How we turned LinkedIn from Glints' most expensive channel into their highest-ROI.
$80 CPM. 0.6% CTR. The original LinkedIn experiment was bleeding budget. We rebuilt the approach around thought leadership, and delivered $5 per lead at 500% of the target.
Volume was high. Quality wasn't.
Glints. The largest tech talent platform in Southeast Asia. Was running active LinkedIn lead generation across 6 APAC markets. The original approach used standard sponsored content with broad targeting. Result: $80 CPM, 0.6% CTR, and a CPL that made the channel commercially uncomfortable.
Their tech talent report sat behind a gated form. Strong content, locked behind friction. Meanwhile competitors were spending more for less, and Glints' marketing team was being asked to prove that LinkedIn could be more than an expensive experiment.
Activity was high. Efficiency was the problem.
Thought leadership. Localised data. Rapid creative testing.
Instead of gating the report, we extracted its sharpest insights and turned each into a standalone visual asset. Then we localised by market and tested rapidly.
Pulled the most compelling stats and insights from the talent report and made each one a standalone LinkedIn creative, visual, immediately consumable, no gate. The full report became the destination, not the asset.
Created market-specific stat variants for each of the 6 APAC markets. Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong. Local relevance compounded engagement.
Tested creative angles at speed to identify which insight hooks pulled hardest in each market. Winners scaled within weeks, losers killed within days.
Repositioned the campaign category from 'lead generation' to 'thought leadership'. Made the LinkedIn algorithm reward us with cheaper distribution.
$5 per lead. 137% CTR lift. 500% over target.
Down from a $25 target, a 90% reduction. Made LinkedIn commercially scalable for the first time.
Up from 0.6%, a 137% lift. Algorithm rewarded the better engagement with cheaper distribution.
Against a 1,000-lead target. 500% over-delivery without proportional spend increase.
