#8 - Ali Yildirim

Let's talk about Thought Leader Ads—a new ad unit on Linkedin that is generating a lot of buzz.

When done well, Thought Leader Ads can dramatically improve return on ad spend, yielding 3-5X lower cost-per-click and stronger conversion metrics.

I went straight to Ali Yildirim, Co-Founder at Understory (paid media and outbound agency) to learn about how he built a Thought Leader Ad machine for Adam Robinson and RB2B.

Thought LeaderAds basically allow companies to use Linkedin's full ad targeting to boost organic posts from individuals.

The ads look like normal posts from individual people within the feed. They read as natural and authentic.

They don't *feel* like an ad:

Because of this, the click-through-rates can be much higher and the cost-per-click (CPC) much lower.

Ali says that he sees CPCs as low as $1-2 on Thought Leader Ads (maybe $3-5 on the higher end). Compare this to upwards of $10 CPC on more "traditional" single-image ads.

That means that just by swapping formats, Ali is getting 3-5X more prospects funneled into retargeting with the same dollar spent.

On a campaign spending $50k–$100k per month, this impact on revenue can be dramatic.

But there's a catch...

The content needs to be good to begin with.

"[Thought Leader Ads] are not a silver bullet to your performance...it's not gonna work if the content is crap in the first place," Ali says.

Ali recommends investing in quality organic content production before implementing Thought Leader Ads, and then only promoting content after it has performed well organically.

The RB2B Case Study

Ali peeled back the curtain on his Thought Leader Ad campaign for "known-well" SaaS CEO Adam Robinson of RB2B.

They began with a $10,000 trial spend in month one:

  – 4 targeted personas (sales, marketing, founders, agencies)
  – Used Thought Leader Ads as cold layer
  – Bucketed 5-10 posts per persona
  – Picked posts based on performance + relevance of hooks
  – Retargeted with single image, text, and spotlight ads

And they tracked the following metrics:

  – Cost-per-click conversion (7-days)
  – Cost-per-impression conversion (30 days)
  – Click-through-rate
  – Engagements

They saw about $70 cost per conversion on average, and surprisingly, the Thought Leader Ads were actually more effective at driving website conversion than the retargeting ads. 

Yes, you read that right. The cold layer (Thought Leader Ads) drove more website conversions than the retargeting layer.

The caveat here is that Adam is one of the most recognizable faces on Linkedin. It's no surprise his content is performing well. But even these (outlier?) results show the upper bound of what is possible with this ad unit.

If you're looking to build a pilot test of Thought Leader Ads, take note of Ali and Adam's step-by-step play:

1. Publish great organic content on Adam's account.

2. Identify 4 personas for targeting.

3. Identify 5-10 organic posts per persona that would resonate with each audience. Use what has already performed well organically. Pay particular attention to the hook (first 150 characters).

4. Edit each of the posts to include a call-to-action and link.

5. Set up campaigns for each audience, use "Engagement" objective.

6. Use selected organic posts as the ad creative (Thought Leader Ads). Author will need to grant permission.

7. Be sure to have some retargeting layer in place (single image, conversation ads, spotlight, etc).

8. Allocate $10,000 spend to first month.

9. Monitor results + iterate.

Again, the real arbitrage here comes from the fact that these ads feel so natural an authentic within the feed.

Thought Leader Ads will not instantly solve your whole paid ad funnel, but they can make retargeting audiences dramatically cheaper to build if done well.

I'm curious to see more case studies on how TLAs impact larger ad budgets. For companies spending $50k/mo, what happens when they swap out their cold layer with really good Thought Leader Ads? If you have an answer let's have you on the next pod.

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