LinkedIn has grown exponentially in the last few years, establishing itself as a hub for professionals across various industries in the UK and beyond. With the explosion of other new entries to the plethora of social media platforms, LinkedIn continues to assert itself as the leading professional platform particularly for those focussed on B2B markets looking for business development and growth.
Much as we all know that we should, as individuals, post more, engage better and be a more present part of the jostling business community there. Time is not our friend, but we know the gig.
But when it comes to advertising on LinkedIn, many run scared. The options feel very different from Meta, Google and Bing leaving even seasoned digital advertisers rubbing their furrowed brows.
So, let’s unpack LinkedIn advertising and allow me to reassure you that you will not be unlocking the Pandora’s box you may fear.
Types and Formats
LinkedIn offers various ad formats, each with unique purposes and targeting capabilities. Some popular options include:
- Sponsored Content: These ads appear directly in users’ feeds, allowing businesses to share content such as articles, videos, or company updates.
- Sponsored InMail: Send personalised messages directly to users’ LinkedIn inboxes, enabling direct communication with your target audience.
- Text Ads: Displayed on the side or top of the page, these simple ads include a headline, description, and small image.
- Video Ads: Engage your audience with short, autoplay videos that can be used to showcase products, share testimonials, or tell brand stories.
Targeting
One of LinkedIn’s strongest features is its robust targeting capabilities and creating a targeted audience on LinkedIn is essential for successful advertising campaigns. Navigate yourself to the “Create Audience” section and take a deep breath.
Here you can define your ideal audience by selecting relevant attributes such as job titles, company size, industry, location, and education level. Remain calm – you do not have to use all of these attributes, only the ones you are confident it. To the right, you’ll see an estimated audience size to guide you on just how general or specific you’re being. You can also use this section to exclude any characteristics that you don’t want to target (e.g. remove anyone who is still in education).
You can then save this audience so you can use it, edit it or simply admire it in future.
The Content
Whilst it’s obvious, let’s not linger on the fact content should be high-quality, creatively engaging and show a clear call to action because we all know that. Right?!
From the well-trodden path of LinkedIn campaign management let me be more specific for you:
- Write concise, impactful headlines that highlight your USPs. Focus on benefits, not features.
- Tailor to your audience – you’ve defined who will see this so talk to them; their needs, the challenges they face, the wins they want.
- Use high-resolution, professional images.
- Craft clear and concise CTAs that encourage users to click – tell them what they should do next.
- If you have it leverage social proof like testimonials and reviews – peer feedback is important to decision makers.
Set the right objective, test and optimise
Monitoring and optimising your campaign’s performance is crucial for success. Be clear what you are measuring and why. For example, if you want to increase your website traffic select ‘website visits’ and monitor the click through rate.
If you want to encourage interaction on your LinkedIn page, select ‘engagement’ as your objective and monitor ‘engagement rate’.
Don’t be afraid to test different ad formats, targeting parameters, and creative elements to ensure continuous growth and success.
Tips
As opposed to a classic conclusion where we repeat what has just been said let me sign off with a few specific tips (‘hacks’ as the kids say):
- Use LinkedIn’s Insight Tag: Install this tag on your website to track visitors and unlock valuable insights, such as demographics, job titles, and companies.
- Saturate deeply into a company: When targeting specific companies, don’t limit your ads to senior decision-makers. Reach employees across various levels and departments to build broader awareness and advocacy within the organisation.
- Qualify traffic before retargeting: Instead of retargeting all website visitors, focus on those who have shown interest in your offering by visiting specific product pages, consuming content, or spending a certain amount of time on your site. This ensures that your retargeting efforts are focused on the most promising prospects.
- Maximise each campaign by ensuring there are at least 5 ads within each campaign: Use a range of keywords and contentment to test adverts within each campaign – take your learnings into future campaigns.
LinkedIn advertising is a beautiful blend of art and science, but you don’t need to be Van Gogh or Stephen Hawkings to lead the field.