Directive

What ad format is winning on Meta and LinkedIn for B2B right now? Video... This came up in Sour & SaaS EP 002 with Angelina Glass-Liu, and her take is backed by what we're seeing in the data across our own Paid accounts. Why video? Because it does something static ads can't... It compresses the education cycle. B2B buying is a long nurturing process. Your ICP needs to understand the problem, evaluate solutions, compare vendors, and build an internal business case. Static ads can communicate what you do. Video can show how it works and why it matters...in 15-30 seconds. A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth ten times that. Use video for prospecting and brand awareness. 15-30 second clips that show your product, explain your value prop, or demonstrate a use case. The goal isn't conversion. It's education at scale. Video ads on Meta (and LinkedIn) have cheaper CPMs than static or carousel ads right now. The platforms are prioritizing video in the algorithm, which means you get more reach per dollar. So you're educating prospects at a lower cost. Then you retarget them with conversion-focused assets (case studies, demo offers, instant forms) at cheaper CPLs because they're already familiar with you. The mistake most B2B marketers make is they treat video like a bottom-of-funnel asset. They gate it. They only use it on landing pages. They assume prospects won't watch unless they're already high-intent. Wrong. Video is your top-of-funnel education engine. It's how you take cold audiences and move them from "never heard of you" to "I understand what you do and why it matters." The funnel Angie's describing: 1️⃣ Prospecting: Video ads at low CPMs. Goal = education and awareness. 2️⃣ Retargeting: Static ads, carousels, or instant forms. Goal = conversion. If you're still running static image ads as your primary prospecting creative on Meta, you're leaving cheaper reach on the table. Watch the full conversation with Angie on Sour & SaaS EP 002. Link in comments. ⬇️

B2B leaders, if you do this it's killing your pipeline... Too many teams still blur the line between Lead Gen and Demand Gen. And that confusion? It shows up in your revenue. Lead Gen = A volume game. Blast ads → gate content → collect forms → toss to sales. Looks great in a dashboard. Feels terrible in a sales pipeline. Demand Gen = A vibes game. Ungated content → lots of impressions → “building awareness.” But when you ask what pipeline it created? Silence. Neither model is built to scale revenue. Customer Generation is. When companies shift to Customer Gen, everything changes: 1️⃣ Lead quantity drops, but quality goes through the roof. 2️⃣ Sales stops complaining because they’re finally getting real buyers. 3️⃣ Your CP-SQO rises—but so do deal sizes and conversion rates. 4️⃣ Marketing can actually prove they drive revenue, not vanity metrics. The winners aren’t optimizing for leads or awareness. They’re optimizing for paying customers. So… what are you building? A lead machine? A brand show? Or a revenue engine? Only one of them keeps the business alive.

Meta Ads for B2B: What's Actually Working Right Now This is from Sour & SaaS EP 002 with Angelina Glass-Liu, where we put her through rapid-fire questions on Meta for B2B while she powered through sour Fruit Riots. Here's what came out of it: ✅ Q1: Best creative format on Meta right now for B2B? Video. Not static. Not carousel. Video. ✅ Q2: One Meta ads feature or tactic that's overrated and needs to die? Advantage Plus. Let that settle in. ✅ Q3: If you had to choose: Facebook or Instagram for B2B? Instagram. Specifically, Instagram Reels. Yes, for B2B. And yes, that's the correct answer. ✅ Q4: Advice for someone running their first Meta campaign for a B2B SaaS company...what should they test first? Audiences. Not creative. Not format. Audiences. Your targeting matters most. You will never see success on Meta if you don't get your targeting right. Start testing with your audiences. And if you have the budget, test the native targeting too. But your first priority should always be audiences. After that, focus on creative testing. Video ads, static versus carousel, all of that. Bonus tactic that most people miss: Test instant forms versus sending to the website. The numbers can surprise you. So here's the play: 1️⃣ Lock your audience targeting. Test custom audiences, lookalikes, and native targeting if you have budget. 2️⃣ Run video creative...specifically optimized for Instagram Reels. 3️⃣ Test instant forms versus landing pages. See which one converts better for your ICP. 4️⃣ Once you've validated targeting and format, then scale creative testing. Don't skip step one. Most campaigns fail because they never got the audience right in the first place. Watch the full conversation with Angie on Sour & SaaS EP 002. Link in comments. ⬇️

Million-dollar ad campaigns launch and fail every single day. And it has nothing to do with budget, creative, or targeting. It's because nobody asks the most fundamental question before launching: What does success look like, and how do we measure it? I know it sounds basic. But there are literally million-dollar campaigns being launched where nobody knows what metric they're optimizing toward. And that's where everything falls apart. Here's what happens in most B2B orgs: The CMO wants brand awareness. The VP of Demand wants pipeline. The Head of Paid wants efficient CPAs. Sales wants qualified leads. Nobody is aligned. So you launch this massive campaign, and three weeks in, everyone's looking at a different dashboard. ➡️ The Head of Paid is celebrating CPL improvements. ➡️ Sales is furious because leads aren't converting. ➡️ The CMO is pointing to brand lift metrics. And nobody can agree on whether to pivot, scale, or kill the campaign. This is because campaigns get built backwards. Most marketers start with tactics, "Let's run LinkedIn ads," instead of locking in the outcome first. They skip the hard conversations upfront: ❌ What stage of the funnel are we trying to move? ❌ Are we creating demand or capturing it? ❌ What signals prove this is working? ❌ What metrics are we willing to bet our budget on? Without alignment on those questions, you're running an expensive experiment with no hypothesis. Here's how we fix it at Directive: Every campaign starts with alignment on three non-negotiables before a single ad gets written: 1️⃣ Lock the funnel stage. Are we optimizing for awareness, consideration, or intent? You can't drive all three in one campaign. Pick one, build for that stage, measure accordingly. 2️⃣ Define the North Star metric. Not clicks. Not impressions. Not MQLs. For us, it's SQOs and pipeline dollars. If the campaign doesn't ladder to revenue, it doesn't ship. 3️⃣ Agree on the attribution model upfront. How are we proving this drove revenue? What's the lookback window? What counts as influence? When you align on these three things before launch, everything changes: ✅ Creative gets sharper because you know what action you're optimizing for. ✅ Targeting gets tighter because you're clear on who needs to see this and when. ✅ Reporting becomes undebatable...it either moved the North Star or it didn't. So before you launch your next campaign, ask yourself: What am I optimizing for? Does everyone on my team actually agree? Can I explain it in one sentence? If the answer is no, don't launch yet. Fix alignment first. Then build the campaign. Because the most expensive campaigns aren't the ones that fail after launch. They're the ones that fail before launch, and nobody realized it until the budget was gone.

90% of LinkedIn SEO content is nonsense. Preliminary data gets thrown out as "the new playbook." One month later, conflicting data completely contradicts it. This came up in Sour & SaaS EP 003 with Benjamin Glass-Liu, and it's the hottest take he has about the future of search...one that would absolutely get him roasted on LinkedIn. Here's the problem: Someone tests a new AI optimization tactic on one site for two weeks. Traffic goes up 15%. They immediately post: "This is the new SEO playbook. Here's the framework." Then a month later, someone else runs the same test and sees traffic drop 10%. New post: "That tactic is dead. Here's what actually works." Neither of them have significant data. Neither of them tested across multiple sites, verticals, or time periods. But both are confident they've cracked the code. And agencies are the worst offenders. They advertise that they have "the hack" or "the cure." They promise guaranteed rankings or traffic growth using some proprietary method. When in reality? A lot of this is testing. A lot of it is gathering data across clients and basing recommendations off patterns...not one-off wins. Here's what Ben's actually saying: It's very important, even if there's a new technique or tactic, to test everything and make sure there's actual significant data behind it before pushing it as something that's going to move the needle. One site's success isn't a playbook. It's a data point. The advantage of working with an agency (a good one) is data aggregation. You're gathering insights across dozens of clients, industries, and scenarios. You can see what holds true across contexts and what was just a fluke for one site. But most LinkedIn SEO content isn't coming from that level of rigor. It's coming from: ❌ One person's anecdotal win ❌ A single A/B test with no statistical significance ❌ Correlation mistaken for causation ❌ Repackaging someone else's post with a new hook The result? Marketers are whipsawed between conflicting tactics every month. They implement "the new playbook," see no results, then abandon it for the next trend. Meanwhile, the fundamentals, targeting high-intent keywords, building authoritative content, earning quality backlinks, still drive 80% of SEO success. Watch the full conversation with Ben on Sour & SaaS EP 003. Link in comments. ⬇️