Show notes
AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency, in 2014. He's an official LinkedIn partner, host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, and has managed among the world's largest LinkedIn Ads accounts worldwide.
Follow AJ on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/
Learn more about B2Linked here: https://b2linked.com/
Let's dive in. And I'm excited for this one. We'd been talking about doing this and there's just so much that we can nerd out about here.
Oh I can't wait!
Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so grateful for you making the time and joining us, and I'm so excited for all of you listening to this show today, AJ is just a killer with LinkedIn advertising, and it's going to be a really fun show. So as a way to get started, please, my friend brag about yourself. Give us, give us a quick background as to what led you to where you're at in your career today.
Sure so I started out in digital marketing. I've loved it for the last 13 years, but I really stumbled on to LinkedIn Ads about nine years ago. And the story there was, I went into a company, my CMO- the new boss said, Oh, by the way, you know, on, on day one, you just, we just started a pilot using LinkedIn Ads. So see what you can do with it. It was kind of flippantly. And I was like, Oh man, I've never heard of LinkedIn Ads before. Like what, what have I got myself into? And about two weeks later, one of my sales reps came up to me and said, "AJ, we don't know what you're doing over here, but we're fighting over your leads, keep it up." And I was like, what are you talking about? So I logged into our CRM. I took a look at the leads and every single one of them that he was talking about, we are sourced from LinkedIn Ads and it was not the only advertising I was doing.
So a long story short, it worked well. So I kept investing. I eventually took it to become LinkedIn's largest spending ad account world-wide. And after running that for a few years, I went, okay, there's got to be more companies than just this one that would slay it on LinkedIn ads. So I want to go and help those brands out. And so I started B2Linked about six years ago and we're a specialty ad agency. Literally LinkedIn Ads is all we do.
Yeah. It's man. There's so much to break down with this to LinkedIn Ads is just this whole unique world. And what was the difference? What was LinkedIn Ads like when you were running em then and comparison to where they're at now?
It's gotten quite a bit better, but it's always been four years behind Facebook ads. It it's always just never held a candle to Google. It. It's always just been a very unique kind of animal. And even from day one, even back when you can get clicks for $2 a piece You that was still expensive at the time. You know, right now we're paying eight to $11 per click using LinkedIn Ads. But when we were paying $2 a click, we still call it that expensive because Google and Facebook we're still, you know, significantly less than that. So they're making strides. I think they finally realized what tool they have and how valuable it is. And they're putting resources into making it better, but it's still a little ways behind the others.
Yeah. Do you think Microsoft's acquisition, that's a positive for the future of LinkedIn advertising?
I do think so because I've, I was a long time Bing Ads advocate. I still am. I guess they call it Microsoft advertising now. And I watched that team. I know them quite well. I watched that team take a product from zero to being in direct competition with the world's most sophisticated ad platform in just a matter of years. And so I think if LinkedIn will take anyone from the Microsoft advertising's advice on how to build out an ad platform, ultimately, I think it's going...
Follow AJ on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/
Learn more about B2Linked here: https://b2linked.com/
Let's dive in. And I'm excited for this one. We'd been talking about doing this and there's just so much that we can nerd out about here.
Oh I can't wait!
Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so grateful for you making the time and joining us, and I'm so excited for all of you listening to this show today, AJ is just a killer with LinkedIn advertising, and it's going to be a really fun show. So as a way to get started, please, my friend brag about yourself. Give us, give us a quick background as to what led you to where you're at in your career today.
Sure so I started out in digital marketing. I've loved it for the last 13 years, but I really stumbled on to LinkedIn Ads about nine years ago. And the story there was, I went into a company, my CMO- the new boss said, Oh, by the way, you know, on, on day one, you just, we just started a pilot using LinkedIn Ads. So see what you can do with it. It was kind of flippantly. And I was like, Oh man, I've never heard of LinkedIn Ads before. Like what, what have I got myself into? And about two weeks later, one of my sales reps came up to me and said, "AJ, we don't know what you're doing over here, but we're fighting over your leads, keep it up." And I was like, what are you talking about? So I logged into our CRM. I took a look at the leads and every single one of them that he was talking about, we are sourced from LinkedIn Ads and it was not the only advertising I was doing.
So a long story short, it worked well. So I kept investing. I eventually took it to become LinkedIn's largest spending ad account world-wide. And after running that for a few years, I went, okay, there's got to be more companies than just this one that would slay it on LinkedIn ads. So I want to go and help those brands out. And so I started B2Linked about six years ago and we're a specialty ad agency. Literally LinkedIn Ads is all we do.
Yeah. It's man. There's so much to break down with this to LinkedIn Ads is just this whole unique world. And what was the difference? What was LinkedIn Ads like when you were running em then and comparison to where they're at now?
It's gotten quite a bit better, but it's always been four years behind Facebook ads. It it's always just never held a candle to Google. It. It's always just been a very unique kind of animal. And even from day one, even back when you can get clicks for $2 a piece You that was still expensive at the time. You know, right now we're paying eight to $11 per click using LinkedIn Ads. But when we were paying $2 a click, we still call it that expensive because Google and Facebook we're still, you know, significantly less than that. So they're making strides. I think they finally realized what tool they have and how valuable it is. And they're putting resources into making it better, but it's still a little ways behind the others.
Yeah. Do you think Microsoft's acquisition, that's a positive for the future of LinkedIn advertising?
I do think so because I've, I was a long time Bing Ads advocate. I still am. I guess they call it Microsoft advertising now. And I watched that team. I know them quite well. I watched that team take a product from zero to being in direct competition with the world's most sophisticated ad platform in just a matter of years. And so I think if LinkedIn will take anyone from the Microsoft advertising's advice on how to build out an ad platform, ultimately, I think it's going...