Short answer: Pick a LinkedIn Ads agency on five things: how much they've actually run on LinkedIn, what they change on day one, whether they report on pipeline instead of clicks, who touches your account every day, and whether their pricing fits your spend. Ask the eight questions below on every call, including ours.
Fun fact: almost every "best LinkedIn ads agencies" list you'll find is written by an agency that ranks itself #1. We run a LinkedIn Ads agency too, so take this with the same grain of salt. Instead of another ranking, here's how I'd vet any agency, us included, if I were the one hiring.
What should you ask a LinkedIn Ads agency?
How much have you managed on LinkedIn specifically? Not "paid media." LinkedIn. It's its own platform with its own quirks, and you want someone who's been burned by them on someone else's budget.
What do you change on day one? A good answer includes turning off Audience Expansion and LinkedIn Audience Network and moving off Maximum Delivery. If they don't mention any of these, they're running LinkedIn's defaults. Here's our day-one list.
How do you bid? You want manual bidding with a reason behind it. We start 30% below LinkedIn's recommended bid and adjust 10% at a time.
How do you handle creative? Who writes it, how many ads run per campaign, and how often it gets refreshed. We run five per campaign to fill LinkedIn's frequency cap.
What do you report on? If the answer stops at CTR and cost per lead, keep looking. Ask how they connect LinkedIn to your CRM and whether they use the Conversions API.
Who runs my account day to day? Not who's on the sales call. Who's in Campaign Manager on a Tuesday.
How do you price, and what's your minimum? Percentage of spend, flat retainer and tiered fees all work. Make sure the model still makes sense at the budget you'll actually run.
Can I talk to a client or read verified reviews? Case studies are written by the agency. Reviews on sites like Clutch are written by clients.
What are the red flags?
They want to start with Audience Expansion "to get scale." You know that audience you built? That setting disregards it.
They judge everything on CTR. 0.4% is the average for sponsored content. It tells you if the creative works, not if anyone bought.
Junior people run the account while the senior people run the sales calls.
No exclusions. If they aren't excluding customers, competitors and the seniorities and company sizes you don't sell to, you're paying for gray zone leads.
They can't tell you what good looks like. Any decent LinkedIn agency should know its benchmarks cold. Here are ours.
What kinds of LinkedIn Ads agencies are there?
LinkedIn-only specialists. Deepest platform focus. Great if LinkedIn is the only paid channel you need help with.
B2B paid media agencies. Run LinkedIn alongside Google, Microsoft and Meta, so budget moves to whatever drives pipeline. This is what TB3 is.
Full-service demand gen agencies. Paid media plus content, SEO, web and sometimes RevOps under one roof. Better if you need a whole marketing team, not just paid.
Freelancers and consultants. Cheaper and flexible, but one person is a single point of failure, and you'll usually own more of the strategy yourself.
Which other LinkedIn agencies are worth talking to?
If we're not the right fit, these show up again and again when B2B companies shortlist LinkedIn agencies. Talk to two or three and ask them the same eight questions.
B2Linked: a LinkedIn Ads-only agency. A good call if LinkedIn is your only paid channel.
Impactable: LinkedIn-first, with Google Ads and CRM-connected reporting.
Hey Digital: works only with B2B SaaS, covering strategy, creative and paid acquisition.
Directive: a larger B2B SaaS performance agency that runs Google and LinkedIn together.
Abe: a B2B agency with a dedicated Conversation Ads practice.
When is TB3 the right fit, and when isn't it?
We're a good fit if you're a B2B SaaS or tech company selling to mid-market and enterprise, you spend $50K or more a month across paid channels, you want one senior team running LinkedIn and search together, and you measure marketing on pipeline.
We're not the right fit if you're a consumer or B2C brand, your combined ad spend is under $50K a month, or you only want LinkedIn and nothing else. In that last case, a LinkedIn-only specialist might suit you better. More on how we run LinkedIn Ads.
FAQ
How much does a LinkedIn Ads agency cost?
Agencies usually charge a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer or a tiered fee. Ours works like tax brackets: each tier of spend is billed at its own rate, and higher tiers carry lower rates. Most agencies also have a minimum. Ours is $50K a month in combined ad spend.
Should I use a LinkedIn-only agency or a broader paid media agency?
If LinkedIn is your only paid channel, a specialist makes sense. If you also run Google or Meta, one team across channels can move budget to whatever is creating pipeline instead of defending its own platform.
How long before I know if a LinkedIn agency is working?
Give sponsored content at least a week of data and Conversation Ads three to four weeks. Pipeline takes as long as your sales cycle, so look at qualified lead rate and meetings booked first, then opportunities.
Written by Trey Buchanan, founder of TB3 Digital. Trey has spent nine years in B2B paid media, managed $110M+ in LinkedIn ad spend, and has twice been selected for LinkedIn's Customer Advisory Board. If you want to run these questions on us, book a strategy call.