Paid Social Ads

Choose one platform: LinkedIn if your ICP is defined by job title, seniority, company size, or industry (CPC $4-12). Meta if you have website traffic for retargeting or a customer list for lookalikes (CPC $0.50-3.00). Do not split budget across platforms.

Build ONE audience segment: on LinkedIn, target by job function + seniority + industry + company size (aim for 20,000-80,000 audience). On Meta, create a 1% lookalike from your best customers or retarget website visitors from last 30 days. Exclude current customers and competitors.

Create 3 ad variants targeting one ICP pain point. Variant A: statistic hook (surprising data point about the problem). Variant B: question hook (question they answer yes to). Variant C: social proof hook (customer result). Each offers educational content (guide, checklist, case study) -- NOT a product pitch.

Set up the campaign: Lead Generation objective with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms or Meta Instant Forms for lowest friction. Set $300-1,000 as lifetime budget for 1 week. Use automated bidding.

Launch and do NOT touch for 5 days. Do not pause underperforming ads until each has 500+ impressions.

After 5-7 days, pull results: impressions, clicks, CTR per variant, total leads, cost per lead. For each lead, check name, company, title against ICP criteria.

Evaluate: >= 2 leads or >= 1 meeting = PASS (proceed to Baseline). 1 lead or leads with <50% ICP match = MARGINAL (iterate and re-run). 0 leads = FAIL (diagnose: if CTR < 0.2% on LinkedIn or < 0.5% on Meta, creative is the issue; if CTR is fine but no conversions, the offer or form is the issue).