# How to reach founders and CEOs at advertising and creative agencies on LinkedIn

Last updated 11 November 2026

Reaching founders and CEOs at advertising and creative agencies on LinkedIn requires a specific approach, and HeyLead can run this outreach for you.

## What weighs on advertising agency founders

Founders and CEOs at advertising and creative agencies own new business. They also own the client list. Many of them still sell the work themselves. Their revenue is tied to a few large clients. Their new business depends on referrals.

They are pitched by many tools and other agencies. You need an opening angle that fits this reality. Ask where their best clients came from this year.

HeyLead is an AI agent for LinkedIn outreach: it finds the right people, writes to them in the voice of your own LinkedIn posts, follows up, and handles replies. It runs from Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client or a web dashboard.

## How HeyLead handles the outreach

You type a brief in Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or the HeyLead dashboard. 1 sentence creates a draft campaign. You review it and press Launch. Nothing is sent before.

Before an invitation, HeyLead warms up. It does a profile view, a follow, and a comment on a recent post. It sends an invitation with a note, an opening message, and up to 2 follow-ups on Free and 5 on Pro. It uses InMail and email fallback.

You can set 6 campaign goals. These are sell a product or service, find a job, hire people, find partners or investors, find a vendor, and research interviews. Hire people, find partners or investors and research interviews work with a custom brief.

## Managing replies and signals

Replies are read, classified and answered from the campaign's facts. A reply that could mean 2 things gets 1 short question back. A question your facts cannot answer is held for you. A not now reply gets a check-in in 30 days.

Opening messages, follow-ups and answers to replies go out without review unless you switch review on. Then they wait for your approval. Invitations are not held. In review mode, invitations go out without a note.

HeyLead watches 40+ signal types. These are scored, matched to your ICP and expiring. A strong signal starts outreach and the opener says why now. It runs from the cloud with your laptop closed.

## The brief to type into HeyLead

You can start a campaign to sell a product or service with a short brief. The brief defines your target audience. It sets the industries to advertising and media. It targets seniority levels like cxo, vp, director, and manager. It sets the company size to 11-50, 51-200, and 201-500 employees.

You type this brief into your chosen interface.

```
Sell my agency services to founders and CEOs in advertising and media, targeting cxo, vp, director, and manager roles at companies with 11-50, 51-200, and 201-500 employees, asking where their best clients came from this year.
```

## Pricing and integrations

Free costs $0 for 1 connected account with 2 follow-ups. Pro costs $29 a month per connected account. The client's source is on GitHub under MIT. The hosted backend is not.

HeyLead syncs with HubSpot. Google Calendar is the calendar it books into. It reads your own LinkedIn posts to learn how you write. It never posts unless you ask for a post.

It works in Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop and claude.ai, any MCP client and a web dashboard. It also works in ChatGPT as a custom MCP app.

## Questions people ask

### How much does HeyLead cost?

Free costs $0 for 1 connected account with 2 follow-ups. Pro costs $29 a month per connected account.

### Does HeyLead sync with my CRM?

HubSpot is the CRM it syncs with.

### Can I review messages before they go out?

Opening messages, follow-ups and answers to replies go out without review unless you switch review on. Then they wait for your approval, but invitations are not held.

### How does HeyLead handle replies?

Replies are read, classified and answered from the campaign's facts. A question your facts cannot answer is held for you.

HeyLead sends from your own LinkedIn account at a human pace: at most 20 invitations a day and 100 a week on a free LinkedIn account (more on Premium or Sales Navigator: a newly connected paid account starts at 20 a day and doubles each week up to its limit), Monday to Friday 08:00 to 22:00 in your time zone, minutes apart. It backs off when LinkedIn pushes back and resumes on its own. You can pause any campaign at any time.

HeyLead is not affiliated with LinkedIn. It reaches LinkedIn through Unipile, which is also not affiliated. LinkedIn's own rules are in the Terms: https://heylead.dev/terms

Related: [How to reach founders and CEOs](https://heylead.dev/for/founders-and-ceos), [How to do LinkedIn outreach to advertising companies](https://heylead.dev/industries/advertising), [How to reach CIOs at law firms on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/for/cios-in-legal), [How to reach law firm COOs on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/for/coos-and-heads-of-operations-in-legal), [How to reach founders and CEOs at law firms](https://heylead.dev/for/founders-and-ceos-in-legal), [How to reach chief strategy officers](https://heylead.dev/for/chief-strategy-officers-in-manufacturing), [HeyLead for your role](https://heylead.dev/for), [How to reach e-commerce founders on LinkedIn](https://heylead.dev/for/founders-and-ceos-in-e-commerce)