LinkedIn is too big a marketing opportunity to overlook, don’t believe us? Let the numbers speak! According to a statistic, there are 830 million members that are registered on this platform from all corners of the world.
Back when it was launched in 2002, it slowly started getting traction, and today it has grown to be one of the most efficient social media platforms for connecting with your target audience. However, remember that LinkedIn is not like its social media counterpart Facebook. So naturally, using the same ad copy will be not a wise decision- not to say ineffective. Also, the LinkedIn ads cost differs from its counterparts.
You would have ventured into LinkedIn. But did your ad campaign succeed as you planned? No? And you don’t know the reason? Note that as much as the ad design is crucial, there are other criteria you must consider while planning the ad. You also have to look carefully into the targeting criteria and what is the thing you are testing.
However, before we get into the part where we talk about the best plans to curate a LinkedIn Ad, let us first discuss how effective LinkedIn ads are. It will give you an idea of whether or not you should go that way.
Are LinkedIn Ads Effective?
The answer to this question is a big YES! The reason is when it comes to B2B paid socials, the platform has a lot of potential and can’t be ignored. Moreover, LinkedIn boasts 61 million senior-level influencers. Moreover, they have 65 million decision-makers that too, across multiple industries. Not just that. These decision-makers have the power to buy the average web audience.
So, does not the platform offer an unmatched platform for marketing experts to engage with their prospects? If you are yet to agree with us, let us tell you that LinkedIn generates nearly three times the revenue of other social media platforms. Still, have doubts? Listen to the B2B marketers themselves!
According to 80% of B2B marketers, LinkedIn generates the best results when it comes to paid socials. Apart from that, the platform also has Lead Gen Forms that can convert better than landing pages.
You may be convinced about LinkedIn’s power to reach your target audience. We agree it only sometimes tops your Return on Investment (ROI), but it surely brings successful results with the best strategies.
Even if social media doesn’t typically top your ROI, it can bring significant results with the right strategy. So let’s start discussing the effective growth marketing strategy(s) you can implement for generating leads via LinkedIn Ads.
What are some Effective LinkedIn Ads strategies?
If you want to keep up with the latest digital marketing landscape, you have to capitalize on what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and stay on the best of your game in terms of ad platforms.
LinkedIn ads costs are really low, so there is no reason to hold back. So let’s start with how you can attract leads and scale up your business with LinkedIn advertising.
Create Customized Ads
If you want to determine what are one of the top success factors for your LinkedIn Ads, let us help you with that. Of course, targeting a suitable audience is the first step toward success. Fortunately, you can easily customize your content and ad format to align with the interest and needs of your audience.
While targeting your audience, you can choose from a wide range of criteria. It can be:
- Industry,
- Company name,
- Company Size,
- Job title,
- Job position,
- Institutions attended,
- Age,
- Gender,
- Skills,
- Level,
- Field of study.
While the above-mentioned criteria are primarily-targeted categories, they get more refined from here.
Choose a Suitable Ad Campaign
There is a wide range of LinkedIn-sponsored ads that you can choose for your campaign. They include:
- Sponsored content
A native ad that appears directly on the user’s feed as they scroll is called sponsored content. It is easy and appears like any other posted content by LinkedIn users, thus helping you build awareness, drive leads and nurture relationships. Typically, ads with less than 150 characters drive maximum interaction.
- Message Ads
Message ads are a great way of reaching your target audience directly. Thanks to its distinct format, you can build personalized ads in order to deliver appropriate content to qualified leads.
If the user is active, the ad will go to their inbox just like any text message. Did you know that message ads work better than traditional email marketing?
- Text Ads
You can usually spot text ads on the website’s sidebar; you can pick between cost-per-1000 depressions or PPC payment options. This means you have to pay when 1000 people view it or a user clicks on the ad.
Text ad campaigns are more effective if your audience size is somewhere between 60000 to 4 lac.
Pick an Ideal Ad Format
As you decide which is the best ad type to use, you can select the best format for your ad campaign. Some of the options are:
- Text ads
These ads only have text phrases and are found on the feed sidebar.
- Single-image ads
These ads feature a high-quality interactive photo combined with a short text. If you have sponsored content, single-image ads are considered as they are the most commonly used ad formats.
- Carousel ads
Ideally used for sponsored content, marketers can incorporate several images. These ads are used for showing multiple products.
- Video ads
On LinkedIn, you can add video ads in sponsored content to get our message across, garnering clicks and attracting attention.
- Follower ads
Follower ads promote your business’s LinkedIn page to attract followers. This is ideal if you want to grow your audience so more users can view your content.
- Spotlight ads
Advertisers use spotlight ads to showcase their brand as a whole. So, upon clicking, a user is redirected to a landing page. Note that these ads are only available with sponsored content.
- Job ads
This format is the best if you are looking to hire new people in your organization. To help you connect with prospects, they can be used in Message ads or sponsored content.
Based on your needs, you can opt for the ad format.
Personalize Ads
Experienced marketers understand that personalized ads will pique the interest of their target audience in such a way that generic ads fail to. A customized ad will align with the interest of your audience.
However, only some users will show interest in your brand or in the market for what you provide. That said, you can create campaigns that target suitable client profiles at their journeys. This way, you attract the right kind of leads.
Share Content from Strategic Viewpoint
LinkedIn allows 1300 characters for a personal post. When we talk about the content that witnesses maximum success on this platform, the longer ones are a clear winner. Leveraging long-form content will garner more visibility than when you post something short.
When you want to post a link to a blog, you can offer value in your post by putting something witty or funny in the context of the content and why your audience needs to read it. For example, offer a teaser or quote that will attract your audience to click the link.
For your LinkedIn advertising, coming up with a new content strategy can be time-intensive. Instead, you can repurpose content to avoid costs you can cash in on your already present assets. To align with the format and audience of LinkedIn, you can use content from your lead magnets, blogs, and knowledge base.
Apart from that, you can also leverage third-party content. For example, sharing breaking news relevant to your industry. That said, sharing just the news will not be effective. Instead, share your take on it and caption it nicely to gain traction. This way, you can write a short post and still gain the audience’s attention.
Track Crucial LinkedIn Ads Metrics
In order to get full benefits from your LinkedIn Ads campaigns, you have to measure the metrics properly. Tracking them will help you make adjustments to your future techniques and make evaluations of your marketing efforts. Some of these metrics are:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per click
- Conversion rate
- Cost per conversion
- Engagement rate
The numbers keep changing based on the ad types you run and the industry. Although keeping a constant eye on your metrics is crucial all the time, the most successful way of ensuring your strategies are working out or not is to consistently conduct a social media audit.
Optimize your Video Ads
In the news feed, the earnings of video ads per impression are more comments when compared to images. Thus, it is crucial to be detailed about this format of the ad.
Based on your ongoing marketing objective, you can benefit from the best practices we have discussed below.
#1 If the goal of your ad is brand awareness, you can:
- Add storytelling and branding content at the video’s ending
- Try making your services and products relatable by focusing on real-life human experiences.
- Try making videos that are crisp- preferably under 15 seconds, as people are more likely to watch them entirely.
- Avoid thinking about conversations with a brand awareness video. Analytics should be based on different metrics.
#2 If the goal of your ad is thought leadership ads, you can:
- Introduce your brand at the video’s beginning ad.
- Leverage popular words if a warm audience is your target.
- Be inclusive and considerate of people who don’t or can’t have their sound on by incorporating captions into your video.
- Benefit from words that suggest potential, profitability and growth like growth, rewarding, thriving, progress, successful etc.
#3 If the goal of your ad is lead generation, you can:
- Show the brand at the starting of the ad
- Combine lead generation forms and video ads.
- Try being dynamic with lead generation, especially at the video’s beginning.
- Tell the important message in the first 5 seconds of the video.
Based on the goals you have, you can do the following.
- Leverage Matched Audiences
You can use the Matched Audiences option of LinkedIn in order to expand the reach of your campaign. It is available for all the advertising products of the platform, including sponsored and message ads.
Matched Audiences provides:
- Retargeting — helps in marketing services or products to people who clicked on your LinkedIn Ad, visited your website, or participated in your LinkedIn Event.
- Contact targeting — helps in marketing to LinkedIn members on your contact list.
- Account targeting — helps in setting up an account-based marketing (ABM) campaign by matching target companies against other LinkedIn pages.
- Lookalike targeting — helps in finding audiences similar to the audience you work with
The Matched Audiences’ users witnessed a significant increase in their post-click conversions and CTR.
The third-party cookie phasing out will come into effect in 2023. Until then, you can leverage these targeting tools to keep up with the latest marketing practices.
- Keep it Professional
The key to a robust marketing strategy is understanding the tone and voice your audience responds to the best. However, it is also crucial to consider the ad platform.
For instance, a reel video about something relevant may work well on Instagram but will be a flop show on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Plan how you can bring your audience to this particular platform. When it comes to LinkedIn, the approach should be strictly professional, job-based, or networking. Making an ad that is too tacky or edgy might not align in a similar way as it would on a platform such as Twitter.
- Use Extras Offered by LinkedIn
While some LinkedIn features are not important or say necessary, they can help in enhancing your metrics. That includes:
- Custom URL: Having a custom URL simplifies the web address to be crisp and can be remembered conveniently.
- LinkedIn Resources: There are numerous tools available that you can use to learn how to leverage LinkedIn to your advantage. The courses and tutorials dedicated to LinkedIn will help you improve your LinkedIn Ads strategy using all the insider information. Apart from that, you can also avail of LinkedIn magazines made for marketing.
- Polls: Polls are not just suitable for interaction but also for engagement, but they also help you extract crucial information from customers who are in your target demographic.
So there you have it! These are some of the best LinkedIn strategies that can be handy to scale your reach. Implement them and see the difference yourself.
Strategize the Best Ads!
Advertising is how you subtly combine art and science, and in this blog, we have discussed the art of creating LinkedIn ads. When made correctly, they have the ability to deliver quality and targeted traffic to your business. First, make sure your growth marketing agency incorporates all the above-mentioned tips and practices into your ad campaigns.