LinkedIn boasts a network of over 756 million professionals who are increasingly engaging on the platform. The latest figures from LinkedIn suggest user sessions increased by 30% and conversations were up 48% over the course of the last year. Advertising on the platform therefore has the opportunity to be highly targeted as a result, done correctly. LinkedIn ads have the potential to yield high-quality leads for B2B tech and telecoms companies.
If you are looking to invest in LinkedIn advertising for your B2B brand but are not quite sure where to start, we have put together some key points to get you started.
Step 1: Create a Campaign Manager Account
Visit the platform and create a Campaign Manager account directly from LinkedIn.
Step 2: Choose Your Objective
Your objective is what result your business wants from marketing on LinkedIn. You can select a range of objectives across awareness, consideration and conversation, such as ‘Tell your product or business story through video’ or ‘Promote job opportunities at your company.’ The purpose of selecting an objective is that it streamlines your campaign and enables you to focus on your desired outcomes.
Step 3: Select Your Target Audience
Targeted marketing will reach individuals that will benefit or be interested in your business, increasing the chance that they will become substantiated sales leads. LinkedIn offers over 20 different audience attribute categories to create the exact buyer’s persona your business wants, based on interests, skills or seniority.
Step 4: Choose Your Ad Format
There are four different ad formats to choose from, or you can combine multiple.
- Sponsored Content posts appear directly in the feed of the professionals you are targeting and are good for any form of promotion as they stand out and are more difficult to ignore.
- Message Ads appear in your audience’s inbox, directly where professional conversations happen.
- Dynamic Ads use LinkedIn profile data, such as company name or job title, to personalise the ads. This type of ad works well for job applications as your business will be more likely to receive relevant, qualified applicants.
- Text Ads are smaller ads that appear to the side of the LinkedIn desktop feed. Using a powerful headline and call to action (CTA) will mean your text ad is simple, but effective.
Step 5: Set Budget and Schedule
The way you pay for a LinkedIn ad depends on the ad format and objectives you have chosen. Cost per send (CPS) is used when you run Message Ads as you pay for each message that is successfully delivered. Cost per click (CPC) fits best with action-oriented campaigns and cost per impression (CPM) is appropriate for brand or business awareness related objectives.
You will be prompted to select whether you want to use a daily budget, which is how much you want to spend per day, or a lifetime budget, which is the overall amount of money that you want to spend during the whole campaign, or a mixture of both. It’s important to take into consideration that LinkedIn’s minimum daily spend for ads is $10.00 per day and that LinkedIn uses an auction system for bidding that rewards engagement, meaning you can win an auction without being the highest bidder.
Finally, select your schedule. Your marketing campaign can run continuously or on a fixed schedule, with start and end dates.
Step 6: Measuring the Ads Success
To measure the ads success, you can view its metrics in the Campaign Manager. From here you can view its impressions, clicks, social actions and revisit the budget.
Use these performance stats to adapt your current campaigns if necessary. For example, if a campaign is receiving lots of impressions but fewer clicks than expected, refining or changing your target audience selection can increase the number of professionals you reach that are relevant to your ad and will therefore engage with it.
If you’d like more support with your social media marketing that amplifies your message, distributes to the widest possible audience and builds a community across LinkedIn and other social media platforms, contact us today for a no obligation quote.
