LinkedIn ads: The untapped potential for your digital marketing strategy
5 minute read
LinkedIn advertising is a big opportunity for brands to target their audience with strategic precision, but many companies are unaware of where to start.
Our Digital Strategist, Clark Chapman, is here to help you succeed with LinkedIn Ads!
What is LinkedIn Ads?
LinkedIn Ads is LinkedIn’s advertising platform. These ads can help generate quality leads.
When you run a LinkedIn Ads campaign, your content appears across the platform. This approach is based on interruption advertising, unlike Google Ads where people see your content after actively searching for the service or product.
Not everyone who sees your ads on LinkedIn will be in the market for what you’re providing - but they don’t need to be.
Is LinkedIn Ads right for your business?
LinkedIn advertising is best for B2B businesses (businesses that sell to other businesses) due to the higher costs associated with using the platform.
If you’re in this space, then LinkedIn ads could be perfect for you!
Before you make the leap, do a calculation of the lifetime value of your customer (or the LTV as us marketing folk call it). This value is the entire expected spend of your customer over the years.
For example, if you manufacture parts for a particular industry, and expect your customers to spend tens of thousands of pounds over the coming years, then LinkedIn could be right for your business.
If your company needs instant results, then LinkedIn Ads is not the right platform for you. It’s best used by organisations that need to build brand awareness and develop relationships.
How much should you spend on LinkedIn Ads?
The million dollar question! But don’t worry, you won’t need to spend that much. However, LinkedIn Ads are more expensive than other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
If you’re just starting out and targeting the European market, I’d suggest at least £1000 per month (and double that figure if you’re running ads in the United States).
You might need to spend more, depending on the industry you’re targeting and the value of the product or service. There’s no one-size-fits-all budget on the platform.
We’ve worked with companies that have spent thousands of pounds on LinkedIn per month.
There are two reasons why you pay more on LinkedIn Ads:
The fantastic targeting options (more on this later…)
People are more likely to be at work using the platform, and therefore in B2B buying mode.
While we can’t give you an exact budget, we do recommend planning ahead to run ads for at least three months.
Think carefully about how people interact with your brand on the platform. What time of year is busiest for your company’s profile? This will impact the cost of ads on LinkedIn.
Top tips when starting out:
Start with manual bidding. This means you only pay when someone clicks on the ad. It’ll help you save a lot of money without sacrificing eyes on your ads.
Take a look at the ‘similar advertisers’ section when setting up your ads. This will show you the costs businesses like yours are paying per click.
How do you make sure your ads are seen by the right people?
In terms of social media ad targeting for businesses, no platform can compete with LinkedIn. There are many ways to narrow down your audience, including:
Job title
Where people work
Job function
Each option has different costs, depending on the competitive environment at the time your ads go live.
Despite LinkedIn being the best platform for targeting businesses and employees, it isn’t perfect. For example, if you target your audience by job title, you could miss out on similar roles, as LinkedIn allows users to add their own job title and only about 30% are listed in the LinkedIn Ads system.
Before you begin, here’s three ways that LinkedIn learns about its users to produce its ad targeting criteria:
Direct - the individual provides information (such as the company they work for)
Indirect - LinkedIn assumes information about the user (for example, seniority can be determined by the number of years with a particular organisation)
Action-based targeting - LinkedIn adds users to a targeted audience (based on what they do on the platform)
Top tip for running an ad campaign: Don’t forget to use the powerful exclusion tool on LinkedIn to stop your competitors seeing your ads!
What ad creative should you run?
Let’s focus a little on the creative!
When you’re running ads on LinkedIn, the ad creative is essential for success.
Will you opt for a dynamic video, an engaging image, or even an interactive carousel?
Exploring your creative options
Videos are great for harnessing the power of remarketing. You can create an audience based on how much of the video they’ve watched. This allows you to segment your audience depending on how engaged they are with your content.
This is a very useful tactic for finding out who is in the market for what you offer.
Make use of a great thumbnail image in any video you use, as this will be the first thing people see before it starts playing.
Images can be just as useful, but keep the text to a minimum and opt for bright, bold colours (not grey and blue) to avoid clashing with the platform itself.
Try carousels if you want to provide tips or guidance to your audience. They can be very effective for boosting engagement, as the user has to flick through the carousel to access the content.
Top tips for ad creative:
If you do use video, make sure the first 2 seconds is exciting enough to keep people watching!
Keep it short and punchy, with a maximum runtime of 45 seconds.
Most videos on LinkedIn play on mute, to add some subtitles to help your user understand what the video is about.
Creative can make or break your LinkedIn Ad campaign. Be sure your messaging grabs the attention of your target audience and speaks to their pain points with clear, impactful copy.
Watch our recent webinar for more LinkedIn insights:
Ready to explore LinkedIn Ads?
The above is the tip of the iceberg, so if you’re thinking about diving into LinkedIn Ads, get in touch!