ABB Motion Services partnered with Eminence to develop a LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy across four strategic regions: the United States, Australia, Europe and the Middle East.
The objective was not simply to generate more leads, but to find the right balance between acquisition efficiency and lead quality while identifying the audiences, formats and campaign approaches most likely to contribute to ABB’s sales pipeline.
Through a two-phase test-and-learn approach combining native Lead Gen acquisition and retargeting, the campaign progressively refined audience targeting, creative formats and qualification criteria based on performance and sales feedback.
The result: engagement in line with LinkedIn B2B Lead Gen benchmarks, a 27% lower CPL than the LinkedIn MEA benchmark in the campaign’s strongest market, and the first sales opportunities generating a pipeline value equivalent to approximately 1.8x the total media investment.
Beyond media performance, the campaign provided ABB with a clearer understanding of which audiences, markets and LinkedIn formats were most effective at turning engagement into qualified B2B leads and pipeline.
Who is ABB motion services?
ABB Motion Services supports industrial organisations in improving the performance, reliability and efficiency of their rotating equipment.
For this campaign, the focus was ABB's Energy Efficiency offering and its relevance to industrial organisations seeking to optimise their operations.
The challenge was therefore highly B2B: reaching the right professional audiences across multiple markets and transforming their interest into qualified B2B leads that ABB's sales organisation could follow up on.
The challenge: Balancing lead volume, cost efficiency and lead quality
A successful B2B lead generation strategy cannot be evaluated on lead volume alone.
For ABB, the campaign needed to balance three interconnected objectives: generating sufficient lead volume, maintaining sustainable acquisition costs and ensuring that the people completing the forms were relevant to the business.
Reaching industrial decision-makers
LinkedIn provided access to professional targeting signals such as industry, seniority, job function and company size, but the campaign quickly demonstrated an important challenge: the profiles most likely to engage with advertising are not necessarily the final decision-makers.
Across the campaign, large industrial organisations formed a significant part of the audience reached, while Machinery Manufacturing was the most represented sector.
Engagement data also showed interest from a broader mix of professional profiles, including technicians, operators, engineers, managers, directors and owners.
This created an important question for the campaign: should targeting be narrowed aggressively toward senior decision-makers, or could more operational profiles also represent valuable entry points into target organisations?
Rather than making this decision based solely on media metrics, the strategy progressively incorporated sales feedback and stronger qualification criteria.
Managing four strategic markets
The campaign ran across four regions with very different advertising economics and audience behaviours: the United States, Australia, Europe and the Middle East.
This made a single global optimisation strategy inappropriate.
The US, for example, delivered strong engagement but was by far the most expensive advertising market, while Europe offered significantly more efficient reach but lower overall engagement. Australia combined relatively strong engagement with confirmed pipeline impact, while the Middle East generated exceptionally low lead acquisition costs but required closer attention to lead quality.
The LinkedIn lead generation strategy therefore evolved market by market rather than applying the same optimisation rules everywhere.
Our LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy
Eminence developed a two-phase approach combining direct acquisition with retargeting.
The objective was to first generate and identify engaged prospects, then evaluate whether retargeting those audiences could improve conversion efficiency.
Phase 1 - Lead generation and acquisition
Phase 1 used native LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, primarily through Single Image Ads, to acquire leads directly within the platform.
This became the campaign's most reliable acquisition engine.
In the US, Australia and Europe, Phase 1 consistently generated leads more efficiently than the retargeting phase.
The results demonstrated that native LinkedIn lead gen could provide a scalable foundation for reaching professional audiences, although acquisition costs varied substantially by market.
Phase 2 - Retargeting engaged audiences
Phase 2 introduced Message Ads to retarget audiences that had already interacted with the campaign.
The results revealed one of the campaign's most important learnings: retargeting performance was highly dependent on the market.
In the US and Australia, Message Ads were significantly more expensive than Phase 1. Europe generated the strongest result outside the Middle East, but still less efficient than direct Lead Gen acquisition.
The Middle East behaved completely differently.
There, Message Ads generated the strongest-performing part of the campaign from a pure cost and volume perspective.
This reinforced a central principle for future LinkedIn Ads for B2B campaigns: formats and funnel strategies should be adapted to audience behaviour rather than systematically replicated across markets.
Testing LinkedIn Ad formats
Three LinkedIn formats were tested during the campaign: Single Image Ads, Document Ads and Message Ads.
Each provided a different combination of reach, engagement, conversion friction and scalability.
Single Image Ads
Single Image Ads emerged as the campaign’s most dependable format, providing the most consistent balance between lead volume, cost efficiency and scalability across markets.
They were particularly effective in the US, Australia and Europe, where they consistently outperformed the retargeting approach in terms of lead generation efficiency.
Engagement was also strong, with CTR performing in line with LinkedIn B2B Lead Gen benchmarks overall and exceeding the benchmark in selected markets.
Document Ads
Document Ads were tested to explore a different creative and messaging approach, while making greater use of ABB’s existing gated content within the LinkedIn experience.
The format provided an opportunity to turn a long-form asset into an engaging advertising experience, allowing prospects to preview the content and its key messages before submitting a Lead Gen Form to access the full document.
Compared with Single Image Ads, the format delivered a lower CTR and a significantly higher CPL, making it the least efficient format tested during the campaign.
One important learning was the additional conversion friction created by the user journey: submitting the form and accessing the document involve separate actions.
Rather than ruling out content-led advertising, the test highlighted the importance of giving users a stronger reason to continue engaging with the asset. Future iterations should bring compelling proof points, tangible results and customer use cases earlier into the content to strengthen the value exchange.
Message Ads
Message Ads produced contrasting results depending on the market, highlighting why blended campaign averages can be misleading in B2B lead generation.
In the Middle East, the format proved particularly effective: CPL was approximately 40% lower than with Single Image Lead Gen in the same market, while remaining broadly competitive with LinkedIn Sponsored Messaging benchmarks.
However, this performance was not replicated across other regions. In the US, Australia and Europe, Single Image Lead Gen remained substantially more cost-efficient and scalable than Message Ads.
The key learning is therefore not that Message Ads universally outperform other formats. Their effectiveness depends heavily on market conditions and audience maturity, making them better suited to carefully selected and already-engaged audiences rather than systematic deployment across every market.
How we improved lead quality over time
ead generation performance cannot be judged by CPL alone.
As the campaign progressed, ABB and Eminence identified opportunities to strengthen qualification and reduce the number of less relevant leads reaching the sales team.
Strengthening qualification criteria
The campaign progressively introduced additional qualification measures, including:
- tighter audience targeting;
- audience exclusions and segmentation;
- work email validation;
- mandatory phone number fields;
- closer monitoring of job titles and seniority.
These adjustments intentionally introduced more friction into the conversion journey.
The objective was not simply to maximise the number of LinkedIn leads, but to increase the likelihood that each new contact represented a commercially relevant prospect.
Finding the right balance between volume and quality
Adding qualification criteria naturally reduced lead volume in some campaigns.
This was particularly visible in the Middle East, where stricter targeting and work email validation slowed delivery after a period of exceptionally high lead generation.
This trade-off was intentional.
For B2B demand generation, the lowest possible CPL is not necessarily the best outcome if sales teams receive contacts they cannot progress. Conversely, narrowing an audience too aggressively can increase costs and remove potentially valuable entry points into target organisations.
The right balance therefore depends on downstream sales data.
Media performance can identify who clicked and converted; CRM feedback ultimately determines which audiences generated genuine business opportunities.
Optimising audiences and creatives across markets
One of the campaign’s key learnings was that a global B2B lead generation strategy cannot rely on a one-size-fits-all approach.
As performance patterns emerged, Eminence continuously adapted audience segmentation, qualification criteria and format allocation to each market. High-cost markets required a stronger focus on efficiency, while markets generating higher lead volumes required additional qualification measures to protect lead quality.
Audience insights also revealed differences in engagement across industries, seniority levels and job profiles. These signals were used to progressively refine targeting rather than applying the same audience restrictions from the start.
The same principle applied to creatives and formats: instead of identifying one universal winner, the campaign helped determine which combinations of audience, message and format were most relevant in each market.
This continuous test-and-learn approach allowed the LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy to evolve throughout the campaign, balancing scalability, cost efficiency and lead quality according to local market dynamics.
The results: From LinkedIn leads to salesforce pipeline
The campaign demonstrated that strong LinkedIn B2B lead generation performance is not only about generating leads efficiently, but about understanding which markets, audiences and formats are most likely to contribute to business outcomes.
Across the campaign, engagement remained in line with LinkedIn B2B benchmarks, while the strongest-performing market achieved a CPL 27% below the relevant LinkedIn benchmark.
More importantly, the campaign created a measurable connection between LinkedIn lead generation and ABB’s sales pipeline.
Beyond CTR and CPL
CTR and CPL provided valuable indicators for continuously optimising audiences, formats and media allocation. However, they only represented the first part of the performance story.
By combining media performance with sales feedback, ABB and Eminence were able to look beyond the initial conversion and assess the quality and commercial potential of the qualified B2B leads generated.
This helped shift the focus from simply generating more leads towards identifying the audiences and campaign approaches most likely to create meaningful sales opportunities.
Measuring pipeline and ROAS
Australia provided the clearest evidence of this connection, with campaign-generated leads progressing into confirmed opportunities within Salesforce.
At the time of the final review, the value of these opportunities represented approximately 1.8x the campaign’s total media investment.
Connecting LinkedIn lead generation with CRM outcomes creates the foundation for a more mature B2B measurement approach - moving beyond media efficiency towards understanding which markets, audiences and formats are contributing to pipeline and, ultimately, business growth.
5 key lessons for B2B lead generation
1. Make native Lead Gen the acquisition foundation
Single Image Lead Gen delivered the most reliable combination of volume, efficiency and scalability across mature markets. It should remain the core format for future acquisition campaigns.
2. Do not apply the same retargeting strategy everywhere
Message Ads performed exceptionally well in the Middle East but were expensive in the US, Australia and Europe. Market behaviour should determine channel and format allocation.
3. Treat lead quality and volume as a strategic trade-off
Work email validation, mandatory phone fields and tighter targeting can improve qualification, but they also reduce conversion volume. The right balance should be determined using sales and CRM feedback, not media metrics alone.
4. Use market and audience segmentation to improve optimisation
Different markets showed substantially different costs and engagement patterns. More granular audience structures make it easier to identify these differences and allocate investment accordingly.
5. Connect LinkedIn Ads to CRM and pipeline
The three opportunities identified in Australia demonstrate why B2B campaign measurement should extend beyond CTR and CPL. Connecting advertising data to Salesforce allows future campaigns to optimise toward the audiences that generate genuine commercial value.
Looking to generate more qualified B2B leads?
Effective LinkedIn B2B lead generation is not about maximising form submissions at the lowest possible cost.
It requires finding the right balance between reach, conversion efficiency and lead quality — and then connecting those results to what happens further down the sales funnel.
ABB's campaign demonstrates how a test-and-learn approach across audiences, formats and markets can turn LinkedIn Ads for B2B into a source of actionable commercial insights and measurable sales pipeline.
At Eminence, we help B2B organisations build data-driven acquisition strategies designed not only to generate leads, but to identify the audiences, formats and optimisation strategies most likely to create business value.
Looking for a business lead generation company to strengthen your B2B acquisition strategy? Get in touch with our team to discuss how LinkedIn advertising can support your next demand generation campaign.
Contact us for more information.
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