How to Win B2B LinkedIn Ads Across a 272-Day Sales Cycle
TL;DR: LinkedIn and Google Ads are doing fundamentally different jobs, but many B2B marketers run the same playbook on both. Getting results on a demand generation platform (during the long 272 day B2B buying journey) relies on building a funnel structured around where accounts actually sit on that journey.
Many B2B marketing teams arrive on LinkedIn with a Google Ads mindset: find the active buyers, show them a demo offer, measure the clicks, repeat.
It rarely works though. And the reason isn’t the creative, the targeting, or the budget.
In a recent episode of the Attributed Podcast, Anthony Blatner, Founder and CMO of Speedwork Social, made the case that the problem is structural. LinkedIn and Google Ads are doing fundamentally different jobs, so running the same playbook on both is a recipe for wasted budget.
Keep reading for Anthony’s framework for building LinkedIn strategies that actually match the reality of a 272 day B2B buying journey, or listen to the full conversation here.
The Search Mindset Doesn’t Work on LinkedIn
Many B2B marketing teams have cut their teeth on Google Ads. They know how to find active buyers, match intent signals, and push toward a conversion. That playbook works because Google is a demand capture channel: someone types a query because they’re already looking for something and the job is to intercept that intent and convert it.
LinkedIn, however, doesn’t work that way.
There’s no search query signaling readiness. The person scrolling their feed isn’t necessarily looking for your product or currently comparing vendors. They’re consuming content, catching up on their industry, or learning something that they’ll take back to their own work.
That means that showing them a demo offer at that moment is the wrong ask entirely.
”Social is more of a demand generation platform,” Anthony says, “and then [you have to rethink] your strategy of what’s really going to get somebody interested, really create that demand.”
He notes that the default settings mistake he sees (Audience Network on, Audience Expansion on, direct-to-demo CTAs) is really just a symptom of this. Teams who’ve copy-pasted their Google approach naturally reach for the settings that feel familiar and optimize for the signals they already know how to read.
The 95:5 rule that Professor John Dawes speaks about captures this structural gap: at any given moment, 95% of your market isn’t actively looking to buy. Treating LinkedIn like a bottom of funnel capture means spending heavily to compete for the 5% while ignoring the 95% who will eventually enter a buying window.
But, if you’ve consistently been in front of that 95% via brand awareness, they’ll already know your name when they are ready.
Building a Funnel that Covers the Whole Buying Journey
If 81% of the B2B customer journey happens before a prospect enters the sales pipeline (which is what we discovered in our 2026 LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks Report), then buyers are spending the first seven months of that journey forming opinions through content consumption and self-education.
A single demo ad can’t cover that.
Anthony’s answer is a five-stage account-based funnel, with each stage mapped to where an account sits in the buying journey:
Prospecting: targeting your ICP by industry, company size, and job title or working from an ABM list that sales has already signed off on. This is where you reach accounts that have never heard of you.
Remarketing: Accounts that have engaged with your ads or visited your website move here. They know who you are, the job is now to deepen that familiarity.
Qualified intent: Accounts showing repeated, high-signal behavior, for example, multiple website visits, time on the pricing page, consistent ad engagement. These are accounts worth sharing with sales.
Open opportunities: Accounts that have had a demo and are actively talking to sales. They should be getting different content than everyone else, more like reinforcement rather than introduction.
Customer expansion and retention: Existing customers are their own stage, so that they’re not left exposed to competitor ads. This way, they continue seeing content relevant to where they are in their relationship with you.
“Those are the five stages of the funnel that really help structure your campaigns and serve this 272 day marketing journey,” Anthony says.
He argues that this approach needs to be account-based rather than pixel-based because LinkedIn’s own tracking windows cap at 180 days and cookies expire even faster. To stay present across a journey that routinely runs past these limits, you need account lists to hold the whole thing together.
And, critically, each stage excludes each other: “your prospecting campaigns stay targeted at fresh prospects. Somebody who’s in remarketing or in open [opportunities] … you don’t want all these people to continue getting prospecting ads.”
Where Sales Fits in the Funnel
Marketing and sales alignment tends to matter most at two specific moments in this funnel.
First, at the very start: getting sales to agree on the target account list before any campaigns go live. And second, at the qualified intent stage, when an account has shown enough signal to make outreach feel timely rather than cold.
So, what counts as a signal in Anthony’s funnel?
He points to website behavior – number of visits, specific pages viewed (read: pricing) – and whether a company has crossed a threshold that the team has agreed on in advance. “Once an account hits that stage, that’s a good time for your sales people to start reaching out.”
Getting this handoff also protects the relationship with sales. When marketing can show that impressions are going to the exact accounts sales cares about, and that outreach is triggered by intent rather than gut feel, the conversation around LinkedIn ROI gets simpler.
Cracking the Mid-Funnel Problem
“The middle there, that’s probably the hardest thing to crack,” Anthony says, “and that’s where most people need to spend the most time figuring out.”
It’s the accounts that are aware of you, have engaged a few times, but just aren’t booking calls.
Anthony’s answer is to stop relying on paid ads to bridge that gap. Instead, he suggests building in a step where prospects can opt in to something and continue consuming content, something he calls “subscribable media”. This could be a newsletter, a recurring event like a webinar or in-person event, or simply following your company LinkedIn page.
“Running ads can be expensive,” he says. “You don’t want to just purely rely on an advertising strategy.” Getting someone to follow a thought leader or sign up for a newsletter means you can keep showing up in their world without paying for their attention.
The underlying logic here is about micro-conversions.
The big conversion, the demo or sales conversation, is expensive to force. And for most B2B buyers at the awareness stage, it’s also too much to ask.
Subscribable media is a mechanism that keeps the relationship alive across the months when a prospect isn’t ready to buy, but might be getting there. “The two things,” Anthony says, “is you need to be continuing to build the awareness with them and then have that opt-in step so that you can communicate for free.”
What You Put in Front of Them Matters Too
Building the right funnel structure gets you in front of the right accounts at the right time. But it’s what you put in front of those accounts that determines if any of it actually resonates.
Thought leader ads are the biggest structural change to LinkedIn’s ad offerings in recent years. It adds another tool to your kit: boosting company page posts as well as posts from individual profiles. And according to Anthony, these posts consistently outperform what a company page produces.
Because people trust people more than they trust brands.
A post from a named individual with a face and an interesting point of view gets more engagement than the same content pushed from a logo. And LinkedIn’s feed is built around people, rather than companies, so individual posts tend to get more organic reach to begin with. Add in a boost as a thought leader ad and that personal credibility carries tenfold.
Mid-funnel is where this matters most. These accounts aren’t ready to convert, but they still need a reason to keep engaging. A well-placed thought leader ad gives them one without asking for anything in return.
“The type of educational posts that teach people how to do something and how to get a result that they want is the content that they’re looking for,” Anthony says.
He points to case studies in particular as the best performing thought leader ads. People are on LinkedIn because they want to learn something they can take back to their job. A post that shows how a real person solved a real problem fits exactly what they’re there for.
Conclusion
Winning at B2B LinkedIn Ads means accepting the long reality of the buying journey and building a funnel that covers the full length of it.
That starts with dropping the search mindset. No demo offers to cold audiences, no optimizing for the 5% while ignoring the 95%. When the funnel structure is right, content earns its place by serving accounts at the right stage. And your company ends up on the shortlist before the buying window opens.
About the Speaker
Anthony Blatner is the Founder and CMO of Speedwork Social, a LinkedIn Ads agency specializing in B2B technology and software companies. He has spent over 10 years running LinkedIn ad campaigns for B2B clients and is the creator of one of the only LinkedIn learning courses and podcasts dedicated to LinkedIn advertising.
