Guiding B2B SaaS Companies to unlocking Revenue-Driven Success. Founder & Head of Growth @ Marked.

Over the past decade, I've dedicated my career to helping B2B SaaS companies focus on revenue-driven marketing operations that result in tangible growth. 

As the former founder of Marked, a respected agency in Belgium, I have worked with over 50 clients worldwide, providing sustainable growth solutions.

My mission is to empower B2B SaaS businesses by setting up revenue programs that generate consistent and sustainable growth. My approach is centered around practical strategies that drive real results. Nothing fluffy, real action.

What I Offer:
→ Coaching for CMOs & B2B Marketers: Tailored coaching to enhance skills and strategic thinking.
→ Fractional CMO Services: Providing leadership and expertise on a part-time basis to drive your growth.
→ Strategic Trajectories: Developing comprehensive plans that align with your business goals.
→ Building Revenue Systems: Crafting and implementing systems to ensure steady revenue growth.

Notable Clients:
I've had the privilege of working with leading B2B SaaS companies such as Mouseflow, Robovision, 6clicks, Sequesto, Froomle, and Accurat.

Key Achievements:
→ Assisted over 50 clients worldwide
→ Established Marked as a respected agency within Belgium
→ Advised startups through Belgian accelerators

If you're interested in learning more about how I can help your business grow, visit my personal site or subscribe to my newsletter for the latest insights and strategies.

Learn More:

Personal Site: xanmannekens.me
Newsletter: b2bmarketerscompass.com

Let's connect and explore how we can drive growth for your business together.

Xan Mannekens

We're looking for a intern or student videographer to join us at Superhlth (paid internship).

Here's the situation. We're building mini-series content to tell the story of what we're creating, show real health transformations, and basically bring our mission to life on camera. 

We need someone who gets excited about turning complex health tech into human stories.

If you're into creative work, can shoot and edit video, and want to build your portfolio while working on something that actually matters, this could be a great fit.

Flexible hours around your studies. Real creative ownership. 

Interested or know someone who'd be perfect? 

Just send me a message.

CMO & GTM Lead @ Superhlth | Helping you understand your body like never before.

Framer expert? Give me a shout!

We got some work to do on our product detail pages (gallery cards, review implementation,...). Who can help us? - Short notice

Global Demand Generation at GetAccept | Paid Ads & Growth Advisor | Prove the impact of running LinkedIn Ads by identifying influenced deals and revenue with Fibbler 🦁

Hey! 

I’m Adam. Dad, marketer, and full-time founder.

Right now, I’m building Fibbler, the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs. We’ve grown to 400+ paying customers in our first 20 months, fully bootstrapped.

If you’re into LinkedIn Ads, founder-led growth, brand building, or just want to see me try to build this company without external capital while competing with VC giants, follow along here on LinkedIn.

Adam Holmgren

FIBBLER JUST HIT 500 CUSTOMERS

A year ago we had around 140.

Two regular guys from Sweden building an attribution tool for paid ads in the SMB segment.

Completely self-serve and 60% of our customer base is in the US at this point.

For a long time our entire go-to-market was me posting on LinkedIn and running thought leader ads.

And it worked.

But it also meant that every time a post flopped, I could see the numbers dip. 

Every week where I didn’t have a good content idea felt like I was letting the company down.

So late 2025 into early 2026 we started layering on new tactics. 

YouTube. SEO. Creator programs. Outbound emails.

For the first time growth isn’t just tied to me being in the feed every day. I can’t describe how much lighter that feels.

The other thing we didn’t expect: companies with 100-250 employees are now our fastest growing segment.

We built Fibbler for individual marketers like myself. The person who just wants to swipe their card and prove that paid ads actually work at their startup.

Turns out the same problem exists at larger SMBs too. They just didn’t have an alternative between “do it manually in spreadsheets” and “pay five to six figures for an enterprise tool.”

So now we’re at 500 paying customers.

Still two full-time employees.
Still fully bootstrapped.
Still working from a small town in Sweden.

We have a very clear vision of where we want to take this. 

To build the future of paid ads attribution for SMBs.

And honestly, this is the most fun I've ever had at work. 

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LinkedIn and Google Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/.

Co-founder & CEO at Fibbler | Building the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs | 10+ years in B2B marketing

I’ve never sat in business class in my life.

When you’re bootstrapping a company you just don’t. You book the cheapest flight and move on.

But on our flight to New York yesterday, my co-founder surprised me with an upgrade.

We’ve grown MRR 30% since January 1st and have more than 500 customers now. 

His way of saying we should celebrate a little.

But here’s what I find interesting.

If I look at how those customers actually found us, almost none of them follow a clean attribution path.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀:

They see one of my posts while scrolling during lunch but don’t engage → A week later they catch an ad but don’t click → A peer mentions they use us for attribution → They check our company page on LinkedIn and leave → A month goes by, they see more ads, and then one day the pain gets real enough → They Google “fibbler,” land on our site, and sign up.

CRM says: organic search.

Reality: tons of touchpoints over weeks that we’ll never fully track. 

This is the part most B2B marketers still get wrong.

Buyers don’t move in a straight line, they bounce around, and slowly build trust until the timing is right.

So yes, CTR matters.

It’s a strong signal for how engaging and memorable your creative is.

But the real goal with LinkedIn Ads isn’t just engagement.

It's about reaching as many potential buyers as possible at a healthy frequency, and staying in front of them until the timing is right.

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LinkedIn and Google Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/.

I hit 30,000 followers yesterday and I still don’t fully know how, but I think it comes down to one early decision.

About 4 years ago I started posting on LinkedIn with no real plan, just sharing what I was learning in demand gen.

Over time, people actually started paying attention and it opened doors to interviewing some of the smartest marketers in the world on my own podcast.

And that’s when I made the decision that changed everything.

I decided what I wanted to be known for.

I had a deep passion for paid ads and I felt like so many people had the completely wrong idea about what advertising is actually for.

Everyone was obsessing over clicks and conversions when the real job of ads is to build really strong brands.

So that became my thing. 

I talked about it every single week and never stopped.

My narrative shifted over the years, but when I started building Fibbler, everything clicked. 

Suddenly I wasn’t just talking about it, I was building the product to prove it.

And now here I am, 30,000 followers later, sitting in a pool of pink lions because apparently that’s what my life has become.

If you’re trying to build a personal brand on this platform, here’s my biggest tip: find your narrative and talk about it every single week. 

That’s it.

I found the cheat code for being memorable at events, and it’s not caps, hoodies, plushies, or branded board games.

Look down at anyone’s feet at these things. 

It all looks the same.

So I reached out to this great shoe artist and got these made.

Custom Pink Lion Air Max 1s.

If you don’t know, the pink lion is Fibbler’s mascot. It’s on our clothes and ad creatives. 

Now it’s on my feet.

This afternoon I’m taking the stage at LinkedIn’s yearly Partner Connect.

Once a year LinkedIn brings together their official marketing partners. It’s the room I most want to be remembered in.

I’m talking about what I’m seeing from SMB marketers on buyer journeys, measurement and attribution.

But honestly? I want people to remember the shoes first. 😬

They’ll give me that extra bit of confidence up there.

And maybe, just maybe, a few more people will remember me after.

No alternative text description for this image

It's 4:30am in a hotel room in San Francisco and jetlag has me wide awake. So I'm building a feature I can't believe I didn't think of myself.

Last week Patrick Cumming sent me a simple idea that hit me hard.

"You should build something where you can compare LinkedIn influenced deals versus deals that weren't touched by LinkedIn."

I just sat there.

We've been building Fibbler for almost two years. 

How did I not think of this before.

Because this is the one thing every marketer struggles with. 

You can show reach. 
You can show engagement. 
You can even show impact on pipeline.

But when your CEO asks "would these deals have closed without LinkedIn?" 

You have nothing.

So that's what I've been building these early mornings.

A lift analysis that compares deals touched by LinkedIn versus deals that weren't:
→ Close rates 
→ Sales cycle length 
→ Deal sizes

Side by side.

Is it proof that LinkedIn caused the deal? No. 

But when LinkedIn touched deals close 18% faster and are 30% larger? That's not something you just ignore.

Sometimes you're so deep in your own product that it takes one message from someone else to see the obvious.

P.S. 

Fibbler now lets you compare LinkedIn-touched deals vs. untouched ones, side by side, so you can finally show your CEO the real lift on close rates, deal size, and sales cycle length. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/

We spent $80,000 on LinkedIn Ads over the last 12 months. That’s roughly 10% of our ARR as a bootstrapped startup.

Not to chase form fills.
Not to distribute gated content.

But to become the brand people think of when they think LinkedIn Ads attribution.

Last year I shared what I learned spending $27k. We tripled that over the last 12 months.

This is what our strategy looks like now:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1️⃣ Engagement benchmarks above everything

We hold ourselves to two numbers:
1%+ CTR on image ads
10%+ CTR on Thought Leader Ads

If we're below that, the creative is not good enough. These benchmarks force us to make ads that make people actually feel something.

2️⃣ 70% of our budget goes to Thought Leader Ads

TLAs let me amplify organic content that's already performing well and push it far outside my network. And when you're a founder building in public, TLAs are the closest thing to a cheat code on LinkedIn.

3️⃣ Build your retargeting pool like it's your most valuable asset

We now have around 10,000 people in our ICP retargeting pool. We keep ad penetration above 75%, so we’re reaching nearly everyone who’s already shown interest, with a frequency around 3-4 excluding text ads over a 30-day window.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

4️⃣ Brand compounds. And eventually the numbers prove it.

The hardest part of spending $80k on awareness is explaining it to yourself or your executive team. 

But here’s what happened over 12 months for us:

Branded search: 1,500 to 3,000 per month
Signups: 150 to 400+ per month
ARR: $120k to $660k

You can’t attribute this to a single campaign, but look at the trend and tell me it’s not working

What's next?

✅ We're building an outbound motion based on ad engagers (using Fibbler)
✅ We're also running more TLAs featuring customers and creators

And one last thing.

Last year I said we'd double our budget. We tripled it.

LinkedIn Ads work for all kinds of startups, included bootstrapped ones.

But only if you treat it as a long game, hold yourself to high creative standards, and be willing to put a decent sum of money on it.

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LI Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/

Five years ago I attended my first SaaSiest event, and now we’re there as a vendor with Fibbler, a real full-circle moment.

Let me back up to that first event.

I was working in-house as a B2B marketer and honestly didn't know what to expect.

I'd been to plenty of events before where you sit through sessions that sound great on paper but turn out to be theoretical fluff. 

And then everyone awkwardly stands around during the breaks.

SaaSiest was different.

The sessions were actually practical and useful. 

But more importantly the vibe was just different.

People genuinely wanted to talk to each other. Not in a forced way but in a "hey, what are you working on?" kind of way.

And for someone like me who is a bit of an introvert, that was a big deal.

People actually came up to talk.

I've been to pretty much every SaaSiest since then.

And every time I left with new connections and that feeling of being around people who are building stuff and figuring it out as they go.

Fast forward to now. 

On May 5-6th we're joining our first ever event as a vendor at SaaSiest, and me and our pink lion Fibbs couldn't be more excited.

From 5x attendee to vendor with my own company. 

That's a full-circle moment I didn't see coming five years ago. 🥹

I spent the last 10 years in startup marketing and I've never seen things shift this fast. And most companies won't adapt fast enough.

We grew Fibbler to 400+ paying customers in 20 months. 

And almost everything I learned along the way goes against what most B2B companies are doing right now.

1. Brand is your only moat

There are 200,000+ SaaS companies right now. Features get copied overnight. The reason people pick Fibbler over tools with way more features than us? A pink lion they cant stop seeing in their feed.

2. Go deep on one channel before you try to be everywhere

We only focused on LinkedIn. One channel. Made it easy to see what was working and to do it really well.

3. Your CRM is lying to you

It says a deal came from "organic search" but in reality that company saw your content 500 times before they ever Googled you. You're giving credit to the wrong channels and killing the stuff that actually works.

4. Founder-led growth has a ceiling

I had 25,000 followers on LinkedIn before we even launched. Got us to 50 paying customers fast. But if your company brand don’t start growing you will eventually plateau.

I break all of this down way deeper in the full YouTube video including what to actually do about each one.👇

Teaching my son to ski while answering support tickets from the mountain. That’s my life right now and I love it so much.

I have two beautiful kids (4 and 2) who are finally sleeping through the night and actually listening to their parents (kind of..)

A partner who is my best friend and everything I could have wished for in someone to build a family with.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

And a co-founder who is also a true friend, building something in a space I’m so passionate about, seeing results we couldn’t have dreamed of when we started.

But all that aside, there are times that get really intense.

The last 3 weeks have been totally crazy.

1 week in San Francisco hanging out with some awesome people at LinkedIn’s HQ and meeting customers.

Then 1 week skiing with the family in Sweden.

And next week is another week away, this time NYC for LinkedIn’s yearly partner event and meeting customers.

At the same time, my day-to-day at Fibbler is busier than ever.

More support, more demos, more campaigns.

And naturally, this gets harder and harder when you’re moving through different timezones..

And we’re trying to launch our biggest feature to date, adding Google Ads as our second paid channel.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Living the startup dream right now. 

And it’s more intense than anything I’ve ever done.

𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗼 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Build a product for startup marketers who want to know if their LinkedIn Ads actually drive revenue.

I’d spent 10 years as an in-house B2B marketer and I knew the pain. 

Every month end was the same conversation: “We think LinkedIn is working but we can’t really prove it.” 

My friend Adam Hartsner said yes before I even finished the pitch. 

We split it 50/50 and started building from a small town in southern Sweden.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Population: not many.

The first version was bad. And it took us 8-10 months to get it out the door (this was before AI coding…)

But 50 people from my LinkedIn network signed up and paid anyway.

Fast forward to now and things look a little different.

We just got back from NYC where I was on stage at LinkedIn’s Partner Connect event. 

One guy from a small town in southern Sweden, sharing the stage with companies 15x our size, talking about B2B measurement and the future of attribution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But honestly one of the best parts of that trip was hanging out with the teams from Dreamdata, Factors, and Channel99. 

And instead of it being weird or competitive we had a blast. 

Talking about where the market is going, comparing roadmaps, sharing what we’re learning.

Also, before NYC I was in San Francisco for a LinkedIn Live production about founder-led growth (check it out if you haven’t seen it).

Got to share our story of growing Fibbler without any funding, using primarily LinkedIn.

I keep having these moments where I look over at Adam and think… how is this actually our life?

We have 500+ customers at this point and get to travel the world with LinkedIn to meet marketers just like myself.

The thing nobody tells you about building a software company is that the early days feel mostly horrible. 

Everything breaks constantly and you need to literally put in all of your time fixing it.

But now we finally have a stable product and I can’t wait to see where we go in 2026 after launching additional ad channels, MCP servers and audience building capabilities.

One year ago I started putting our mascot into popular memes and running them as LinkedIn Ads. Still our best-performing creative format ever.

And I’m sharing our exact process because nobody else is doing this and they should be.

It started as a dumb experiment. 

I wanted to see if anyone would actually engage with something that felt more internet than LinkedIn and still remember our brand from it.

Here’s how we build them for Fibbler: 

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟏 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Not just any meme. I’m specifically looking for scenarios that capture the relationship between a B2B marketer and their exec team. 

When you nail that dynamic in a meme format people stop scrolling because they see themselves in it.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟐 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If people have to think about what they’re looking at you’ve already lost them. It needs to be something they’ve seen a hundred times. The familiarity is half the joke. 

But here’s the real win: they already know the meme, so now they attach our brand to that situation. That’s memorability you can’t buy with a standard ad format.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟑 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐫​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He uses a mix of AI tools to edit our pink lion mascot smoothly into the scene. We also tweak the meme enough that it’s not a direct copy of the original. It needs to feel native, not slapped on.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟒 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Cold audience ads focus on proving your ads are actually working and how hard that can be to argue for.

Retargeting ads poke fun at spending a fortune on attribution tools when you don’t have to (by that point people already know who we are so we can just lean into the joke.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​).

The creative I’m attaching to this post might be our best one yet. 

Genuinely think it’s going to be our highest performer.

If you’re running LinkedIn Ads and you have a mascot, try this. 

You can thank me later.

I used to think outbound was just buying a list, blasting emails, and hoping someone replies. Turns out… there's a bit more to it 😅

With Fibbler, we've grown to 450+ customers through inbound. LinkedIn content, LinkedIn Ads, word of mouth, community.

But outbound? I've just avoided it.

Not because I didn't believe in it.

But because most outbound I've seen in B2B is terrible: "I noticed you breathe oxygen, thought we should connect."

I didn't want Fibbler to be that.

So when I finally decided to take outbound seriously, I wanted to do it differently.

We're now working with Kiin.co - Linkedin Ads Agency and Philip Ilic to build a real outbound engine. 

And the strategy already has me excited.

𝐖𝐞'𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞𝐬:

1. Cold outbound to companies running LinkedIn Ads

Marketing teams spending money on LinkedIn but most likely have zero visibility into how it connects to pipeline and revenue. We reach out, show them the gap, and make it hard to ignore. Subject lines like "[CEO name] thinks your ads don't work."

2. Warm outbound using Fibbler on ourselves

My favorite one (surprise...). We use our own product to find companies that have already engaged with our LinkedIn ads. Send them to Clay, enrich with ICP contacts, and email them. In the email, we tell them exactly how we found them. The outreach IS the product demo. They experience the value before they even reply.

3. Fully automated signals-based outbound
Someone visits our website. Likes one of my LinkedIn posts. Leaves a comment. That signal fires, the lead gets automatically enriched, and a personalized email goes out. 

The cool part is that angle 2 is powered by our own product.

So every outbound email we send is basically proof that Fibbler works.

The outreach itself becomes the case study.

That's what I always wanted outbound to feel like. Just showing people what's possible with their own data.

We're just getting started so I don't have results yet.

But I'll keep you posted on everything.

Open rates, reply rates, meetings booked. All of it.

Doing it all in public, as usual!

I’m not a positioning expert at all. But launching my own startup forced me to be ruthlessly clear about what we do and who it’s for.

And what a journey it has been.

Fibbler started out as a “Revenue Attribution platform for LinkedIn Ads.”

And honestly, it was pretty laughable to call what we had in the beginning a platform.

So we made it simpler.

It became a “LinkedIn Ads Attribution tool.”

Clear in terms of what we do. 
Clear in how we could help marketers.

But still very unclear on who we were doing this for.

Our pricing said SMB. But bigger companies kept knocking on our door with security assessments that took weeks for us to fill out.

So we got even clearer.

We became “LinkedIn Ads Attribution for SMBs.”

And that’s where the real unlock happened.

Inbound grew massively in the right segment. Activation numbers followed. Marketers could connect in seconds and get value in minutes.

Now it’s time for the next stage.

We’re adding multiple ad channels to Fibbler to support marketers across all their paid investments, starting with Google Ads.

It’s getting closer and closer to what I dreamt of having when I was an in-house marketer for 10 years.

And our positioning needs to shift slightly to reflect that (in reality, we’ve already been doing this quietly over the past few months).​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We’re building the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs.

And I’ve never been more pumped for anything in my professional career than to see where we’ll be at the end of this year.

P.S. Just landed back home after a fantastic week in San Francisco. I’ve never seen so many AI billboards that say absolutely nothing!

I’ve looked at hundreds of LinkedIn Ad accounts over the last few years. The same mistakes show up almost every time.

Default bidding that burns through budget. Audience Expansion turned on.
Demo ads running to people in cold.

And then the conclusion is always: 

LinkedIn Ads are too expensive.

They’re not. They’re just unforgiving if you don’t know the settings that actually matter.

Here’s what I cover in the episode:

1️⃣ Structure your campaigns in layers

Your audience isn’t going to buy the first time they see you. I structure everything into three layers: cold (just get on their radar), retargeting (connect your product to the problem), and high-intent (the only place you earn the right to ask for the next step). Most companies skip straight to layer three and wonder why nobody converts.

2️⃣ LinkedIn’s default settings are designed to spend your money faster

Maximum delivery bidding, Audience Network, Audience Expansion… all on by default. All should be off. I recommend starting with manual bidding at one-third of LinkedIn’s recommended bid and usually get the same results at roughly 20% lower cost.

3️⃣ Small targeting mistakes quietly drain your budget

LinkedIn groups job titles loosely. You target marketing titles and suddenly office administrators are seeing your ads. I use three filters (company size, industry, job titles), and check demographics every week week to exclude titles that doesn’t fit.

4️⃣ Clicks only tell you 0.4% of the story

Someone sees your ad 20 times over a few months, Googles your brand, and books a demo. Last-click attribution gives LinkedIn zero credit for that. You end up cutting the campaigns that are actually filling your pipeline because you can’t see the full picture.

I just dropped a quick tutorial on YouTube walking through the full campaign setup from scratch. Targeting, bidding, formats, and how to measure what’s actually driving pipeline.

Whether you’re spending $20/day or $1000/day, this should save you a lot of wasted budget.

Most CMOs don’t cut paid ads because the channel failed. They do it because they never understood what advertising is for.

I keep seeing the same story play out. 

In surveys. In LinkedIn posts. In comments.

"We're cutting paid ads because it's not giving us results."

And it always goes the same way...

A marketing team launches ads. A few weeks go by. The team looks at the numbers and the leads aren't qualified enough. Or there aren't enough of them. Budget gets slashed.

But here's what nobody talks about.

If your main complaint is "we're not getting enough leads from our ads" that's rarely the channel's fault.

It's usually a combination of how you think about the purpose of advertising and how well you actually execute it.

Advertising builds familiarity. 

It makes your brand the obvious choice before a buying committee even starts to evaluate options.

Advertising isn't a gumball machine. 

You don't put a dollar in and get a qualified lead out.

The companies that understand this are seeing compounding returns.

Better win rates. 
Shorter sales cycles. 

Because their buyers already knew them before the first call.

The companies that don't will keep chasing the next channel hoping it's the magic gumball machine they've been looking for.

The problem was never the channel.

The problem is fundamentally misunderstanding what advertising is supposed to do for you.

P.S. Fibbs didn't take this post too well. Luckily, we're heading to SF today to take his mind off it... ✈️

Everyone who follows me knows I’m a LinkedIn Ads guy. What most people don’t know is that I’ve been just as deep in Google Ads.

Several years ago at a previous startup, I got Canberk Beker to audit our Google Ads accounts. 

If you don’t know him, he’s one of the best paid search minds in the B2B space. 

That audit was a proper education. 

I learned more in those sessions than in years of running it myself.

Main learning… 

Most B2B companies are wasting at least half their Google Ads budget.

The first place budget dies is default settings. 

As an example, when you create a new Google Ads campaign, Search Partners and Display Network are both turned on automatically. 

Your search budget quietly bleeds into banner ads and random third-party sites.

The second problem is structure. 

The best B2B accounts run distinct campaign layers, each with its own budget and intent level. And don’t even get me started on broad match…

The third problem is tracking. 

Most teams optimize for clicks, which just teaches Google to find volume. Feed it offline data from your CRM instead, and the whole platform starts working differently.

I put everything I know into a new YouTube episode. 

The full strategy I’d run today for Google Ads, from account setup to bidding phases to the tracking mistakes most teams never fix.

You know those outbound emails where someone spent 4 seconds on your LinkedIn before hitting send? When we launched ours, something weird happened. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.

Let me back up.

Last year customers started using Fibbler's ad engagement as part of their intent data layer for outreach. A use case I never thought about.

And as a bootstrapped founder doing a little bit of everything, I didn't have time to explore it.

So I partnered with Philip Ilic and his agency Kiin.co - Linkedin Ads Agency to launch our own outbound motion 2 weeks ago.

They build the infrastructure and automations. 

I create the content.

Because that's the part most people skip. 

They obsess over the tech stack and the automation. 

I obsess over writing emails people actually want to read. 

Two weeks in, we've activated two layers:

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: Cold emails to ICP buyers with similar targeting as our LinkedIn Ads. Companies between 10-250 employees already spending some money on LinkedIn Ads.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: Warm emails to our own ad engagers using Fibbler to push engagement data from our Thought Leader Ads into Clay, then enriching for ICP contacts.

The best signal so far? The replies. 

People are writing back that even though they might not be interested they loved the content. And that warms a marketers heart. 🫶

And we've already seen a couple of direct signups too.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗼𝗻: warm emails triggered by website visits, organic post engagement, recently promoted marketing leaders, and other intent signals.

Turns out people don't hate outbound. 

They just hate lazy outbound.

A few months ago I searched for "best linkedin attribution tool" on ChatGPT and Google. Fibbler wasn't mentioned anywhere.

I'd spent 15 months growing Fibbler almost entirely through LinkedIn. 

My posts, our ads, building a community around what we do. And it worked really well. Branded search traffic had been growing 100% over the past year.

But non-branded organic traffic growth was basically zero.

And I realized that would become a real problem if we wanted to scale. 

Because more and more B2B buyers are asking LLMs things like "what are the best LinkedIn attribution tools" or "what are the alternatives to HockeyStack."

And if you're not showing up in those results, you're missing out on buyers that are already in-market.

So I reached out to Sam and the team at Breaking B2B to help us build an SEO and AI search program from scratch.

The whole approach was the opposite of what I expected. 

We ignored the big high-volume keywords completely. Instead we went after searches that barely have any volume but where the person searching is ready to buy right now.

We've been running this for about three months now and our content breaks down into three layers:

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: Owned listicle content. Alternatives pages, comparison articles. Honest breakdowns where we show where Fibbler wins and where we're not the right fit. I've used most of these tools myself over the years so I know where the real differences are. These pages started ranking within days.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: Integration and use-case content. Pages like "how to integrate LinkedIn Ads with HubSpot" or "LinkedIn Ads Clay integration." Tiny search volume but the people searching have a very specific problem that Fibbler solves.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯: External placements and backlinks. Getting Fibbler mentioned in other people's comparison articles that already rank on Google or get cited by AI tools. Plus earning niche relevant backlinks to boost our own pages.

Three months in, non-branded traffic is up over 200%. Our listicle pages convert at around 9%. And most importantly, it's driving real signups and we're showing up on important topics in LLMs.

I spent 15 months convinced that LinkedIn was the only channel I needed.

Turns out you can build a brand that people love but still can't find in LLMs.

And that's a very expensive blind spot.

taplio

The Battle

Xan Mannekens

Adam Holmgren

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreXan Mannekens's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdam Holmgren's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Xan Mannekens

Adam Holmgren

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Xan Mannekens's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdam Holmgren's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreXan Mannekens's LinkedIn Performance