Did you know that 80% of B2B lead generation on social media comes from Linked In? That’s a big number, but most people aren’t aware of that.
There are currently 630 million users on the platform:
Most marketers are familiar with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat advertising, but many of them haven’t tried LinkedIn. If you’re looking to get started with Linked ln ads, this is the perfect guide for you!
Why LinkedIn?
The first question you need to ask yourself is whether LinkedIn is the right choice for you.
Here’s how you can determine yes or no. Since LinkedIn is a platform for business professionals, you can already narrow down your target audience to individuals aged 18 and above that are skilled workers actively participating in the job market.
This will answer the question for you. If you sell games for teenagers or toys for children, LinkedIn probably isn’t the place for you. But if own anything that targets professional adults, LinkedIn is the right choice.
Types of LinkedIn ads
Once you’ve decided to advertise on LinkedIn, you need to select what type of ads you’ll be displaying:
- Self-service ads
As the name suggests, these ads require doing it on your own.
Setting up an account on LinkedIn takes minutes. After that, you can get the Campaign Manager tool to help you schedule and target your ads:
With this tool, you can see how your ads are performing, which you can use to improve weak areas and maintain strengths.
- Sponsored content
This type of ad is similar to boosting a post on Facebook. You can use it to sponsor existing content on your LinkedIn account.
You can sponsor ads that are pictures, videos, slideshows or in any other form. These ads appear on the home feed of users and are generally compatible with both mobile phones and desktops.
Whether you want to promote company news, an upcoming sale, an event or anything of the sort – you can always boost your reach by creating a paid ad.
Oh and also, keep in mind that pictures are 30 times more engaging than normal text so incorporate infographics into your ads.
- Text ads
While infographics have their own benefits, text ads can also be used to your advantage as well. An eye-catching title or meta description is all it takes to engage users in your advertisement.
Text ads are also a great way to drive traffic towards your page or website.
However, text ads only run on desktops. Luckily, since LinkedIn is used by professionals, it has a comparatively high desktop usage as compared to other social media channels (about 30%).
- Sponsored mail
Similar to sponsored ads, sponsored mail is a great way to boost your ad reach by delivering ads to your target audience’s inbox.
But how is this effective? Email marketing has an amazing ROI of 122%! Not only that, but your audience will trust you more if you talk to them directly instead of showcasing ads to the masses.
This trust eventually develops into revenue for you, because they will be persuaded to buy what you’re offering.
Sponsored InMail is a great business tool that LinkedIn offers. It’s compatible with all platforms (mobile and desktop) and supports features such as custom greetings, call to action buttons and hyperlinks within the email.
- Video Ads
If you thought image ads created high engagements, wait till you see the performance of video ads:
The results of this study done by DataBox shows that almost 60% of marketers believe that video ads drive higher engagement as compared to image ads. Not only is this effective for B2C marketing, but it’s also becoming quite the trend in B2B markets as well.
Whether you want to upload a tutorial, hold a webinar, interact with your consumers or provide them with useful information, a video is a great way to engage your followers in your content.
- Display Ads
This one is interesting. Because there are so many methods of marketing these days, consumers usually suffer from what marketers call an ‘information overload’.
If you look around, you’ll see a billboard when you step out of the house. You’ll see an advertisement every time you open a social media app on your phone, and more when you switch on the TV.
The problem with that is, consumers stop paying attention to each ad. So to stand out, marketers have to come up with unique ideas that catch their audience’s attention. Display ads help them do precisely that.
Display ads are Linked In ads solution. The platform allows you to buy ads from your favourite advertising platform or auctions.
Display ads also allow you to use multiple media, including images, videos, audio, text and more all incorporated into one.
They are also a great way to target a specified audience right from the start.
- Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads are personalized to your audience based on their activity.
Google bots and cookies help to track users’ web history, likes, clicks etc. which then determine their interests.
The reason behind the effectiveness of these ads is that they manage to target each individual at just the right time.
Suppose your consumer is searching Google for cough and cold medicines. You happen to be one of the local sellers.
If you target a dynamic ad at the user right there and then, there’s a high chance that he/she will purchase your product because they’ll see it at a time when they are in dire need of the product.
- Marketing Partner Ads
Self-serve ads are not for everybody. For those of you who want to outsource or rely on a skilled expert in the field instead of doing the grunt work yourself, LinkedIn has a solution for you.
Just pair with one of LinkedIn’s marketing partners! These partners will offer you the tools that you need to create your ad e.g. content creation, technology, media buying, customer insight etc.
With professional expertise backing your campaign, you’ll be able to achieve greater success and thus, ROI.
Creating an effective ad
There are 6 easy steps that you need to complete in order to create and maintain effective advertisements on LinkedIn:
- Set up an account on Campaign Manager
- Choose your LinkedIn ad format
You can choose between dynamic, text, display and other ads. This will depend on two things: your budget and the life cycle stage which your product or brand is in.
- Create your ad
- Set your budget
- Target your audience
- Measure and optimize your campaign
These basic steps will ensure that your ads run smoothly. For more detail, take a look at the detailed guide on LinkedIn’s official website.
How to target the right users
Luckily for you, LinkedIn is the best platform to target customers highly specifically.
LinkedIn provides career-related filters that you can use to target customers based on industry, company size, title as well as geographic location.
This proves to be a great way to target professionals in need of your product.
What Linked In ads will cost you
Of course, the price of your ad campaign will vary depending on the number of consumers you want to reach as well as the competition.
Why the competition? Because consumers will only click your ad if it is better than other products being offered in the market, and you will be charged according to the number of clicks on your ad.
The average cost-per-click of a Linked In ads varies from $2-$5, with the higher number occurring when you get fewer clicks on your ad.
The best click-through-rate that you can achieve falls between 0.08% to 0.1%. This will occur if you manage to get 1000 impressions.
But how do you ensure a high click-through rate? Not only do you need to ensure an engaging ad, but you also need to switch up your ads at LEAST once a month so that your customers see new content.
This means that newer ads have a higher chance of boosting impressions and improving your click-through rate.
Lead Generation through Linked In ads
Lead generation is perhaps the sole purpose of a marketer’s job, and LinkedIn ads are only the first step in getting there. There are two main ways through which you can generate leads from ads:
- Landing page
Your landing page is what customers will see when they click on your ad, so of course, it has to be remarkable. However, you need more than just an appearance to capture your viewers’ attention.
Use incentives such as promotions and discounts because customers love nothing more than free things (I’m sure you do too, just like I would).
This will generate leads a whole lot faster than any other way.
- Lead Generation Forms
You’d be surprised to know that most marketers aren’t even aware of these. LinkedIn’s ‘lead gen forms’ allow customers to respond to your ad immediately with over-populated fields, which could substantially boost your ROI.
Tracking the performance of your ads
Just like Facebook and other social media platforms, LinkedIn also allows you to track how well your ads are doing.
But why do you need to track your ads? The idea is to determine whether your investment is worth it or not and make any improvements if possible.
The platform offers a Conversion Tracking tool that, as the name suggests, helps you set up a conversion action for consumers – whether they want to signup, purchase something or subscribe to your blog.
LinkedIn’s conversion tool is similar to Facebook’s pixel system that tracks conversions, so if you’re familiar with that, then you’ll be able to catch on quick.
LinkedIn Statistics
- LinkedIn currently has over 610 million members.
- The network has 303 million active monthly users, 40% of which visit the site daily.
- 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers use LinkedIn.
- 92% of Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn.
- 57% of companies had a LinkedIn company page in 2013.
- 46% of the social media traffic to B2B company sites is from LinkedIn.
- 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as a content distribution channel.
- Only 3 million LinkedIn users share content every week.
- In 2016, LinkedIn users published 130,000 posts monthly.
- LinkedIn is responsible for 80% of B2B leads from social media
Source: 99 firms
Take a look at the Top 3 marketing tips by Neil Patel for your ads on LinkedIn:
Conclusion
All in all, Linked In ads can be expensive in comparison to other social media ads, but if you’re creative enough, you’ll get a good ROI which makes it all worth it.
For businesses that deal with the professional world and B2B markets, LinkedIn is the best platform to promote their brand on. If your business falls into any of these categories, then creating an ad on LinkedIn is perhaps the best way to go.
But remember, for effective results, make sure you follow the guidelines and take advantage of the little tips and tricks to maximize your ROI.