2026 MSP LinkedIn Ads Strategy Guide

How Managed Service Providers Should Use LinkedIn Ads in 2026

If you're an MSP looking to generate high-quality leads and build real awareness with decision-makers, LinkedIn should be on your radar. I've spent years refining MSP LinkedIn ads strategy for managed service providers, and I've learned that most MSPs either ignore the platform entirely or waste money because they're following bad advice from LinkedIn reps who don't understand the MSP business model.

In this guide, I'm going to break down five distinct strategies for MSP LinkedIn ads management, ranging from low-budget approaches that any MSP can implement today to full-funnel campaigns designed for mature marketing organizations. The strategy you choose depends entirely on your budget and how much time you want to invest in producing results.

Why LinkedIn Ads Are Different (and Powerful) for MSPs

LinkedIn Is the Only Platform You Can Target a Specific List of Companies

Here's what makes LinkedIn fundamentally different from every other advertising platform: it's the only platform that allows businesses to target the exact companies they want to reach and the exact people at those companies. You can upload a list of your ideal accounts—whether that's 300 companies or 1,000—and serve ads exclusively to decision-makers at those organizations.

If your organization focuses on a specific company size or on key decision-makers within a particular industry, LinkedIn allows you to generate leads through sponsored content targeted directly at those exact accounts.

LinkedIn Is the Only Platform You can Target by Job Title and Seniority

Unlike Google Ads or Facebook, where you're often paying for traffic that includes everyone from interns to unqualified browsers, LinkedIn lets you filter down to specific job titles, seniority levels, and company attributes. For MSPs, this means you can serve ads exclusively to IT directors, CFOs, or business owners at companies that match your ideal customer profile.

Why LinkedIn Ads Are Expensive—and Why Most MSPs Use Them Wrong

I need to be direct about this: LinkedIn is an extremely expensive platform. And here's the uncomfortable truth—the LinkedIn reps who are supposed to help you don't know what they're talking about most of the time. They'll push you toward objectives and formats that benefit LinkedIn's revenue, not your results.

Its critical that before you get started you have a clear battle-tested strategy to follow. The strategies outline below are designed to maximize your return while avoiding the common pitfalls that drain MSP advertising budgets.

How Budget and Time Dictate Your MSP LinkedIn Ads Strategy

Low Budget, Low Effort Strategies

If you're just getting started or working with a limited budget, retargeting ads and text/spotlight ads are your best entry points. These strategies require minimal creative investment and can run on budgets as low as a few hundred dollars per month.

Mid-Funnel Strategies for Low-Cost Content Leads

MSPs that are willing to spend $1,000 - $2,000 per month should focus on a middle-funnel strategy with gated case studies, eBooks, and guides. This strategy will produce content leads for ~$200/lead if you pair the audience and offer right. On average, your sales team will need to follow up with 6-9 content leads (MQLs) to book a meeting (SQL).

Full-Funnel LinkedIn Ads for High-Value Target Accounts

The full-funnel approach is reserved for MSPs with established marketing operations and budgets of $3,000 to $5,000+ per month in ad spend. If you haven't exhausted other marketing channels yet, this isn't where you should start. Though this strategy requires the most in ads spend, it also produces the highest ROI.

On average, a full-funnel strategy can produce a new MSP client for $3k-$5k. At face value, that might seem like a lot but when considering that this is your dream customer (accompanied by a higher MRR) it can be a worthwhile investment.

Strategy #1 – Retargeting Ads (The Foundation Every MSP Should Use)

This is the strategy I think every MSP should use, especially if you have any search visibility at all. Retargeting ads take people who have already visited your website and put your ads in front of them on LinkedIn.

When Retargeting Makes Sense for MSPs

If you're getting any organic traffic to your website—whether from SEO, referrals, or direct visits—you should be retargeting those visitors. There's a small pixel you can add to your website through Google Tag Manager that communicates visitor information to LinkedIn, which then serves your ads to those people.

How LinkedIn Retargeting Filters Out Junk Traffic

One of my favorite aspects of LinkedIn retargeting is how easy it is to filter out irrelevant traffic. For MSPs, technology vendors often visit your website because they’re trying to sell you something. On most ad platforms, that traffic wastes budget. With LinkedIn, we can exclude those companies and make sure your ads are only shown to the prospects you actually want to reach.

Best Ad Formats for Retargeting (Single Image Ads)

For retargeting campaigns, single image ads are the way to go. They're the easiest to create and test, and they're highly effective from a conversion perspective. Keep it simple—one compelling image with clear messaging.

Recommended Campaign Objective: Website Visits

Use the Website Visits objective for the most cost-effective ad delivery. This is an important distinction: rather than paying every time your ad is shown, you only pay when someone clicks through to your landing page.

There's another reason this matters. Other ad formats charge you for clicks on your social profile, comments, or visits to your LinkedIn company page. With the Website Visits objective, all of those interactions are free—you only pay for actual landing page visits.

Here's an example of what an effective retargeting ad could look like... 

What Offers Convert Best

For your retargeting creative, I highly suggest using some type of gated asset that links out to a landing page. Cybersecurity assessments and cybersecurity audits perform exceptionally well. These offers give prospects a clear reason to engage while positioning you as an expert.

Segmenting Retargeting Audiences by Website Pages

For MSPs with higher search volume, you can get fancy and break out your retargeting audience by specific pages visited. You might have one series of ads for people who visited cybersecurity-related pages and another for visitors to your general managed IT pages. This allows you to serve more relevant messaging based on demonstrated interest.

Strategy #2 – Thought Leadership Ads (Low Cost, High Leverage)

Why This Is Not a Traditional Lead Generation Strategy

With thought leadership ads, our goal is less about getting immediate conversions and more about building awareness and promoting education within your target audience. This is a long-game strategy that pays dividends over time.

Using Founder-Led Content Instead of Company Ads

Instead of using a retargeting audience, you'll upload a list of target accounts. Then, instead of running ads from your company page, you take organic posts from your CEO, CTO, or co-founder and slot them into your LinkedIn ads campaign.

Why Thought Leader Ads Get 70–80% Lower CPCs

Here's what's powerful about this strategy: LinkedIn heavily favors content from individuals over company pages. We've seen cost-per-clicks drop by over 75 percent when using thought leader posts instead of company posts.

To put that in real numbers: if a single image ad from a company page costs around $2 per click on average, a thought leader post might cost as little as 50 cents—or even less. That's a massive efficiency gain.

Building a Target Account List (100–1,000 Companies)

Your target account list should include 100 to 1,000 companies that fit your ideal customer profile. These might be businesses in your city or businesses nationwide if you're pursuing a specific industry. These should be the accounts that would contribute the most MRR to your business.

What I love about this strategy is that it doesn't require a large budget. You can run it in a very cost-effective way while building significant awareness.

Creating a Content Roadmap Based on Buyer Pain Points

Once your account list is uploaded to LinkedIn, create a content roadmap by asking yourself: What are the main problems your prospects are trying to solve for? What questions are they likely asking along the way?

Here's a great example. For MSPs targeting financial services, there's a new SEC regulation taking effect in June 2026. RIAs have questions about how to deal with it and what they need to change regarding their cybersecurity requirements. That's exactly the kind of topic you should be addressing in your thought leadership content.

Best Objectives and Ad Formats for Thought Leadership

For thought leadership campaigns, use the Engagement objective with sponsored posts from your executive team. Have four to five ads ready with that thought leadership angle. You can use single images, text-only posts, or video if you have it.

Strategy #3 – Gated Content Ads

When Gated Content Works (and When It Fails)

This strategy uses document ads with a lead generation objective. You'll have some type of resource that's specific to an industry or a tightly defined audience, and you run campaigns to get people to download that resource.

The Importance of a Tight, Focused Audience

Let me be extremely clear about this: with gated content, it is absolutely critical that you have a tight audience. If you don't have a tight audience, this strategy will not work.

The reason small businesses can compete with large enterprises spending millions on LinkedIn ads is because small businesses can be much more precise with their targeting. If you're trying to be everything to everyone, that's a battle you will lose on LinkedIn.

Examples of High-Performing MSP Gated Content

A good example that we've run for clients is "The Ultimate Guide to SOC 2 Readiness for Tech Startups." That performed extremely well because it targeted a tight audience (tech startups) with a specific initiative they care about (SOC 2 compliance).

To give you context: around 70% of enterprises require their technology vendors to have SOC 2 compliance. If you're a B2B SaaS company that just raised your Series A, there's a very good chance you need SOC 2 before you close your Series B—especially before you start landing enterprise accounts.

Strategy #4 – Text Ads and Spotlight Ads

What Text Ads and Spotlight Ads Look Like on LinkedIn

If you've ever been on LinkedIn and looked at the right side of the page, you've seen these. Maybe it was an ad with your face next to another brand's logo, or a small ad with just a bit of text. Those are text ads and spotlight ads, and they're the most cost-effective way to get impressions on LinkedIn.

Cost-Per-Impression vs. Cost-Per-Click Benefits

These ads are extremely cheap. Oftentimes, you're paying only a few dollars for 1,000+ impressions. If you run a text ad or spotlight ad with the Website Visits objective, you get thousands of impressions for free and only pay a couple dollars when someone clicks through to your landing page.

Compare that to Google Ads, where you could pay upwards of $50 for a single click to your landing page. Of course, Google Ads traffic is more qualified because they're actively searching for your term—but you can see the value proposition here.

When to Use These Ads in an MSP Campaign

With these ads, you can use a small image with text (spotlight ads) or just text alone (text ads). Write a quick blurb that speaks directly to the pain your prospects feel. For an MSP, that might be something like "Tired of poor IT support?" or "Technology headaches holding you back?"

Setting Expectations (Awareness First, Not Conversions)

Don't expect a lot of direct conversions from these ads. That's not their purpose. The goal is to build awareness by getting your logo in front of prospects at an incredibly low cost. When people do click, they'll land on your page—and you'll have added another touchpoint in the buyer journey.

Strategy #5 – Full-Funnel MSP LinkedIn Ads Strategy

Who This Strategy Is For

This is by far the most expensive approach, but also the most effective strategy on the platform. It's really meant for brands that are more mature from a marketing standpoint—companies that have already effectively utilized other marketing channels and are ready to invest heavily in LinkedIn.

Stage 1 – Awareness via Thought Leadership Ads

The first stage creates awareness with the thought leadership ads from Strategy #2. Discuss the main questions and problems your prospects are trying to solve. When you get cost-effective engagement on these ads, you can build retargeting audiences affordably.

Stage 2 – Education via Document Ads

When prospects engage with your thought leadership ads, they move into the second stage of the funnel: education through document ads. At this point, they already recognize who we are, so the goal shifts from awareness to deeper understanding. We use document ads to share valuable, relevant content that helps them better understand their challenges and how our services solve them—without pushing for a sales conversation too early.

Stage 3 – Conversion via Retargeting Ads

Finally, in the third stage we will transition to conversion. At this stage, the prospect has had at least two meaningful interactions with our brand and is ready for an offer. For an MSP, we would suggest using an offer that is a low-risk, high-value next step such as a free IT assessment or a cybersecurity audit.

Minimum Monthly Ad Spend Needed to Make This Work

I usually suggest a full-funnel strategy for groups that have a budget of $2,000 to $5,000 each month for ads. Without a healthy budget it is next to impossible to create a stage 3 audience that is big enough to produce a meaningful number of conversions.

Managing Ad Fatigue and Ongoing Content Creation

You also need a pretty good-sized audience and a robust content plan that can support this for months on end. Ads fatigue over time and require new content to maintain performance. This needs to be a strong consideration when you're strategizing about adding LinkedIn ads to your marketing mix.

How to Think About LinkedIn Ads as a Long-Term Growth Lever

LinkedIn ads aren't a quick fix. They're a long-term growth lever that compounds over time. You build awareness, establish thought leadership, and create multiple touchpoints with your ideal accounts. When those accounts are ready to buy, you're already a known and trusted name.

Start with retargeting if you have website traffic. Add thought leadership if you're creating content. Layer in gated resources for specific audiences. And when your marketing is mature enough, consider the full-funnel approach.

The MSPs who commit to effective MSP LinkedIn ads management will have a significant competitive advantage in 2026. The question is whether you'll be one of them.