LinkedIn's technical minimum is about $10 a day per campaign, or the equivalent in your currency, which works out at roughly €270 to €300 a month. That's what the platform requires, not what works. For a couple of qualified leads a month I usually plan for €700 to €1,400, and the campaign needs at least three months before you can draw any firm conclusions. Below roughly €450 a month you get statistics, not business. Here's how I arrive at those numbers.
How much does a click cost on LinkedIn?
In my accounts a click usually costs between €5 and €14, and a thousand impressions (CPM) somewhere between €27 and €75. If you target finance directors or IT decision-makers at larger companies, you'll end up at the top of that range, sometimes above it. Treat these numbers as a range, not a promise: the price is set in an auction and depends on who else wants to reach the same people.
Compare that with Meta, where a click often costs €0.50 to €2, and it's easy to see why many small businesses flinch. But expensive per click isn't the same as expensive per deal. LinkedIn is the only place where you can say “show this ad to procurement managers at manufacturing companies with 50 to 200 employees in the Benelux” and actually get exactly that. On Meta you're guessing; on LinkedIn you know who clicked.
What does a LinkedIn Ads budget actually get you?
Work backwards. €900 a month at €9 per click gets you about 100 clicks. Send them to your website, and if 2 to 3% fill in a form, you end up with 2 or 3 leads. That's the honest result for a normal B2B site with a normal contact form. With LinkedIn's Lead Gen Forms instead, where the form opens in the feed with name, email and company already filled in, 8 to 15% of clicks usually turn into leads. The same budget then gets you 8 to 15 contacts, but of lower quality, because tapping a button takes less commitment than visiting a site and making up your mind.
This also shows why the minimum budget isn't enough. €280 buys you about 30 clicks a month. With a website form, that's statistically zero or one lead. You can't conclude anything from that, and you've still paid for it.
Which audience works for a small business?
The formula that works best in my accounts is simple: job title or function + company size + geography. For example: “marketing managers and CEOs at companies with 11 to 200 employees in the Nordics.” That often gives you an audience in the tens of thousands, which is just what you want.
Narrow beats broad when the budget is small. LinkedIn requires at least 300 people in an audience and recommends far more, but that recommendation is written for companies with much bigger budgets than yours. With €900 you want the money to reach 20,000 of the right people, not 300,000 roughly right ones. A few details that matter:
- Function plus seniority beats exact job title. The same role comes with a hundred different titles (Marketing Manager, CMO, Head of Marketing, Marketing Lead). Choose the Marketing function with Manager seniority and above, and you'll catch them all.
- Switch off audience expansion and the LinkedIn Audience Network. Both are on by default, and both widen the audience beyond what you chose. You're paying for precision, so keep it.
- Exclude your own employees, competitors and students. It sounds fussy, but it's ten minutes' work that saves you money every month.
Which ad format should you choose?
Single image is the workhorse: one image, one piece of text, one button. Cheapest to produce, easiest to replace, and good enough for most small businesses. Start here.
Document ads put a PDF, such as a guide or a price list, straight into the feed, where people can flip through it without leaving LinkedIn. Engagement is good, and you can lock the rest of the document behind a Lead Gen Form after a few pages. If you already have a decent guide, it's one of the best formats for the money.
Lead Gen Forms, or send people to your site? The in-feed form brings more leads at a lower cost per lead, but you have to follow up the same day: someone who tapped a button in their feed will have forgotten you by tomorrow. You collect the leads in Campaign Manager or through an integration with your CRM. Sending people to your site brings fewer leads, but with higher intent, plus traffic you can measure in your own analytics and retarget later. For a small business without a CRM, I still usually recommend starting with Lead Gen Forms and a simple routine: export every morning, call or email before lunch.
Message ads, which land straight in the inbox, are restricted for members in the EU, so don't count on them. Video works for awareness, but on a budget under about €1,400 a month it costs more to produce than it's worth.
Why run a LinkedIn campaign for three months, not three weeks?
LinkedIn users don't log in every day. Many drop by a couple of times a week, some a couple of times a month. If you run a campaign for three weeks, a large part of your audience never sees it, and the ones who do see it too often. The fix is a longer campaign with a cap on impressions, so the budget is spread across more people and fewer repeats. That matters even more on a small budget.
Two more settings that save money: choose manual bidding instead of maximum delivery, and bid below LinkedIn's suggestion. You'll get fewer impressions a day, but that's exactly what you want when you're in it for three months.
How much does a LinkedIn lead cost, and is it worth it?
With Lead Gen Forms the cost per lead in my accounts usually lands between €35 and €140. With a website form or a booked meeting it's more like €140 to €360. Again, that's a range with a caveat: a niche audience and a specific offer can beat it, while a broad audience and a “contact us” can double it.
Whether it pays off isn't decided in Campaign Manager but in your own numbers. Work it out like this: if a new customer is worth €5,500 in the first year and one in five leads becomes a customer, a lead is worth €1,100, which makes €180 per lead an excellent deal. If a customer is worth €360, the same maths gives you a loss, and you shouldn't advertise on LinkedIn however good the audience is. Follow the chain all the way: note where every lead came from and check which ones became customers after three and six months. That's the only report that matters.
When are LinkedIn Ads not worth it?
Below about €450 a month, my honest advice is not to advertise at all. You get too few clicks to learn anything and too few leads to make a difference to your sales. A better first step is often to post organically from the founder's own profile twice a week: it's free, reaches the same people and shows you what works before you pay to amplify it. If you sell to consumers, the answer is simpler: LinkedIn is the wrong place, full stop. And if you're not sure whether B2B advertising is the right next step for you at all, take the quick analysis: five questions, two minutes, and you'll get a first picture.
What to do next
- Work out what a lead is worth to you (customer value times the share of leads that become customers). If it's under €140, stop here and stick to organic posting.
- Set the budget to at least €700 a month and commit to three months before you judge the results.
- Build an audience from function plus seniority, company size and geography. Switch off audience expansion and the Audience Network.
- Start with single image ads and a Lead Gen Form: two or three image variants, manual bidding below the suggested bid and an impression cap.
- Set up the follow-up routine before you hit start: who collects the leads, when, and what they say when they call.
- If you want someone to set it up with you in your own account, take a look at how I work with LinkedIn Ads. Setup and coaching is a one-off fee of €890, and you can price your full mix of channels in the pricing calculator.
