Wondering what the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn are? One advantage is reaching your target audience and getting a great ROI because there’s less competition on LinkedIn. This site isn’t very cluttered so you can get a better chance of your ads being seen. This means a greater chance of success!
Here are 10 ways to make use of the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn.
Here’s Why You Should Be Using LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn ads can help you scale even further if you haven’t tried them before.
Most people have more of a focus and purpose when using LinkedIn. They are there to look for something specific. It’s a site for businesses looking to find other businesses to work with or make their products and services available. They don’t spend all day chit-chatting with their friends either! ??
What does this mean for advertisers?
Two things.
- Your ads should just get to the point. You don’t have to write long posts hoping to draw people into your creative or copy ✍
- And your ads can stay the same for about a month without needing any fixing or refreshing. Just let them live and be because you don’t have to worry about saturating your audience in a few days on LinkedIn. Isn’t that cool?
And another cool thing is that LinkedIn is a platform where you’re encouraged to create and publish content on its site. LinkedIn assures you that people will see your content and share it. Yes, people will actually see your content! So start writing articles if you haven’t already.
People are starting to spend more time on their LinkedIn newsfeed now more than in previous years, so content is a good way to engage with your audience.
Guess which platform is the easiest in the whole world where you can go viral with your content?
You guessed it! LinkedIn! Viral content happens because when anyone comments, shares, or engages with a LinkedIn post, it immediately goes to a portion of their network. Then it just keeps spreading. As more people are interested in what you wrote about and they keep engaging and sharing, your reach will grow and grow. Organically too! ? All you have to do is write some juicy articles for your target audience and watch it fly!
Who Should Run LinkedIn Ads?
Is LinkedIn ads for you?
It depends.
Ads on LinkedIn can be a little costly. But if you’re a brand that makes lots of money then it’s really worth it.
There are 3 categories of businesses that work really well on LinkedIn.
- High-value B2B products & services tend to work really well. Like subscription services that bring in higher profits for your business. Or if the value of your deal is over $15K you will do great and see the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn.
- If you are a company looking to recruit good employees this is a great platform for that. Recruiting is usually a huge expense for companies, but not on LinkedIn.
- Higher education targeting is powerful. You can show your ad only to people who got a bachelor’s degree but not any graduate degree. Or you can target college grads who got a degree in a particular area. Or you can even target schools people attended. All this information is already in their profiles.
Bring Your Audience, Message, And Offer To LinkedIn Ads
Audience
Targeting your audience on LinkedIn is quite powerful because it’s based on first-party data. It’s a very precise way of targeting. Marketers can target people through demographic data such as job function, seniority, company name, geography and industry. You can use interest-based targeting and your own audience data.
Message
The message you bring to LinkedIn ads is what your prospect sees. Like the ad format, copy and image or video. Make them compelling!
Offer
Your offer is your lead magnet. What are you using to lure someone in? It has to be something for free maybe, that your audience is really interested in. You want them to click and become part of your email list, so you can give them even more value!
Maximizing Campaign Results
Your campaign objectives change the way LinkedIn bids for you.
- If your objective is ‘Website Visits’ LinkedIn will provide the maximum CPC or CPM bid.
- When you choose an ‘Engagement’ campaign objective, you’re going to bid by the like, follow or comment on your page.
- If you choose ‘Lead Generation’ you’ll bid by the lead form open of the submitted lead form.
- And ‘Video Views’ are where you’re going to bid by the cost per view.
Track Your Conversions
Track your conversions with the LinkedIn pixel. It can be placed on a thank you page or event.
Also, you can set up parameters with Google Analytics UTM. Use this to track your goal conversions in Google Analytics.
Audience Targeting
You can find high-quality prospects on LinkedIn. One thing to do is separate every audience into two parts and learn about each of them.
- First, get to know the individual professional.
- Second, interpret what type of company those professionals are in.
For example, if your target market is CFOs and you have a product that costs $1200 a month, you probably won’t target a CFO of a 2 person company.
Targeting By Type Of Organization
Targeting an audience uses these basics like demographics, location and interest targeting. But you can also target and reach people based on the size of their organization.
That refers to the number of employees a company lists on its company page. This number ranges from 1 to 10,000 and more!
You can advertise to a general industry and then drill down into specific subsections. There are several industry options to choose from. For example:
- Arts
- Tech
- Education industries(focusing on Post Secondary)
- Profit or Non-Profit industries
Targeting By Company Name
If you are only interested in targeting people within a specific company you can target by company name on LinkedIn.
You can upload a list of up to 300,000 companies within an industry into the Campaign Manager and use this data for your ad targeting.
If you rely on your own data rather than using LinkedIn’s native data will bring down your CPC.
Targeting By Skills And Interests
LinkedIn has a Skills database where they list over 35,000 skills that can be found on their platform.
Each skill can be broken down into several subcategories. And people can add up to 50 skills to their profile. It doesn’t matter if a member of LinkedIn has 1 endorsement for a certain skill or over 100, they are still on the skills list.
Currently, LinkedIn doesn’t separate those who are highly skilled from those who aren’t. You will have a large audience when targeting based on Job Seniority and Skills people listed on their profiles.
Interest targeting is based on the content users share and engage with on LinkedIn. The categories are limited to general topics like AI, Android, or Recruiting. So far LinkedIn hasn’t told us what qualifies someone to be tied with interest, but this targeting does help narrow an audience.
Targeting By Groups
You will find a highly engaged audience in specific LinkedIn groups. People who go out of their way to join a group that is focused on a specific topic or interest, probably means they’re an active user and specialize in that industry. Targeting groups may yield a smaller audience but more engaged. You’ll get a higher CTR and more traffic.
LinkedIn Audience Size and Ad Bidding
You want your audience to just be the most powerful people and prospects for your brand.
LinkedIn suggests having at least 300,000 in an audience. But others say to keep it smaller. If you want a more focused audience make the size around 20 to 80 thousand per campaign.
At the start of your campaign, LinkedIn will give you a range of what your ads should cost. When you set a bid, LinkedIn will by default enable automated bidding. Instead of automated reset this to maximum CPC bid at the start of your campaign. If your ad is successful and performing over a 1% CTR, then switch the bidding to the cheaper maximum CPM. To fix low traffic, bid higher. If traffic is high and you’re hitting your budgets for the day, then bid lower.
LinkedIn Ad Placement Options
Text Ads
Text ads are found on the right side of the desktop version of the site. They are actually for desktop only. They’re really great for landing pages that don’t work as well on mobile.
Text ads are mostly text! They do have a tiny 50 x 50 image alongside them which can be a logo or a face. Usually nothing more than that.
They are the cheapest LinkedIn ads costing about $3 – $5 per click. They do include the same targeting options as your other ads. Unfortunately, they have very low CTR. So you need a really large audience before you get a lot of action on those types of ads.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is the most common ad format on LinkedIn. They look like a normal organic post on the platform. They have an image or video or carousel and have a lead generation form attached. Beneath the ad, it will say ‘Promoted’ or ‘Sponsored’.
For video ads, you should use subtitles all the time.
Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads include a user’s profile image in them in order to capture their attention. But they kind of appears invasive so there is a low CTR with them. And they tend to be more expensive than sponsored content.
Sponsored InMail
The 3rd ad format for LinkedIn is sponsored InMail. It functions similar to email marketing campaigns. These are great for highly specialized and amazing offers that feel like a personal invitation.
When you put early access, sneak peeks, and VIP invitations to events, for example, these ads will get a 50% open rate and about a 3% CTR. Advertisers pay per send for these ads instead of only paying when someone interacts with them.
What’s included for personalization is the first name, last name, company name and industry.
How To Make Your LinkedIn Ads More Effective
Your ads on LinkedIn will be more effective if you keep them really simple. You don’t have to get complex with what you write or write really long offers. People are there with a purpose in mind, so you can get straight to the point of your ad really fast.
The first thing in your ad can be to explain why someone should pay attention. Then write a call to action that is focused and to the point.
If you stick to doing only these two things you’ll have CTR that are 2 or 3 times higher than the average. You’ll be a step ahead of other advertisers because most of them are doing it all wrong!
Now you know some of the advantages of advertising on LinkedIn. Start using these tips and explore LinkedIn ads to gain more traffic and sales.