LinkedIn works differently from every other platform. Think about it, why do you visit the platform? You’re not looking for entertainment and you would likely look at it during work hours.

What earns attention is different, so you can see when businesses treat it the same as Meta, they get exactly the kind of results you’d expect from the wrong approach: not much.

This isn’t a guide telling you to get on LinkedIn. It’s not the perfect fit for everyone, but this blog is a case for what the platform actually does well, who it’s genuinely good for, and how to make it work for you.

People and personalities drive everything

The single biggest driver of LinkedIn reach and results isn’t the company page. It’s the people behind the business.

Personal profiles generate 561% more reach than company pages! According to research, posts from personal profiles also earn five times the engagement of company posts, even when those individuals have fewer followers than the brand account. 

Meanwhile, organic reach for company pages dropped 60-66% between 2024 and 2026. The algorithm actively deprioritises corporate speak and promotional copy as well as trying to incentivise paid rather than organic. 

It’s looking for human-to-human connection, and it rewards content that delivers it – this reflects what people are engaging with on the platform. As the platform gets more saturated with ‘AI slop’ the personal stories and valuable information are what stand out both to users and to the algorithms.

We’ve seen the rise of the personal brand, and LinkedIn is where this comes to life. The founders, the specialists, the people doing the work, sharing what they know from their own profiles, can do more for your brand than any amount of scheduled company posts. Often when we’re cross posting Meta content to LinkedIn for our clients, the results aren’t particularly inspiring but that doesn’t mean the platform is the problem. 

We’ve seen this hold true across clients in professional services, B2B manufacturing and premium products. When we incorporate people in the business into the brand –  you build trust quickly, it signals people are passionate about what they do and that they know what they’re doing. It also allows people to connect the brand logo to a face they can relate to and trust. 

Fun fact: less than 1% of LinkedIn users post regularly, if you can put yourself in that 1% you’re winning. 

Thought leadership content backs this up from a commercial angle too: 

65% of B2B buyers say it positively changed their perception of a company. 

64% use it to evaluate a vendor’s competency, which rates higher than product sheets or traditional marketing materials. 

People want to know if you know what you’re talking about. Personal content on LinkedIn is the most direct way to demonstrate that.

LinkedIn for advertising

Nearly 60% of users are aged 25 to 34, professionals in their peak career growth years and increasingly are the people making or influencing B2B purchasing decisions. 80% of LinkedIn users influence business decisions. They hold 64% more assets than the average social media user. 45% of article readers are managers, VPs, directors or C-suite.

To put that in contrast: reaching affluent professionals on TikTok, where only 26% of users are in the $100k+ household bracket, requires significant filtering and spend to find them in a sea of content that has nothing to do with your business. 

So, that’s enough numbers. LinkedIn clearly has a more specific demographic that may suit your targeting more, but what else? 

One of the big differentiators of LinkedIn is that people are on the platform with a different intent; they come to LinkedIn in work-mode. 

They’re often there to research, evaluate, learn, and solve professional problems. When someone on LinkedIn engages with your content or sees your ad, they’re in a headspace where commercial decisions feel appropriate. On Facebook, that same person is there to see what their cousin is up to and watch a video about a cute cat; in other words you’re interrupting them. The purchase intent isn’t the same because the context isn’t the same. That’s why using the same content you post on Meta platforms – that have to demand attention and entertain – do not perform the same on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn content also has a longer shelf life than most people account for. The average post has a half-life of 24 hours, compared to five hours on Facebook and 18 minutes on X. Your content keeps working after you publish it, which is useful on a platform where people are searching for specific expertise and perspectives. Not to mention LinkedIn also ranks in google, so can build SEO or GEO for your brand. 

On the B2C question

LinkedIn has such a strong B2B reputation that a lot of B2C brands dismiss it entirely. That’s fair for a lot of consumer categories. But for high-consideration purchases, the platform still has a compelling case.

LinkedIn research shows that one in three high-value purchases is tied directly to a professional milestone like a promotion or a bonus. 69% of LinkedIn members made a luxury purchase in the last year. Nearly half plan a major personal purchase within the next 12 months. And LinkedIn members are, according to their own research, a third more likely to trust ads on the platform than on other social channels; partly because it isn’t oversaturated with content but also, again, because of the mindset. 

Finance, property, education, luxury goods, premium travel, high-end automotive, professional development. These categories thrive when you can reach people with genuine disposable income and the purchasing intent that comes with professional achievement. For paid media LinkedIn’s targeting lets you reach a senior executive at a specific company size in a specific industry. For brands where that profile is the ideal customer, it’s a different category of targeting precision compared to what Meta can offer. 

For these higher value/consideration products or services, there is a higher value on storytelling, education and reputation. These can all be communicated compellingly through Linked utilising longer content formats like blogs, or through publishing content through personal profiles, bringing an additional dimension to your marketing. 

What LinkedIn ads actually do

LinkedIn is the more expensive ad platform, if you’ve considered or asked about it, that’s probably the first thing anyone would tell you. CPCs run higher than Meta and recommended minimum spend is more. 

However, for high value conversions it’s worth considering. LinkedIn’s visitor-to-lead conversion rate is 2.74%, compared to 0.77% on Facebook. The platform generates leads at a rate 277% more effective than Facebook and X combined. Overall conversion rates run 3x higher than other major platforms. 

HubSpot has run some extensive testing on LinkedIn campaigns in B2B advertising. According to their report: targeting marketing professionals at small-to-medium businesses generated 400% more leads than other paid platforms, with click-through rates 60% higher than other social networks. Their paid marketing lead described the appeal directly: 

“There’s no clutter on LinkedIn. Members are there to do business.”

Now we all know they’re only going to say good things about their own platform, duh. But we’ve seen effective results with our clients. 

If your advertising benefits from targeting by seniority, job title etc. (which you can’t do on Meta) then it’s worth considering. 

When you need to reach a financial controller at a manufacturing business all with hundreds of employees, that distinction is the difference between reaching the right 20 people and paying to reach 20,000 who roughly match a behavioural pattern. 

For businesses selling high-value products or services where a single converted lead justifies serious acquisition cost, LinkedIn ads consistently deliver ROI that other platforms struggle to match. 

So there’s a compelling case for using LinkedIn, however, only if the audience and targeting align with your product/service offering. 

What good looks like: personal and company working together

The brands getting real results on LinkedIn are running a coordinated strategy where the company page and personal profiles each do specific jobs.

Take HubSpot as an example; they pair precise paid targeting through their company account with consistent thought leadership from people inside the team. The company page carries positioning and campaign infrastructure. The individuals carry personality, credibility and reach. One amplifies the other in a positive feedback loop. 

Salesforce’s approach to promoting Dreamforce combined sponsored event content with organic executive posts and retargeting, reaching a highly specific professional audience in a way that a purely company-page-driven approach couldn’t have achieved. LinkedIn event campaigns, where you can target by verified role and industry, consistently outperform other channels for professional events. This is something we’ve seen reflected in client campaigns too, where layering personal visibility with paid activity produced notably stronger results than running either in isolation.

For smaller businesses, the same logic applies and is actually easier to execute. A founding team where even one to three people post consistently and share genuine perspectives on their industry, outperforms virtually any level of company page activity. Trust builds faster through people and it compounds over time in a way that purely paid strategy doesn’t. Paid turns off when you turn off the ads but you could use it to amplify organic that continues to build value long after you have posted it. 

So, is LinkedIn worth it for you?

That depends… who is your audience, and are they on LinkedIn? What’s a qualified lead worth to you? Is your business model one where reaching decision-makers directly creates real commercial value?

LinkedIn rewards specificity, quality and patience. The ones making it work are investing in their people’s visibility, being consistent about it, and treating LinkedIn as its own strategic channel rather than an afterthought in the content schedule.

We love talking about this stuff

If you’re trying to work out whether LinkedIn belongs in your strategy, or your current setup hasn’t really touched it, we’re up for a conversation. Ask us anything.

Let’s have a chat with Milkman →