Library / B2B / Adyen
A
Adyen
Weak fit
LinkedIn ads plan · estimated

How Adyen should run LinkedIn ads.

Six-figure enterprise deals close in boardrooms, not from a lead form. The honest plan: paid social is air cover for the sales motion, and most of the budget belongs elsewhere.

Industry Enterprise payments Model B2B · enterprise sales Region Global Site adyen.com
Jonas SluijsAnalysis built with paid.social, the ad-planning tool from Jonas Sluijs, former Meta growth lead
Our read

Be honest: this is a weak fit, and pretending otherwise wastes money. Adyen sells six-figure, often seven-figure, platform deals to a buying committee of finance, product, and engineering leaders, over a cycle measured in quarters. There is no "lead form" that closes that. Run a lead-gen campaign and you'll get a pile of unqualified fills that the sales team quietly ignores, and a CPL number that flatters a channel doing nothing.

Paid social has exactly one honest job here: air cover. Keep Adyen's name and point of view in front of the named accounts and titles that matter, so that when the sales team, the RFP, or the analyst report lands, the buyer already knows who they are. That's real, but it's a supporting role. The budget that actually moves enterprise revenue goes to ABM, field events, analyst relations, and sales, not to a performance campaign.

The economics we assumed
Deal size
€100k+
Sales cycle
12mo+
Paid-social role
Air cover
Where budget goes
ABM
Enterprise payments deals run to six and seven figures over 12-month-plus cycles with a multi-person buying committee. At that shape, CPL and ROAS are meaningless for paid social; the only measurable job is influence and awareness inside the target accounts. Our read on the model, not Adyen's data.
If you run it anyway, keep it small
Goal
Awareness inside named accounts, not leads. Measure share of voice and engagement in the target list, not CPL.
Platform
LinkedIn only. Company-list (ABM) targeting plus the specific titles: CFO, VP Payments, Head of Engineering, Head of Product.
Format
Thought-leadership and single-image posts carrying a point of view, not a demo request. No Lead Gen Forms.
Coordinate
Sync the message with what sales and ABM are already running into those accounts. Paid social is the drumbeat behind the real motion.
Budget
A small, capped air-cover line. The majority goes to events, ABM, analyst relations, and sales, where enterprise deals are actually won.
What not to do
Don't run lead-gen to a CPL target. It will look efficient and produce nothing a salesperson can use.
Creative angles

Point of view, not a pitch. The job is to be known and respected by a committee, so the creative is credibility and perspective, aimed at named accounts.

Adyen
Promoted
One platform. Every market. The finance team's payments stack.
adyen.comLearn
Single imagePositioning
"One platform. Every market. The finance team's payments stack."
Plants the category position with the exact committee. Not a demo ask, a memory that pays off when the RFP starts.
Adyen
Promoted
What your payments data is trying to tell you.
adyen.comRead
DocumentThought leadership
"What your payments data is trying to tell you."
Earns credibility with a technical buyer through insight, not a sales pitch. This is the content that makes a committee take the meeting later.
Before you spend

How we built this plan

This one is a judgment call, not a spreadsheet. Adyen's enterprise model, deal size, and cycle make performance paid social a poor fit, so the honest plan is restraint. Our read on the model, not Adyen's data. If you're B2B and unsure whether paid social is your channel, this is the plan to read first.

Not sure paid social is your channel?
Run your own site free, or book a call and we'll tell you honestly where your budget should go.
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