get access to all four of our courses.
Um, it's me just teaching you every aspect of LinkedIn ads that you need to know, access to the whole community, and then if you're in the 279. Dollar version. Um, we call those the super fanatics. Um, we hop on a weekly group call altogether where we just get to ask questions and talk about whatever topics they want.
Um, so if you're looking to do LinkedIn ads yourself, you maybe you don't want to afford or you can't afford an agency to do it for you, that's a great option. And I think that what we're talking about today, you know, we're [00:16:00] just, we're we're kind of getting. Okay, so this is a great awareness. Next, next phase of the funnel is this, and this is all stuff that you talk about in your membership.
Oh, yeah. And, and really train on. So be sure to check that out. We will include a link in the show notes, but I think that one of the things that most of us forget, especially with ads, is that you can't, it's really hard to just show up and make a cold sale. Yeah. In the, in the ads. I mean, I get the Amazon, you know, carousels.
I'm like, oh, how did they know that I was into tie dye sweatshirts? Of course I wanna click it, but I mean. It's Amazon, uh, you know, they know my browsing history, all of that creepy big brother stuff that we don't wanna talk about. But I mean, for, for most of the Rocky Mountain marketing listeners. We're introducing ourselves.
Yeah. You know, we're, we're not Nike. Uh, it's, it's way harder to, to make that, that ask from the very first. I mean, and even then they've, they spent years building out brand awareness. So having that first video saying, you know, what it is that you [00:17:00] do or what, what, what, you know, giving that value, what is your next phase of the funnel like then?
And how should people really be allocating their budgets? I mean, is the majority of the budget going to that brand awareness video and then. You know, half the budget's going into the next phase of it, or let's talk about how you funnel people through. Yeah, I love that you're asking this question. When you very first start building the funnel, uh, you'll have a stage one is what I call it, it's your cold audience, but you won't have a stage two or a stage three yet.
So a hundred percent of your budget is going to stage one, and that's gonna be these thought leader videos. Um, as soon as you have an audience big enough to run a stage two kind of ad, um. That's, you need at least 300 people in an audience for LinkedIn to run it. Then you start giving it as much budget as it can spend efficiently without overpaying, and then that builds your stage three over time.
So I would say if, if you're running really heavy for, uh, let's say a three month period, you might spend [00:18:00] in month one 90% of your budget at stage one on these videos. Uh, in month two, you might be spending. 80% on the top and then you know, 20% at middle. And then in month three, you're trying, because stage three is where you actually get the business result that you're looking for, which is usually like a demo, a consultation, meeting with sales.
And so I want to give as big as that of, as big as that audience is, I want to give them as much as, uh, uh, as I can possibly give them without overpaying. And so over time you kind of see that. The funnel inverting where like if I have a big stage three audience, I may try to spend the majority of my money there, and then whatever's left, give it to stage two, and then whatever's left, give it to stage one.
I think that that's it. Okay. So someone's listening like, man, this sounds really great. It sounds complicated. I'm gonna check out your, your, your community here, aj, but this sounds complicated and it sounds like I need a lot of money. [00:19:00] What kind of budget are we talking about here? I generally don't recommend approaching LinkedIn ads if you have less than about $5,000 a month to spend on, on, uh, on LinkedIn ads every month.
Uh, I find that if you dedicate less than about 5K, chances are you'll end up with your tests not being statistically significant. You may not actually be able to tell very quickly what's working and what's not. So 5K is about that, like a good starting point. And, and one of the things too, with that aj, I think that's important to point out is that that's the whole budget.
And that's not just for the one part of the funnel. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. And you're gonna start out giving more of that budget to, to the top of the funnel. And so you might have your first couple months where you're not spending enough in a stage three to actually see leads. And so I would think of this very much as like an investment, a longer term play.
Um. So that you're not, yeah. So you're not expecting [00:20:00] in month one, like, Hey, I'm starting to run some of these short thought leader ad videos. Why aren't people knocking down my door, uh, trying to become my customer? Like, it takes time. So let's, let's, let's say we have that $5,000 budget. We're gonna build out this, this pipeline that you've talked about.
How, how do you structure your funnels that go beyond just lead gen? Uh, I would start with stage one are, are these videos and I would specifically make them as, LinkedIn has a new ad format called Thought Leader Ads, and what that means is we're boosting an individual's post rather than a company post.
So Katie, you put, uh, you record one of these videos, you post on LinkedIn yourself with this video and the, you know, your caption and whatever. Um. We sponsor that as your stage one ads, and then anyone who watches at least 50% of one of those videos, that's when we graduate them down to stage two. At Stage two, I want to give them more [00:21:00] content, something meatier, something they can really sink their teeth into.
And that might be, uh, you know, longer videos. It might be listen to our podcast or subscribe to our podcast. Uh. Watch a YouTube video or subscribe to YouTube, uh, or YouTube channel, um, eBooks guides. I, I, and I try. Whatever we do at this stage, I try to keep it ungated if possible, just 'cause I want everyone that we send to it to get value out of it.
Because the goal here is not to capture their information 'cause they're not gonna respond yet when sales reaches out. I want to give them so much value that by the time we follow up and say, you look ready, do you want to talk to someone in sales? I. They're much more likely to, to accept. I love that. And I, it's, it's a way of showing up to where it, you're, you're getting the right people.
You know, not why waste the money on a click or anything if it's not someone that's actually gonna buy from you. Right, exactly. And I feel like there's so often, uh, [00:22:00] and I'm not trying to poo poo all over meta ads, but I feel like that happens a lot where you set up a lot of these parameters about who you want the ad to get in front of, and it's.
It still misses the mark. Yeah. And so you're paying to get in front of someone that's, they're kind of maybe a fit, but uh, you know, you actually get, need to get on a call with them and make sure, you know, like then see where they're at. I mean, like, it just seems like it's a lot more work. Yes. So while it is a little bit more expensive, I think that you're getting.
The better PE better fits into your pipeline, right? Definitely. Yeah. We put up with Facebook because it's cheaper, but now that Facebook has gotten into this like four or $5 a click, whereas it used to be like maybe one to two, uh, more and more advertisers are going, alright. I would much rather get LinkedIn leads because they're high quality sales, likes 'em.
Um. They don't complain versus the meta ones where they have to disqualify 90% 'cause they're just, they're not the right people. [00:23:00] No shade on meta. Meta just doesn't know who you are professionally. They know everything about you personally, but they don't know your title and your level of seniority and what company size As much as they try to figure it out.
For people that are doing B2B, it's really a no-brainer. Right. Totally. It's a no-brainer if you're doing B2B. Uh, it it, if you have, if, well you said that $5,000 budget. If you have the budget, it makes sense. 'cause you're gonna get in front of the exact right person. It's gonna cost a little bit more per click.
Now you said something else too that I thought was really interesting. You pay around $2 or less than $2 per lead. Oh. No, it's, we pay, right? I mean, like, I'll be full, full transparency, like I've done some LinkedIn ads for, for clients. Just, you know, ah, yeah, I can go, I'm kinda go on my way around there. I can go ahead and help you out with that.
And I'm like, man, I'm seeing like sometimes nine to $25 a lease, Uhhuh. So I mean like, but again, I'm like, well this is [00:24:00] exactly, I mean, I have like. 700 people to, to target. So, I mean, I don't have this big Yeah. But anyways. Yep. What, what, I guess like what is a good cost per lead that you see? Like what's the best you've seen for, for one of your clients?
Um, so. Cost per click. A lot of people are paying for clicks to their website, um, between like, like I said, 10 to 20 bucks per click, and, but our clients are paying on average six to nine. So it's possible to optimize and get lower costs. Uh, and that's great. Then depending on what your conversion rate is and what you're asking people to do, um, you know.
You multiply the conversion rate by the, the cost per click and that'll tell you what your cost per lead is. Um, we've seen some be very efficient. Uh, we, we've gotten, uh, a content, like a gated content offer down to like 11 to $13 per conversion, uh, which is great. Um, yeah. For gated content. Yeah. Yeah. For full on like calls with sales, I would [00:25:00] say it's pretty rare to get them down less than like.
$150. A lot of times we see a cost per scheduled meeting with sales being between 150 to 500, which again makes sense. That's why I suggest like you really want your lifetime value to be high. Totally. 'cause if it's costing you, you know, anywhere near, let's say $500 per demo, yeah. You gotta pay, compensate a sales rep, you have to finance more ad costs.
You have other overhead in the company, uh, and you still wanna return on investment. So when is, when is the time to do it? In-house. When, when is it time to hire an agency? When is it time to say, okay, I, I just need to work with somebody. Um, I, I think if budget is really low, uh, like if you say aj, you're saying five KA month.
We don't have that. But I still want to test it out. I think it would be a good idea to, to try it internally because you can get more of your, your, uh, budget to be spent on ads and not paying an agency. [00:26:00] Yeah. That being said, there are some major pitfalls that it's honestly just tricks that LinkedIn pulls on people.
Maybe they actually believe that these things are best. I don't know, but there's like. The five pitfalls of every time I go and build a campaign, they're making suggestions that are not in our favor and cause us to pay too much. Well give, give me the juice here. Like that's, what are these five pitfalls?
Yeah. I'll cover three of 'em really quickly. Uh, these are the most egregious one is you choose the targeting and then right below that LinkedIn auto checks this box called LinkedIn audience expansion. And we're already paying a major premium to advertise on LinkedIn and choose the people we want to go to.
Why in the world does LinkedIn think that we should leave it up to them to shove less qualified people into our audience and muddy it? So always uncheck that box. That's pitfall number one. Pitfall number two is they automatically turn on a, a placement called the LinkedIn Audience Network. I. And the LinkedIn audience network sounds great in [00:27:00] theory.
You see high click through rates, low cost per click. Uh, being able to target your LinkedIn people around the web sounds great, but every time we've tested it, we find that there's like fraudulent spam bot clicks that are coming from it. And like one or two publishers that will spend your entire budget in the first 20 minutes of the day.
Oh man, obviously problematic. So I don't touch that unless I have a really strict allow list or a block list going. And then number three, the bidding method that LinkedIn selects by default and they actually hide the, the better one. The default is called maximum delivery, and you're paying on a per impression basis.
So they have all the incentive in the world to just show your ads. And not actually get you clicks, actual engagement, but it turns into it's the most expensive way to pay for your LinkedIn traffic over 90% of the time. And so if you select the option that's hidden, it's like a show, more options. They'll give you one that's [00:28:00] called a, um, a a max cost per click bid, or a manual bid is I think what they call it.
End. Then the secret here is that LinkedIn's gonna say, oh yeah, manual cost per click. We suggest that you pay 20 to $90 per click. And you say, no, that doesn't make sense at all. Yeah, you way undercut that. I, I usually like to start in North America at like a $7 bid and just see what happens. 'cause if you're not spending any money, you're not getting enough impressions on your ads, you can always increase that bid.
But. Those are the major pitfalls that keep people from actually having success. So if you go and try to do it yourself and you make sure that you're avoiding those pitfalls, I, I think that's a great place to start out, get your feet wet, and then as you up your budget and find some success, maybe go seek out an agency then.
So for all you d Iys that are listening today's episode, uh, make sure you mark where AJ just gets set all of those tips because that's gold right there. And I think that, you know. [00:29:00] I'm sure you talk about this in your community all the time, but this, these are things where you don't know what you don't know.
Yep. And it, it, it might appear like LinkedIn's trying to help you, but like you said, they're, they're just trying to get more money. Uh, so I That's, that's gold right there. Yeah. All you di wires, listen to that again before you start launching your very first LinkedIn ad because that is some great insider tips to, to get more bang for your buck.
Well, I was actually just on a call yesterday with a LinkedIn rep. When you're, when you're spending hundreds of thousands a month, you get access. To really skilled reps and you know, just like every other network. Yeah. If you're not spending very much and they give you a rep, you're gonna get someone who has no experience.
They just repeat what they've been told. And so I get, especially every quarter, uh, reps get moved around in the smaller accounts. And so at the beginning of every quarter I get a whole raft of emails. Someone introducing themselves saying, Hey, I'm your new rep, by the way. I noticed you don't have audience expansion turned on and you're not running the audience network and you're not bidding by maximum delivery.
You should go change that. [00:30:00] And then I, I just had a, a meeting yesterday with, with a LinkedIn rep. I. Who, uh, said exactly the opposite. She was like, uh, I'm so happy I get to work with you 'cause I know your accounts. They're not running audience network. They're not on the, uh, not using audience expansion and they're bidding.
Right. And we're not overpaying. And just thank you. So, uh, that's awesome. Ignore the, the bad advice that you get from LinkedIn's lower level reps. 'cause the, the ones who actually know what they're talking about, they would disagree with it. With. Yeah. All that advice. As we wrap up today's episode, aj, man, I can't believe how fast this has gone by.
If you had one ad where you're like, where I said here AJ is $50,000 and it's for whatever business you want, it's doing whatever type of campaign you want. What would, what would that campaign be? What would like your dream? I mean, because we're trying to make ads sexy here. Let's be real. Yeah. So, but like, what would this dream campaign be for what, you know, type of [00:31:00] company?
How would you set it up? Ooh. Uh, steer me if I'm going a, a, a weird direction here. Um, but I am a huge car fan and so I, even though I don't own one and I'm probably never will, I love Ferraris and Aston Martins and, and Lamborghinis. Um, so if I could, if I could choose my ideal client, it would be one of those major luxury brands.
Uh, or I, I also really love cruises, so I would love to work with rural Caribbean cruise line. I love cruises too. But yeah, if I had my my dream, that's what it would be. And uh, because I'm an enthusiast myself, I think I would start. With something like, uh, you know what, if it's an Aston Martin car kind of ad, I would start with videos where I'm showing people elements of the car that are totally unexpected.
Everyone else knows on cars like what the zero to 60 time is, how much it costs, how much horsepower. But if you show someone like. This isn't current, but you show someone the Aston Martin key [00:32:00] and you say, this isn't just a key, this is art. It's a, a personally engraved crystal that plugs into your, your car.
Like those kinds of things, I think make people really passionate about your brand, knowing the little things that they, they wouldn't know otherwise. I think that's where I'd start. Oh, I love that. And I had no idea that. Ashley Martin had crystal keys. Um, yeah, to show you my, you know, fancy luxury car knowledge, but, well, AJ I know we talked about your community, your, your podcast.
Obviously, you're the guide to follow on LinkedIn for all LinkedIn ads if people wanna connect with you, so you speak on stage. Anything else? What's the best way for them to get all things AJ Wilcox? Yeah, I think following me on LinkedIn is probably the best, or if you want to connect, just make sure you customize the connection request and say that you heard me on Katie's show, uh, and then I'll be happy to accept it.
I just get a lot and I, I only accept him if I know who, uh, like where you come from or, or who you are. Yeah. So, but yeah, I'd love to connect with you there. I share all my best stuff for free and [00:33:00] uh, and I try to just give as much value as I possibly can. And be sure to check out the show notes as well to to check out AJ's community.
You have a couple great options if you are looking to grow your business. If you're in the B2B space, and you may wanna just kind of see what it's like running these ads before you go ahead and hire a, you know, an out of, uh, an, an, an agency, check out this community. It's, it's gonna be a great opportunity for you.
So aj, thank you again so much for joining me on Rocky Mountain Marketing Today. Thank you so much, Katie. Have me back anytime.
