AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency, in 2014. He's an official LinkedIn partner, host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, and has managed among the world's largest LinkedIn Ads accounts worldwide.

Follow AJ on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/

Learn more about B2Linked here: https://b2linked.com/

Let's dive in. And I'm excited for this one. We'd been talking about doing this and there's just so much that we can nerd out about here.
Oh I can't wait!
Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so grateful for you making the time and joining us, and I'm so excited for all of you listening to this show today, AJ is just a killer with LinkedIn advertising, and it's going to be a really fun show. So as a way to get started, please, my friend brag about yourself. Give us, give us a quick background as to what led you to where you're at in your career today.
Sure so I started out in digital marketing. I've loved it for the last 13 years, but I really stumbled on to LinkedIn Ads about nine years ago. And the story there was, I went into a company, my CMO- the new boss said, Oh, by the way, you know, on, on day one, you just, we just started a pilot using LinkedIn Ads. So see what you can do with it. It was kind of flippantly. And I was like, Oh man, I've never heard of LinkedIn Ads before. Like what, what have I got myself into? And about two weeks later, one of my sales reps came up to me and said, "AJ, we don't know what you're doing over here, but we're fighting over your leads, keep it up." And I was like, what are you talking about? So I logged into our CRM. I took a look at the leads and every single one of them that he was talking about, we are sourced from LinkedIn Ads and it was not the only advertising I was doing.
So a long story short, it worked well. So I kept investing. I eventually took it to become LinkedIn's largest spending ad account world-wide. And after running that for a few years, I went, okay, there's got to be more companies than just this one that would slay it on LinkedIn ads. So I want to go and help those brands out. And so I started B2Linked about six years ago and we're a specialty ad agency. Literally LinkedIn Ads is all we do.
Yeah. It's man. There's so much to break down with this to LinkedIn Ads is just this whole unique world. And what was the difference? What was LinkedIn Ads like when you were running em then and comparison to where they're at now?
It's gotten quite a bit better, but it's always been four years behind Facebook ads. It it's always just never held a candle to Google. It. It's always just been a very unique kind of animal. And even from day one, even back when you can get clicks for $2 a piece You that was still expensive at the time. You know, right now we're paying eight to $11 per click using LinkedIn Ads. But when we were paying $2 a click, we still call it that expensive because Google and Facebook we're still, you know, significantly less than that. So they're making strides. I think they finally realized what tool they have and how valuable it is. And they're putting resources into making it better, but it's still a little ways behind the others.
Yeah. Do you think Microsoft's acquisition, that's a positive for the future of LinkedIn advertising?
I do think so because I've, I was a long time Bing Ads advocate. I still am. I guess they call it Microsoft advertising now. And I watched that team. I know them quite well. I watched that team take a product from zero to being in direct competition with the world's most sophisticated ad platform in just a matter of years. And so I think if LinkedIn will take anyone from the Microsoft advertising's advice on how to build out an ad platform, ultimately, I think it's going to be a really good thing for them.
Yeah. Interesting. So what is it that makes or breaks for good LinkedIn advertising?
Yeah. I break it down with an acronym called the AMO- and it it's what you need for a successful social media ads campaign. And your a is your, your audience. Who you are targeting and going M is your message for here's what I'm saying and, and what the prospect is going to see. And then O is your offer. And this is what you're asking people to do. What your call to action is, your lead magnet. And what we find is the reason we are willing to pay LinkedIn's high prices is access to that audience. So the A has really taken care of on LinkedIn. We're just ultra specific targeting, only the exact right people who can afford us, who feel the pain that we solve.
The Message really depends on the offer, but O, the offer is by far the most important make or break thing with your campaign. Because I mean picture of yourself in just surfing through LinkedIn. If you saw an ad that said, click here to talk to our sales rep, here's what we do. You're going to think to yourself, I'm not here to do business with a vendor or find a new vendor. I'm on my way to go do something else. And chances are, you're like everyone else. You wouldn't click that ad. And so if you're trying to run with that kind of offer, like cut right to the chase, talk to sales, it, it will be insanely expensive and you will get very few leads out of it. But if you could move a little ways up the friction, Scale where you're going to provide a lot of value to someone.
And in exchange, you're asking for their, their contact info. So you can follow up, we call it gated content or lead magnets. That seems to be the best approach to LinkedIn ads. And so if you have a piece of content, let's say a webinar or a guide that your prospects just look at it and go, oh, that is amazing. I need that. That's how, you know, your LinkedIn ads, campaigns going to be a huge success.
Really? Interesting. So what you're saying is a and a lot of people that are failing, they're just going straight for the meet with us consultation or some sort of buy off the platform that most successful that you are seeing. There is some sort of gated, gated content for remarketing. You're not going to like land that lead directly in from that LinkedIn ad. It's more of a long-term play to build your pipeline and funnel. And in my understanding that correctly?
Yeah, we have a couple different approaches you can take after you actually get someone to submit their information. Usually larger companies, more enterprise. It's not their first rodeo. And they'll say, hey, just because someone downloaded a guide doesn't mean they are ready to talk to someone. We are going to put him in our nurture stream. We're going to wait until they get a lead score. That's high enough to push them to someone in sales. And so you'll have those, but I would say the majority of LinkedIn advertisers are not the, the enterprise and they need leads. They they've got an SDR team, our sales team that's ready to start following up with people. So the best approach I can recommend is to a sales person like yes- know what this person is signed up for, they download it a guide.
It, it wasn't a demo request. So you have to approach it as a- I'm here to be a resource to you and be helpful to you. I'm not just trying to sell you. And if you can really customize that approach and make it, you know, I'm here to be a resource to be a consultant to you, help you solve your problems. Obviously it takes more work to research every lead like that, but you can actually take someone who downloaded a white paper and to turn it into a sales conversation, usually 10 to 20% of the time.
And that sort of, There's always that push and pull in a fight between marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, and salespeople just wanting the lowest hanging possible fruit that they can go in and close. They don't want to do the work. And that's also where a lot of leadership don't invest into, you know, LinkedIn marketing or, or, or Ads because some of them do take a little bit of extra work and development and everything. So it's like, you know, how, how do you feel? How do you, how do you get your clients sell it to understand the balance between that's something I've always found an uphill battle on, for sure.
Yeah. Well, I'm at a nice advantage here because I came from the world of search. And so Google Ads, and SEO is what I did for like the first seven years of my career. And so I get it when I'm talking to accompany, who says, umm, you know, we're used to Google ads leads where they are requesting a demo with software. And so we just hop on the phone and give them what they ask. And LinkedIn Ads is, it's so different. I mean any type of social advertising is different. You have to offer value first and you know, what's going to be a little bit longer term. So the way I kind of pitch it to people to picture is LinkedIn Ads is really good at making sure that you're getting exactly the right people onto your website or to engage with your brand and then re-targeting and search- they are more bottom of funnel.
That's when you're going to get them back and, and convince them. So use LinkedIn for mid to top of the funnel, introduce people to your brand and, and then rely on, on search channels and more direct channels to get more serious with them. The big challenge that most people who run Google Ads face, especially if they have a high ticket item is a sales team just says, ah, man were getting a ton of tire kickers and mom and pops here. Could we qualify them a little bit? And that's because you know, you're targeting a keyword. You're not targeting or filtering out people who wouldn't be able to afford what you do. LinkedIn Ads solves that problem, but it's gonna have a little bit longer have a sales cycle.
Yeah. It gives you a next level and, and something that's interesting too... Just kind of shifting here is people don't realize there's actually three, maybe even four different ways to do LinkedIn advertising. And so what's your perspective on that in the different ang