Winning with LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads CASE STUDY: How Valueships Scored 12 Meetings, $0.15 Cost Per LP Click, and a $2.31 CPM with TLAs

$0.15 cost per landing page click. 66x cheaper than their image ads. 12 meetings booked from cold in under two weeks. Total spend:

…$391.

This is probably the most mind-blowing case of thought leader ads smashing it on LinkedIn I have ever seen – and I have been running LinkedIn ABM campaigns for the last three years (with $20-80k monthly budget)… but when Valueships shared their first two weeks of TLA data with me, I had to reconsider our entire demand gen plan and reprioritize our ABM ads strategy. 🤯

Luckily, I’m friends with the cofounder so I could witness this miracle and have lived to share it  with you 😅 and in this post, I will break down exactly what Valueships did, show you the top-performing TLAs with real performance data, explain the creative patterns that drove those results, and share how they use ZenABM to turn TLA engagement into pipeline by personalized outreach to the interested accounts.

The Numbers: Thought Leader Ads vs. Image Ads vs. Carousel Ads

Valueships ran three ad formats simultaneously in the same campaign targeting senior SaaS executives (CFOs, CEOs, and similar roles) across a global audience (US, UK, DACH, and Western Europe). Here is the full breakdown:

Read that again.

TLAs drove 83% of all website clicks while spending only 6% of the total ad budget.

The cost per landing page click from TLAs was $0.15. From image ads it was $10.02. From carousels it was $11.69.

That is 66x cheaper – cost per click to landing page from TLAs than cpc from image ads 🤯

The CPM tells the rest of the story. LinkedIn charged Valueships $2.31 per thousand impressions for TLAs versus $48-55 for the other formats.

LinkedIn’s algorithm treated the TLAs as high-quality organic content (Linkedin recognized they really ship value, hehe)  and rewarded them with dramatically cheaper distribution.

Since the TLAs were outperforming every other format – it was natural for Valueships to want to pause all the other ads – I told them to hold their horses until the data syncs and they can tell if the conversions were influenced by TLAs only, or have been influenced by image ads and carousels too…but when the company-level engagement results came in (from ZenABM) – the demos were all influenced by TLAs only. Needless to say, other ad formats (image & carousel ads) had to go.

The result? Image ads and carousels had to go. 🥲 I advised Ola Romańczyk, their Head of Growth, to pause them after a week.

The Backstory: How Valueships Got Here

Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz is the co-founder of Valueships – a SaaS pricing consultancy that helps B2B software companies increase revenue through pricing optimization. He is also the only person who actually closed a deal at my wedding (except my husband). Kris has been posting sharp, opinionated content about SaaS pricing on LinkedIn and built a strong personal brand through conferences and speaking. But being the smartest guy in the room does not scale – literally, Kris was sometimes hopping between three countries in two days.

I had been pushing Valueships to try LinkedIn thought leader ads for a while. Finally, their new Head of Growth, Alexandra, reached out and said they were ready. I helped them pick out some of their best LinkedIn posts, we set up the campaigns, and well – you know the rest of the story – the results came in fast.

Let’s see which ads exactly performed so well – and why:

Top 5 Thought Leader Ads: Ranked by eCTR (Clicks to Landing Page)

Here are the top 5 TLAs, ranked by eCTR (clicks to landing page divided by impressions – the metric that actually matters for pipeline):

For context, the ZenABM 2026 Benchmarks Report shows the median TLA CTR across all accounts at 2.68%. Valueships’ top TLA hit 20.92% CTR and 4.69% eCTR. That is not an outlier – it is what happens when you have genuinely good content from a genuinely credible person, shown to the right audience.

Here are the top 3 TLAs by performance – and the rest you can see on their Linkedin Ads library: 

Top 3 TLAs:

🥇 – 20.92% CTR, 4.69% eCTR (= clicks to landing page/ impressions) 1,394 clicks, $0.10 CLCP – “Millennials: ‘skinny jeans are still cool!’ (they’re not); SaaS: ‘seat-based pricing is still cool!’ (it’s not)”

🥈- 21.03% CTR”, 3.02% eCTR, 141 LP clicks, $0.02 CLCP; “In a single month, Amos Bar-Joseph from Swan AI (just raised $6M) paid Anthropic $51,217. If Antropic did seat-based pricing like most SaaS co’s, how much would they be able to charge?”

🥉- 8.46 CTR, 2.29 eCTR, 463 LP clicks, $0.10 CLCP – “As I’m sadistically bashing software companies for pricing mistakes, I couldn’t let it slip. Jenna Alburger, some time ag,o did a great job in smashing Netflix, and I spin it for myself as well:”

Why These TLAs Worked: 6 Patterns From the Data

After analyzing all 10 Valueships TLAs, the patterns are clear. The gap between the top performers ($0.10 CPLP) and the bottom performers ($0.38 CPLP or zero clicks) comes down to six things.

1. Analogy and humor as the hook – never a direct product pitch

The best performing TLA (4.69% eCTR) opened with a meme-style parallel: “Millennials: skinny jeans are still cool. SaaS: seat-based pricing is still cool.” It is funny, it is relatable, and it immediately signals “this is not an ad.” The second-best TLA (3.02% eCTR) opened with a specific financial figure: “$51,217 paid by Swan AI to Anthropic in a single month.” The third (2.29% eCTR) opened with self-deprecating humor about “sadistically bashing software companies.”

Not one of the top 3 opens with the product, the company name, or anything that smells like an ad.

2. Named real companies with real numbers

Swan AI. Anthropic. $51,217. Netflix. Notion. $700M ARR. +140% price increase. These are not made up case studies or “a company we worked with” anonymized examples. They are real, verifiable, specific. SaaS executives scroll past generic advice. They stop for real data about companies they know.

3. First person, imperfect, human

Kris writes “As I’m sadistically bashing software companies” and “Her is how we typically address product launches” (yes, the typo stayed in – and it still hit 2.29% eCTR). He signs off “Regards, Kris, a millennial who thinks skinny jeans are still cool.” This is how real people write on LinkedIn. Not “Valueships is pleased to announce” or “Our team of pricing experts.”

4. The CTA is in the P.S., not the headline

Every top-performing TLA follows the same structure: value-first content that delivers an actual insight, followed by a soft CTA at the very bottom. “My DMs don’t bite or book a free pricing diagnostic.” “P.S. Skinny jeans I can’t help with. Outdated pricing I can.” The link sits in the last line, not the first.

This matches what we see in our benchmarks data: 75% of top-performing TLAs place the link in the bottom 25% of the post.

5. Short hook, under two lines

The hook – the text visible before the “see more” fold – is the entire game. The skinny jeans post has maybe 15 words before the fold. The Swan AI post leads with a dollar figure. The Netflix post leads with self-deprecation. In every case, the hook is punchy enough to earn the click to expand, without trying to say too much.

6. What did not work: debate bait without a link

The worst-performing TLA had 0% eCTR. Zero landing page clicks from 21,615 impressions. The post: “Prove me wrong: Pricing is the most efficient way to solve OpenAI’s profitability.” It had a 10.79% CTR (people clicked to read more and engaged in comments) but had no CTA link. Engagement without a link means engagement that stays on LinkedIn and never reaches your website. Always include a link.

The TLA Creative Playbook

Based on Valueships’ data and our analysis of top-performing TLAs across all accounts in the 2026 Benchmarks Report, here is the playbook.

Do this

• Name real people, companies, products, and real data. Even modest numbers work. “$51,217” is more compelling than “significant revenue.” “Notion’s +140% price increase” is more compelling than “major SaaS companies raising prices.”
• Write in first person and admit mistakes. “I’ve made it (several times)” is more credible than a polished thought leadership piece. 65% of top-performing TLAs use “I” voice.
• Keep the hook under two lines. The hook should create curiosity or pattern interruption, not summarize the whole post. Paradox, bold specific numbers, or humor all work.
• Anchor in a specific painful moment your ICP has lived through. SaaS executives have all dealt with outdated pricing, bad price increase messaging, or seat-based models that cap revenue. Hit those nerves.
• Deliver the insight before any CTA. The post should be worth reading even if they never click. That is what makes them share, comment, and eventually click.
• Put the CTA in a P.S. or as a soft offer – but DO put a link in. The $47.94 Valueships spent on the “Prove me wrong” post with no link was pure waste. Every TLA needs a destination.

Do not do this

• Do not pitch slap. “We’re excited to announce” or “Valueships is proud to share” kills the whole format. The moment it reads like a company post, the TLA advantage disappears.
• Do not write in brand voice or third person. “Valueships helps SaaS companies optimize pricing” is a company ad. “I’ve been doing pricing for SaaS companies for years and here’s the mistake I see most often” is a TLA.
• Do not make it about your product features. Not one of the top 5 TLAs mentions Valueships by name in the hook. The product is implied through the author’s credibility. The reader clicks because they trust the person, not because they want a product demo.

“The most effective thought leader ads are niche-specific posts to niche-specific audiences. I see a lot of posts that are too high-level or too general. These might do well organically, but with paid, I would get more specific.”

– Philip Ilic

This is exactly what Valueships did. Kris did not write generic “pricing is important” content. He wrote about Notion’s specific pricing evolution, Netflix’s specific price increase email, Swan AI’s specific Anthropic invoice. Niche content for a niche audience (SaaS executives dealing with pricing).

The Biggest Challenge: How to Get Your Internal ICPs to Post TLAs Like This

The reason Valueships’ results are so exceptional is that Kris is a genuine domain expert who was already posting great content. Most companies do not have that luxury. The co-founder is too busy, the subject matter expert does not post on LinkedIn, and the marketing team writes in brand voice.

Here are four ways to solve this:

• Interview your internal ICPs with leading questions and produce the posts for them. Record a 20-minute call with your CEO or product lead. Ask specific questions like “What is the biggest pricing mistake you have seen a client make?” or “What did Company X do wrong with their price increase?” Turn their answers into a TLA-style post. Let them review and publish.
• Monitor brand mentions on LinkedIn. Search for your company name, product name, and category keywords. If a customer posts something authentic about their experience with you, ask their permission to boost it as a TLA. These convert well because the enthusiasm is genuine and the author has no incentive to pitch.
• Build a customer advocacy program. Reward customers for posting about their experience. Give them guidelines (1,000-1,500 characters, focus on a specific problem they solved, include real results) and offer extended trials, early feature access, or co-marketing in return.
• Hire a ghostwriter. A good ghostwriter can capture someone’s voice and produce consistent TLA-ready posts. The investment pays for itself when a single TLA drives 1,394 clicks at $0.10 each.

For the full breakdown of how to source TLA content, see our guide on how to get your ICP to post more thought leader ads.

How Valueships Uses ZenABM to Turn TLA Engagement Into Pipeline

Getting 2,669 clicks to a landing page for $391 is impressive. But clicks do not pay the bills – meetings do. Here is how Valueships turns TLA engagement into 12 booked meetings using ZenABM.

Step 1: Detect intent at the account level

ZenABM tracks which companies engage with Valueships’ LinkedIn ads and scores them into intent stages. When an account moves to the “Interested” stage based on engagement patterns, that signals real buying intent – not just a random click.

Step 2: Group by intent topic and tag with specific intents

Valueships groups their TLA engagement by specific intent topics. Are they interested in churn prevention? Expansion revenue? Pricing page optimization? ZenABM tags each engaged account with the relevant intent based on which TLAs they engaged with. This means when a company clicks on the Netflix pricing teardown TLA, they get tagged with “price increase messaging” intent. When they click the Notion AI pricing TLA, they get tagged with “AI monetization” intent.

Step 3: Push interested accounts to Clay for auto-prospecting

Valueships sends interested-stage accounts from ZenABM into Clay through a webhook on a weekly basis. In Clay, their growth agency automatically finds the right prospects – matching the right ICP, persona, seniority, and job function at each engaged account.

Step 4: Personalize outreach based on intent

Because they know which topics each account engaged with, Valueships personalizes their email outreach accordingly. An account interested in churn prevention gets a different message than one interested in expansion revenue. This is not generic “Hey, saw you visited our website” outreach. It is “I noticed your team has been looking at price increase strategies – here is how we helped a similar SaaS company increase ARPU by 18% without losing customers.”

The result: 12 meetings booked from cold in under two weeks. From $391 in ad spend.

Why TLAs Get Such Cheap Distribution (and Why Most Companies Leave This on the Table)

The $2.31 CPM is not a fluke. LinkedIn’s ad auction rewards content that generates engagement. When a TLA gets 10%+ CTR (people clicking to expand, reacting, commenting), LinkedIn’s algorithm treats it as high-quality content and serves it to more people at lower cost. Image ads and carousels typically get 0.4-0.5% CTR – LinkedIn needs to charge 20x more per impression to make the same revenue per slot.

This creates a compounding advantage. Better content gets cheaper distribution. Cheaper distribution means more impressions. More impressions means more data on what works. More data means better content choices for the next campaign.

But most companies never see this flywheel because they do not have someone like Kris posting genuinely valuable content. They run polished corporate TLAs that read like rewritten press releases – and get corporate-ad performance at thought-leader-ad prices.

“Organic content + LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads + Warm Outbound = the best go-to-market strategy for sales-led SaaS right now.”

– Philip Ilic

Full Performance Data: All 10 Valueships TLAs

For completeness, here is the full dataset of all 10 TLAs Valueships ran, ranked by eCTR:

Notice the pattern: TLA #10 had a 10.79% CTR but 0% eCTR. People engaged heavily – expanding the text, reacting, commenting – but nobody clicked through to the landing page because there was no link. $48 in spend with zero website traffic. Always include a link.

Key Takeaways

• TLAs drove 83% of all website clicks for 6% of the budget. Valueships spent $391 on TLAs vs. $5,812 on image and carousel ads. The TLAs outperformed on every metric.
• $0.15 cost per landing page click is 66x cheaper than image ads ($10.02). This is not a small improvement. It is a different category of performance.
• 12 meetings booked from cold in under two weeks. When company-level engagement data from ZenABM confirmed all demos were influenced by TLAs only, the other ad formats were cut.
• The top TLAs use analogy, humor, real company names, and real numbers. Not one of the top 5 opens with a product pitch or company announcement.
• Always include a link. The only TLA with 0% eCTR was the one without a CTA link. Even a P.S. with a soft offer works.
• Intent-based follow-up is what converts clicks into meetings. Valueships uses ZenABM to detect intent, groups accounts by topic, pushes them to Clay for auto-prospecting, and personalizes outreach based on which TLAs each account engaged with.
• The content has to be genuinely good. These results come from a real domain expert writing real opinions about real companies. No ghostwriter or marketing team could have written “Prove me wrong” in Kris’s voice. Invest in getting the right people to post, and everything else follows.

FAQs

How long did it take for Valueships to see results from thought leader ads?

Under two weeks. The campaign launched on February 20, 2026 and within the first two weeks they had 169,571 impressions, 2,669 landing page clicks, and 12 meetings booked. TLAs can produce results fast when the content and targeting are right because LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards high-engagement content with cheaper, faster distribution.

What audience did Valueships target with their TLAs?

Senior SaaS executives – primarily CFOs, CEOs, and similar C-level roles – across a global audience covering the US, UK, DACH region, and Western Europe. The content about SaaS pricing strategy was a natural fit for this audience, which contributed to the high engagement rates.

Do I need a strong personal brand to make TLAs work?

It helps, but it is not required. Kris had an existing personal brand, which contributed to the exceptional results. However, even without a large following, TLAs perform well because LinkedIn distributes them based on content quality and engagement, not follower count. The key is that the content is authentic, specific, and written by someone credible in the space. Start with your best internal expert and build from there. See our guide on how to get your ICP to post more TLAs for practical approaches.

What is the difference between CTR and eCTR for thought leader ads?

CTR (click-through rate) counts all clicks – expanding the post text, clicking reactions, profile clicks, and landing page clicks. eCTR counts only clicks to the landing page (the destination URL). For TLAs, the gap is significant: Valueships’ top TLA had a 20.92% CTR but 4.69% eCTR. The eCTR is the metric that matters for pipeline because those are the people who actually visited the website.

How does ZenABM help with thought leader ad campaigns?

ZenABM tracks company-level engagement with your LinkedIn ads, including TLAs. It shows you which target accounts clicked on which ads, scores them into intent stages, and pushes interested accounts to your CRM or Clay for follow-up. For Valueships, this meant knowing which companies engaged with which specific TLA topics – enabling personalized outreach based on intent (churn prevention vs. expansion revenue vs. pricing page optimization).