Are LinkedIn ads the way to find decision makers?

For B2B companies, LinkedIn ads complement Google search. On Google, people are already looking for something. On LinkedIn, you can reach people who haven't started searching yet but fit exactly the profile you're after: the purchasing manager at a manufacturer, the technical director of a hospital or the founder of a software company. In this post we explain when LinkedIn ads make sense in B2B, what each format is good for and what to watch to protect your budget.

When do LinkedIn ads make sense?

If most of the following apply to you, LinkedIn is worth trying:

• A single customer is worth a lot. Annual contracts, project work, enterprise software, machinery and equipment.
• You can describe your buyer by job title and company attributes. For example, "purchasing managers at construction companies."
• Your product or service isn't searched for; it needs explaining. A new solution, a little-known service, a different business model.
• You want to reach specific companies. For sales teams with a target account list.

On the other hand, if you sell to consumers, your product is low-ticket or customers already search for you on Google, LinkedIn usually shouldn't be your first choice.

Targeting — LinkedIn's real difference

LinkedIn targets based on the information users give in their own profiles. The main options:

• Company attributes: Industry, employee count range, company name.
• Work experience: Job title, job function (purchasing, engineering, finance), seniority.
• Location: Country, city, region.
• Matched audiences: Uploading a target company list and showing ads only to people at those companies; retargeting site visitors.

There are two common mistakes. The first is narrowing the audience too much: in Türkiye, the intersection of a specific job title and industry can be very small, and the ad may not run at all or may run at a very high cost. The second is leaving audience expansion switched on: this option lets LinkedIn also show ads to people "similar" to your target audience, spilling outside the audience you carefully selected. Keeping it off at the start and deciding based on results gives you more control.

Ad formats — which one is good for what?

For most B2B companies, the starting point is to show a valuable piece of content (a guide, a checklist, a short case story) to the right job titles as sponsored content or a document ad. Ads that say "request a proposal" outright usually perform poorly on LinkedIn; people aren't at the buying stage yet.

Lead Gen Form or sending traffic to your site?

LinkedIn's Lead Gen Form is a form that opens inside the ad and is pre-filled with the person's profile details (name, title, company, email). It's very easy to fill in on mobile, so form submissions are usually higher than when you send people to your site.

Things to watch:

• The email that comes through the form is often the personal address the person registered on LinkedIn with; you can add a separate field for their work address.
• Leads shouldn't sit waiting on LinkedIn; they should be transferred automatically to the CRM or a tracking screen. We explain the logic of this connection in our post on web form and CRM integration.
• The form should clearly include your KVKK (Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law) privacy notice link and what the data will be used for.

If you prefer sending traffic to your site, a well-prepared landing page is a must.

Measurement — the Insight Tag

The LinkedIn Insight Tag is code added to your site that measures what visitors coming from LinkedIn do. It also lets you reach site visitors again on LinkedIn. Like other marketing tags, it should run subject to the visitor's cookie consent. The setup and consent side follow the same steps as in our post on conversion tracking.

Checklist before you start

• Is the target buyer written down by job title, function and company size?
• Is the audience size at a level LinkedIn considers large enough to run?
• Is the audience expansion option deliberately on or off?
• Is there content or an offer ready that will genuinely help the decision maker?
• Do Lead Gen Form leads reach the sales team automatically?
• Is the Insight Tag installed and compatible with cookie consent?
• Is the ad account linked to the company's own LinkedIn page and owned by the company?

How we do it at Globya

We don't recommend LinkedIn to every B2B company. First we look at your sales process, customer value and the size of your target audience, and decide what role it will play alongside Google search. If it fits, we keep the audience narrow but large enough to run, start with content that truly helps the decision maker and route incoming leads to your sales team automatically. Our digital advertising service runs under the same roof as the website, content and integration work. We've summarized our experience with technology companies on our technology and software page.

Frequently asked questions