Beyond LinkedIn: The myth of platform-specific B2B marketing

It’s one of the most persistent assumptions in B2B marketing: LinkedIn is where the buyers are. Meta? That’s for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands and vacation photos.

But the people who build and buy B2B software don’t disappear when they close their laptops. They’re scrolling Instagram, checking Facebook, and watching reels long after their workday ends. And they’re doing it with the same needs, challenges, and purchase intent they brought to LinkedIn that morning.

So why do so many B2B teams ignore these channels entirely?

Fabien David, former growth lead at Notion and Airbnb, summed it up best: “For a lot of B2B companies, especially the ones who target enterprise customers — the same ones who discard all their personal emails — oftentimes have these knee-jerk reactions: ‘Meta is not for me.’”

This is not just wrong — it’s an expensive mistake.

We unpacked this question in a recent Clarify session featuring Fabien and Alvin Ding, a growth strategist who’s managed over $200 million in ad spend for brands like Airbnb and Upwork. The conversation focused on what actually works in B2B advertising today, why traditional assumptions are breaking down, and how to build a cross-platform strategy rooted in buyer behavior — not channel loyalty. What follows isn’t just a recap. It’s a new playbook for modern B2B teams who want to expand their reach without wasting their budget.

Conventional wisdom is costing you

LinkedIn is undeniably powerful. But it’s not your only option. And if you treat it as such, you’re ignoring a much bigger opportunity set.

Fabian explains: “If you're a B2B company targeting startups, Meta is definitely for you — it should at least be part of your testing roadmap — because a lot of your customers are going to be spending a lot of time consuming content there. This is a much cheaper way to be in front of them than to pay $20 a click on LinkedIn.”

Meta’s cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) are significantly lower. The audience? Enormous. The challenge isn’t whether your prospects are there. It’s whether you know how to find them.

Alvin put it bluntly: “Everyone’s on Meta. You just have to figure out how to get to them.”

And the numbers back them up. According to Statista, 59% of U.S. B2B buyers use Facebook and 42% use Instagram to evaluate vendors — both higher than LinkedIn at 37%. LinkedIn still leads in trust, but treating it as the only viable B2B platform ignores where influence is actually happening.

The persona table: What B2B marketers miss

Most marketers don’t have a targeting problem. They have a persona problem.

Alvin lays out a framework he uses to clarify audience needs. It’s a four-column persona table:

• Who they are
• What they want
• How they currently get what they want
• What’s standing in their way

The final column — emotional barriers — is where the hooks come from. Think: “You’re stuck in spreadsheets,” or “You’re losing hours every week in approvals.” These insights shape the creative that cuts through on any platform.

This table isn’t just a research exercise. It’s a blueprint for tailoring campaigns across channels based on real buyer needs.

“Without these things on paper,” Alvin says, “you basically don’t have a good theory of how to acquire folks. With it, you have a much sharper roadmap.”

Enrichment changes everything

This shift becomes most powerful at the intersection of qualitative insight and quantitative depth. It’s when self-reported persona data meets enriched lead intelligence gathered through third-party tools and behavioral signals.

The common assumption is that work emails are required for qualification. But Fabien pushes back. At Hex, he saw firsthand how many promising signups came in through Gmail.

“A lot of companies will just discard personal emails and think, ‘Oh, they’re just not qualified,’” he said. “This is just lazy.”

Using tools like Clay and Clearbit, Fabien’s team enriched personal email addresses to uncover gold: titles, company domains, data warehouse stacks. One reverse lookup revealed a Fortune 500 data scientist - their exact ICP. Without enrichment, that lead would have been thrown away.

And the payoff was significant. Hex had previously blocked personal emails at the top of funnel, which limited inbound volume. But after lifting that restriction and layering in enrichment, they discovered they were attracting more high-value users than expected. That shift led to better signal detection, stronger lookalike audiences, and a more qualified pipeline. Below (and in our Revtech essentials course), we’ve listed out an enrichment vendor comparison to help you get started.

Before you invest in an enrichment tool, consider how it will fit with the rest of your revtech stack. It should integrate with any tool that handles contact data like your marketing automation tool, sales engagement tool, or CRM. Bonus points if you invest in a CRM (like Clarify) that has built in enrichment.

It’s not just about patching gaps in your customer relationship management (CRM). It’s about surfacing the hidden value already inside your funnel.

And it matters for more than just segmentation. Meta’s ad platform thrives when it’s fed enriched first-party data. Despite changes in privacy and tracking, custom and lookalike audiences remain powerful tools — so long as the input quality is high.

First-party isn’t enough. Go zero-party.

Most marketers chase first-party data: site visits, clicks, open rates. But this doesn’t tell you why someone showed up in the first place.

Fabien advocates for onboarding surveys that collect what’s known as zero-party data: information the customer voluntarily provides. Not just role and industry, but:

• What tool are you currently using?
• What’s the main problem you’re solving?
• What outcome would make this a success?

This data powers campaign relevance and audience precision at a level no ad platform can offer natively. And there’s a small window where people are willing to give it up.

Alvin explains: “The most motivated a prospect will ever be in terms of gathering data is when they haven’t gotten to play with the tool yet.”

Ask the right questions early — and use that information to inform the entire journey, from lifecycle emails to retargeting campaigns.

Channel selection starts with strategy

Once you have real persona data and enriched lead profiles, picking platforms becomes tactical, not ideological.

Alvin recommends testing broadly, then optimizing for ROI. His rule of thumb:

• LinkedIn is expensive, but hyper-targeted. Ideal for high contract values, known accounts, and enterprise audiences.
• Meta delivers reach and efficiency. Great for startup buyers, product-led growth (PLG) products, and broader awareness plays.
• Google is intent-first. Best when you know exactly what your audience is searching for — and when.

Cost matters — but context matters more. LinkedIn’s average CPC typically ranges from $5 to $7, with some high-intent campaigns exceeding $15 depending on your audience and targeting. Meta’s CPC, by contrast, averages closer to $1.70 across all industries.

If your audience is broad and you’re focused on reach, Meta offers a much more cost-efficient way to get in front of them. You’ll need enrichment to qualify the volume, but in many cases, the economics win out.

But if your target list is tight — and the value of a single conversion justifies the premium — LinkedIn’s precision might be worth the investment.

Don’t confuse cost with value

The platform debate is often framed as cheap vs. expensive. But this is not the right lens.

It’s about precision vs. scale.

Alvin has seen campaigns fail on Meta — not because the channel didn’t work, but because the data wasn’t strong enough. Without signals to feed the algorithm, targeting gets fuzzy. This is where enrichment and segmentation matter most.

He’s also seen Meta outperform LinkedIn in B2B lead gen for startups, especially when backed by first-party cohorts and zero-party insights.

Alvin doesn’t treat channel selection as a one-time decision. He approaches it like an investment portfolio — testing across platforms, doubling down on what delivers results, and adjusting the mix as data comes in.

Why measurement still breaks everything

Platform debates often start with CPCs and CPMs — but they tend to fall apart when you look at reporting. Attribution models vary wildly across platforms, which makes performance comparisons murky at best.

LinkedIn leans on last-touch attribution. Meta relies on modeled conversions. Google offers data-driven or position-based models (if they’re properly configured). And your CRM? It’s often lagging by weeks, capturing only part of the buyer journey.

This fragmentation isn’t just a data issue. It’s an organizational one. Different teams are making decisions based on incomplete views of performance. One platform gets the credit, another gets ignored, and the real story — how buyers actually move from discovery to conversion — gets lost.

Solving this takes more than a better dashboard. It requires aligning your internal systems around a shared understanding of buyer behavior and creating feedback loops that reflect the full journey, not just the last click.

The real myth

LinkedIn isn’t the problem. Meta isn’t the solution. The real myth is that there’s a single “right” platform at all.

What separates high-performing B2B marketing teams isn’t their channel of choice. It’s their willingness to challenge assumptions, build better systems, and go where the evidence leads.

This starts by asking a better question. It’s not "Where should we run ads?" It’s "What do we need to know about our buyers to reach them anywhere?"