Google and Facebook Ads move aside! LinkedIn's advertising platform has something to bring to the party. Find out all about LinkedIn Ads below, and discover how your business can benefit from adding them to your online advertising arsenal.
So, you’ve mastered Facebook and Google Ads but have you considered LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a highly valuable tool with the potential to reach millions of people in your industry. It may seem a little bit intimidating, especially if you feel like you’ve already got enough on your plate. You might ask yourself, ‘do I really have time to figure out another way to create targeted content?’ The answer is yes. You have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realise.
With its powerful ads platform, 630 million users (63 million of which are in key decision-making positions), now have increased buying power - you can’t afford to ignore LinkedIn as an advertising channel in 2020. We’ve put together this LinkedIn ads guide to outline how a powerful campaign can be created, as well as its benefits to your business and professional audience.
Sign up to Campaign Manager
To get started, sign in to Campaign Manager or create an account if you don’t already have one. Campaign Manager will be the hub of your entire advertising strategy and will house all your assets and analytical data. It will also be used to help configure ads, run campaigns, and monitor progress. Simply fill in the relevant fields; enter your account name and select your currency. If you’re running ads on behalf of a company, link your campaign with a LinkedIn page.
Set Your Ad Budget
The next step is to choose your campaign objective. According to LinkedIn, selecting an objective helps their algorithm to customise your campaign creation, deliver the best ROI and show you the most relevant reporting metrics. You will be presented with several objectives to choose from for three different stages of the sales funnel: awareness, consideration and conversions.
Choose Your Ad Targeting
The key to running a successful ad campaign is targeting the right people, so you need to make sure you have a key understanding of the target audience. There are several targeting options for LinkedIn ads including; company size, position at company, job function, industry, location and skills.
You’re given the option to select multiple attributes at a time, which can further narrow down your targeting, allowing you to reach the key demographics more effectively. You also have the option to exclude audiences that have attributes which are not relevant to your business. For example a retail company might choose to exclude ‘industrial manufacturing’ or ‘chemical engineering’ within their audiences profiles.
Remember to make sure the ‘enable audience expansion’ option is selected to allow LinkedIn to expand and engage new audiences with your ad campaign. This option will automatically include people with similar attributes as the ones you’ve selected.
Choose the Right Ad Format
The type of ad you choose will greatly affect the likelihood of your campaign succeeding. If you’re not sure which format would appeal to your target audience, A/B split test the different ad types to see what works best. For example, some users may hardly scroll through their feeds, but may look at their messages often. In that case, sponsored messages would be the best use of your ad budget.
The format types you have to choose from are:
Text ads - show up in the right hand column or on top of a LinkedIn feed.
Dynamic ads - are similar to text ads but are more personalised. They can include personal data from the user such as profile pictures or name.
Message ads - are delivered to your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox as Inmail. Sponsored InMail messages tend to be direct and personalised, making them extremely effective for targeting a niche audience.
Sponsored content - looks just like your regular LinkedIn post with a CTA button and a “promoted” label. You can choose from three different formats of sponsored content: single image, carousel or video. Carousel ads can feature two or more images, video ads feature one video.
Analyse Your Linkedin As Campaign
It’s crucial to monitor and measure the success of your ad campaigns, this will highlight whether or not your investment is paying off. Monitoring your campaign can also present the ad types that are working better than others, allowing you to adapt your strategy as required.LinkedIn’s Campaign Monitor comes with a robust reporting feature that includes metrics such as clicks, impressions, cost per click, click-through rate, cost per impression, conversions, cost per conversion, leads and cost per lead etc.
Final Thoughts
With the right approach and strategy, a well-researched, optimised LinkedIn ads campaign has the potential to increase brand exposure, bring in new leads and help you grow your business. Here at TANGA Digital, we pride ourselves in our paid media expertise and will be on hand to assist your organisation. If you require more information about LinkedIn ads or just need to discuss your marketing function, reach out to us.