How I run a LinkedIn B2B growth engine
I’ve driven $1M+ in pipeline in the last 12 months from LinkedIn alone.
This isn’t with a $10K monthly ad budget. Quite the opposite as we’re only spending $300 per month on ads.
To excel on LinkedIn, there’s a flywheel I’ve proven out with my startup– one that any growth team can replicate.
As a bootstrapped founder, I had to get scrappy about building lead flow, and LinkedIn became the answer.
It didn’t happen overnight and took a lot of iteration to unlock.
Here’s my playbook
The steps contained in this playbook are simple, but do require work to maintain on a daily and weekly basis.
Publish founder-led content
In the last year, I’ve gained nearly 15,000 followers. That doesn’t happen by accident.
I’ve been posting almost daily for an entire year, and the results speak for themselves. I’ve built an audience of individuals in my ICP by consistently providing value through my posts.
This is key and where the flywheel begins.
You must start building an audience for your startup, whether it’s the founder or employees posting. This humanizes your company in the age of AI.
I strongly recommend posting from a founder or employee account rather than a company account.
Partner with others to post about you
I’ve partnered with influencers who have audiences that overlap with my potential customers.
Instead of every post coming from my account, posts now come from influencers, customers, and friends within the space. This diversity helps you expand reach and sets you up perfectly for the next step.
Promote top-performing posts with thought leader ads
Once I identify top-performing posts, I boost them with ad spend using LinkedIn’s Thought Leader Ads. This doesn’t require a huge budget. I generally run retargeting ads (website visitors and LinkedIn company page visitors) to these posts.
I spend $300 per month on this strategy and see click-through rates of nearly 20% consistently.
If a post performs well organically, it’ll likely perform well with ad spend behind it. That’s why I only boost the top-performing posts.
Message and connect with engaged users
Every day, I check who engages with my posts—whether they like or comment—and I connect with them if we’re not already connected.
Then, I follow up with a message offering help or inviting them to be featured in our newsletter.
I focus on providing value, not asking for a discovery call. By doing this, I build trust right out of the gate.
Comment on our ICP’s posts
It’s not enough to just publish content on your own account.
I spend 5-15 minutes per day engaging with posts from my ICP or within my industry.
You’d be surprised, some of my comments have reached thousands of impressions, and on average they get 300-500 impressions.
That’s a lot of free visibility for both my profile and my brand, which is listed right below my name in every comment.
By running this playbook consistently, I’m confident you’ll start driving real pipeline for your B2B startup.
Some other tips
Use tools like Taplio to help with content scheduling and analytics.
Build a small group of friends to cross-engage with each other’s posts.
Skim through thought leaders for inspiration and post ideas.
Add around 50 new individuals within your ICP each week (well under LinkedIn’s limit).
Don’t spam your business in your content– people sense that instantly.
Keep your campaign audience for Thought Leader Ads under 50,000.
If you don’t have time to run the full flywheel, the highest-leverage move you can make is to start posting content from a founder account.
That alone will drive the highest ROI and impact. The rest of the flywheel can easily be built on top of that, but you need that foundation first.
Comment on this post if you’d like to see more writing around B2B growth engines.