Why Thought Leader Ads Beat Company Posts: AJ Wilcox

Introduction

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I first got to know AJ back in 2020 we did a LinkedIn live together during my time at LinkedIn what really stood out about AJ is not just his knowledge of LinkedIn Ads but his enthusiasm he's  one of the early adapters and advocates of LinkedIn Ads for driving pipeline he's as bullish on them now as he was over a decade ago so it made a ton of sense to get his take on where he see's Thought Leader Ads as format for driving pipeline.

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A company post and a person's post can say the exact same thing. One of them gets ignored. The other gets three to five times the attention. That is not a theory. That is what AJ sees every day running paid LinkedIn campaigns for B2B brands.

AJ founded B2Linked over a decade ago, back when most marketers had never heard the words LinkedIn ads. He has spent years since figuring out what actually converts on the platform, and his agency now runs Thought Leader Ads as the first touch for nearly every client they have.

I spoke with him to talk about why this format works, how to build a three stage funnel around it, and why getting an executive on video is harder than anyone expects. If you care about B2B influencer marketing, the creator economy, or what actually drives pipeline through LinkedIn strategy you're likely to get a lot of value from our conversation.

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Key Takeaways

• A person's post outperforms a company post by three to five times. Use Thought Leader Ads as the first touch with any cold audience.
• Executives freeze when asked to record video alone. Interview them instead and you will get usable content every time.
• A three stage funnel beats a single hard sell. Educate first, retarget the engaged, then ask for the meeting & no the funnel isn't dead
• Target the person who feels the pain first. Bring in the rest of the buying committee only after they have shown interest.
• Most micro influencers do not want cash. They want their content amplified to a bigger audience.
• Carousel ads on LinkedIn are overpriced and underperform. Avoid them.
• AI generated thought leadership will get noisier before it gets better. Real people on camera will become rarer and more valuable.

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Why a Person Beats a Company Every Time

AJ told me something on the show that I have seen play out with every client I have worked with. Take the exact same post. Publish it from the company page. Then publish it from a person. The personal version gets three to five times the engagement.

This is the entire logic behind Thought Leader Ads. LinkedIn used to only let you boost posts from people inside your own organisation. Then they opened it up to anyone who gives permission. That single change turned a feature into a strategy. AJ now runs Thought Leader Ads as the first touch for almost every client at B2Linked, because they are the cheapest way to get a cold audience to actually pay attention.

Cold audiences do not care what your company does. They have not earned the right to your attention yet. But a person sharing something useful, something educational, something that sounds like a real opinion rather than a press release, gets a different reaction. That is not a tactic. That is just how people behave.

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The Three Stage Funnel That Actually Converts

Most B2B marketing teams ask for the meeting too early. AJ has tested this enough times to know exactly what happens when you do. Nobody books the call. The ones who do half the time never show up.

His fix is a three stage funnel. Stage one is Thought Leader Ads to a cold audience, built to educate rather than sell. Anyone who engages, watches half a video, comments, clicks to read more, becomes the retargeting audience for stage two. Stage two runs document ads or longer video to that warmer group. Anyone who engages there becomes the audience for stage three, where conversation ads finally ask for the meeting.

AJ's data shows each stage converts roughly five times better than the one before it. That is not a small lift. That is the entire economics of B2B influencer marketing in one number. Pipeline does not come from shouting louder at strangers. It comes from earning attention in stages and only asking for commitment once someone has already shown interest twice.

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Target the Pain Feeler

There is a temptation to go straight after the whole committee. AJ initially avoids it. He calls the first target the pain feeler, the person who actually experiences the problem your product solves day to day. Going after a large audience from the start multiplies your spend for no real gain.

Instead, AJ targets the pain feeler directly in the cold stage. Once they engage, he builds a dynamic list of companies in the funnel and only then layers in the rest of the buying committee, finance, procurement, whoever else needs to sign off. By the time the committee sees anything, the pain feeler has usually already taken it to them. The reaction changes completely. Instead of cold scepticism, it is recognition. I have heard of this company before.

This is the buying committee dynamic every enterprise seller already understands. AJ has just built the LinkedIn strategy and the budget discipline to make it repeatable.

Getting Executives on Camera Without the Excuses

Every brand wants its founder or its head of sales on video. Almost none of them get it done. AJ has tried the obvious approach, asking an executive to record something themselves, more times than he can count. It almost never works. They book the time. They sit in front of the camera. They freeze, overthink it, and the video never happens.

What works instead is an interview. Schedule thirty minutes once a month. Ask questions. Let the executive talk naturally. You walk away with four to eight usable clips from a single session, and nobody had to perform alone in front of a lens. This is a small operational fix with a large commercial consequence. It is the difference between a creator strategy that produces nothing and one that actually feeds a pipeline.

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What Comes Next for B2B Creators

AJ's prediction for the next year is one I think about a lot. As more brands lean on AI generated thought leadership, avatars, scripted content, polished but empty, audiences will start noticing the absence of a real person behind it. The brands willing to put an actual human on camera, with the awkward pauses and the real opinions, will stand out simply by being real.

That is the entire premise of the B2B creator economy. Trust is not manufactured. It is earned by showing up as a person your buyers already believe.

This is exactly the loop Kleos was built to run.

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