Linkedin Abm Ad Design

LinkedIn ABM ad design

Take a finished ABM strategy (from a strategy-planning session or an equivalent uploaded strategy) and turn it into everything needed to launch: an outline, ad briefs, rendered image-ad mockups, and optionally a database to manage it all.

The strategy decides what to run. This skill decides exactly what each ad says and looks like. Do not re-litigate the strategy: take its campaigns, ad sets, formats, budgets, audiences and value props as given.

This skill doesn't need live LinkedIn Ads data - it builds from the strategy you already have. It works best alongside the ZenABM connector (app.zenabm.com) if you want to ground the ads in real ZenABM data (e.g. real engaged accounts to name), but it is fully usable without it.

Step 0 - Locate the strategy

Work through these in order:

1. Conversation context. If an ABM strategy (from a strategy-planning skill, an ABM strategy deck, or equivalent) exists earlier in this conversation, use it.
2. Ask for it. If not, ask the user to either upload their strategy document or produce a strategy first. The companion strategy-planning skill is part of the full plugin at github.com/ZENABM/linkedin-abm-skills.

Do not invent a strategy from scratch. Without one, this skill has nothing to execute.

Step 1 - ABM Campaign Outline (deliver this FIRST, as an artifact)

Distill the strategy into a concise, actionable outline and hand it to the user before anything else - it needs only the strategy, not the interview, and it lets them correct the map before you build the territory. The outline is also the index to every deliverable: each ad gets its own brief file (Step 3) and, for image ads, its own mockup files (Step 4), and the outline links to each one directly. Produce three sibling files at the root of the output folder and present them immediately:

• 00-ABM-Campaign-Outline.md - the plain-markdown source
• 00-ABM-Campaign-Outline.html - a styled, self-contained artifact: brand-neutral clean layout, a "Download PDF" button (window.print()), the per-campaign Assets tables, AND every ad's brief inlined as an anchored section (<section id="ad-NN">) with each image ad's PNG embedded inline (base64). The Assets links are internal anchors (href="#ad-NN"), never relative file paths - so every link works in the browser, in a preview panel, AND in the exported PDF. (Relative links to sibling files only resolve in the unzipped folder and never in a preview or PDF - don't rely on them for the clickable index.) If a live-artifact tool is available, publish the same HTML there too.
• 00-ABM-Campaign-Outline.pdf (optional, if PDF tooling is available) - render the self-contained HTML with any HTML-to-PDF tool that preserves internal anchor links (e.g. WeasyPrint or headless Chromium), so the anchors become clickable jump-to-section links in the PDF. Verify the PDF contains working internal links for each #ad-NN.

File-path convention (fixed). Give each ABM campaign a kebab-case folder slug and number the ads within it (01, 02, ...) in outline order. Per-ad files still live on disk so the user can edit them:

• Brief (one per ad, every format): ./[abm-campaign-slug]/briefs/[NN]-[format]-[ad-slug].md (+ .docx if document-export tooling is available). [format] is lowercase: image, tla, text, video, document, carousel.
• Mockup (image ads only): ./[abm-campaign-slug]/mockups/[NN]-[ad-slug].html and ./[abm-campaign-slug]/mockups/[NN]-[ad-slug].png - same [NN] and [ad-slug] as the ad's brief.

Anchor IDs match the file numbers: the inline section for NN-format-slug uses id="ad-NN", so the Assets link #ad-NN and the on-disk file [NN]-[format]-[slug].md always line up. The self-contained outline is finalized once the briefs/mockups exist (its inline sections embed them); if you deliver a preliminary map first, say the brief sections are filled in the following steps.

Use exactly this hierarchy (an ABM Campaign is the highest-order unit targeting a distinct audience). Each ABM campaign ends with an Assets table that links to every file produced for it:

# ABM Campaign Outline

## ABM Campaign 1 - [Title] - [Persona]

### LinkedIn Campaign 1

#### Ad set 1 - [FORMAT] - [daily budget]
- Ad 1 - [FORMAT] - [what it's about]
- Ad 2 - [FORMAT] - [what it's about]

#### Ad set 2 - [FORMAT] - [daily budget]
- Ad 1 - ...

#### Assets for ABM Campaign 1
| # | Ad | Format | Brief | Creative |
|---|----|--------|-------|----------|
| 1 | [ad name] | Image | [brief](./campaign-1-slug/briefs/01-image-[slug].md) | [PNG](./campaign-1-slug/mockups/01-[slug].png) · [HTML](./campaign-1-slug/mockups/01-[slug].html) |
| 2 | [ad name] | TLA | [brief](./campaign-1-slug/briefs/02-tla-[slug].md) | post copy is in the brief |
| 3 | [ad name] | Text | [brief](./campaign-1-slug/briefs/03-text-[slug].md) | copy is in the brief |

## ABM Campaign 2 - [Title] - [Persona]
...

Every row's Brief link is an internal anchor (#ad-NN) that jumps to that ad's inlined brief section; the Creative cell links (also by anchor) to the same section, where each image ad's PNG is embedded inline. So the whole table is clickable in the browser, the preview panel, and the PDF - not just the unzipped folder. This table is the "very clear, concise list of assets per ABM campaign with working links" - it must be present for every ABM campaign.

Derive daily budgets from the strategy's monthly allocations (monthly ÷ 30, rounded sensibly). One line per ad - format plus a 5-15 word "what about". Keep the whole outline scannable in under a minute; it's the map, the briefs are the territory.

Only include the ad formats the strategy actually calls for. If the strategy has no video ads, there are no video briefs. Never pad the plan with extra formats to be thorough.

Step 2 - Interview the user

Before writing briefs or mockups, gather what the strategy can't tell you. Batch questions, don't drip them.

A. Design system (for image-ad mockups):

• Primary / accent / dark-background colors (hex), text-on-dark, muted text
• Font (and heading/body weights)
• Logo (SVG code pasted, a file in the images folder, or "company name in font X")
• Tone (e.g. "direct, numbers over adjectives, short punchy lines")
• If they have an existing brand config, accept it verbatim.

B. Images folder. Based on the ads you plan, recommend the specific images each mockup needs (product screenshots, founder/poster headshots, customer logos, report covers, G2 badges). Ask the user to put them all in one local folder and share/connect it. Every brief must list which image files it needs by name, and mockups must use these real files - not placeholders - wherever the user has provided them.

C. TLA inputs (only if the strategy includes Thought Leader Ads):

• Who posts each TLA - name and position in the company. Ask explicitly; a TLA without a real author is dead on arrival.
• For each TLA use case: numbers, personal experience, and learnings the author can genuinely share (real metrics, a mistake they made, a client story, before/after figures). Specificity is what makes TLAs perform - never fabricate these.
• If the author can't provide real inputs (or you're demoing the campaign): don't block. Write a full, on-pattern "Example TLA based on this brief" following the TLA writing reference's rules, but leave every specific number/story as a clearly marked [bracketed placeholder], add a short banner ("EXAMPLE - illustrative; replace [brackets] with the author's real figures before launch"), and note it reads on the shorter engagement-variant length. Never present invented figures as real under a person's name.
• The demo / trial / landing URL the CTA should point to.

D. Personalization macros. Confirm whether they want personalized intro-text variants (%FIRSTNAME%, %COMPANYNAME%, %INDUSTRY%, %JOBTITLE%).