“It’s not about adding more to your plate, it’s about being smarter with what you’re already doing. And if you can link your content back to your priorities and values as a business, your presence on social media can help you achieve them.”

We all know that user-generated content performs much better on LinkedIn than anything posted from your brand account. Part of that is down to the algorithm, and part of it is down to the people using the platform. At the end of the day, nobody likes ads interrupting their morning scroll. 

So creating content on LinkedIn can be tough – especially when you’re the only one doing it. 

But it may have just got a whole lot easier… 

In June, LinkedIn launched its Thought Leader Ads. The new update allows you to boost the reach of employee-generated content in front of a curated audience, which could see huge benefits for agencies trying to promote B2B content. 

It’s still pretty new, but those who are clued up on the ads are already praising their potential.

“In most large organisations, you’ve got a PPC team and an organic team. Or you’ve got a paid social team, and then you’ve got an organic social team – but they don’t work together,” says Justyna Brownbridge.

“So the PPC teams run these polished ads that look amazing but don’t perform because nobody likes ads. Then organic teams and employees will create this amazing content which is not being seen because their networks are not big enough. So finally, with thought leader ads, you can merge these two worlds.”

Justyna is the Chief of Growth at Tribal Impact, but had previously worked on global search campaigns in her last agency, so could see the potential the new ad format had as soon as it came to market. 

But she still needed the data to prove it to everyone else. 

So her team decided to test it, using their own agency as a case study. They ran two campaigns: one focused on sponsoring content that had been published on the brand account, and the other focused on sponsoring content published by their CEO, using the thought leader ads. 

The results were quite impressive – with the thought leader ads gaining an average of 25% more engagement and 240% higher CTR.

“This is the way forward to make the most out of your marketing budgets,” says Justyna. 

“If you can leverage your employees’ expertise and online presence, and see that actually, it can be another path to achieving your agency’s goals, maybe even in a more efficient way and in a more scalable way, that tends to persuade even the highest level managers.”

In this session, Justyna will be taking us through her agency’s case study of using thought leadership ads for B2B content, the benefits this kind of strategic campaign can have for your business, and how to encourage your team to build their online presence by becoming content creators.