LinkedIn Ads vs. Meta Ads: The B2B Growth Guide

The "Facebook vs. LinkedIn" debate is one of the most common questions I get, and honestly, it's the wrong question to be asking. It frames the problem as a choice between two tools, like picking a hammer or a screwdriver. The real issue isn't the tool; it's understanding the job you need to do. Choosing a platform without first understanding your customer's deepest pains, the economics of your business, and the psychology of your offer is like starting a construction project by buying a nail gun and hoping for the best. You're just going to make a lot of noise and waste a lot of money.

Most agencies will give you a vague "it depends" answer. I'm going to give you a framework. The right platform for you isn't about your location or even your industry. It's about three things: the specific, career-threatening nightmare your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is trying to escape, the maths of what you can afford to pay to acquire a customer, and the friction of the offer you're putting in front of them. Get these three things right, and the platform choice becomes blindingly obvious. Get them wrong, and you'll burn through your budget on both platforms with nothing to show for it.

So, what's your customer's actual nightmare?

Forget the generic customer profiles you've been told to make. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" is a useless starting point. It tells you nothing about their problems, their motivations, or where they spend their attention. This kind of targeting leads to bland, generic ads that get ignored because they speak to everyone and therefore no one.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive problem. Your Head of Sales isn't just a job title; she's a leader who's terrified of missing her quarterly target because her team is buried in manual data entry instead of selling. A CTO at a fast-growing startup isn't just "in tech"; he's haunted by the fear of a critical system failure during a major product launch. Your ICP isn't a demographic; it's a person stuck in a problem state.

Once you've identified that nightmare, your whole approach to targeting changes. You're no longer just looking for job titles. You're looking for watering holes. Where do these people go to find solutions or vent their frustrations?

• -> Do they listen to specific niche podcasts like 'Acquired' or 'The All-In Podcast' on their commute?
• -> Do they read industry newsletters like 'Stratechery' to stay ahead?
• -> Are they active in private Slack communities or specific subreddits?
• -> What software do they already use? Are they a HubSpot shop, a Salesforce company, or do they use a specific industry tool?

This is the intelligence that builds a real targeting strategy. If your Head of Sales ICP is constantly in Salesforce, then targeting interests around Salesforce on Meta could work. If they're trying to upskill and follow thought leaders like Jason Lemkin, then targeting them on LinkedIn makes sense. This deep understanding is non-negotiable. Without it, you might as well be throwing your money into a furnace. As you build your strategy, our guide for B2B founders on paid social can give you a solid foundation.

Are you prepared for the uncomfortable maths of B2B advertising?

Let's be brutally honest: LinkedIn is expensive. Frighteningly so, for many early-stage businesses. We've run campaigns where a single qualified lead costs over £200. I remember one B2B SaaS client got leads for around $22 on LinkedIn, which they were happy with. On the other hand, we've managed campaigns on Meta for similar B2B software companies that brought in registrations for as little as $2.38 or software trials for $7.

So, why would anyone pay almost 10 times more for a lead on LinkedIn? Because of context and intent. On LinkedIn, you are reaching people in a professional environment. They are thinking about work, their careers, and their business problems. The targeting is incredibly precise; you can target by exact job title, company size, seniority, and industry. You are paying a premium for that precision and context.

The question isn't whether a £65 lead is "expensive." The real question is: "Can I afford it?" And the answer to that lies in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. It's the single most important metric for determining your advertising budget.

Let's do the maths.
Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a customer worth to you each month? Let's say £500.
Gross Margin %: What's your profit on that? Let's say 80%.
Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers cancel each month? Let's say 4%.

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

In this example: LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04 = £10,000.

Each customer you acquire is worth £10,000 in gross margin over their lifetime. A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single £10,000 customer. If your sales team closes 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £333 per lead.

Suddenly that £65 LinkedIn lead doesn't look so scary, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Use the calculator below to find your own numbers.

Understanding these numbers is liberating. It stops you from chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring valuable customers, profitably. If you find your LinkedIn ads are not performing as expected, it's often a mismatch between your CAC tolerance and the platform's costs.

How to use Meta as a secret B2B weapon

Now, let's talk about Meta. Most B2B founders dismiss it as a place for holiday photos and arguing with relatives. They're wrong. Meta's true power isn't its social graph; it's the algorithm. It is one of the most powerful pattern-recognition machines on the planet, and you can train it to find your perfect customer for a fraction of what LinkedIn charges.

The key is to move beyond basic interest targeting. While you can start by targeting users interested in competitor software (e.g., "HubSpot," "Asana") or business roles ("Small business owners"), the real magic happens with custom and Lookalike audiences. One campaign we worked on for a B2B SaaS client generated 1,535 trials almost exclusively using Meta Ads, proving its power when used correctly.

Here's how you do it. First, you need data. You need to install the Meta Pixel on your website and track every meaningful action: page views, content downloads, trial sign-ups, and purchases. Once you have at least 100 people who have completed a key action (like signing up for a trial), you can create a Lookalike Audience. You are essentially telling Meta: "Here is a list of my best customers. Go and find me millions of other people who share their hidden behaviours and characteristics."

This is where Meta's scale becomes your advantage. The algorithm will analyse thousands of data points—far beyond simple demographics—to build a profile of your ideal user and then put your ad in front of them while they're scrolling through their feed. Because you are reaching them at a much lower cost-per-impression, your final cost-per-lead can be dramatically lower.

The trade-off is intent. On Meta, you are an interruption. Your ad appears between a wedding photo and a funny video. This means your offer must be incredibly compelling and low-friction to work. For a more detailed breakdown of this strategy, have a look at our complete guide to Meta Ads for B2B SaaS.

Your Offer is More Important Than Your Targeting

This brings us to the most critical, and most frequently failed, element of any B2B advertising campaign: the offer. A perfect audience seeing a terrible offer will not convert. A mediocre audience seeing an irresistible offer just might.

The "Request a Demo" button is the single most arrogant, high-friction call to action in marketing. It presumes your prospect is so desperate for a solution that they are willing to schedule a 30-minute meeting to be sold to. It screams "I value my time more than yours." It's a conversion killer, especially on a low-intent platform like Meta.

Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. It needs to solve a small part of their problem for free, earning you the right to talk to them about solving the whole thing. The platform's context dictates the offer's friction.

• -> For Meta (Low Intent): Your offer must be low-friction. Think free trials (no card required), valuable PDF guides, interactive quizzes, free tools, or webinar registrations. The goal is to capture an email address in exchange for instant value.
• -> For LinkedIn (High Intent): You can afford slightly higher friction. A demo request can work if your targeting is precise. Other great offers include a free consultation, a personalized audit, or access to an exclusive case study. You're leveraging the professional context to ask for more commitment.

If you're struggling to choose between channels, it's often a sign that you need to rethink your offer first. Our channel selection framework goes into more detail on how to align your offer with the right platform.

Here's what this looks like in practice

Theory is great, but let's make this concrete. Imagine we're marketing a B2B SaaS tool that helps project managers. Here’s how we’d set up seperate campaigns on each platform.

On LinkedIn, we hunt for the title. Our goal is to get a highly qualified lead for the sales team.

• Campaign Objective: Lead Generation, using an instant Lead Gen Form.
• Targeting: Job Title: "Project Manager", "Head of Operations", "Program Director". Company Size: 50-500 employees. Industry: "Information Technology & Services", "Computer Software".
• Ad Creative: A static image ad with a very direct, problem-focused headline. "Tired of project scope creep? Our tool helps you deliver on time and on budget. See how."
• Offer: "Get a Personalised 15-Min Demo". The form pre-fills their LinkedIn data, making it easy to submit.
• Expected Outcome: Low volume of leads, but they are highly qualified. CPL might be £50-£100, but the close rate will be higher. This approach is detailed in our complete guide to LinkedIn Ads.

On Meta, we fish for the behaviour. Our goal is to get as many relevant users into our funnel as possible, cheaply.

• Campaign Objective: Conversions, optimising for "Trial Starts".
• Targeting: A 1% Lookalike Audience of our existing paying customers, layered with broad interests like "Asana", "Trello", "Monday.com".
• Ad Creative: A short, 15-second user-generated style video showing the tool solving a common frustration, like rebalancing a project timeline with a simple drag-and-drop. No corporate polish.
• Offer: "Start Your Free 14-Day Trial. No credit card needed." This is a zero-risk offer designed for impulse clicks.
• Expected Outcome: High volume of trial sign-ups. CPL could be £5-£15. Not all will convert to paying customers, but we're filling the top of our funnel at a very efficient cost.

This is the main advice I have for you:

The final answer: a hybrid approach and when to call for help

So, should you use Facebook or LinkedIn? The answer for many businesses is both, but for different jobs. A sophisticated strategy doesn't pit them against each other; it makes them work together.

Imagine this: You run a cheap, scalable campaign on Meta to get people to download your "State of the Industry Report". You build a custom audience of everyone who downloaded it. Then, you run a highly targeted retargeting campaign on LinkedIn, showing a "Book a Strategy Call" ad only to the people from that list who have the title "Director" or above. You use Meta for cheap acquisition and LinkedIn for precise, high-intent qualification. This is how you build a real marketing machine.

This is also where it gets complicated. Managing multi-platform budgets, tracking attribution, and ensureing your messaging is consistent across the funnel is a full-time job. It requires deep expertise to acheive properly. If you've figured out your ICP's nightmare and your business maths, but you're struggling to translate that into profitable ad campaigns, it might be time to get some help.

We specialise in building and managing these kinds of B2B advertising systems. If you'd like an expert to review your current setup and provide a clear, actionable plan, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation. We'll look at your business, your goals, and help you decide on the right path forward.

Hope this helps!