LinkedIn costs several times what Meta or TikTok cost per click. For most e-commerce sellers that settles it.
For a narrow set, it is the cheapest channel available, because the thing being bought is worth enough that the click price stops mattering. Working out which group you are in is the whole decision.
When it is worth it
Wholesale and bulk. If one customer places repeat orders worth thousands, a $9 click is cheap. Reaching retail buyers, procurement and store owners is what LinkedIn targeting is actually good at.
Corporate gifting and swag. Someone buying three hundred branded items for a company is at work when they decide. This is a genuinely strong fit.
Office, hospitality and trade supply. Anything bought by a business for a business, where the buyer has a job title you can target.
Recruiting for your own brand. Not sales, but it is where the audience is.
High-ticket consumer goods aimed at professionals. Specialist equipment, professional tools. Narrow but real.
When it is not
Consumer products under $100. The arithmetic does not work and no amount of creative fixes it.
Impulse purchases. The surface is not built for them and the audience is not in that mode.
Broad lifestyle goods. You are paying a professional-audience premium to reach people as consumers, which is the worst of both.
If you are in this group, the honest advice is to spend the budget on Meta and come back if you ever launch a wholesale line.
What the targeting actually buys
This is the only thing LinkedIn sells that others do not: job title, company size, industry, seniority, and function, self-reported and reasonably current.
If your buyer is "procurement manager at a hotel group" or "owner of an independent retailer", no other platform lets you say that. That precision is what you are paying the premium for — and if your buyer cannot be described that way, you are paying for a capability you are not using.
The creative
LinkedIn creative conventions differ from social platforms, and the common failure is importing a TikTok sensibility.
It is fine to look like an ad. The audience expects business content. Disguising it as native content, as you would on TikTok, reads as odd here.
Lead with the business outcome. Margin, lead time, minimum order quantity, reliability. Not lifestyle.
Professional production helps, in contrast to TikTok where it hurts. A polished video signals a company that can fulfil an order.
Longer is tolerated. 30 to 60 seconds is normal where 15 would be long elsewhere.
Captions always. Much of the feed is consumed in an office with sound off.
Square or landscape. Vertical is supported but the feed is not vertical-first the way others are. Reframe your vertical assets rather than uploading them unchanged.
One clear next step, and make it low-friction — a catalogue, a sample request, a line sheet.
What to offer
Clicking "buy now" is rarely the right action for a business buyer who will need approval and terms. Offers that convert better:
- A wholesale catalogue or line sheet download
- A sample request
- Minimum order and pricing information
- A short call for larger accounts
The video's job is to make the business case for taking one of those steps, not to close a sale in sixty seconds.
Expectations, honestly
Clicks cost multiples of other platforms. Budget accordingly and do not panic at the CPC in week one.
Volume is low. Precise targeting means small audiences. This is not a channel for learning fast through volume.
The cycle is long. A business buyer who sees your ad in October may order in January. Attribution will not capture this cleanly and you should not expect it to.
Judge it on pipeline, not on same-session conversion. If you measure LinkedIn the way you measure a TikTok retail campaign, it will look like a failure even when it is working.
A minimum viable test
If you think you might be in the worth-it group:
- Define the buyer by job title. If you cannot, stop — the channel's advantage is unavailable to you.
- Produce one polished 30–45 second video making the business case. One, not five; volume testing is not what this channel is for.
- Offer a catalogue or sample, not a purchase.
- Budget enough for a readable result — which, given the click prices, is more than feels comfortable.
- Track enquiries over a quarter, not conversions over a week.
If that produces nothing, the answer is clear and you have spent one quarter finding out.
Where generated video fits
Narrowly. LinkedIn rewards production quality, and the volume-testing argument that justifies generated creative on Meta does not apply on a channel where you run one or two assets.
Where it is useful: B-roll, product scenes you cannot photograph, and visualising a product in a commercial setting. The Playground covers those. For the main asset on a channel this expensive, the economics favour doing it properly.
The summary
LinkedIn is worth it if your buyer has a job title and your order values are large — wholesale, corporate gifting, trade supply. It is not worth it for consumer goods under $100, and that covers most e-commerce.
If you qualify: look like an ad, lead with the business case, offer a catalogue rather than a checkout, and judge it on pipeline over a quarter rather than conversions over a week.