In this episode of LinkedIn AdWise, host Justin Rowe sits down with Riley Duncan for a practical conversation on what B2B teams get wrong across paid search, LinkedIn Ads, attribution, and lead quality. Drawing on patterns seen across more than 150 managed LinkedIn Ads accounts, they unpack why disciplined account structure, strong buying signals, and revenue-focused measurement consistently outperform bloated campaign setups. Riley also reveals why B2B teams need to be cautious with automation, especially PMax.

Tune in for a practical conversation on making B2B ad spend more disciplined, focused, and tied to revenue.

Riley explains why many B2B paid search accounts are far too bloated. Teams often start with keyword lists that include hundreds of terms, many of which may have search volume but very little buying intent. Riley suggests taking the other approach - focus on a small group of keywords that show the clearest commercial intent, even if they do not generate huge search volume. For B2B teams with limited budgets, this matters because every dollar needs to be concentrated where it has the highest chance of producing qualified pipeline.

Riley and Justin discuss why PMax campaigns often underperform in B2B environments. The issue is not that PMax can never work, but that many B2B accounts do not have enough conversion volume for automation to learn properly. When the system has weak signals, it may optimize toward cheap leads instead of qualified opportunities. Riley suggests that PMax may be worth testing when the company has strong assets and clear guardrails, but it should not be treated as a guaranteed solution for B2B performance.

One of the first things Riley looks for in LinkedIn accounts is whether default settings are pushing campaigns away from the intended audience. Audience Expansion can take a carefully built list of job titles or targeting criteria and allow LinkedIn to go beyond it. Audience Network can place ads outside the LinkedIn feed in display-style placements. Both settings may look harmless because they are recommended, but they can cause campaigns to spend in places marketers did not intend. Before rewriting creative or changing headlines, Riley recommends checking whether the spend is actually reaching the target audience.

Riley’s attribution approach is centered on pipeline and revenue rather than just lead volume. He looks at whether leads become meetings, whether meetings become opportunities and whether those opportunities become revenue. Instead of trying to assign perfect credit to one channel, he looks for meaningful ad interactions that happened before a demo request or deal creation. This accepts that B2B attribution is imperfect, but still gives teams a better way to understand which touchpoints are influencing real opportunities.

Riley challenges the idea that advertising programs should always optimize for the lowest cost per lead. In B2B, especially in categories like cybersecurity, getting in front of the right decision-makers is not cheap. If teams chase low CPL above everything else, they often end up generating leads that do not convert, do not answer sales calls or do not fit the ICP. Riley argues that pipeline, revenue and quality should matter more than simply getting more leads at a lower cost.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In this episode of LinkedIn AdWise, host Justin Rowe sits down with Cody Duke for a practical conversation on how LinkedIn budgets get wasted and what marketers should audit before they blame the channel. 

Tune in for a practical conversation on fixing the structural problems behind LinkedIn ad performance before assuming the channel is the problem.

Cody and Justin talk about why B2B marketers need better attribution, but also need to be mindful about how they use it. LinkedIn often plays a role across a longer buying journey, especially when buyers do not click immediately. The goal is not to claim that LinkedIn closed the deal autonomously, but rather show where LinkedIn helped create awareness, influence accounts and directly support sales activity. 

20:04 The Problem With Building Strategy Only Around What You Can Track
Justin points out a trap many smart companies fall into: they build marketing strategies based only on what they can prove in the dashboard. While that sounds responsible, it can lead to weak marketing. If teams only do what is easy to track, they may ignore wider, but equally important results such as brand awareness, trust and credibility. Cody suggests that the better approach is to build a strong strategy first, then figure out what can be measured. 

22:44 Why Placement Settings Should Be The First Audit
Cody explains that one of the first things he checks in any LinkedIn account is whether spend is actually staying on LinkedIn or being pushed into Audience Network. If a campaign is meant to reach people on LinkedIn but most of the budget is being spent elsewhere, the campaign is already working against itself. Before marketers test new creative, change bids or rewrite copy, they need to make sure the money is going where they intended it to go. 

Cody shares his “big to small” approach to campaign audits: instead of starting with small optimization tweaks, he looks at the bigger structure first. This would include the strategy, number of campaigns, how the budget is spread, audience size and whether the campaign setup matches the actual goal. A common mistake is spreading a limited budget across too many campaigns and then wondering why nothing has enough volume to work.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Tune in for a practical conversation on fixing the fundamentals behind LinkedIn ad performance.

00:52 The Agency Sweet Spot: Balancing Speed and Strategy
Katia explains that one of the biggest frustrations she experienced as a CMO was working with agencies that failed to balance speed with strategic understanding. Some agencies spent too long learning the business before launching anything, while others moved quickly but relied on generic templates that ignored the company’s product, audience, and industry context. For Katia, the solution is learning the business quickly while still launching campaigns fast enough to generate real market feedback. This approach allows teams to avoid both paralysis and generic execution.

Katia breaks down one of the most common reasons LinkedIn campaigns fail - poor setup. When marketers do not understand the platform, the campaign structure often suffers from the start and as she points out, one of the major issues is audience sizing. Some teams try to target extremely narrow audiences that cannot generate enough volume, while others go too broad and lose relevance. Strong LinkedIn strategy requires finding the right middle ground where the audience is focused enough to matter but large enough to optimize.

Katia explains that HubSpot can be helpful, but it should not be treated as an unquestionable attribution tool. Conversions can be misattributed as direct, duplicate ads can create tracking issues, and platforms often disagree with each other. When companies rely too heavily on HubSpot, they may end up optimizing for what the software can track rather than what is actually creating revenue. For LinkedIn especially, this can push teams toward short-term lead generation tactics that miss the bigger influence of the channel.

Katia shares how she uses communities like Reddit to understand what audiences are really saying when they are not being filtered through formal surveys or polished marketing language. Reddit allows marketers to see raw pain points, frustrations, objections and industry debates. She then uses those insights to create LinkedIn thought leader content that feels more relevant and less generic. When these posts spark engagement or debate, that is often a sign that the message has touched a real audience concern.

Kattia explains that there is no universal LinkedIn strategy for SaaS companies. Enterprise SaaS companies with high ticket sizes and long sales cycles usually need a demand generation approach. Mid-market SaaS companies may need a mix of demand generation, demos, retargeting and nurture. Product-led companies with strong onboarding may be better positioned to push free trials. So, the right strategy depends on the company’s maturity, product readiness, sales motion, ticket size, and onboarding experience. Applying the wrong strategy to the wrong SaaS model is one of the fastest ways to waste LinkedIn budget.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Turns out marketers have been missing one of the most efficient pipeline generation strategies of their time. 

Nico's framework inverts the typical awareness-first approach by beginning with high-intent mid-funnel campaigns using lead magnets and retargeting, then layering awareness campaigns on top once conversion proof is established. This strategy directly addresses the gap between messaging intent and audience mindset - a critical failure point when companies spend €15-20 per click with cold targeting and sales-heavy copy. By validating that your offer actually converts with warm audiences first, you earn internal alignment to scale budget upward without wasting spend on untargeted awareness. 

22:33 Segment Audiences by Intent Intensity and Maximize Conversion
Nico's intent-based full-funnel framework identifies behavioral signals at each stage (video views, document interactions, engagement depth) and dynamically adjusts ad frequency based on how intensely each audience segment is responding. Most B2B marketers run generic quarterly campaigns with scattered retargeting, leaving conversion upside on the table and wasting impressions on cold segments. The LinkedIn Company Tab now enables account-level intent identification; pair it with person-level behavioral signals to move segments through the funnel based on their actual engagement depth. 

25:03 Allocate 80% of Budget to Thought Leader Ads
Nico invests 80% of The One Media's own budget in thought leader ads (personal profile posts boosted as ads) because they achieve higher engagement, stronger trust-building, and ultimately better conversion than company-page ads. This is because users naturally consume personal content with more interest than corporate messaging. The format creates a win-win: LinkedIn shows audiences genuinely valuable content and you pay to scale that value to your ICP, making the platform mechanics align with authentic engagement. 

The "LinkedIn ads are expensive" myth dies when you track beyond surface metrics to CRM outcomes: LinkedIn's higher CPM and CPC are justified by 2-3x higher lead quality, better ICP alignment and dramatically higher close rates compared to Meta and other channels. Nico's access to HubSpot data across dozens of accounts shows that when you measure cost per closed customer (not cost per lead), LinkedIn often outperforms platforms with supposedly cheaper per-click costs because sales teams are motivated to work high-quality leads and conversion rates are substantially higher. 

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Tune in for an eye-opening conversation on optimizing your LinkedIn ROI.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Tune in for an eye-opening conversation on optimizing your LinkedIn strategy.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Tune in for an eye-opening conversation on building an AI-resilient brand! 

08:34 Content Creation and Distribution Are Equally Critical Disciplines
Rob emphasizes that most companies optimize either content creation or distribution, but never both simultaneously, which is a fatal gap that breaks the entire marketing engine. The truth is distribution requires as much strategic thinking as creation itself, including platform-specific optimization, audience segmentation, and timing logic. Without this organizational clarity, your LinkedIn budget, email sequences, and event presence all underperform because the asset quality or audience targeting (or both) isn't optimized.

15:35 Why Bad Content is Worse Than No Content
Rob warns that AI-generated content created at scale doesn't just fail to move the needle - it actively diminishes brand perception, making recovery brutally difficult with risk-averse buyers like CISOs. For CMOs managing cyber or B2B tech portfolios, a single wave of low-quality content forces expensive cleanup efforts and erodes trust that takes months to rebuild. The solution is assigning dedicated ownership to someone who understands your audience deeply enough to create credible, opinion-backed content worth amplifying. 

27:16 Become Part of the Industry Conversation to Build Dark Funnel Authority
Rob provides a breakthrough insight: speaking only on your own channel limits reach, but getting invited to third-party podcasts, partner panels, and industry events transfers credibility through external validation - and then you become part of other people's conversations organically through dark funnel effects.  This approach works because it leverages existing audiences and pre-established trust, making your individual effort compound through network effects.

30:12 Attribution Requires Both Demand Creation Trust and Demand Capture Proof
Rob rejects both extremes - the obsessive UTM-trackers who won't launch anything unmeasurable, and the "vibes-based" marketers who claim revenue flows from invisible brand work without proof - instead proposing a balanced system where you invest in brand only if your demand capture engine (paid channels, lead forms, sales signals) is performing. This pragmatism addresses the core pain point CMOs face: senior leadership demands ROI clarity, but modern marketing doesn't fit neat attribution boxes, so you need a framework that demands accountability without strangling strategy.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In this episode, Justin talks with Vuk, CMO of HeyReach, about how the company scaled from 15K MRR to $10M ARR in just 26 months and expands upon how none of it was accidental.

Before joining HeyReach full-time, Vuk was the first employee at Lemlist, helping scale it past $13M ARR. That experience shaped his philosophy: don’t rush paid channels until your inbound engine works. Build a product people win with. Then amplify it.

They break down:

They also discuss the difference between vanity reply rates and revenue-positive reply rates. Here is where they talk about how 1% can be incredible if your ACV supports it.

[00:08:31] From Job Security to “I’ll Work for Free”
Vuk shares the story of how he reached out to Lemlist’s founder with the subject along the lines of “I want to be the Kobe Bryant of Lemlist,” offering to work for free. He walks through what he said, why he sent it, and how that message changed the direction of his career.

[00:15:00] The Founder Dynamic Inside HeyReach
A look at the working relationship between HeyReach’s founders, how responsibilities are split between product and go-to-market, and how decisions are made internally. Vuk explains how that structure influenced speed, execution, and the company’s ability to scale early.

[00:21:47] User Win Rate > Everything
Vuk breaks down what he means by “user win rate,” how it differs from traditional reply rate metrics, and how HeyReach measures campaign success. He explains what qualifies as a positive reply and why that distinction matters in outbound.

[00:25:35] What Instantly’s Got Right
A discussion about Instantly’s rapid growth in the outreach space, including how they positioned deliverability, packaged features, and simplified onboarding. Vuk shares what stood out to him as an operator watching the market evolve.

[33:20 – 34:08] What’s a “Good” Reply Rate?
Vuk explores what makes a reply rate “good,” why the answer depends on context, and how business model and deal size influence expectations. The conversation compares different performance thresholds and how teams should think about benchmarks.

[51:47 – 52:25] LinkedIn Changed My Life
Why personal branding and company growth are not binary, and how thought leadership compounds both. Vuk talks about how LinkedIn changed his career trajectory, how he approached posting and visibility, and what role content played in HeyReach’s growth. He shares how personal distribution intersected with company momentum.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Tune in for a masterclass in getting the basics right! 

One of Sam’s core insights is that most SEO agencies focus on rankings and traffic metrics while ignoring the actual business outcome - demo bookings, pipeline, and revenue. This disconnect matters because CMOs and RevOps leaders are evaluated on closed deals, not vanity metrics, yet they inherit campaigns optimized for the wrong KPIs. To fix this, audit your current SEO reporting: replace "monthly organic traffic" with "bottom-funnel leads generated" and "pipeline value attributed." By shifting focus to comparison pages, integration guides, and competitor content - pages that capture high-intent prospects - the same traffic volume can generate 10x more pipeline. This framework forces accountability and ensures your SEO investment directly supports revenue targets.

Sam highlights the fact that the market is flooded with AI search tracking platforms claiming to solve LLM visibility. Yet, there's likely more SaaS tools tracking AI visibility than companies actually investing in it - a clear indicator of hype over substance. For growth leaders skeptical of trends, this matters because chasing unproven tactics (like Reddit-only strategies) diverts resources from proven foundations that still generate 80%+ of the pipeline. Your immediate action is to ignore visibility tracking tools entirely and instead focus on what actually works: listicles, comparison pages, competitor analyses, and product-positioned content - all pulled directly from Google organic results into LLM responses. This approach future-proofs your strategy because whether LLMs cite Reddit, LinkedIn, or YouTube tomorrow, solid foundational SEO never goes out of style.

Sam admits that his approach to LinkedIn ads isn't revolutionary, but it does work like magic. He identifies what's already generating organic traction (educational posts, case studies, founder engagement), then amplifies those exact assets with paid thought leader ads targeting his ICP. For CMOs familiar with siloed channel strategies, this is counterintuitive because most teams treat paid LinkedIn as a separate channel requiring new messaging, new audiences, and new landing pages. Your immediate next step should be to run a 30-day audit: identify your top 10 organic posts by engagement, run 3-5 of them through thought leader ads at $2-5K spend, and track which assets drive calls. This ecosystem approach means each channel reinforces each channel rather than competing. The outcome is a predictable flywheel where organic content generates volume, paid amplification generates velocity, and your funnel stays topped off.

Sam reveals that his biggest win came from niche influencer partnerships (partnering with 100K+ audience creators in his space, amplifying their posts about his work), which seemed risky but had strong signals: he kept hearing about this strategy from multiple trusted sources before testing it. For CMOs evaluating new channels (Reddit, TikTok, Discord communities, etc.), this framework removes decision paralysis: don't commit 50% budget to an unproven channel, but don't ignore it entirely either. The formula is logic-first betting: identify signals (multiple founders doing it successfully, your ICP mentioning it in interviews, competitor activity), then allocate a small budget ($3-5K) for 90 days to test systematically. If results show up (bookings, pipeline, engagement quality), you scale; if not, you kill it guilt-free and move on.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

LinkedIn AdWise breaks down the myths, analyzes the data, and uncovers what’s actually working (and what’s not) in the world of LinkedIn marketing. Each episode focuses on practical, real-world strategies, not generic advice, to help marketers stay ahead of the curve.

Topics include:

Backed by insights from 150+ active LinkedIn Ad accounts managed by Impactable and DemandSense, the podcast shares actionable lessons drawn from real campaigns, covering both the wins and the mistakes.

For B2B marketers looking to improve performance and eliminate wasted ad spend, LinkedIn AdWise delivers the clarity and strategy needed to win on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn AdWise is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so