The Boost Button

You boosted a post. That’s not a LinkedIn ad strategy.

There’s one conversation about LinkedIn ads I have more than any other.

“We tried LinkedIn ads. Spent the money. Got likes, a few new followers, no leads. I don’t think paid works for us.”

I always ask the same question back: did you run a campaign, or did you press Boost?

It’s nearly always Boost.

That’s not a criticism. LinkedIn puts the Boost button right under your post, it takes about ninety seconds to use, and it feels like advertising. But what it buys is quite different from what most founders think they’re paying for.

THE THREAD SO FAR

In Issue #3, we looked at the peer trap: every like from a peer teaches LinkedIn to show your content to more peers, not to buyers. In Issue #10, we separated metrics that feel like progress from metrics that show pipeline. In Issue #15, we argued that paid media should come after the foundations, not before them.

This issue picks up from there. Once the foundations are in place and you’re ready to spend, this is how to make sure the money reaches buyers.

WHAT THE BOOST BUTTON ACTUALLY BUYS

When you boost a Page post, LinkedIn asks you to choose an objective. If you choose “Increase engagement on your post”, which is the obvious choice for a thought-leadership post, you’re asking LinkedIn to find people likely to click, like, comment and follow.

That isn’t the same as finding people likely to buy.

Then there’s the audience. The default option in the boost flow is a “Suggested audience”: LinkedIn’s AI proposes who should see the post based on its text. You can build your own audience instead, but inside the boost flow that means choosing from job seniority, job function, company industry, LinkedIn Groups and preset audience templates, plus location and language.

Here’s what you can’t start from inside the boost flow:

• The list of companies you actually want as clients
• The people who visited your pricing page last month
• The people who watched 75% of your product video

All three are possible on LinkedIn. You just have to set them up in Campaign Manager, which most founders never open.

So the typical boost pays LinkedIn to find people who resemble the words in your post and who like engaging with posts. That’s the peer trap again, this time with your money behind it.

WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN IT SEEMS

The B2B Institute, LinkedIn’s own research unit, worked with Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute on what they called the 95:5 rule. At any given time, only about 5% of your potential buyers are actively looking to buy. The other 95% won’t be for months or years.

That changes what an ad has to do. A boosted post asking strangers to “get in touch” is aimed at the 5% and gets ignored by the 95%. A good LinkedIn ad strategy does two things at once:

1. It keeps you remembered by the 95%, so you’re the name that comes to mind when their time comes.
2. It’s ready for the 5% who are actively looking right now.

The Boost button can’t do either well, because it doesn’t know who your buyers are.

WHAT TO RUN INSTEAD: THREE MOVES

Move 1: Promote your best post as a Thought Leader Ad. Thought Leader Ads let your company’s ad account promote a post from your personal profile. It still appears under your name and your face, not your logo.

This matters because people relate to a person more readily than to a brand. A founder’s post with a real opinion doesn’t read like an ad, even when it is one.

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The practical requirements:

• Someone with admin or Sponsored Content poster rights on your company Page sets it up.
• You approve the sponsorship.
• The post must be public, and your profile must show your full name.
• There’s no CTA button, so the post itself has to make people curious.

Move 2: Target your list, not a category. Write down the 200–500 companies you’d actually want as clients. Upload them to Campaign Manager as a company list (a Matched Audience), then narrow it by seniority or function so you reach the decision-makers inside those accounts.

Now your budget is spent only on companies you’ve chosen, and nothing goes to people who merely match your keywords.

One honest caveat: LinkedIn needs at least 300 matched members before an audience can run. A very short list of companies, narrowed to a few job titles, may not get there. Start a little wider and narrow it as you learn.

Move 3: Retarget the people who already showed interest. Put the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website. It’s free, and it starts building an audience of your visitors immediately, before you spend anything. You can also retarget people who watched your videos or opened your lead form.

Show these people proof, not another awareness post. Use a case study, a client result or a short walkthrough. They’ve already shown interest, so now they need a reason to believe you.

Put together, the sequence looks like this:

• Thought Leader Ad to your account list, to be remembered
• Proof to the people who engaged, to build belief
• A lead form only to the warm audience, to make the ask

That’s a campaign, and it’s built in a completely different way from a boost.

BEFORE YOU SPEND A RUPEE

Do these five things this week:

1. Install the Insight Tag today. Every day without it is a day of website visitors you can’t retarget later.
2. Write your account list. If you can’t name 200 companies you want as clients, go back to Issue #2 before spending anything.
3. Pick a post that already works. Promote a post that has earned comments from the right people, not your newest one. (Our own rule: boost only after 3–4 genuine comments are in.)
4. Turn off the LinkedIn Audience Network for your first tests. It’s switched on by default and shows your ads on partner sites and apps outside LinkedIn. For a small, precise B2B test, keep the spend on LinkedIn.
5. Judge results by who engaged, not how many. Check the job titles and companies of the people who responded. If you wouldn’t take a call with them, the campaign isn’t working, however good the click-through rate looks.

THE BOTTOM LINE

When founders ask me whether LinkedIn ads work, my answer is always the same:

The ads work. The button doesn’t.

The Boost button isn’t useless. It’s fine for promoting an event or for pushing a post that’s already landing with the right people. But it can’t do the job you need: making sure the right companies remember you, and making it easy for them when they’re ready to buy.

OVER TO YOU

Pick a side: is the Boost button a useful shortcut or a slow way to burn your budget?

Reply with “shortcut”, “money pit”, or “never pressed it”, plus one line on why. I’ll share the split, with the sharpest replies kept anonymous, in Issue #19.

Tanmay Sharma, Founder, Vividh Visibility