LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads

This is best used for B2B businesses that are already creating organic LinkedIn content and want to amplify what's working instead of guessing at ad creative. Thought Leader Ads excel when you're targeting professional audiences with high-value offerings ($10k+ deal sizes), need precise targeting by job title, company size, or industry, and want to leverage your founder or executive's personal brand—not just your company page.

The key insight: Your best organic posts are already telling you what resonates. Traditional LinkedIn ads require you to create new ad creative and guess what will work. Thought Leader Ads let you sponsor the posts that have already proven themselves organically—the ones with engagement, comments, and saves. You're not testing blind. You're amplifying winners.

I use this with clients who've built content momentum organically using the Granola → content workflow. Once we identify which posts generate the most engagement, profile views, and DMs (the real conversion metrics), we sponsor those exact posts as Thought Leader Ads. The content is already written, already tested, already resonating. We're just putting budget behind it to reach more of the right people—specific titles at specific companies in specific industries.

The real power: You're advertising with social proof baked in. When people see your Thought Leader Ad, they also see the existing likes, comments, and engagement from your organic audience. It doesn't look like an ad—it looks like an interesting post from a real person that happens to be showing up in their feed. Higher trust. Better engagement. And you're only amplifying content that's already proven to work, not throwing money at untested creative.

Tactical advantages:

• Leverage personal brand of founder/executives (more trust than company page ads)

• Sponsor posts with existing engagement (social proof built-in)

• Precise B2B targeting: job title, company size, industry, seniority

• Only amplify content that's already proven organically

• Perfect for Account-Based Marketing (target specific companies/decision-makers)

How it fits the stack: Granola captures your voice → content gets created → posts go organic → winners get identified → Thought Leader Ads amplify them to your exact ICP. You're not creating separate ad content. You're systematizing what already works.