Combining Thought Leader Ads with Retargeting

#317 | Dave hosts a live session with Dasha Shakov (Head of Marketing, Proton.ai), Emeric Ernoult (Founder, CEO, Agorapulse), and Finn Thormeier (Founder, Project 33) to break down what’s working on LinkedIn right now. They discuss why LinkedIn is the most important channel for B2B, why social media is the best marketing channel available today, how founder-led and employee content drives growth, and what’s changed about how people use the platform over the last five years. The group also gets into LinkedIn’s thought leader ads, thoughts on measuring results when attribution is messy, and how to sell LinkedIn’s value to leadership and convince them to spend time there. It’s a look into how B2B teams can earn attention, build credibility, and make LinkedIn a massive growth channel in 2026.

Timestamps

• (00:56) - – Why LinkedIn is still Dave’s favorite B2B channel
• (05:01) - – Panel intros: Dasha, Finn, Emeric
• (07:25) - – Why LinkedIn changed and why it matters now
• (09:34) - – “Our buyers aren’t on LinkedIn” is mostly wrong
• (12:26) - – Who should post: CEO, team, or company page
• (16:47) - – Why promo posts flop (and why that’s okay)
• (21:44) - – What to actually post when starting from zero
• (38:13) - – Why thought leader ads outperform everything else

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:

Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive.

AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.

Visit exitfive.com/retreat to apply for Exit Five’s first-ever, in-person Marketing Leadership Retreat, March 18–20, 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join 100 CMOs and VPs of Marketing from companies like like Zoom, Snowflake, Manychat, Bitly, G2, HP, and more for two days of thinking bigger around a trusted group of peers in marketing. 

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

• They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
• Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
• Visit hatch.fm to learn more