If you’re trying to get in front of more businesses to sell your product or service, and if your target buyer is in the B2B realm, LinkedIn is clearly going to be a primary consideration for you. And if you’re really trying to ramp things up, having a good advertising strategy on LinkedIn is vital. 

For most B2B brands, LinkedIn has been a well established acquisition channel for some time. However, in our experience there are still some common misunderstandings on how best to use the platform, what should be expected in terms of results, and how to invest your budget to get the most out of it. 

Running activity in house is often an option, but having an external agency partner with experience on what works best can provide a great head start and avoid you wasting precious advertising spend on what is a very expensive platform.

Which brings us to the real question: what actually makes a good LinkedIn Ads agency?

There are several factors, but here are a few of the most important.

Understanding the Market, Objectives and Challenges

It might sound obvious, but a LinkedIn Ads agency that can distinguish a strong KPI from a poor one is critical to getting the most out of your ad spend.

A good agency knows when campaign performance is off – for example, if frequency is too high or if your cost per lead (CPL) is creeping up. But context matters. Whether a CPL is considered high depends entirely on what you’re selling. If you’re offering a subscription-based service, a CPL of £40 might be perfectly acceptable because the recurring revenue and lifetime value balance it out. A strong B2B LinkedIn marketing agency will understand your business and know it inside out.

Challenging the Client

The client-agency relationship should be a partnership – not just a transactional one. A good LinkedIn lead generation agency will challenge your business to make better decisions, align with your goals and budget, and focus on what will actually move things and drive tangible results.

For instance, truly understanding what the business objective is. If a client goes to an agency and says, “We want to run a brand awareness campaign”, a good LinkedIn advertising agency should ask why. What’s the end goal? Chances are, it’s to drive leads into the business, not just increase awareness. So, the agency should suggest running a lead generation campaign instead – something that drives contacts into your CRM, allowing your sales team to follow up or retarget those potential leads.

Agencies should also suggest ways to entice those potential customers to become leads – this could be through a webinar sign-up, a whitepaper offering industry insights or statistics, or other value-driven content.

Testing

A good LinkedIn Ads agency will always be thinking ahead to boost results and keep campaign performance steady. They should recommend new audiences to test – such as member groups, job titles, seniority levels, or ABM lists. These audience tests can help optimise your LinkedIn Ads campaigns and ensure your media spend is being used as effectively as possible.

Creative is also key. Creating concepts like benefits-led messaging or reviews helps identify what types of creative resonate most with your audience. This insight allows you to make fine-tuned changes, maximise performance, and prioritise where you spend your time and budget.

And when testing these new audience types or creatives, it’s important not to lose nerve when results initially look poor. A good agency understands that optimisations need time to learn and improve, so they give campaigns a proper chance to perform before making major changes.

Tracking

Last but not least – though there are many factors that make a good agency – one of the most critical is proper tracking.

A LinkedIn Ads agency should ensure that all tracking is set up correctly and functioning as it should. This is essential to measure the effectiveness of your media spend, understand what’s driving performance, and follow up with leads properly.

Now go forth and find yourself a great marketing agency.

Or better yet – if you’re reading this, you already have. Why not get in touch and let’s chat about how we can help your business objectives?