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Cold outbound has a pipeline ceiling. Contact-level ABM breaks it.
Too many teams still run ABM at the account level. But we sell to humans — not accounts.
Influ2 analyzed 2M targets to quantify what happens when you drop to the contact level instead. Their newest report reveals:
If you show this type of ABM ad to the buyer group — and at least one person clicks it — your conversion rate will be 2.18x times higher compared to your cold conversion rate
Why the stakeholder you're least likely to target is statistically the most likely to kill the deal — and what the data says to do about it
When the buying window actually opens — and why most teams don't know they've already missed it
I shared how I helped one of my Executive LinkedIn Accelerator clients reach 10,000,000 organic LinkedIn impressions in 12 months.
I’ve shared this framework in different bits and pieces before. But this time I added something I'd never shared publicly. It’s what determines if an exec — or any LinkedIn creators, really — catches fire and builds momentum and a massive audience from scratch, or keeps getting a handful of likes from coworkers and calling it a win. 18 months ago Christina Ross hired me to help her build her LinkedIn presence. She's a 2-time CFO turned CEO of Cube. When we met, she told me she was ready to put herself out there, grow a valuable audience of senior finance leaders, and candidly, dominate her competition. I liked her right away. So we built her strategy and launched her content. One.. two.. five weeks passed with consistent output of three posts per week. Traction was good and heading in the right direction. Then, it happened. On week six, one post exploded to 977,000 views.
We celebrated, and if I knew how, would’ve moonwalked across my office. When I sobered up, I couldn’t help but wonder… y tho? For six weeks we did the same things. Solid content, niche audience, clear message, good formatting… everything looked “right.” But then that one post took off. I refused to believe it was luck. Surely, something triggered this massive upswing. So I did what you do when something works unexpectedly — I pulled apart the content piece by piece, like a crime scene. Because success leaves clues, if you know what to look for. I discovered five things that turned this into a breakout post:
1) The access was different
Christina wasn't coaching from a safe distance. She was talking about her first CFO role — what she walked in expecting versus what actually hit her: six months chasing unpaid bills and fixing QuickBooks instead of driving strategy. That level of inside access is rare, and most executives won't touch it because it means admitting the gap between the title and the reality. She went there anyway.
2) She said the thing CFOs feel but never say
The hook wasn't just a contrast structure. It was a confession that landed like a confession because it was true for thousands of people reading it. Every CFO who's ever stared at a QuickBooks error at 11pm instead of presenting to the board felt seen. Christina gave language to something the audience had lived but never articulated. That's not a content trick. That's resonance — and it's the difference between a post that gets likes and one that gets DMs.
3) The vulnerability was real, not performed
She doesn’t manufacture drama with lines like “I almost quit.” Instead, she shares the kind of honest story you hear when a mentor trusts you enough to drop the script. Readers feel the difference between performed and real — even when they can't explain why. Real always wins.
4) One word did a lot of work
"CFO" was in the hook. That's an ICP magnet. If you're a CFO, want to be a CFO, or sell to CFOs, you stop scrolling before you hit the second line. The post told the readers exactly who it was for before they'd even decided to read it.
5) The rarity factor
Christina isn't posting hot takes every Tuesday. She's a CEO. When someone like that decides to get honest, the scarcity of it does half the work before the content even gets a chance.
Once I had the ingredients, I had one question: can I put this back together?
Not copy the words, rebuild the formula. Can I pull the same levers on something entirely new and see if the formula held up. The next week…
A few days later…
That's when I stopped calling it luck, and realized… Breakout posts aren't lucky. They're inevitable. Here's what I want you to understand before I give you the formats. I didn't come up with these on a whiteboard. I found them by studying what Christina's breakout posts had in common. Then tested these patterns across dozens of posts, multiple clients, different industries, different audiences. Some formats showed up once and never again. Some showed up consistently but only with the right ingredients underneath. But these three kept showing up over and over — with outsized results, across the board. These are the ones worth your attention if you want to get more reach, followers, and leads.
→ 1st Person Stories — "I" not "you."
You're not telling people what to do, you're showing them what happened to you. Specificity is what builds trust. It's also what makes a C-suite title feel like a real person instead of a brand account.
→ Immediate Tension — Open with conflict or contrast. This isn't a hook trick — it's a tension structure, and there's a meaningful difference between the two. Tricks get stale. Structure compounds.
→ Hard-Earned Lessons — Advice from scars, not slides.
Readers always know the difference. This is the most shareable format on LinkedIn because people don't forward frameworks — they forward things that made them feel seen.
None of these formats are “secret." But most people try to use them without the ingredients underneath. No real access, no built-in tension, no vulnerability that actually costs something. That's the plateau. The formats are the vehicle. The ingredients — your experience and creativity — are the engine. Your next breakout post isn't a matter of luck. It's a matter of knowing what to look for — and now you do. Go find your outlier.
-Devin
PS...
I ranked B2B marketing strategies best to worst... and some might surprise you.
Everyone has opinions about B2B marketing strategies.
But when you actually stack them side-by-side… the rankings get interesting.
Watch the breakdown. Then tell me — what did I get completely wrong?
