I want to be upfront and tell you the truth in one simple line: Run LinkedIn Thought Leadership ads only when your organic foundations, audience signals, and offer are somewhat working without paid fuel; otherwise, you’ll pay LinkedIn to learn expensive lessons you could have learned for free.
So, if you haven’t started running LinkedIn ads yet, I wrote this blog to give some genuine advice based on the expensive lessons learnt with my clients.
Just getting the right ICP is not enough
Most YouTube videos and LinkedIn ads experts say the main reason LinkedIn ads are not giving desired results is the wrong ICP and geography. But think logically, if you open a shop in a market with 100s of competitors, but having footfall of the right target audience, will you immediately get customers? It doesn’t happen that way. People buy from brands they’ve noticed, heard about, and learned to trust, even subconsciously. Ads don’t work that way.
We ran ads for a cybersecurity product company with a clear ICP, clean targeting, great graphics, basically everything “recommended.” And yet no results. The reason was not just one, but many.
- The company page was inactive, so was founder’s id and both accounts were followed by the wrong crowd.
- The product was early-stage with niche appeal. Good tech, but not a mass hook yet.
- The founder had ~2.5k followers, half irrelevant or students, and barely posted. That kills distribution and trust. People follow people before they follow brands.
- The ‘webinar’ ad had no recognisable face and no truly interesting topic. Ask yourself: would you attend your own webinar if you saw it cold in your feed?
We did everything that is usually recommended for ads, from ICP to text to timing, but still the ad underdelivered. LinkedIn is not some quick attention gathering platform like Instagram. There are professionals and it takes time to generate trust with them.
What we are often not told about LinkedIn ads are these basic and logical points:
- A smaller, warmer audience will outperform a huge cold list with generic creative. It’s not about being visible to everyone; it’s about mattering to someone who understands the pain point.
- Company pages matter, but most of your initial trust comes from humans who trust you and your name.
- Timing is everything. Ads are an accelerant for an offer that’s already working in the wild.
- Ads scale on the already established momentum. If there’s no momentum, the meter runs and nothing moves.
So basically, when your leaders are already posting useful, opinionated content that gets real engagement from the right people, LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads can scale that trust, get you in front of similar buyers, and turn a good spark into a steady flame.
Where to start if you’re eager to run ads?
Patience is key on this platform. If you are eager to run LinkedIn ads for cybersecurity, you should first turn your founder into a creator for 8 –10 weeks. Post three to four times a week on real buyer problems, not product features.
Share frameworks you use, teardown mistakes you’ve made, and the unpopular truths most vendors don’t talk about. Remove irrelevant connections, add the right ones and potential buyers, and start engaging with their posts thoughtfully. You’re training the algorithm on who your content is for, and you’re training your audience to see you where it matters. Founder’s content alone can lift reach, comments, and the kind of DMs that signal you’re onto something.
If you can, then co-create content. Bring some known leaders to create content with you, not on the lines of ‘state of cybersecurity, AI or need or advancements’ rather very specific and sharp topics like ‘How mid-market CISOs are quietly replacing X with Y.’.
The most important thing is to resist the urge to sell immediately. Start promoting a few posts that have earned real attention organically. You can track by comparing engagement, impressions, saves, reposts etc.
How to budget for LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads?
Budgeting for LinkedIn Ads is very similar to how you start your team. Small first and then structured and scaled.
Your total spend should be a series of controlled experiments. Split a modest budget between a warming layer, thought leadership, short videos, document posts and one clear conversion path, like a native event or a lead form with a genuinely useful asset.
Think and execute in sequence, starting with education, following up with proof/case studies, and then asking them to fill a form. Always double down on creatives that earn saves and meaningful comments, and change one or two variables at a time so you actually learn what moved the needle.
Give videos more weightage than text or image-based ads. A ratio of 60-40 or 70-30 is preferred, with the former being the videos and the latter being text and images. If you have a choice of a leadership account to run ads from, choose the one with more relevant connections than the number of followers.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, ask three questions before you spend:
Are your leaders already getting real engagement from the right buyers on this topic?
If not, build that first.
Do you have a credible face and a specific, timely topic that solves a real problem?
If not, fix the offer before funding the campaign.
Do your early tests attract genuine comments and shares from ICPs, not just impressions?
If not, pause and iterate the message first.
If you are looking to run LinkedIn Ads and are not sure about where to start, we at Digi-tx are more than happy to lend a hand to you.
