LinkedIn is a highly valuable tool to connect with professionals. It is a platform for professionals and job-seekers to connect and grow in their professional careers. But here’s something we don’t talk about much that LinkedIn also a marketing platform. There are offered advertising services for years now.
What really apart LinkedIn from other social media advertising network, is their B2B targeting option. If you’re already using PPC advertising to increase your presence on Google or Facebook, you can add LinkedIn to that list, too.
Because of the B2B option, many businesses are heading to LinkedIn. That’s not say they are not using Facebook ads, but depending on the budget they may be heading to LinkedIn also.
The thing is to always keep in mind that the cost you spend on LinkedIn advertising is a lot greater than Facebook.
How to Advertise on LinkedIn: An Overview
LinkedIn used to be very limited when it comes to its advertising options. Advertising on LinkedIn, is a two-step process: first setting up your LinkedIn campaign, and second is creating your ad. You can create LinkedIn ads based on what you want to achieve. If you want to successfully advertise on LinkedIn, your goal needs to be one of the following:
- Website Visits
- Brand Awareness
- Engagement
- Lead Generation
- Conversions
- Video Views
The most commonly used objectives with LinkedIn advertising is lead generation, brand awareness, video views, and website visits.
You’re going to pay more on LinkedIn for each objective you choose; therefore, you need to be careful about choosing your ad objective.
Based on the objective you choose, LinkedIn gives you different ad formats to attempt:
Text Ads:
Text ads are tiny ads you may notice on the right column of LinkedIn feed. Beside from right column, these ads may appear under the “People You May Know” section.
Video Ads:
LinkedIn video ads help to promote your videos to your target audience. These ads show up on the LinkedIn newsfeed along with the organic content.
Also read: Google Ads vs Facebook Ads: What better suits you?
Message Ads:
These ads will deliver in your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox.
Sponsored Content:
It’s like you’re promoting an article or posts from your LinkedIn company page that appears in your target audience’s news feed. These ads have the highest CPC than others, so proceed with caution and make sure the content you’re promoting is engaging.
Audience Targeting:
Targeting an audience who sees your ad can help to fulfill your objective. The more relevant and specific it is, the better it will perform. LinkedIn allows you to target according to different categories, which we’ve mentioned below:
Demographic: Male/Female, Age, and Location
Company: You can target people directly- even by name. LinkedIn also allows you to target companies based on the industry.
Education: If you want to target people according to their educational background, you can target your ads based on schools or colleges. You can also customize the targeting according to the field of study.
Job Experience: From the CEO of the company to the employees, you can target a specific group of people for your ads. You can choose job titles, seniority, and years of experience for your ad.
Once you complete your ad targeting criteria, you can save it as a template for further campaigns.
How to track your LinkedIn Ad campaign
LinkedIn makes it easy to track your ad progress in the campaign manager dashboard. In the dashboard, you’ll see the various charts that measure clicks, impressions, and bid. You can also track conversions in the graphs at the bottom of the dashboard.
You can also set up LinkedIn retargeting ads once you have the insight tag installed and a number of site visitors.
Use LinkedIn content suggestions:
LinkedIn provides a content suggestion feature for business pages to help them on what they should write about. Use this feature and get trending topic ideas for ad headlines and descriptions.
The content suggestion feature is easy to use. Simply choose the industry, location, and seniority you want to target on LinkedIn, and this will generate the latest trending topics for those filters.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a great advertising platform among B2B marketers. With the right strategy, LinkedIn ad campaigns can be a huge factor in your business marketing success. A well-optimized ad campaign has the potential to bring thousands of new leads and sales.
