Can You Use LinkedIn Ads to Boost Your Follower Count Efficiently?

Last Updated: 08/08/2026

Yes, you can use LinkedIn ads to grow your follower count, and for most B2B brands it is one of the faster ways to do it.

LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content and Video formats can carry a built in Follow button, so someone can follow your page without ever leaving the ad. The catch is cost. UK LinkedIn campaigns typically run at £3 to £10 per click, so paid growth works best when it sits alongside a proper organic and SEO services strategy rather than replacing one entirely.

We have run enough of these campaigns for clients to know that the follower count itself is rarely the real goal. It is a proxy for something else: trust, reach for future organic posts, and a page that looks credible when a prospect checks you out before a sales call. If you are weighing this up for your own page, it helps to understand how the ad format actually works before you commit any budget.

What Are LinkedIn Follower Ads and How Do They Work

A Follower Ad is not a separate product you switch on. It is what happens when you run a Sponsored Content or Video Ad campaign with the engagement or brand awareness objective. LinkedIn automatically adds a Follow button to the ad unit, and anyone who clicks it starts following your company page and receiving your organic posts in their feed from then on. You can read LinkedIn’s own guidance on Follower Ads for the exact mechanics, including how billing works for CPC versus CPM campaigns.

The important detail most people miss is targeting. LinkedIn lets you narrow an audience by job title, seniority, industry, company size and skills, which is a big part of why LinkedIn ads work so well for B2B brands compared with more generalist platforms. A follower gained through precise targeting is worth far more than a follower gained through a broad, cheap audience, because they are more likely to be a genuine buyer, not just a cheap click.

Why Bother Growing Your LinkedIn Followers at All

Follower count on its own does not pay the bills. What it does is compound. Every organic post you publish gets shown first to your existing followers, so a bigger, more relevant follower base means a bigger starting audience for everything you post afterwards, at no extra media cost. LinkedIn also states that four out of five of its members have some influence over business decisions at their organisation, which is a large part of the benefits of LinkedIn ads for anyone selling into other businesses.

There is also a credibility effect that is harder to measure but easy to notice. A page with 200 followers and a page with 8,000 followers send very different signals to a prospect doing their due diligence before a meeting. That is not the primary reason to run a follower campaign, but it is a genuine side benefit worth factoring in when you are deciding on budget.

How Much Does It Cost to Grow Followers With LinkedIn Ads

Cost is where most people get nervous, and fairly so. LinkedIn is consistently the most expensive major ad platform in the UK on a cost per click basis, sitting well above Meta or Google Search. The table below gives a rough sense of what to expect, based on typical UK benchmarks across ad formats.

Most campaigns also require a minimum daily budget, currently around £10, though you will need considerably more than that to gather any meaningful data. If you want the full breakdown of how spend is calculated across formats, our piece on how LinkedIn ads work goes through the bidding mechanics in more detail. For anyone weighing LinkedIn against other channels, it is also worth reading up on what a Google Ads agency in London would typically charge for comparable click volume, since the two platforms serve very different intents.

Setting Up a Follower Ad Campaign That Actually Works

Getting the setup right matters more than the creative on LinkedIn, largely because of how expensive a wasted click is. If you are new to the platform, it is worth starting with the basics covered in our guide to LinkedIn ads for beginners before building out a follower campaign specifically.

Pick clear objectives first. Decide whether you want brand visibility, thought leadership, or a specific follower number by a set date. This shapes the ad format and the budget you set aside.

Narrow the audience deliberately. Segment by job title, industry and company size rather than casting a wide net. A smaller, well matched audience of 50,000 to 150,000 people usually performs better than a huge, vague one.

Choose the right format for the goal. Follower Ads and Spotlight Ads are built specifically for this purpose, while our comparison of which LinkedIn ad format is best for your goals covers the trade offs between each option in more depth.

Write copy that earns the click. Short, specific copy that states a real value proposition consistently outperforms generic brand statements. Treat the ad copy the same way you would treat headline copy on a landing page.

Track performance properly. Use LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager alongside your own analytics so you can see cost per follow, not just cost per click. Our article on key metrics for LinkedIn ad campaigns is a useful reference if you have not built a reporting framework for this before.

Getting Your Page Ready Before You Spend a Penny

We have seen campaigns where the ad performed well and the follow rate still underwhelmed, simply because the page itself was not ready. Before you launch, check three things.

Your logo and company name need to be instantly recognisable and high resolution, since this is often the first thing a viewer glances at before deciding whether to click follow. Your page banner should visually represent what you actually do, not a generic stock image, because it reinforces the brand promise made in the ad. And your Follow button and About section need to load quickly and read clearly, since a confusing landing experience will undo the good work your targeting has done.

If your page also sells directly to consumers alongside businesses, it is worth reading our take on LinkedIn ads for B2C marketing, since the page optimisation advice shifts slightly depending on your audience.

Combining Paid Growth With Organic Content

Paid follower growth without a content plan behind it is a leaky bucket. You will gain followers through ads, then lose the benefit if there is nothing worth engaging with once they arrive. The businesses that do this well treat paid and organic as one system rather than two separate jobs.

Thought leadership content is the clearest example. Posting genuine expertise, not recycled industry news, is what keeps a follower engaged long after the ad stopped showing them anything. Retargeting reinforces this further. Once someone has visited your page or engaged with a post, you can serve them further content through the LinkedIn retargeting strategies we cover separately, which tends to convert better than cold targeting because the audience already knows who you are.

It is also worth thinking about how LinkedIn fits with the rest of your marketing. Many of the brands we work with run LinkedIn alongside a PPC marketing agency relationship covering Google and Meta, and the follower base you build on LinkedIn often becomes a warm retargeting pool for those other channels too. If Meta is part of your mix, our notes on working with a Facebook ads agency in London cover how the two platforms typically divide labour in a joined up campaign.

Ecommerce, B2C and Niche Use Cases

Follower ads are usually framed as a B2B tool, and that is where they perform best, but that is not the only use case. Ecommerce brands selling higher consideration products, such as software, furniture or business services, can also build a following worth having. Our guide to LinkedIn ads for ecommerce brands looks at where this makes sense and where your budget is genuinely better spent elsewhere.

It is also worth being honest about where LinkedIn is not the right fit. If your product is low cost, impulse driven, or aimed at a consumer audience with no professional angle, your cost per follow will likely be too high to justify against the return. In those cases, a platform with lower CPCs will usually outperform LinkedIn on pure follower economics, even though the quality of a LinkedIn follower tends to be higher.

Measuring Whether It Is Actually Working

The number that matters is cost per follow, not cost per click, and the two are frequently confused. A cheap click that never converts to a follow is not a good result, no matter how the CTR looks on a dashboard.

Set up proper LinkedIn conversion tracking before you launch, not after, so you have a clean baseline to compare campaigns against. It is also worth reviewing real LinkedIn ad case studies from other companies in your sector, since benchmarks vary a lot by industry, and a “good” cost per follow in recruitment looks very different from one in fintech.

If you are still deciding whether the spend is justified at all, our broader look at whether LinkedIn ads are effective and our separate piece on are LinkedIn ads worth it both go through the return on investment question in more general terms, beyond follower growth specifically.

Is It Worth It

For a B2B business with a defined audience and something genuinely useful to say, yes. LinkedIn follower ads are an efficient way to grow a page, provided you treat the follower count as a means to an end rather than the end itself. For a low margin consumer brand with no clear professional angle, the cost per follow is unlikely to stack up, and you would be better served putting that budget into a platform with lower CPCs.

Either way, this only works as part of a wider plan. A page with a growing follower count and nothing useful to post is not a strategy, it is a vanity metric with a media bill attached. Pair the ad spend with genuinely useful content, review the LinkedIn’s official page growth tips for the organic side, and keep an eye on LinkedIn ads pros and cons so your expectations stay realistic as the campaign matures. Strengthening the rest of your organic presence helps too. Our notes on getting more from your SEO strategy and on why social media matters for business growth are both useful reading if LinkedIn is one part of a bigger digital marketing plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do LinkedIn follower ads cost in the UK?

Expect a cost per click of roughly £3 to £10 depending on your targeting and industry, with more competitive audiences such as senior decision makers sitting at the higher end.

Can you buy LinkedIn followers directly?

LinkedIn does not offer a direct “buy followers” product outside of running proper ad campaigns, and third party services that promise instant followers usually deliver low quality, disengaged accounts that can damage your page’s credibility.

How many followers does a LinkedIn company page need?

There is no fixed number, but pages tend to see momentum build once they pass a few hundred followers, since organic reach and social proof both improve noticeably at that point.

Do LinkedIn ads help with organic reach as well as paid reach?

Indirectly, yes. A larger, more relevant follower base increases the starting audience for every organic post you publish afterwards, at no extra media cost.

How long does it take to see results from a follower campaign?

Most accounts see early data within one to two weeks, though it typically takes four to six weeks of consistent spend to judge cost per follow with any confidence.

Get Help Running This Properly

If you would rather have a specialist set this up and manage it rather than testing it yourself, that is exactly what we do. As a LinkedIn advertising agency in London, Flow20 builds and manages follower and lead generation campaigns for B2B brands across the UK, alongside SEO and PPC work through the same team.

Get in touch today to talk through what a realistic budget and timeline would look like for your business.