New LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads Getting Started and Best Practices

And we're live. All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of LinkedIn Ads Radio. For you LinkedIn super users out there, you've probably noticed over the last few months that there's been a new ad format that's been gaining steam in the newsfeed and frankly, really impressing us with performance. So to talk about that today, I'm super excited to welcome Taina palumbo price from LinkedIn to the show today to deep dive on the amazing new thought leader ads that we have and share some insights from the inside with us. Welcome to the podcast. Tynya. Can you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, where you're based and Your role at LinkedIn?

Sure. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So I'm originally from New York City, but have been living in Austin, Texas for 10 years. I have a son who's a native Texan, so I feel like I get to wave the Texas flag now and I lead the product marketing function for LinkedIn ads.

Awesome. I'm sure your job has been very busy this year. I feel like LinkedIn, from what I can see, has been cranking out new features this year. So I'm sure you've had a very busy year.

Totally. Yeah. And maybe not surprisingly, but it's been busy and super exciting for me because my background before LinkedIn is as a B2B marketer, so spent the majority of 20 years, actually all but one year that I spent at Meta. I've been a B2B marketer, not always in product marketing, but also leading all of marketing for B2B brands, particularly in the SaaS space.

Wow. And 10 to 20 years ago, B2B marketing was very different. So I'm sure you've seen that whole evolution. What. What brought you to LinkedIn?

Oh, that's a great question. Yes. The landscape is exceptionally different. It's deeply exciting. I wish I could start over and be a B2B marketer today versus today. Ten years ago, what brought me to LinkedIn actually is a. It's a story that tugs at a different. A bunch of different parts of what LinkedIn does. The majority of the last eight years I spent in HR technology. So LinkedIn was a competitive technology to the things that I sold. So LinkedIn has been normal planet around the work that I've done. And when I spent time in ad tech at Meta, one of the things that I missed was the ability to actually serve B2B businesses directly. The ad tech space is really built for that B2C fast movement. And B2C or B2B is just so different. So when I had an opportunity to bring those 20 years of being a B2B marketer in the trenches, trying to retrofit B2C tools for my purposes and the ability to actually influence the ad tech space for those people that I care so deeply about felt like a no brainer.

That's awesome. And then a very important question to ask. Being a fellow Austinite. Where are your favorite breakfast tacos in Austin?

That question could get me in a lot of trouble depending on how I answer. My favorite current breakfast tacos are the bacon, egg and cheese with molcajeta sauce at Tacorito.

It's a very specific for your order. Nice.

They also have an amazing coffee drink called El Equinox, which is a mixture of espresso and horchata, which is delicious for anybody is in town.

Wow. I'm putting those on my list. All right, so back to the topic at hand, Thought Leader ads. So we're really excited to learn more about the new Thought Leader ad format today. Can you start by giving our listeners a little bit of an overview of what Thought Leader ads are?

Sure. So Thought Leader ads is a format that allows you to turn any post by somebody within your company into an advertisement. We can boost it, send it out to the network and drive followership for the incredible content that people within your company put together.

Yes. And to add some context for our listeners here, up till recently, LinkedIn it was only possible to run and boost posts from a company page. So you'd have to have always have the company page logo in the top left there. But now with Thought Leader ads you can boost and create ads from individual profiles. So we're super excited for this. And as we think like big picture here as like a marketer thinking about their strategy, where do Thought Leader ads fit in?

Oh, I love this. So I'll give you a wish I had in retrospect from 10 years ago, thought Leader ads is like the culmination of the ability for people within your company to build their personal and professional profiles and their voices within a market. It's a bit of that creator space amplified by the fact that it comes from your company. So. So as I was preparing for this conversation, I was thinking about this economist I had that worked on staff at a fintech company that I worked for and they had a huge organic following from years of working as a federal person inside of the economy, as somebody working particularly with big Bureau of Labor statistics work, and over the years amassed Tens of thousands of followers. When they joined our fintech company, a lot of the things that they posted were about the work we did inside of our company, but they were was no way to really use it. So we would do pull quotes, we would use his stuff in webinars, we would repost it as an ad. But it's not the same because you're not getting that traction, that organic engagement from the people that are already following that person as you're able to boost it through thought leader ads. So this is a way to take the investment you make and the quality people you bring into the business who come with their multitude of experiences and followership from the expertise that they have amassed over the course of their career and being able to use that to amplify the things that matter most to your company or your brand.

Yeah, I love how you explain that and how you mentioned about having to retrofit different features over the years. I know I've seen people like take screenshots of social posts that had a lot of engagement and then put it into an ad because that was the only option that they had to do. But now we can go right in and actually boost that post directly. So I love that feature's there now a little bit less retrofitting that we have to do. And then in terms of the funnel, I think I, as far as I've noticed, like people have used these in so many different ways. So interesting to see all the different ways people have used these and gotten creative with it. And it's almost hard to think of a place where it like it doesn't fit. Sure, there's certain times when a message makes more sense coming from a company, but there's so many times when a message from a person is going to support and get a lot of engagement on LinkedIn because it comes from a person or a thought leader or a founder or an owner. So I love that. And then I know like just looking at my feeds, like I mentioned, I've seen people use these in so many different ways and I think the question a lot of people ask is like, how do I know when content is worthy of promotion in a thought leader ad?

That's the beautiful thing. It's like everything and nothing all at once. So traditionally and the way that the product was modeled was meant to be really top of funnel awareness of brand product. But like you've said, we've seen just this incredible malleability and its utility across the funnel. And I've seen folks use it for most recently we saw really interesting usage that was around being able to recruit talent for a company. And those are use cases that we didn't necessarily set out to support directly. But folks are understanding that you've got thought leaders within your business that provide deep thought leadership engagement, thought provoking conversation around a variety of topics and they may mean different things dependent on what stage of the funnel a particular person is in and what kind of content that person is putting out. So although it was meant to be top of mind, mind brand and drive some of the top level discussion around the top themes for a business, we've seen people use them for a variety of different things and it's really exciting. We get updates on a weekly basis around how people are thinking about new ways to engage in thought leader ads. And it's amazing.

I love that example. I always love finding new examples of like ways that people use this format or other formats. And it's. When you think about a big company you have all these different departments, all these different probably you probably have a lot of subject matter experts there and especially when they're hiring for their team, you want to, you want to get that person's message out because the, a really talented specialist is going to look up to somebody who's that department lead. So they probably have a lot of great things to say. Boosting using a thought leader ad to get their message out. What really creates that connection with maybe somebody who's looking for a job. So I love that example.

Yeah. And we, I especially love that one because I think coming from HR tech from several companies back the job market is so volatile and people particularly as we look into millennials and Gen Z's are really looking for careers that are fulfilling and they want to work with people they want to work with. And I love that use case in particular because it is around finding a tribe that you want to work with, finding leaders that you respect and you understand their ethos about the way they do a particular part of work. And that's just a, a reason to both look out at the market and figure out who you want to bring in. What are they talking about, what do they bring to the table? In some cases we see people really deeply promoting the content of some of their DEI or DIBs work which is also exceptionally important. And there's critical voices land at companies explicitly for the way that they approach that work in addition to just founder stories. How they think about building a business, how they think about running a business, ethically hiring teams, you name it. If it's an hbr you can do a thought leader out about it.

Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb right there.

But honestly, I think you asked a different question, which maybe I skipped over, but I'll answer. I think we've been talking a lot about what it takes to get started. And I think one of the things that I love most about thought leader ads is that it's a deeply approachable format. You don't have to have a thought leader with 500,000 followers, 50,000 followers, even 5,000 followers on LinkedIn to get started. You just have to have something interesting to say on behalf of the business. And that can be anyone, it can be an ic, it can be the president, it can be anyone who's got a unique voice and perspective that aligns with the things that you want to be putting out into the market about your company. And so I think one of the things that we've been talking about is just encouraging companies to experiment and play. Even companies that have a lot of folks that work in engineering or people that code talking about their approach to coding, explaining some of the things related to AI that their company does uniquely or differently, are also interesting ways to engage in the current dialogue that is topical, it's relevant, it's trending. That doesn't necessarily have to do with moving the needle at the bottom of the funnel. But we know that every engagement is a movement that moves somebody down through awareness, consideration and purchase.

Yeah, that's a good thing to remind people about is as marketers we often think about the funnel and like, how does this, what stats are we going to get out of this? What performance stats? But if you think big picture, there's so many messages inside your company. This now gives you an avenue to promote other voices and other people at your company and get other messages out there. It might not be directly marketing funnel based, but that gives you a lot of opportunities to boost a lot of their voices for people in your company. So I love that. And then say, say a brand wants to promote a thought leader outside of their organization. First question is, can they do that? And can you tell me more about what they can and can't promote?

Sure. So presently, although it's a very requested feature, you cannot promote content outside of your own organization. But it is coming and we're really excited to see how the future of that particular type of engagement is going to grow over time because we know that there are so many folks who are out there with large followings in the creator space that can add gravitas or lend Exceptional depth of expertise to the things that particular companies are doing.

Ooh, that's exciting. So that's something coming down the pipeline. I love the idea of that because I know like in the creator space there's a lot of co partnerships or partnerships with other organizations. So that's very exciting to think about. I know for certain cases that I've seen, there was a time when somebody had an advisor and they wanted to boost a post from an advisor and that person did list themselves as an advisor of the company. So we were able to boost a post from them because they were listed as an advisor. But as it is right now, what we can do is, or the way that it works is you can search for search through employees at a company and then search through their posts and then you choose which posts you want to boost. But I'm very excited to hear that some more options are coming down the road. And you've already mentioned a few interesting use cases. So you've already shared a bunch of examples of very interesting use cases and the ways that people have been using thought leader ads. Are there any other examples that you can think about or use cases that you've seen that are very interesting uses of thought leader ads?

I think the most traditional and classic is promoting executive leaders within your business. And what I like about that in particular is these are folks that have been in business for a long time. They ever have a really interesting creator story if they're a founder or they they're engaged a level of discussion that is really at that C suite, that leader within an executive presence in a business which gives you ability to see how they engage what they talk about. It gives you a sneak preview to the kind of things that are happening at that level of discussion where depending on what level you are within a business, you may not have access directly to those types of discussions. And that allows you to see what the reactions are and the engagement from those types of conversations. Yeah, I also like, I don't know, I think it's also, I call it like a Swiss army knife. It's also like a tool that can both be deeply organic. Like we've been talking about these use cases that come from necessity or an inadvertent organic opportunity. And then there's also an opportunity to really think about what you want to promote as a business. So one side of it is what happens naturally and organically around your company and the other part is like what you want to put out into the world. You've got comms and PR as a piece of the puzzle. This allows you to also extend those crafted narratives onto the platform. And so there are definitely comms and PR teams that work with SMEs or leaders within a business to help extend the life of a story, a thematic topic or a trend that's going out into the market to ensure that they're getting additional exposure on those topics of conversation.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of times the discussion would be like, should we do organic or should we do paid? And now it's like, you don't have to choose. You can combine the two into, you know, into one approach by boosting those organic posts into paid campaigns. So I love that connection that I can make now.

Yeah, I love blurring the lines. The thing you love the most about organic content is that it is raw, it's real, it's live, it's unscripted. And there's something that allows us here to blend the lines between the two. No one is going to put a post out in an authentic voice. It doesn't behoove you. Your presence on LinkedIn is you as a professional in your career. And so it gives you the ability to take pre structured topics and narratives and have someone really deeply think about, like, how do I represent myself? How do I put my spin? My voice is very different than my boss's voice and a peer's voice. We may be talking about the same topic in different ways and it may appeal to people in the market in different ways depending on what style or tone and voice they like the best.

Yep. Yeah. And with Thought leader ads, you have the ability to pick and choose where that message is going to go. When you're just doing organic, you're just limited to what the algorithm is going to is who's going to see that in the feeds. But with thought leader ads, you can now pick and choose who are those different segments that I want to get my message out to and then get it out in that way.

That's right. So not only being able to have your authentic voice, but deliver it to the people who are going to resonate the most, either because of the message or because of who you are. And that's like why I think about it as a Swiss army knife.

All right, and now getting into maybe the performance side of things, question is what, what types of results are people seeing who are using Thought leader ads?

Yeah, I think the most important thing to the listeners on the line is that we're seeing an incredible increase in engagement on these posts, both on click through rate and engagement. Directly on the posts. I think why we like that and why people should lean in a little bit further here is because it is actually an ability for you to engage earnestly and directly with your audience from a human point of view. Although you are obviously promoting something and getting people to engage with your ad to bring them to your website or to a landing page, but it does actually give you that credibility from a human point of view. And even though it is a sponsored piece of content on the site, and.

As a performance marketer myself, Funnel metrics be what they may the the front end of your funnel start. Yeah, starts on LinkedIn Starts in the in the campaign level there and we've seen like really high click through rates and engagement rates on Thought Leader ads where on a normal ad sure maybe like 1% is really good click through rate, but on Thought Leader ads I've seen four to five times that or more and like consistently like that'll stay where it's not just a quick shot. So seeing much higher click through rates which then gets you a lot higher campaign quality scores, allows you to get better costs on the front end and allows you to get better costs and then improve all your down funnel metrics from there. So as a performance marketer there's a lot of, a lot of benefits there too. So we've been really excited about what we've seen by using them.

Also maybe added benefit that the person whose post you engage with might end up in your sales cycle at some point.

Exactly, exactly. And looking in the future, the future roadmap, you've already hinted towards something in the future so far, so I'm really curious to hear what can we expect in the future of Thought Leader ads. I know video was added recently, but I'd love to know what else is in the works.

Yeah, a few things I think one that we touched on just to double click there permissioning. It allows you to sponsor non employee posts and creator posts which I think really excited about for a variety of reasons. But just from having spent time at Meta and seeing that creator economy grow so dramatically, the ability to be able to harness the power of these networks and folks that are really deep specialists and experts in this space and not part of your company is going to be an added layer of gravitas that doesn't exist today. The second is the ability to sponsor posts that include LinkedIn articles, which is super exciting, especially now that we're driving collaborative articles forward, which is a bit of an ability to take a source of truth groundswell and understanding from A variety of experts and being able to promote that as a part of thought leader ads.

Awesome.

And then there's. Sorry, go ahead.

As you say, those are very exciting features.

Yeah. And then I think the other couple things, I think these are exciting, but probably further away. The first is boosting from pages, which is probably super exciting to companies, a host of API integrations and integrations with a content library, again, related to that sort of like articles piece. Starting to build a little bit more of a hub and spoke model that allows you to promote the variety of things that you're creating in your library instead of having to always start from the post side.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I know, like just the growth of influencer marketing, as you mentioned, like on Facebook and like YouTube and these other channels like influencer marketing and creator marketing has been such a huge thing. And now we're going to. This is another way to enable that on LinkedIn and in the B2B world, we've seen that kind of happening organically. And then of course, this is the tool to use it in the paid sort of the platform.

Yeah, we're really excited to see where it goes.

And then final question is how to get started. So if someone's listening to this, they want to try out thought leader ads. How should they go about getting started?

Okay, so it's a quick and simple process. You want to identify a thought leader within your organization that you'd like to to serve as an ambassador for a particular body of work. As we've discussed on this podcast, it can literally be anyone. I think about it like ratatouille. Anyone can cook. Anyone can be a thought leader ad inspiration. It can be an employee. But we recommend spotlighting a leader or subject matter expert who's got a pretty complete profile and that can expect increased traffic to their page. I think one thing we maybe haven't talked about is this is great exposure for the people that work inside of your company. And if they are an SME in a particular topic area, if they're a leader within your company that does speaking engagements or out on the road, this is a great way to also get them exposure and people that follow the work that they do over time. Next, you'll determine what the objective is for the faultlier ad. You'll choose brand awareness, engagement objective, or the campaign type that suits your goals. You'll search for the employee associated with your campaign page, find the post you want to promote, and request the poster's permission. You do all of this inside of campaign manager. The permission piece is important as it relates to consent. And then you don't need to create any new content. Simply choose a single image or a video ad format and select the approved post that you want to post. And we've got some great best practices and step by step guides on our Thought Leader Ads landing page on LinkedInads.com boom.

Easy. And when you click that request button, that person will get notified, they'll get into an email and then they'll be able to click approve from there. And then Campaign manager will also generate you a link that you can send to the person that you're requesting from. So it's very easy. You can send them a link, they'll click on that link, click approve and boom, you're good to go from there.

Yeah.

Awesome. All right, amazing. We've covered a lot today on the pod for LinkedIn's brand new Thought Leader ad format. What they are, how they can improve your strategy and great ways that other people are using them. So, Taina, I want to say a big thanks for joining us today and sharing some insight from the inside. It was a pleasure to have you.

Thank you so much. I'd be happy to be back anytime.

Awesome. All right, until next time, folks. Go try out Thought Leader ads and let us know how they go.