The Fail
In this episode of #FailSmarter, Leander Seidl interviews Christoph Schachner, head of growth at WeAreDevelopers and LinkedIn marketing expert, about a marketing mistake he made with a client involving LinkedIn lead generation. Despite being aware of the pitfalls of relying solely on LinkedIn lead form ads, Christoph was unable to persuade his client to adopt a more comprehensive approach to generate demand.
The Details
What went wrong…
Christoph’s client insisted on testing LinkedIn lead gen ads with a limited budget, hoping to convert cold traffic directly into demos without any prior engagement. As it was impossible to convince the client to adopt a broader, more effective strategy, the company’s first-ever LinkedIn marketing test run resulted in disappointing results: the client spent €1,500 and only generated two demo requests, both of which became customers but ultimately didn’t provide enough return on investment for the campaign to be profitable.
What to learn from it…
The key takeaway from this failure is the importance of building a proper marketing funnel and not relying solely on lead forms without warming up the audience. Two effective tactics for top-of-funnel demand generation on LinkedIn include focusing on the product’s benefits and jobs-to-be-done, as well as comparing the “old way” versus the “new way” to highlight the pain points and benefits of the product. Additionally, using positioning frameworks like April Dunford’s can help B2B companies refine their target audience and messaging, before launching an expensive ad campaign.
Experience this Fail…
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