The biggest bottleneck with thought leader ads is not the ad setup, the targeting, or the budget. It is getting real people to post the content you need to promote. TLAs only work when someone – an employee, a customer, a partner – publishes an organic LinkedIn post that you can then boost as an ad. And convincing those people to post regularly is harder than most marketers expect.
I run ABM campaigns on LinkedIn with an $80K/month budget, and TLAs are the single best-performing format in my campaigns. The median CPC for TLAs is $2.29 compared to $13.23 for single image ads, according to ZenABM’s 2026 Benchmarks Report. One of our TLAs hit a 17% CTR with 3.4% clicks to landing page. But none of that matters if you cannot get enough posts to promote.
In this guide, I will share three approaches I have used and seen others use to get ICPs to post content that you can run as thought leader ads – from sourcing posts from customers who already love you, to building an internal content engine with your colleagues.
Before getting into the how, let me explain why getting the right people to post matters so much for TLA performance.
TLAs work because they look like organic posts from a real person – not like ads. But the credibility of that person has to match the audience you are targeting. If you are running an ABM campaign targeting product managers, a post from your CEO talking about revenue metrics will not resonate the same way as a post from a product manager on your team sharing how they solved a workflow problem.
“If I’m targeting product managers, I would have it posted by a product manager at Userpilot. Because this increases credibility, and we’ve seen amazing results with this. People just feel this is more authentic, this is not an ad, even though it is an ad.” – Emilia Korczynska, VP Marketing at Userpilot
Gabriel Ehrlich from Remotion reinforces this point from his experience running TLAs across multiple accounts:
“There are different best practices for different audiences, and different best practices for different thought leaders.” – Gabriel Ehrlich, Founder of Remotion
This means you cannot just find one willing poster and call it done. You need multiple people posting, ideally people who match the persona you are targeting. The more ICP-relevant your thought leaders are, the better your TLAs will perform.
The easiest TLA content to source is content that already exists. People who love your product are already posting about it – you just need to find them and ask permission to boost their posts.
Tim Davidson, founder of B2B Rizz and one of the leading TLA specialists, shared this exact approach during the ZenABM ABM Bootcamp:
When you find a good post, reach out directly to the author. Be specific about what you want:
The conversion rate on these requests is surprisingly high. People are flattered that you want to promote their content. And since they already posted it organically, there is zero extra effort on their part.
This approach has a natural limitation: you can only promote what people have already posted. You cannot control the frequency, the topics, or the messaging. For a steady stream of TLA content, you need one of the next two approaches.
If you want a repeatable source of ICP-generated TLA content, build a formal customer advocacy program. Instead of hoping customers post about you, create a system that encourages and rewards them for sharing their experience.
The basic structure is simple: you inform your users (ideally in-app, where they are already engaged) that you will reward them with something valuable if they post a LinkedIn “hero” post about their experience with your product.
The post should follow the TLA best practices we know work:
“Hook strategy – open with a pain point or vulnerability that really resonates. Use social proof. Specific metrics, specific playbooks or workflows, and specific results.” – Emilia Korczynska, on what makes winning TLAs
The reward does not need to be expensive. Options I have seen work:
The best time to ask for an advocacy post is when the customer has just achieved a meaningful result. If your product tracks milestones or outcomes, trigger the ask at the right moment – right after they hit a goal, complete a major workflow, or reach a usage threshold. A customer who just saw their pipeline double is far more likely to write a genuine, enthusiastic post than one you email randomly.
This is what I do today, and it is the most reliable approach for consistent TLA content. If you have ICPs inside your own company – product managers, engineers, customer success people, sales reps – you can get them to post from their personal profiles and then boost those posts as TLAs.
We literally put this into our ABM campaign plan. It is not an afterthought or a nice-to-have. Content from colleagues is a planned, scheduled part of the campaign.
The process:
The biggest advantage of this approach is control. You decide the topics, the timing, and the messaging. You get the authenticity of a real person’s post with the strategic alignment of a planned campaign.
The challenge with the arm-twisting method is that your colleagues have their own jobs. Posting on LinkedIn is not their priority. Here is how to make it sustainable:
Tim Davidson offered a pragmatic take on how much engagement the thought leader needs to maintain:
“Ideally they will [respond to comments]. I don’t think it’s a non-negotiable. I would say if they post organically and there’s zero comments, that’s going to hurt you more than if you respond to like half of them.” – Tim Davidson, Founder of B2B Rizz
So ask your colleagues to engage with comments when they can, but do not make it a hard requirement. Some engagement is better than none, and the TLA will still perform even without the poster actively managing the comment section.
| Approach | Best For | Control Level | Effort | Scalability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Find existing mentions | Quick wins, authentic social proof | Low (you use what exists) | Low | Limited by organic volume |
| Customer advocacy program | Ongoing ICP content from real users | Medium (you guide but do not control) | Medium to high (program setup) | High if product has large user base |
| Colleague arm-twisting | Consistent, strategically aligned content | High (you write the drafts) | Medium (writing + coordination) | Limited by number of willing colleagues |
My recommendation: start with approach 3 (colleagues) for immediate, controlled content. Layer in approach 1 (existing mentions) as you find them. Build approach 2 (customer advocacy) as a long-term investment that pays off over time.
Most teams I talk to only use one approach. The teams that consistently run high-performing TLAs use all three, which gives them enough content variety to avoid the frequency problem Gabriel Ehrlich warns about:
“Thought leader ads, you really want to have as low as possible frequency on each thought leader. You don’t want the same person seeing the same thought leader ad many, many times.” – Gabriel Ehrlich, Founder of Remotion
Multiple thought leaders means you can rotate who appears in your TLAs, keeping frequency low per person while maintaining overall campaign volume.
Whether your content comes from customers or colleagues, the posts need to follow the patterns that make TLAs work. Share these guidelines with anyone writing TLA content for you:
If you are writing posts for colleagues, write 2-3 variations for each topic. Let them pick the one that feels most like something they would actually say. The version they choose might not be the one you think is “best” from a marketing perspective, but if it sounds like them, it will perform better as a TLA.
For the full breakdown of TLA creative strategies, see our guide on LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads for ABM.
Once you have multiple people posting, you need to track which thought leaders drive the most engagement from your target accounts – not just overall CTR, but company-level engagement.
With ZenABM, you can see which target accounts clicked on which TLA, giving you data to make decisions like:
This data also helps you make the case to colleagues and customers. When you can show someone that their post drove clicks from 15 target accounts including [Company X], they are much more likely to post again.
You can promote any organic LinkedIn post from a person’s profile as a TLA, as long as that person is connected to your Company Page (as an employee, or they grant you access). The post needs to be a regular feed post – you cannot boost comments, articles, or newsletter posts as TLAs. The person must approve the sponsorship through LinkedIn.
I recommend at least 3-5 active thought leaders for a mature TLA program. This lets you rotate who appears in your ads, keeping frequency low per person. Gabriel Ehrlich specifically warns against showing the same thought leader too many times to the same audience – multiple posters solve this naturally.
Start with the colleagues who are already somewhat active on LinkedIn – they are the easiest to convert. For reluctant colleagues, offer to write the entire post and handle everything except the actual publish button. Show them the results from other colleagues’ TLAs (impressions, engagement, profile views). Many people change their mind when they see the personal brand benefit. If someone truly does not want to participate, do not force it – an unwilling thought leader produces inauthentic content.
Not necessarily. The best TLAs build credibility and share genuine expertise, with a contextual mention or link to your product woven into the story. Do not post TLAs that say “book a demo of my product” – that kills the authenticity. Instead, share a real story about solving a problem and mention that your product was part of the solution. The link should come after you have built context and trust in the post.
1-2 posts per month per person is sustainable for most colleagues. For customers in an advocacy program, 1 post per quarter is realistic. The goal is not volume from any single person – it is having enough different people posting that you always have fresh content to promote. I plan TLA content into the campaign calendar the same way I plan any other creative asset.
