The three routes, honestly
| Route | Monthly cost | Best when | Real risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | £800–£2,500 | Account already works and needs hours, not strategy. Single launch. Spend under ~£3,000/month. | Single point of failure. Holiday, illness, a better client — and your account stops. |
| Agency | $2,500–$12,000 | Ongoing programme. You need creative, thought leader content, reporting and someone to argue with. Spend above ~$4,000/month. | Paying for a system you do not use. Some agencies are two freelancers and a logo. |
| In-house | £4,800–£7,000 loaded | Spend is large enough that one person's whole week is justified, and you want the knowledge inside the building. | One person, one channel, no benchmarks beyond your own account. Recruitment takes months. |
The full cost breakdown — National Insurance, pension, recruitment fees, tools — is in agency vs in-house vs freelancer. The short version: the freelancer is cheapest and most fragile, the agency is the middle on both, and in-house is a commitment you make once spend is already working.
What "LinkedIn ads expert" actually means
Marketplaces will show you thousands of profiles with the words in the title. Most can build a campaign. Very few understand the platform's reporting well enough to tell you whether the campaign is working — and that is the whole job.
LinkedIn's reporting is unusually easy to misread. The clicks column counts likes, comments, shares and profile views alongside actual clicks to your site, so a thought leader ad can show a 2% click rate while sending almost nobody to a landing page. A lead gen form reports opens prominently and submissions quietly. Brand awareness looks cheaper than engagement per impression and buys a different thing entirely. An expert knows all of this and reports accordingly. A capable operator does not, and reports the numbers LinkedIn puts in front of them.
So the evaluation is not "have they run LinkedIn ads." It is whether they can answer the following.
The eight questions to ask anyone before you hire them
- "Which click metric do you report, and why?" The only right answer includes the phrase landing page clicks and an explanation of why
clicksoverstates traffic. If they say "CTR" without qualification, they are reading the default column. Background: what a good LinkedIn Ads CTR actually is. - "How do you tell a thought leader ad from a company ad in the data?" By the campaign format or the author URN — not by the campaign name. If they have never had to, they have not run TLAs at any scale.
- "When would you use brand awareness over engagement?" Large, cold audiences over about 30,000. Never on retargeting, lists or small audiences. An expert has an answer with a number in it.
- "What is the difference between a lead gen form open and a lead?" If the answer is "they're the same," end the call.
- "How do you detect creative fatigue?" Cumulative frequency, not days running. An expert watches frequency per person; an operator waits for CPC to rise, by which time it is late.
- "What would you do with a 0.25% landing page click rate on a thought leader ad?" Check whether the post has a link in it, check the audience size, check the objective — in that order. A generic "test new creative" is the wrong answer.
- "What do you benchmark my account against?" Their other accounts, ideally many. A freelancer with three clients has three data points. This is the honest case for an agency.
- "Show me a report you sent last month." Not a case study — a real report. Look for landing page clicks, cost per submission, frequency, and a recommendation that costs the client something.
Red flags
- Guaranteed leads or a fixed cost per lead before seeing your account. Nobody who understands the auction promises that.
- Reporting CTR, CPC and "engagements" as the headline metrics. Those are LinkedIn's default columns; they are not what you are paying for.
- Percentage of spend pricing with no floor. It rewards spending, not results. Flat fees are cleaner.
- No opinion on thought leader ads. It is the highest-performing format on the platform. An expert has strong views on it.
- Wants access to your ad account through their own login rather than as a user on yours. You lose the history if you part ways.
- Cannot name a client they would turn away. Everyone is a fit for someone who needs the work.
Where to find them
Freelancers: Upwork, Fiverr, Guru and Gyde list thousands; LinkedIn's own Services marketplace lists more. All are good for finding people and bad for evaluating them — the profile tells you they exist, the eight questions tell you whether to hire them. The best freelancers are usually found by asking who ran the account behind a campaign you noticed.
Agencies: Sortlist and Clutch for reviews, and our own comparison of UK LinkedIn ads agencies for what each one actually does. Ask every agency the same eight questions; the answers vary more than the websites do.
In-house: the same eight questions as the interview. Add a live audit of your account as the task — an hour with read access and a blank document. The good ones find the click-metric problem in the first ten minutes.
When Kiin is the answer, and when it is not
We are the fit if you are a sales-led B2B company, deal sizes above about £5,000, spending or ready to spend around $4,000 a month on LinkedIn media. The LinkedIn Ads tier is $2,500 a month, published, and includes strategy, build, creative, thought leader content, reporting and the eight-layer audit run monthly. Three of the eight-person team came from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, and we benchmark every account against 1,000+ connected to our own MCP — which is our answer to question seven.
We are not the fit if spend is under about £3,000 a month, if you need a single launch rather than a programme, if the product is self-serve, or if the sale is transactional. In those cases a freelancer is the right call and we will say so. What we charge and when an agency is not worth it goes through each case.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to hire a LinkedIn ads expert?
Three ranges. A freelancer runs £800–£2,500 a month for part-time management. A specialist agency runs $2,500–$12,000 a month depending on channel coverage — Kiin's LinkedIn tier is $2,500. An in-house paid media specialist costs £45,000–£65,000 in salary, about £58,000–£84,000 fully loaded, or £4,800–£7,000 a month. Ad spend is on top of all three.
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency for LinkedIn ads?
A freelancer if you need a few hours a month on an account that already works, a single launch, or spend under about £3,000 a month where an agency fee cannot pay for itself. An agency if you need strategy, creative and ongoing management on a programme, cover when someone is off, and access to benchmarks across many accounts. The single-point-of-failure risk with a freelancer is real and usually shows up at the worst time.
What should a LinkedIn ads expert know?
The questions that separate genuine expertise from a tutorial: which click metric they report and why, how they detect a thought leader ad in the data, when brand awareness beats engagement and when it does not, what a lead gen form open is versus a submission, how they measure fatigue, and what they would do with a landing page click rate under 0.3 per cent. An expert answers all six without hesitation.
Where do you find LinkedIn ads freelancers?
Upwork, Fiverr, Guru and Gyde list thousands of them, LinkedIn's own Services marketplace lists more, and the best ones are usually found by asking who ran the account behind a campaign you admired. Marketplaces are good for finding people and bad for evaluating them — use the eight questions in this guide before you commit to anyone.
Is Kiin a fit if I just want someone to run my LinkedIn ads?
Yes at $2,500 a month for the LinkedIn Ads tier, if you are a sales-led B2B company spending at least around $4,000 a month on media. Below that, a freelancer is the better answer and we will say so on the call. We are not the fit for self-serve products, transactional sales or one-off launches.