LinkedIn Lead Gen for Service Companies

Attract your ideal prospects with LinkedIn ads and webinars.

This webinar originally aired on January 14, 2025.

This webinar discusses high-level concepts and also the detailed steps of exactly how to run a lead generation program that can reliably generate leads for you and connect the dots to sales conversations with those leads.

Why are we talking about LinkedIn lead generation?

It's probably because you have a goal of generating more revenue in your company this year. To do that, you need more customers. The best way to get new customers is to find people who actually want to talk with you about your services.

We want marketing strategies that make sales easier.

‍There are a lot of different options for growing your business, creating awareness of your services, and prospecting. This is one strategy that can really help you generate new conversations and new opportunities.

Creating a Growth Flywheel

Ideally, the strategies we implement build momentum over time. As we implement activities and make marketing investments, more people come into our flywheel. As that flywheel gains momentum and grows, we’re able to convert our marketing investment into sales and revenue.

We have two primary ways people come into our flywheel, We have cold audiences we’re targeting and attracted through promoted content, and we also have people searching for information who discover our content.

Today, we’re really focused on feeding more of the cold audience into this flywheel. We’re creating awareness of our services, nurturing leads, building trust with leads, reengaging as timing becomes more appropriate, and starting conversations based on the trust we’ve created.

‍

What are you going to get from this?

We’ll walk through how to choose topics your ideal customers will actually sign up for, how to create lead-generation campaigns using LinkedIn, how to connect platforms and streamline the customer experience, and how to follow up with leads and book appointments—building up our flywheel.

Why LinkedIn? It’s mainly because the targeting on LinkedIn is unmatched for B2B cold audiences.

No other platform allows us to target people based on company firmographics and persona attributes as precisely as LinkedIn.

People associate their companies and roles with their LinkedIn profiles, which allows us to target them. We’ll talk about all the different types of audience targeting available so you can reach your target audience most effectively.

Another big advantage is LinkedIn’s in-feed forms, which streamline the customer journey. Prospects can sign up for what we’re promoting without leaving the platform.

We’ll also talk about why webinars are especially powerful, particularly for smaller companies that want to maximize their marketing investment.

Webinars help accelerate the sales cycle because you can build trust immediately, people see you, hear your expertise, and get value more quickly than they might from static or written content.

Another unique aspect of webinars is that contacts give you permission to follow up and send reminders.

They know they’ll get communications about the event, which gives you an opportunity to share a bit more about your services and establish credibility.

Finally, you can connect your service offering directly to the topic you’re covering, which is a great way to transition to talking about how you help solve the very problems your audience is there to learn about.

So, what do you need to be successful? You need:

• A topic your customers care about
• A LinkedIn Ads account
• An understanding of how LinkedIn Ads works
• Webinar software and email software
• The ability to connect the experience (so that when someone signs up, everything flows properly)

My hope is that after this, you have a good idea of how to do this yourself and see the benefits of running your first campaign—or improving the results if you’ve already tried.

I want to share a recent example of this in action. One of my clients is an accounting firm that targeted a topic and audience related to private medical practice owners for bookkeeping services.

They put $1,500 toward promoting a webinar and got 38 signups at $39 per signup. They had a 35% show rate, three consulting offers, and closed one new client. You can see how quickly you can generate interest and find people who may already be in the market or might be soon. That’s the power of this model.

Now let’s dive into how you can set up this strategy in your business.

Step 1: Selecting Webinar Topics Your Prospects Will Actually Sign Up For

This is very important because when you spend ad dollars, it comes down to unit metrics, how much each lead costs. The fastest way to make a difference here is with topic selection.

If we’re going to spend $2,000 on an ad campaign, there’s a huge difference between a $10 cost per lead and a $200 cost per lead. Good topic selection makes the biggest impact on cost per lead.

We want a high-priority, near-term issue that aligns with what people care about right now. We’ll talk about longer sales cycles in a bit, but if you can align your webinar with something people urgently need, your leads will come in at a better cost.

Here’s how we approached this with that accounting firm targeting private medical practice owners:

1. Identify what that audience cares about.
2. Discuss what’s getting in the way of achieving it.
3. Identify the knowledge or skills gap preventing them from solving it.
4. Tie that to your relevant services.

Generating Webinar Topics with a Problem Waterfall

To brainstorm topics, I use what I call a “problem waterfall list.

”You start with a broad problem (“I want to grow my company”), then break it down until you find the right “altitude” where it’s specific enough to be compelling but still appeals to a broad enough audience for an ad campaign.

• If you start with the customer problem “I want to grow my company.”
• The next problem a customer might focus on could be “I need more leads.”
• Which could lead to a new problem, “I need a better landing page.”
• Which could then lead to, “I need to drive traffic to my landing page with LinkedIn Ads.”

If you land on the right problem altitude being “I need to run LinkedIn Ads,” then your webinar topic becomes: “How to Generate Leads With LinkedIn Ads.”

This can work for any industry or any type of buyer if you choose the right high-priority pain point.

Step 2: Setting up a LinkedIn ad campaign

We’ll focus on one main campaign type (Lead Generation) because that’s how we unlock LinkedIn’s in-feed lead forms. We’ll also talk budgeting, audiences, ad copy and graphics, and creating the lead form.

Setting Your Campaign Objective

‍Choose “Lead generation” as your campaign objective if you want to use in-feed forms (which you do).When a prospect clicks your ad, that form pops up in LinkedIn itself, and fields like name, email, and company auto-fill from their LinkedIn profile. It dramatically reduces friction compared to sending them off-platform to a separate landing page.BudgetingOnce you choose “Lead generation,” you’ll set your budget. My advice is to use a lifetime budget.Pick an end date (the day of your webinar), and LinkedIn will spread out your ad spend automatically. For your bidding strategy, choose “Maximize” leads.This is the optimum setup for LinkedIn to do the heavy lifting for you.

Selecting Your Target Audience

‍Audience selection is critical. LinkedIn offers four types of audiences:

• ‍List Audiences – You can upload lists of contacts (e.g., your CRM leads, prospect lists, an email list).LinkedIn will match them to their profiles. This is powerful if you know precisely who you want to reach.
• ‍Platform Attribute Audiences – You can set criteria like job titles, industries, company size, etc.
• ‍Retargeting Audiences– You can create audiences based on people who already interacted with your form or website, etc.
• ‍Predictive Audiences – LinkedIn will build a “lookalike” audience of people who share characteristics with an existing list you provide.

You can combine these. Often, combining a first-party contact list with platform attributes and retargeting is very effective.

‍Ad Creative (Copy & Graphics)

‍Don’t overcomplicate this. Use a simple tool like Canva to create a clean, direct graphic. The ad for this webinar was just a template from Canva. Include two ad variations, so you can see which one performs better and pause the lower performer.

‍Lead Forms

‍After uploading your ad creative, you’ll create the lead form. Keep it simple and consistent with the ad messaging. It auto-fills the contact’s info, so all they have to do is click submit.Budget Models & ExamplesI like using $100 per signup as a conservative baseline for B2B campaigns. It can be lower or higher, but $100 is a good rough estimate.

Setting a LinkedIn Ads Budget based on Expected Results

Small Budget Example
Here's a back of napkin example of a campaign with a $2,000 budget.

With a $100 cost per webinar signup, you generate 20 signups, where 15% of those lead to real conversations (3 people), and 1 new client.

If your average retainer is $1,500/month with a lifetime value of $18,000, that’s a solid ROI on one campaign—and you still have a list of warm leads to continue to nurture.

Larger Budget / Higher Ticket Example
‍If you’re targeting enterprise or C-suite with a longer sales cycle and higher contract values ($150k+), leads might cost $500 to $1,000 each.

Spending $15,000 could get you 30 signups, and if you close even one deal in a 12-month sales cycle, your ROI is substantial.

Both are effective if your topic is relevant and help your audience overcome challenges they're facing.

Step 3: Webinar Software & Integrations

You need webinar software that integrates seamlessly with LinkedIn Lead Forms through Zapier (or another integration tool), so when someone fills out the LinkedIn form, they’re automatically registered for your webinar.

‍Criteria for Good Webinar Software
My criteria for webinar software is a platform that integrates with LinkedIn lead forms via  Zapier to register leads automatically.

It also needs to send automated reminders and “save the date” calendar links (important for boosting show rates).And it should be easy to set up.

‍EasyWebinar is a great choice. WebinarJam and Zoom Webinars also work if you configure them properly.

‍Setup Steps:

1. Create the event inside your webinar platform (date, time, etc.).
2. Connect your LinkedIn lead form to it via Zapier (so form fills = automatic registration).
3. Make sure your event reminder sequence is turned on (1-day, 1-hour reminders, etc.).
4. Write your follow-up emails.

Step 4: Following Up & Booking Appointments

After your webinar, it’s time to convert attendees (and even no-shows) into conversations. This is when you build on the trust and awareness you created.

‍Tailor Your Offer to Your Webinar Topic

If your topic was “Cash Flow Management for Small Businesses,” follow up with an offer to help set up their bookkeeping and processes. Show how you solve the exact problem covered in the webinar.

‍Multi-Channel Follow-Up Email

‍Immediately after the event, then 1 day later, 3 days later, 7 days later, 14 days later, 30 days later. Choose a cadence that makes sense. Share more insights, restate the problem, and invite them to book a meeting.

‍LinkedIn Engagement

‍Connect with attendees on LinkedIn and start conversations, engage with their posts, etc.

Add your contacts to a "webinar leads" Sales Navigator list so you can continue to engage with their posts.

Some of your leads may eventually take you up on a meeting request if you stay top-of-mind.

Step 5: Nurturing Leads

Keep the momentum going. An email newsletter is great for staying top-of-mind, no need for a fancy design. Just send consistent, authentic updates, stories, or insights related to the same core themes you covered. That way, if someone wasn’t ready right after the webinar, they might be ready next month.

Special offers or future webinars can reactivate leads. Many companies find that the second or third webinar is when people finally convert, simply because the timing becomes right. That’s how the flywheel continues to gain momentum.

Putting It All Into Action

1. ^Choose a topic using the “problem waterfall” method.
2. Create a LinkedIn lead-gen campaign for that topic.
3. Schedule your webinar and integrate it via Zapier.
4. Run your ads and collect registrations.
5. Host the webinar.
6. Follow up with leads and stay top-of-mind.

‍

Try it for yourself

Don’t wait until you have the perfect topic, slides, and rehearsed webinar. Select a topic, choose a date two to three weeks from away, create your promotional materials, launch your LinkedIn Lead Gen ads, and show up as yourself and teach your webinar registrants something you're passionate about. You’ll learn so much from one campaign. That’s the strategy.

I hope it helps you get more qualified leads, build trust quickly, and drive new opportunities for your service business.

‍