https://youtu.be/UcnTlk-Zv3A

Anthony Blatner, Founder and CMO of Speedwork Social and host of LinkedIn Ads Radio, is on a mission to help B2B companies turn LinkedIn into a predictable growth engine. With a background in technology and marketing, Anthony helps businesses cut through noise, leverage authentic content, and use LinkedIn ads to consistently attract and convert high-quality prospects.

We explore Anthony’s LinkedIn Lead Funnel: Top of Funnel (Tips & Tricks + Case Studies), Middle Funnel (Lead Capture), and Bottom Funnel (Boost Post & Retarget)—a simple yet powerful framework for generating demand, capturing leads, and converting them into customers using a combination of organic content and paid amplification. Anthony shares why traditional tactics like cold connection requests are losing effectiveness, how AI is reshaping content creation, and why human-driven, personality-rich content still wins. He also breaks down how to structure content, budget effectively, and build a sustainable LinkedIn strategy—even with limited time.

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3 Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner

Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Anthony Blatner, the Founder and CMO of the Speedwork, LinkedIn Ad Agency, helping great companies get great customers with LinkedIn ads. Anthony, welcome to the show.

Hey, Steve, excited to be here and to talk to you today.

It’s great to have you here. So before we dive into all things LinkedIn, I’d like to ask my favorite question on this podcast, which is, what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?

Yeah, I’ve always been just really into business. I grew up being around a lot of business owners. My dad ran his own business, and he was in the finance world, so he worked with a lot of other business owners.

So since I was a kid, I've always been around a lot of business owners, and I've always just really enjoyed business, and then I just naturally gravitated to the marketing world there because I just really enjoyed the side of the business world.
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So my ‘Why’ has always been around helping and growing businesses. I come from the technology space doing software development, and now I’m in the marketing space and it’s just something I’ve always loved doing and it’s a very exciting space and it’s always changing very fast. So that’s been my personal ‘Why’, and just manifesting it every day in what we do in our work on LinkedIn. So it’s just always fun to be working with growing businesses.

Yeah, this LinkedIn is a fascinating platform. I’ve been on it, I don’t know, probably over 20 years now. Is this possible?

Yeah.

Something like that. And there were other platforms at the time like Plaxo—I think that was one competitor platform—and I was on multiple platforms. Then I quit Plaxo, and I’m glad that I actually built on the right platform. I’ve also witnessed how people are getting more and more active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is becoming kind of non-negotiable for B2B businesses. So tell me how you see this evolution and how LinkedIn has changed over the past 10 years.

Yeah, it definitely has changed a lot. Back in the day, when we were first getting started, a lot of people would ask me, “Does anybody even use LinkedIn?” Ten years ago, it wasn’t as widely used, especially on the social side. It’s always been like the digital resume. The big change happened with Covid, when everyone was had to get online more. That’s when the big shift happened. Everyone got used to using it a lot more. And then since then, people are used to using it, and it has definitely evolved into being kind of the number one social platform for professionals.

So anything business-wise, business content, people are going to go on LinkedIn to share that and talk about that. So it was kind of cemented in this place there. Then they just continued rolling out additional features and things that are useful for both users on reading, connecting with your colleagues, but then also on the marketing side of things. So the advertising platform has kind of come a long way. There’s a lot of new features, a lot of new capabilities there. So it’s been very interesting to watch how it’s evolved. And I think also at the same time we kind of see how other platforms have evolved differently.

I feel like these days, if I ever go on Facebook, it’s just a lot of like AI-generated garbage content. So during the workday or during the work week, I want to be reading business stuff. I want to be learning things and I’m going to apply to my job. That’s why I go on LinkedIn to read that type of content. And I know that’s why a lot of other professionals do it. So it’s kind of just grown into its place there in the ecosystem. So people are used to using it a lot more. And there’s been a lot of new features that have come out to help marketers use it as a marketing channel.

I’m glad you brought up this AI evolution, because I see that more and more people are writing their posts with AI. There can be benefits to that, because some people don’t write as well as an AI copywriter does—most of us, perhaps. On the other hand, the posts start to look a little bit more alike. So I wonder, what is your perception of this? Do you think people are posting more, and if they post more, do people read less? How is this evolving?

Yes, it’s a continually evolving space. I don’t think we know a hundred percent what the outcome is right now, but I think what I see across all the people that we work with—and just using the platform—there’s a lot more content these days with AI. People can use AI to generate content, so there’s a lot more content out there. But volume does not always mean quality. There’s more content, but not necessarily the best content. The best stuff that we see performing well in our ad campaigns—and also organically on LinkedIn—usually has a human angle to it, where maybe you wrote it yourself.

You can use AI to generate content—AI is great for that, and it’s great for writing—but you probably want to take what it gives you and then add your own edits and personality. That’s a big piece. The more personality you have in your content, the more people are going to engage with it.

So across the board, we see that human content still wins. AI is great for generating the bulk of the content, but then you want to put in your own voice, add some personality to it, and then that's going to help it perform kind of even better…
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Well, that takes me to the next question, which is about connection requests and people reaching out. So how is this evolving, and how do you see people reacting to connection requests? I remember 20 years ago, it was a big deal if you got a connection request, and we basically reached out to all the people we knew and connected with everyone we could. Now, there are different schools of thought. Some say that you should not connect with anyone you don’t want to do business with because it dilutes the exposure of your content, and you’re not going to go viral. You’re also not going to be able to follow the few people you can actually do business with. Other people say the more, the merrier. So what’s your view on this topic?

I think the marketers went very heavily into connection requests—especially during the Covid period—and maybe burned it out. As users, we’ve all been burned out by the connection requests and the messages we’ve been receiving. So as a platform, and in terms of how people use it, that tactic has definitely simmered down a lot. It’s still a usable, viable tactic—prospecting is never going to go away. Whether it’s email, cold calling, or LinkedIn, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time will always matter. But it is changing and evolving. Users are burned out by the messages, so they’re much more skeptical now. People accept far fewer connection requests because they can usually see the intent coming from a mile away. I still recommend connecting with people you do know—your colleagues and your clients—and also connecting with your prospects. But be aware that everyone else is cautious when they receive a connection request. They often assume you’re going to try to sell to them. So start with the people that you do know that you are working with. Prospecting will probably never go away, but definitely the platform as a whole—and what works on LinkedIn—has definitely shifted. Connection requests don’t work as well as they used to.

People have shifted more to the content side of things on LinkedIn, and I think it does provide a better user experience to the end user and also for the marketer too. At the end of the day, it’s about the end user and the experience you’re…
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I’m a LinkedIn user, you’re a LinkedIn user, so we want to have a good experience. We don’t want to just receive spam from everybody, or else we’re not going to use it. But the platform evolves, so it’s a lot more about the content you’re posting on LinkedIn. Other people are going to discover that content, and then maybe they choose to follow you at that point. Maybe they choose to send you a connection request. But it doesn’t have to be just that. When LinkedIn sees people starting to engage with your content, they’re going to show more of your content. So it’s kind of becoming a discovery platform, and there is a network effect to it.

So there’s definitely a shift toward the content you’re posting. It’s much more about thought leadership. I know the LinkedIn product team is trying to be very intentional about the content they surface to users. They want it to be high-quality, thought leadership content. As a platform, they know they’ve had a spam problem—from connection requests to the comments people leave. A lot of those comments are AI-generated. LinkedIn has taken a stand that they don’t want AI-generated comments, and they’re actively scanning to remove them. LinkedIn’s trying to reduce the AI spam, and they are trying to focus on and surface the high-quality thought leadership type of content.

So that’s all on the content side of things. And then the advertising platform has also evolved a lot too. As users and marketers shift more toward the feed and the content being created, the marketing side of LinkedIn follows that shift. Now, marketing on LinkedIn is largely about running ads in the newsfeed. On LinkedIn, you can run ad campaigns just like Facebook ad campaigns. For anybody who’s used Facebook, you’ve seen all the different ads that are on Facebook. LinkedIn has their own same ad offerings, and it’s very similar to those. So you can build your campaigns to put ads in the newsfeed. But the big change in the last year or two is that, in the past, you could only run company page ads. So all of your ads had to be from a company page. Within the last couple years, you can now do what’s called “thought leader ads,” which is just simply boosting posts from a person. So it sounds fancy when you say thought leader ads, but it’s just boosting posts from a person.

It’s a better experience all the way around because you want to be getting your content out there, so you want to be boosting your posts and getting your message out there. You want people to be getting to know you, and they also just perform a lot better because people on LinkedIn will always engage with other people more than with companies, because that’s why people are on LinkedIn to learn from other people and hear what they have to say. So those thought leader ads just perform a lot better, the better user experience all the way around. That’s where the platform has really evolved and shifted to. No more connection requests or very few of those. And now it’s all about the content people are creating, posting, and then boosting, creating a full-funnel approach that way.

Okay, that’s fascinating. So your business is LinkedIn ads and helping companies grow on LinkedIn, and this podcast is about frameworks. Yeah. I’m wondering if there’s a framework for how people should think about LinkedIn and how to use it—especially for a small business, maybe they have 10 to 50 employees, and they want to grow their business. They’re in the B2B space, they want to use LinkedIn. They’re aware that LinkedIn advertising can be pretty expensive, so they’ll likely use a combination of approaches. What’s a good frame of mind for that? There’s the company page, there’s the personal profile—so is there a simple framework for thinking about how to use LinkedIn as an advertising tool and how to promote their small to medium-sized business there?

Yes, there is. I’m going to give you the very simple yet effective thought leader ad funnel—something anyone can go and use. It’s the simplest and also the most effective thing you can do on LinkedIn. It starts with you, and I’ll explain the different stages, as well as how to get started. So the first step is getting your own posts out there. Not everybody’s posting on LinkedIn. Not everybody feels comfortable posting on LinkedIn, and sometimes it’s a hard process to go through to getting people to post. And whether that’s you or your CEO, or somebody else at your company, another leader, the first step is to get into the routine of posting regularly. Again, it could be a big hurdle for some people, but you just have to get it started. Once you start to find your voice on LinkedIn, then we’re going to start thinking about three different buckets of content that you’re going to be creating. The first bucket of content is what we call awareness content.

It gets people interested in what you have to talk about. There’s a lot that can work well here, but across the board, we see that case studies perform very well. By case studies, I mean content like: “Here’s how we achieved X, Y, Z result, here’s what you can learn from it, and here’s how you can do it.” Not the kind of case studies that say, “We’re so awesome, we did this, and we’re great,” but more educational, tips-and-tricks-style case studies. So posting those types of posts on LinkedIn. That’s why everyone else is on LinkedIn—to read those things and learn those things that they can take back to their job and to their company to improve what they’re doing. So if you’re the one creating that type of content that other people want to be reading, that’s the perfect start. And then when you’re talking about a result that you helped this certain industry or a person get somebody else in that industry who wants that result is going to read your post and your content.

So that’s why we start with that type of content. That’s what we call the top of the funnel—it’s meant to get people interested in who you are and what you’re talking about. Then the next step of the funnel, what we call the middle of the funnel.

We want people to opt in for something. Posting on LinkedIn is great, but it’s really just one step in the process.
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Most businesses want to get people to your website, want to get somebody on a list so that they can then communicate with them more afterwards. Many businesses have different resources, downloadables, or things you might offer to those people. It can be a simple newsletter, but even better than that is if it’s a webinar type of thing that somebody might register for, maybe you have a series of webinars.

It might be a guide or report, or it could be something even more than that. It could be a free trial or something like that. So the second step in the funnel is: what can you give to your audience, to your market, that provides more value, but also gets them involved and get them on your list as an indication of interest. So that’s the middle of the funnel. You can post about what you’re offering, explain what you’re sharing, and then you can link back to your website or where they can go to get that. And it’s okay to put the link in the post at this point because we’re going to be boosting it. We know that ad that post is going to be getting delivered to your audience.

So that’s middle of the funnel. Then finally, you have the bottom of the funnel. And this is where your main offer is. At this point, it might be something like “get a free consultation” or “book a demo”—whatever it is that you’re offering. At this point, you can set up your retargeting. So if somebody read your first post and then they clicked on your second post, then you’re going to retarget them with your third post.

By the time they see that third post, they’ve already seen you a couple of times on LinkedIn. They’re more familiar with you, and they’re more likely to take you up on whatever offer you’re presenting. This is where offers like a free demo or free consultation tend to perform well. You can link directly to something like Calendly, or a page on your website where they can request it, and then you’re driving people to take that next step.

I’m sure everyone here is familiar with marketing funnels. This is the simplest thought leader ad funnel that you can build, taking advantage of the thought leader ad format—which is boosting your posts, not running just a company page ad, but boosting your posts. Those will perform much better than company page ads. They’re also much cheaper to run because they perform so much better. So if you’re just getting started, this is the most cost-efficient place to start. That’s the framework right there is the thought leader ad funnel. Top of funnel: case study content. Middle of funnel: guide or opt-in. Bottom of funnel: your offer.

And then once somebody engages with your first one, you want to set it up so they get retargeted with your second post. And then once they click on the second post, or once they got opt in and get on your list, then retarget them with a third post. And then you build yourself a little funnel and then boom, you could be reaching new people and then driving them through to eventually schedule a call with you.

Yeah. That’s fascinating. So this is basically three levels that you can create posts around and to drive traffic. Maybe I’m starting with the third one—the bottom of the funnel. So after you get the opt-in from your prospect, or from people who are interested, you can retarget them with boosted posts.

Yep.

And I assume you can also send them emails and retarget them outside of LinkedIn as well?

Right. Once you get their email, then feel free to use email as another channel. People do only check LinkedIn maybe a couple times a week on average. So if they do opt in to your list, definitely use email. But getting people from that second to third stage can take a little while. It often takes a few more impressions—people need to see more of what you have to offer or what you’re talking about before they’re ready to take that next step. So use both channels.

Love it. So what about company page? Is it not worth building anymore or there’s also a place for company channels?

Yeah, don’t ignore your company page. You don’t want it to ever seem inactive. People are going to visit your company page. For anyone in business, you probably already have people visiting your website, and there are people actively doing research to learn more about you. Company pages rank very high on Google and elsewhere. So if someone searches for your business, the first result will likely be your main website, and the second result will often be your company page. That means a lot of people will end up visiting it. You don’t want it to look inactive. Even posting once a month is enough—you just want to show that there’s some level of activity there.

And then, the bigger you are as a company, the more important your company page becomes. For very small companies or solopreneurs, that’s where the thought leader ads are kind of the main thing you’re going to be doing. The bigger and bigger you go. We work with a lot of mid-market and enterprise companies as well, and for them it is more company page, overall it’s like a mix. We still use thought leader ads for big companies, but it’s a lot more company page ads will do for the big companies.

So the best way to structure that funnel is still leading with your people—those boosted posts—because they perform so much better. It’s also a great way for your audience to get to know you.
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And then once they know your people, then you can start to retarget them with the company page ads. At that point, they’ve already seen your people and are getting to know your brand. That’s when retargeting them with the actual brand ads, the company page ads, are going to perform much better. The bigger the company, the more the company page ads are going to use, and that’s how you’ll typically combine them.

I love it. It’s fascinating. So what’s the right kind of cadence? Because I see some people are on LinkedIn all the time—and I’ve tried it as well—it can take up a lot of time. You still need to do other types of prospecting too. So what do you recommend as a good cadence for someone who’s maybe a small business CEO? They don’t have a lot of time—they have to make calls, write emails—but they also want to be present on LinkedIn. What’s a sustainable pace?

Yeah, from what I see perform best—and also what’s realistic to maintain—is about posting twice a week on LinkedIn. That at least gets a decent amount of content out there without being too much. And then from there, taking those posts and boosting them into the funnel. Once you set up the funnel, it’s very quick to go boost your posts and add them into it. So really it’s about creating those twice-a-week posts and then setting up your funnel so that those posts get added to it. I do recommend using AI to take a lot of the heavy lifting off and make things easier. But of course, look at what it’s outputting, edit it so it’s in your voice, add some personality to it. It just makes it perform a lot better. It makes it more enjoyable for other people to read it. And then if you really don’t have the time, go hire somebody or go find a freelancer, or that’s when people come talk to us, is when you just need help from somebody to go do it.

So start with twice a week and go from there. There’s not really a strict upper limit—you don’t start to max out until you’re posting multiple times a day. I don’t know if anyone listening to this is going to get there, but you can post twice, three times a day, and you’re really not hurting yourself. So at least twice a week. Start with that.

Yeah. So when you say inject personality, what does that mean? Is it about sharing personal information? Is it about having your own voice? What does that even mean?

Yeah, it means a lot of things. AI can be very flat and boring, and you can read something and very often tell this is probably generated with AI. Personality is—it’s hard to say exactly what it is—but it’s like spicing it up. It’s like breaking perfect grammar. It’s using your own unique style, like the way you might start your post or the way you might sign off at the end. Because if someone’s just scrolling through the newsfeed and they’re just seeing a bunch of posts that look the same, that’s noise. It all blends in, and it’s not going to work well.

But the posts that really stand out are the ones that have a little bit of personality. It depends on your business and your vertical—maybe you add some emojis, maybe you add some questions—but it’s about finding a way to break out in the newsfeed. So there’s lots of stuff you can do. Maybe add one or two emojis, maybe add a simple question, but it’s also about adding more energy to your post. It’s not just writing flat business content—it’s finding ways to add more emotion and energy. It’s hard to define exactly what personality is, but when you scroll your feed and you see it, you’ll know it.

Yeah. I did notice that people resonate with stuff that people create. Earlier, about two years ago, we created a video that we thought was very cool, but we used AI, and almost nobody looked at it. But if I put in some emotional energy when creating the post, adding in my own ideas—and even if I write it myself—it works much better. I find the AI stuff, even if it’s structured—maybe I don’t have one-sentence paragraphs and things like that—so it can work better.

And it’s good to have a mixture of different types of content, because yes, text-only is a good format, but maybe you use certain images. Maybe you went to a conference recently, or maybe you’re with your colleagues—you can use images like that. That adds a bit of personality. Videos can also be effective, especially selfie-style videos where you’re talking about your subject or your expertise. Those are good, because AI can’t yet generate the perfect video of you talking—it’s getting much better and getting close—but people can still tell when a video is AI-generated. So leverage those formats as a way to stand out in the feed. Video is a very good format because people get to see you and hear from you. They feel like they get to know you a lot faster when they watch a video.

Most of the time in business and sales, you don’t get to meet someone until you’re at an event or on a sales call. So use the LinkedIn feed as a way to accelerate that. Let people get to know you by letting them see you and hear you, and they’ll…
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Yeah, I love it. Okay, so I think it’s a great picture, and thanks for sharing it. So creating awareness is kind of top of funnel—case studies, what works, tips and tricks. Then you share a lead magnet-type thing, build your list, invite them to download something, come to a webinar, do a free trial, and then you have that list. And then you can retarget them with your bottom of the funnel, which could be more of the same, I guess. It could be multiple channels. So that’s really cool. Now, if someone wants to do this, what kind of budget should they be thinking about? Because boosting posts can be expensive, but if it’s a good post and you get people to download stuff, maybe it’s a good ROI. So what kind of budget would make a difference if I were to post twice? Let’s say I’m a CEO of a small-to-medium business. I post twice a week, I develop a couple of lead magnets, I do some retargeting, boosting posts—what kind of budget makes a meaningful difference for me?

Yeah, so the minimum LinkedIn lets you spend on a single campaign per day is 10 bucks a day. so the very minimum is $10 a day to get started, and then you can kind of play around with it from there. To build the system that I mentioned, that would be three different campaigns. So that’d be about $900 to $1,000 a month. So that’s kind of the minimum to get started there. We see companies start to have more predictable and repeatable results once you get to at least $3K a month in total spend. You’re probably going to start with more of that in the top and middle of the funnel, and then those audiences get smaller as you move down toward the bottom. About $3K a month is where you start to see more predictable, reliable results. But you can get started with as little as $10 a day. And then if you’re a bigger mid-market or enterprise company, you might be spending tens or hundreds of thousands a month on ads. You can scale it as far as you want, but to get started, at least $10 a day.

Yeah, that makes sense. If you do $1,000 a month, then get to $3,000, you can actually use it as a proper, predictable channel. So when you say predictable, what kind of results can people expect? Is it a certain number of downloads? I mean, obviously it depends on the content and the quality of the thought leadership—I get it—but what is the typical range that you see?

Yeah. For some averages—if you build that funnel like I mentioned—what we typically see is you might be driving downloads or opt-ins for your newsletter or webinar at anywhere between $50 to $150 per opt-in. It kind of depends on what it is. Newsletters are easier to drive opt-ins for, while webinars are a bit harder because someone knows they need to set aside time in their schedule. That said, there are some businesses we’re working with that are getting about $7 to $8 per opt-in.

And again, you want to use LinkedIn when you’re targeting a professional audience that carries more value for your business. So $7 to $8 is a really good cost per opt-in. For example, in that case, we’re targeting marketing directors, VPs of marketing, CMOs at mid-market companies. Then for call bookings, those can range anywhere between $100 to $500 per booking. In many cases, we’re driving people directly to a Calendly link so they can schedule a call right there. So yeah, you might see somewhere between $100 to $500 per call booking. That all very much depends on your audience and your offer, but those are some typical ranges we see.

So you’re a business owner as well, and you teach people how to do this, and you help people do this. Are you using LinkedIn for growing your business? Is this effective for your type of business—LinkedIn consulting?

Yeah, LinkedIn is our number one channel. That’s where most people find out about us. It makes sense for what we do—we’re doing LinkedIn marketing, so people are going to discover us on LinkedIn. I’d say probably the number two channel is doing podcasts, speaking at events, and webinars. That’s probably the next biggest driver. But LinkedIn is definitely number one.

I guess that’s advertising. So other than advertising and promoting yourself, what drives growth in your business?

What drives growth in our business is using LinkedIn marketing. What makes us different from other people is we’ve built tooling on top of the LinkedIn Ads API, so we can get more data from the API than you can inside of LinkedIn Campaign Manager. That allows us to do advanced optimizations and see more than you can just inside Campaign Manager. We’re able to pull more data from the API and do deeper analysis on things you can’t normally see. So we can get really deep into the demographics—like what sizes of companies are performing best, what industries are performing best, what job titles are performing best.

And that’s where you start to make more advanced optimizations, like, “Oh, I see this job title is working well, or this one’s not,” or “This industry is performing very well, and this other one is not.” Then you make those adjustments to your campaigns based on that data. So those are some things that make us different. And then after that, it’s just our experience. We’ve been doing it for 10 years. I created a course on LinkedIn Learning about LinkedIn advertising, so if you go to learn about LinkedIn ads, you might end up taking my course there. And it’s really just the depth of experience—we’ve seen every type of funnel, worked with every type of company.

That’s fascinating. Well, Anthony, if someone would like to learn more—okay, they can go to LinkedIn Learning, as you just shared—but how can they connect with you, and how can they get the most up-to-date stuff from you?

Yes. Well, I’m on LinkedIn. I share a lot of content there, so you can look me up on LinkedIn. Otherwise, our website is SpeedworkSocial.com. If you’d like to get our help, you can go there. We also have our own podcast—it’s called LinkedIn Ads Radio—where we have lots of episodes going through different topics. We do interviews with LinkedIn and other leading marketers, so there’s some really good content there. And then also on YouTube—all of those episodes exist there as well.

Fantastic. Well, if you own a small business, or you run one—a small to medium-sized business or even an enterprise—and you want to grow your B2B audience, then just follow Anthony’s recipe: the three levels. The top of the funnel—creating awareness with case studies—then developing your lead magnets, and then retargeting, email marketing to them, boosting your posts. Anthony, thanks for clarifying this for me. I’ve been on LinkedIn for 20 years, but I didn’t have this picture in my mind. And for those of you listening, if you enjoy this content, stay tuned, because we have similar episodes every week from thought leaders and business owners who share their tips and tricks. I guess this is top of funnel, right?

Yes.

So, Anthony, thanks for coming, and thanks for listening.

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326: Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner

Management Blueprint | Steve Preda

326: Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner