Testing Reddit, YouTube, and Programmatic for B2B: What Practitioners Are Finding
Scott Schnaars
Beyond LinkedIn: Which Paid Channels Are Actually Worth Testing for B2B?
LinkedIn remains the default for B2B paid media, but the CPCs keep climbing and the returns are getting harder to justify at scale. The Exit Five community discussion about LinkedIn alternatives is worth taking seriously.
The question is not whether LinkedIn works. For most B2B companies, it does. The question is whether it is the only channel that works, and whether the current spend level is still justified given where the cost trajectory is heading.
Meta, Reddit, and YouTube are consistently underrated for B2B, each for different reasons and with different trade-offs. The teams that get the most from channel diversification are not chasing the cheapest clicks. They are finding the places where their buyers spend time outside of their professional context.
What smart channel diversification looks like from a CMO seat:
- A defined test budget and timeline before any new channel gets funded at scale. Most channel tests fail because they are underfunded or ended too early
- Clear success criteria established before the test runs, not after. Cost-per-pipeline-dollar is the right metric, not cost-per-click
- An understanding of what each alternative channel is actually good at. Meta for retargeting and lookalike audiences. Reddit for category-level intent in engaged communities. YouTube for committee-level awareness in longer sales cycles
- A willingness to call a test early if it is clearly not working, rather than giving it another month because it would be nice if it worked
LinkedIn CPCs are going to keep rising. The teams building channel diversification skills now will have options when the math stops working.
Yirla shows cross-channel performance so new channel tests are measured against the same pipeline standard as your existing channels. (https://www.yirla.com/en/platform)
