LinkedIn Ads: The Only Lead Gen Ad Format Guide

I see this question all the time. Founders and marketers burning through cash on LinkedIn, frantically switching between ad formats, hoping one will magically unlock a flood of customers. The truth is, if you're asking "which format is best?", you're already asking the wrong question. It's like asking a builder "which hammer is best?" without telling him if you're framing a house or hanging a picture.

The ad format is the last piece of the puzzle, not the first. Choosing one without nailing your strategy is a guaranteed way to waste money. Before you spend another pound, we need to fix the foundations: your offer and your understanding of the person you're selling to. Most of the time, when founders tell me their LinkedIn ads feel useless, the format is rarely the root cause of the failure.

Why is your offer more important than your ad format?

Let's be brutally honest. Nobody on LinkedIn woke up this morning hoping to see your ad. They're scrolling through posts from colleagues, industry news, and cringe-worthy "I'm humbled and honoured to announce" updates. Your ad is an interruption. To earn their attention, your offer has to be exceptionally valuable and incredibly low-friction.

The biggest mistake I see in B2B advertising is the dreaded "Request a Demo" button. Tbh, it's the most arrogant call to action in marketing. It assumes your prospect, a busy executive, has nothing better to do than schedule a 45-minute meeting to be pitched at. It screams "I want your time, and I'll give you a sales pitch in return." It's a high-friction, low-value proposition, and it will fail no matter what ad format you wrap it in.

A winning offer, on the other hand, provides immediate, undeniable value. It solves a small part of their problem for free, earning you the right to talk about solving the whole thing.

What does a good offer look like?

• For a SaaS company: A genuinely free trial (no credit card) or a freemium plan. Let them experience the "aha!" moment inside your product. For many SaaS clients I've worked with, this is the single most effective offer. The product itself becomes the salesperson.
• For a service business: A high-value asset. Not a flimsy eBook. An automated audit tool, a benchmark report with industry data, a free 15-minute video training module that actually teaches something useful. For my agency, it's a free ad account review where we find wasted spend.
• For a high-ticket product: A detailed, ungated case study or a buyer's guide that helps them make a smarter decision, even if they don't buy from you.

Get this right, and the choice of ad format becomes a simple question of delivery. Get this wrong, and you're just paying LinkedIn to advertise your own arrogance.

Who are you actually talking to?

The second foundational error is targeting based on sterile demographics. "Marketing Managers at SaaS companies with 50-200 employees" tells you nothing. It leads to generic copy that speaks to no one. You need to get obsessed with your customer's specific, expensive, career-limiting nightmare.

Your ideal customer isn't a job title. It's a problem state.

• The Head of Sales isn't just a "Head of Sales". He's a man terrified of missing his quarterly target because his reps are drowning in manual data entry.
• The CTO isn't just a "CTO". She's a leader who just lost her best engineer out of frustration with a clunky, outdated development environment.

When you understand their pain, you know what to say. And when you know what to say, you can pick the best format to say it in. A complex, emotional pain point might need a video to connect properly. A simple, urgent need might be best served by a direct, punchy single image ad. A deep dive into their industry's challenges might warrant a Document Ad with a full-blown report. The message dictates the medium. If your message is bland because you don't know who you're talking to, no ad format can save you.

The Workhorse: Sponsored Content (Single Image & Video Ads)

Alright, with the foundations in place, let's talk about the most common and versatile format. Sponsored Content ads appear directly in the LinkedIn feed and look like regular posts. They are your bread and butter for most lead generation campaigns.

Single Image Ads are the simplest format. A strong image, a compelling headline, and concise text. Don't overthink it.

• When to use them: When your offer is simple and easy to understand. When you have a strong visual that communicates value instantly. They're also fantastic for rapid A/B testing of different messages and headlines because they're so quick to create.
• My experience: For most of our clients, particularly in SaaS, this is where we start. We test 3-4 different creative angles against each other to find a winning message before we even think about creating more complex assets like video. It's about finding message-market fit as cheaply as possible. A clear offer, like "Get a Free Audit of Your AWS Spend," paired with a simple graphic showing a downward-trending cost line, often outperforms everything else.

Video Ads are more engaging but require more effort. They give you a chance to build a deeper connection and explain more complex ideas.

• When to use them: When you need to demonstrate a product (a 60-second screen recording of your SaaS is gold). When you want to build trust (a founder talking directly to the camera). When you want to tell a customer story (a video testimonial). Don't just make a corporate video with stock footage and a bland voiceover; it'll get ignored. Make it authentic.
• My experience: We've seen fantastic results with UGC-style (User-Generated Content) videos for SaaS clients. They don't look like ads, so they stop the scroll. I remember several campaigns where switching from polished corporate ads to simple, authentic videos dramatically improved performance because the new ads felt more real and trustworthy. If you're a course creator or consultant, a well-produced video is also a non-negotiable part of a successful campaign, as it helps establish you as an authority. If this sounds like you, then this guide on creating effective LinkedIn video ads will be a massive help.

The Delivery Mechanism: Lead Gen Forms vs. Landing Pages

This is a critical fork in the road for Sponsored Content. Once someone clicks your ad, where do they go?

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are native forms that open directly within LinkedIn when a user clicks the CTA. They come pre-filled with the user's profile information (name, email, job title, company), so all they have to do is click "Submit."

• Pros: Massively reduced friction. Because it's so easy, conversion rates are typically much higher than sending traffic to an external page. This means a lower Cost Per Lead (CPL). It's a game-changer on mobile.
• Cons: Lead quality can be lower. Because it's so easy to submit, you get more "tyre-kickers" who aren't seriously evaluating your solution. You also have very little space to sell them further; they make the decision based on the ad alone.
• My experience: For our B2B software clients, Lead Gen Forms are often the volume driver. We ran a campaign for a SaaS tool where we were getting qualified leads for about $22 each using this method, which was fantastic for them. The key is to add one or two custom qualifying questions to the form (e.g., "What is your biggest marketing challenge?") to weed out the least serious prospects. This slight increase in friction can dramaticaly improve quality. If you find yourself getting a lot of junk, that's often a sign that you need to find ways to stop wasting money on bad leads.

Landing Pages involve sending traffic off LinkedIn to a dedicated page on your website. Here, you have complete control over the design, copy, and user experience.

• Pros: Much higher lead quality. Someone who takes the time to leave LinkedIn, read your page, and manually fill out a form is almost always more invested and more qualified. You have unlimited space to use persuasive copy, testimonials, and case studies to convince them.
• Cons: Higher friction. Every extra click and form field causes drop-off. Your CPL will almost always be higher than with a Lead Gen Form. You're also at the mercy of your page load speed.

Which should you choose? Test both. But as a general rule: start with Lead Gen Forms if your goal is lead volume and your offer is straightforward. Use a landing page if you have a complex or high-ticket offer that requires more explanation and you need to prioritise lead quality over quantity.

The Scalpel: Conversation Ads

Think of Conversation Ads as a choose-your-own-adventure chatbot that lives inside LinkedIn Messaging. They are sent from a personal profile and are designed to start interactive, one-on-one dialogues at scale. This is not a format for blasting a generic message to thousands of people. It's a surgical tool for engaging high-value prospects.

• When to use them: When you're selling a high-ticket, complex service or product (£20k+). When your target audience is very small and very senior (e.g., you want to talk to the 200 Chief Financial Officers in the UK fintech sector). When your sales process is highly consultative and requires a real conversation to even begin.
• How they work: You craft an opening message and then provide several pre-written response options for the user to click. Each click can lead them down a different path, perhaps to a case study, a landing page, or to register for a webinar. The goal is to feel personal and helpful, not robotic.
• My experience: The sucess of these campaigns lives or dies on the opening line. It has to feel like it was written just for them. Something like, "Hi [First Name], saw you're the Head of Engineering at [Company Name]. Many engineering leaders I speak to are struggling with developer retention. We put together a short guide on a framework to tackle this – would that be helpful?" is far better than "Hi, want a demo of our product?". You are starting a conversation by offering value, not demanding a meeting. They are more expensive on a CPL basis, but the lead quality can be exceptional when done right.

The Supporting Cast: Other Formats Worth Knowing

While Sponsored Content and Conversation Ads will be your main tools, a few other formats can play a valuable supporting role.

Carousel Ads let you use multiple swipeable images or videos in a single ad. They're great for telling a story, showcasing different features of a product, or highlighting several testimonials. We've used them to walk through a 3-step process or to feature quotes from 5 different happy customers. They are more interactive and can hold attention longer than a static image.

Document Ads allow you to share a native document (like a PDF) directly in the feed. Users can read a preview and download it with a single click, often in exchange for their email address (it acts like a Lead Gen Form). This is purpose-built for lead magnets. If you've invested in a fantastic whitepaper, industry report, or in-depth case study, this is the best way to distribute it. You're giving away immense value right there in the feed, which builds a lot of trust.

Text Ads are the little ads that appear at the top or on the right-hand side of the LinkedIn desktop feed. Tbh, they are mostly ignored. Their click-through rates are very low. However, the cost-per-click can also be very low. I wouldn't build a lead gen strategy around them, but they can be a cheap way to keep your brand name in front of a retargeting audience as a supplementary tactic.

It's Not Just The Format, It's The Targeting

I have to repeat this because it's so important. You can have the perfect offer and the perfect ad format, but if you show it to the wrong people, you've just wasted your money. LinkedIn's targeting capabilities are its superpower, but most advertisers only scratch the surface.

Don't just target by job title. That's lazy. Get specific.

• Layering is key: Target "Directors" of "Marketing" at companies in the "Software" industry with "51-200 employees" who are members of the "SaaS Growth Hacks" group. Now you're getting somewhere.
• Use company lists: Use tools like Apollo.io or your own CRM to build a list of your 500 dream clients. Upload that list to LinkedIn and target the decision-makers at only those companies. This is account-based marketing (ABM) at its finest.
• Website Retargeting: Anyone who visits your pricing page but doesn't sign up is a warm lead. Put them in a retargeting audience and show them ads with customer testimonials to nudge them over the line.

Getting your targeting right is a discipline in itself. It requires a deep understanding of who your customer is and how to translate that into LinkedIn's available options. It's often the single biggest lever you can pull to improve performance, so if you feel like you are struggling with this, I highly recommend that you check out this in-depth guide on how to improve your LinkedIn Ad targeting.

So, what's the verdict?

I've thrown a lot at you, so let's bring it all together. There is no magic format. The path to successful lead generation on LinkedIn is a methodical process of strategic choices.

This table summarises my main recommendations for you based on my experience running hundreds of campaigns.

Start with your offer. Obsess over your customer's pain. Then, use the flowchart and table above to select your starting format. For 80% of businesses, that's going to be a Single Image or Video Ad paired with a Lead Gen form. From there, you must test. Test your creative, test your copy, test your audience, and test your delivery mechanism.

Navigating this is a full-time job. It requires expertise, patience, and a willingness to analyse data and make unemotional decisions. It can be a lot to handle when you're also trying to run a business. This is why many founders and marketing teams choose to partner with an agency or consultant.

An expert can help you bypass the expensive trial-and-error phase, implement a proven strategic framework, and start seeing qualified leads much faster. We've done this for dozens of B2B companies, from early-stage SaaS startups to established service firms.

If you're feeling stuck and would like a second pair of expert eyes on your strategy, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We'll look at your current campaigns (or your plans for one) and give you honest, actionable advice you can implement immediately. Feel free to book a call if that sounds helpful.

Hope this helps!