In this tactical episode, Anthony Blatner, Founder of Speedwork, shares how you transition from founder-led, one-to-one sales into scalable, one-to-many systems using LinkedIn and thought leadership. If you’re stuck closing every deal yourself and struggling to scale pipeline without burning out, you won’t want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to shift from one-to-one sales into scalable one-to-many acquisition without losing message clarity

- What to build before scaling ads so you don’t waste budget on unproven offers

- How to structure a thought leadership funnel that attracts, nurtures, and converts high-value B2B buyers

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Anthony Blatner is the Managing Director of Speedwork Social, a firm that helps B2B tech and SaaS companies amplify their customer acquisition on LinkedIn. With more than a decade of experience in LinkedIn advertising, Anthony works directly with Founders, CEOs, CMOs, and marketing leaders to build high-impact campaigns that convert. Based in Austin, Texas, he also hosts the podcast LinkedIn Ads Radio, where he shares actionable insights and tactical best practices for the LinkedIn Ads ecosystem.

Want to learn more about Anthony Blatner's work at Speedwork? Check out his website at https://speedworksocial.com/

Connect with Anthony through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyblatner/

Check out Speedwork's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@speedworksocial

Check out Speedwork's podcast at https://open.spotify.com/show/01QPcQE41cI1GCDchUJqTu and https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/linkedin-ads-radio/id1692236492

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and if you've built

a company, you've built an organization and you've built a

team, but you're still the only one closing just about every

real deal. If you're the only one who's really filling the

pipeline, you know how exhausting that can be. It's not

just the work, but it's the weight of the world that's

resting on your shoulders. But it's not just that either,

because it's probably costing you a lot more than you think

because you don't scale. And if you've built the other parts of

your company so they can, there's really just one more

piece that has to fall into line and to help us figure out how to

do that and how to build a scalable sales system. I have

with me today, Anthony Blattner, who's the Managing Director of

speedwork social, a firm that helps B to B Tech and SaaS

companies amplify their customer acquisition on LinkedIn. With

more than a decade of experience in LinkedIn advertising. Anthony

works directly with founders, CEOs, CMOs and market leaders to

help build high impact campaigns that convert based in Austin,

Texas. He also hosts a podcast, LinkedIn ads radio check it out,

where he shares actionable insights and tactical best

practices for the LinkedIn ads ecosystem. So before we get down

into LinkedIn ads, because you've worked with founders,

you've worked with rapid growing companies, I'm wondering if we

could, for just a moment, dive in Anthony on the shift that

needs to happen and how these leaders think about building

truly scalable sales systems.

Yeah, so truly scalable sales systems start

with like, what are the channels you're going to use, you're

going to use, and how are you going to leverage your voice so

that it goes from just one to one sales to one to many sales.

That's the shift that needs to happen when you're a small

business or just getting started. You're probably going

one to one just to reach out to people, to strike up sales

conversations, but that you're not going to be able to do that

forever, that's only going to get you so far. So the next tier

up is, how can you go sell at scale? So LinkedIn is one, one

of many great channels of doing that, but there's lots of

channels out there, lots of ways. But to be able to take

your voice and take what you're doing and do it at scale, you

need to start switch from one to one to one to many sales.

Yeah, I really like that language because it's

the opposite early on, right for folks who start at the mistake

that I see early founders make is to go many to one at the at

the go, and never really get one to one working. And so when,

when you go in to work with a company and they've already got

one to one working. Well, what advantage is that for you as an

advertiser?

Yeah, it kind of proves the model first.

There's lots of startups out there, and if you haven't been

able to sell your product on your own, it's very hard for

anybody else or to be able to scale it until you've proven the

sales model there. So definitely having sales, some sales under

your belt, is very important before you go try to scale it.

Otherwise, you might waste a lot of money before you've really

proven out who are you selling to, what are you selling, and

what are those important points that are going to get them to

buy. You might have some hunches of that going in, but really it

is kind of getting the reps in of doing those sales and really

proving it out, then you'll really understand and get a feel

for those points that do sell. And then that's the ammo that

you need to go, take to a platform like LinkedIn to go

scale it up from there.

Yeah, I love that, and I think that's what's

so powerful about it. But it's also some of the assumed

constraints or head trash that folks have. Oh, I tried that

right back when they didn't have one to one working. And I've

seen a number of folks who have used various ad strategies

before. They really had a proof of concept before they could

even sell, and then they kind of get stuck thinking, Well, that

didn't work then, so it's not going to work now. So how do you

help folks? Let's kind of dive into the actual work of using

LinkedIn ads, and I'll come back to this question. But first off,

why LinkedIn ads? Are there companies that it's the right

platform for? Are there companies that shouldn't

consider using it? How do you help folks figure that out if

it's the right channel for them?

Yes. So that's a good question, and LinkedIn

may not be a perfect fit for everybody, but where it does

perform very well is when you are selling B to B, business to

business, or business to professional, when you're look

looking to sell to a very specific decision maker at a

very specific type of company. LinkedIn has that data that

almost no other platform really has to the level that LinkedIn

does. So on LinkedIn, you can you can go do searches. You can

set up your campaign targeting so that you can go after a

specific industry, a specific company size, and then a

specific job title at those companies, to get very specific

into who you're going to be reaching. So if you want to

reach HR directors at financial companies. Is that's, you know,

you can just plug that right into LinkedIn. You'll find those

exact people any other platform. It's going to be very hard to

find, like, a very niche decision maker like that, you

know, they those people do live on every other platform, but

it's very hard to reach them on those other platforms. And you

might be kind of driving a lot of noise if you drive traffic on

those other platforms. So LinkedIn, you can plug those

metric, those items like that right in there and reach those

exact people.

Yeah. What would you say? So let's say we

decide LinkedIn is a channel we're going to go for it. We've

got a history of one on one success, but but don't know how

to scale it. That's why we're looking for someone who's got

the experience like you all do. What are some of the mistakes

that folks make before they bring you in.

Yes. So LinkedIn definitely carries the

reputation of being a very expensive ads platform, and it

definitely can be if you do it the wrong way. And there's a few

different gotchas that can happen along the way to doing

that most people have tried, maybe Google ads or Facebook

ads. And I'd say for most companies, most, most companies

most, most companies do try those platforms first, and then

they try a LinkedIn. And if they have had success on one of those

platforms, then they'll just kind of copy paste what they

were doing on like Facebook or Google, and then try to copy

paste that to LinkedIn. LinkedIn works in a very different way

from those other platforms, just purely in like the technical

setup and and also down to like the business marketing funnel of

what's going to work there versus with other platforms. But

just for a couple examples, on on meta, if you're just going to

set up your ad campaign, you're you're going to use the builder,

you're going to click through the setup wizard, and the

default settings are usually good for you. On LinkedIn, you

usually want to change a lot of those settings, because a lot of

LinkedIn tooling is built for big enterprise companies. So if

you're anybody other than a big enterprise company, you want to

change a lot of those out of the box. So a lot of people kind of

fall into the trap of just using the default settings, which

aren't a good fit for anybody other than an enterprise

company. So they kind of get stuck with launching some

campaigns but the wrong settings, and then they're

paying way too much, not getting anything out of it. So that's

kind of some of the most common issues that we see. And then

from there, it kind of gets into the content that people are

promoting. Lots of you know, if you're running Google ads, you

can go very direct in what you're offering, because people

are searching for you. But on a social platform like LinkedIn,

if someone's not actively searching out at that point in

time, and they're not, they're in the social feed, then you

want to go with more of a thought leadership approach to,

you know, draw people in, get their attention. That's what

they're looking for when they're on LinkedIn. Is looking for tips

and tricks that they can take back to their job and to their

company. So to be able to create content and serve that need and

desire will then help bring people into your marketing

funnel, and then you kind of start the process from there. So

a lot of people kind of lead, lead with like, content. Like,

contact us or get a free consultation, but you might be

jumping in way too fast, and people aren't ready to just sign

up for that just yet. So that's where we start to build out the

marketing funnel, using like, thought leadership and things

like that on LinkedIn these days.

I really like that, because I think one of the

challenging parts of translating one to one into one to many is

that most of your one to one conversations have some intent

behind them, right? They're either a warm referral for

someone or recommendation. They're someone who's calling in

and asking you to sell them. And when you go out into the wild,

that's just not true. That's not the case. And so let's talk

about what you've called kind of this thought leader approach.

What does that? What does that look like in the real world? We

have someone, let's say they're a software company in in

financial tech or something like that. How do they move from,

hey, here's our software, here are all of its features, to a

more effective thought leading campaign,

yeah. So this is kind of the big thing these

days on LinkedIn, is thought leadership and thought leader ad

campaigns on LinkedIn, which come with the recent, recently

new ability that now you can boost posts from people, and, in

a way, create your ad campaigns and your marketing funnel using

boosted posts from People. In the past, it would just be

running company page ads. Now you can boost posts from people

and thought leader ads sound really fancy, but it is just

boosting posts from people. But the approach is much more

effective because you're you're putting a person's voice out

there, rather than just a company. There's definitely

places for your company page ads, but these thought leader ad

funnels perform much better because you're putting your

people out there, front and center. So this is a perfect fit

for any company that is that does have a very visible

founder, or very vocal founder, or a founder who is a thought

leader. So you know, especially like in the startup space, a lot

of those founders are, like, very passionate people. They're

very vocal. They're really smart in what they do. So this is,

like, perfect for those types of companies. So for the example

there with like, you know, FinTech, you would have a

founder talking about on LinkedIn. You know, there's lots

of topics you could be talking about, but it could be around

their usage of AI these days, into their software that they're

building, and how that's helping. Their customers get

better results. So they're going to be posting on LinkedIn,

sharing stuff like that. Other people who maybe want to learn

those topics or are interested in that type of financial

software are going to stop and read his posts. So that's kind

of the basics of it. And then we start to build it into a

marketing funnel in a few different ways. First is, first

is thinking about a few different types of content that

somebody might be posting and that somebody might want to be

reading. And it starts with the standard top of the funnel type

of content. There's lots of stuff that can work well in top

of funnel, but what we see work across the board are case

studies. So this is where somebody could be sharing.

Here's how, here's how we achieved help this. Here's how

we help this company achieve XYZ results. So another company out

there who wants to get get that result is going to stop and read

that post. So case studies just do well across the board. So

it's a great just option for people to be talking about. And

it shouldn't be the we're so awesome case study. It should

be, here's how you can learn how to do this for yourself or for

your company. So an educational type of post, that's what people

are on LinkedIn to read and to learn. So start with that.

That'll get somebody to know who you are, you know, trust you,

because they're seeing your expertise and kind of that

starts the marketing funnel from there, so people who are reading

your case studies that you're posting on LinkedIn is the best

starting point. And from there, you can then go retarget those

people into a middle of funnel segment. What tends to work well

in the middle of funnel is then like redirecting or offering to

those people a next step. Like an easy next step. What we like

to use here is some kind of downloadable. Or what I think is

the best is, like, some kind of, like, subscribe. Type of option

could be, you know, subscribe to my podcast, and then you're

going to hear and get all the episodes that are coming out.

Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about, you know, this

financial technology, or how we're using AI and stuff like

that. And then people will scrub, subscribe to the

newsletter, and then get additional communications from

that company later. So I like to use middle funnel as a way to

get somebody on some kind of list, you know, offer them. Hey,

here's our YouTube channel. Here's some interesting videos

that we're posting there as well. Our newsletter, podcasts

like that are all great. So that's what middle funnel is

good for. And then finally, you can then go retarget those

people with your bottom of funnel. And that's like the

direct offer where, you know, hey, if you are interested in

this, in this app we're building, you know, go here to

get a demo, or go here to sign up for a free trial or try it

for yourself. So that's kind of like building out the stages of

the marketing funnel. At the end of the day, I will also say, if

there is active demand for what you are selling, you don't, you

kind of don't need to go through those stages. You can go direct

to the offer. So for a lot of stuff AI these days, people are

building new tools, and there's lots of active demand out there

for AI tools. So sometimes you can go very direct. And you

know, you don't really need to go through that whole funnel,

but you can go just direct to posting about this new tool

you're building and then tell people where they can go to get

a demo. But that said, the bigger, the bigger your the

larger your price point, the more enterprise type of things

you're selling, then you will need to start building out that

funnel on those stages for people to go through. So kind of

depends on what you're selling, who you're selling it to, but

that's how we're helping people build thought leadership ad

funnels as a way to, you know, draw the right people in, get

them on your list and then offer them, you know, whatever your

core offer is,

Yeah, for folks who are used to get a deal

close a deal that that very concrete, you know, next step,

how do you help them to measure whether or not campaigns are

working, especially in the early days of a new launch?

Yeah, so a lot of it starts with like the

initial engagement that you're getting on your posts. So

there's a few different things. Number one is the initial

engagement you're getting on your posts. When you're putting

these case studies out there, for example, are people leaving

comments? Are they asking questions? Are they DMing you to

get more information? Those are the initial things that you want

to look for. So that's kind of the starting point. From there.

You can set up with as with any kind of advertising campaign,

whether it's meta or Google or LinkedIn. You can set up

conversion tracking. So then you can start to see, are people

reading my content, clicking on my post and then going to my

website to sign up for a demo, or whatever it is. Your next

step is, could be a free trial or free consultation. So you can

start to see if those actions are happening. So standard

conversion tracking is possible with these types of campaigns,

but otherwise, keep an eye on your engagement stats. Are

people DMing you? Are they leaving comments? Those are good

things you want to look for, kind of initially,

Got it excellent. Anthony, there's this

question that I have asked all my guests. I'm interested to see

what you have to say. And the question is this, what is the

biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all. What's that one

thing you wish everybody watching or listening today

knew?

Yeah, so in context of what we're talking

about, while founder led sales is a very great marketing

funnel. You don't have to put all that work on yourself,

leverage your team and your people, and it is beneficial. To

have lots of voices from your company, you know, conveying

your message. So while you're the founder, you know, don't

rely don't don't put all the weight on just your shoulders,

but involve your team. People like being involved, and they

like sharing on LinkedIn. I think a lot of what I hear is a

lot of employees are also, you know, kind of maybe a little

scared initially, to to put themselves out there and share.

But if you encourage them and then help them find their voice

and grow, it'll be extremely, extremely effective way to get

you and your company out there and incorporate everyone's

voices.

That's excellent, excellent, Anthony,

there are some folks listening. They've been toying around with

the ideas. They've been trying things that haven't worked, and

they need to find a scalable sales solution. And they think

LinkedIn ads may be a big part of that. Where can they reach

out to you? How can they find out more about you and the work

that you all do?

Yes, so I'm definitely on LinkedIn. You can

find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Anthony Blattner there, but

otherwise you can go to speedworksocial.com, and that's

our website. You can learn more about LinkedIn advertising, and

then you can schedule a call with us there, and then we do

have the LinkedIn ads radio, podcast, if you'd like to learn

more. And then additionally, our YouTube channel, we have lots of

different tips and tricks and tutorial videos posted there. So

those are some different places.

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Anthony, thank

you for being on today and sharing with us. Love the

structure. The approach really broke it down, made it simple

for us, and I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much

for those of you watching and listening, you know that your

time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as

much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait

to see you next time. Take care.