LinkedIn is the ideal platform for networking with like-minded professionals. Plus, it provides some powerful advertising tools which make it an effective inbound marketing platform.
Whether you’re already using paid marketing to power your presence online, or you’re completely new to the world of paid social – your business could be benefiting from targeting specific users through LinkedIn.
Choosing what type of LinkedIn ad is right for your campaign can come down to many factors, including marketing budget, target audience, campaign goals and more.
Firstly, we’ll go over the different types of advertising that are available:
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content will appear alongside organic posts in your audience’s LinkedIn news feed. These are similar to promoted posts on social media, in they blend nicely into the feed. These are typically the ads with the highest average cost-per-click (CPC) on LinkedIn. There are four types available:
- Single image ads
- Carousel ads featuring multiple images
- Video ads
- Single job ads that promote a career opportunity
InMail Ads
InMail Ads are delivered to your target audience’s inbox on LinkedIn. There are two different types of InMail ads, these are:
- Message ads: You can display a targeted message with one call-to-action (CTA) button.
- Conversion ads: You’re able to set up multiple CTA buttons that link to various landing pages. You can also create a lead generation form and provide more info in a second message.
It’s a good idea to test both of these formats and see what works best for you. You can measure performance based on responses and actions followed.
Dynamic Ads
Dynamic Ads are personalised ads tailored to a LinkedIn member based on their profile data. For example, profile photo, company name, job title and interests. A dynamic ad will change depending on who is viewing it, and each user will see something suited to them.
These are great for all stages of the marketing funnel and can be used for things like:
- Brand awareness
- Website traffic
- Engagement
- Job applicants
Dynamic Ads come in three different formats:
- Follower ads – Promote your LinkedIn or Showcase Page and encourage followers.
- Spotlight ads – Showcase your product, service, content, event and more. These will lead users to your landing page.
- Job ads – Promoting new job opportunities and encouraging relevant candidates to apply to work with your company.
Text Ads
Text ads include a headline, image and some text. You can target users with these ads based on their location, demographics, interests, skills and more. You’ll find these ads at the top of the page, or on the right side of a variety of LinkedIn web pages:
- Homepage
- Profile page
- Search results page
- People You May Know page
- Who’s Viewed My Profile page
- Groups pages
- LinkedIn inbox
You can pay per click or impression for these ads.
LinkedIn best practices
There will always be ways of improving your engagement through social media ads. That’s because your audience and content are continually changing. Plus, LinkedIn will continue to develop.
We’ve put together some of our best practices that you can follow to drive results from your LinkedIn advertising.
Track your campaign performance
You can easily track your campaign progress in the Campaign Manager dashboard. Once you click through, you’ll be able to access various metrics that measure performance, such as:
- Clicks
- CTR
- Conversions
Don’t be alarmed if you see a lot of 0’s at the beginning of a campaign. This is common with new ad campaigns. We’d recommend waiting a few days or even weeks to track performance properly.
Look at click-through rate
Your click-through rate can determine which campaigns are performing the best (if you have more than one). The ad campaign with the lower CTR will require some tweaks (which we will explain more about in our next point).
LinkedIn picks up on campaign performance and will display the higher-quality ads more often. With this in mind, it; ‘s best to focus on the ads that are bringing you a better return on investment (ROI).
Focus on testing one variant at a time
Even when following best practices and guidelines – you may find that some campaigns will not bring you the results you expected straight away.
When an ad is underperforming, it is best to focus on each of the campaign’s aspects separately. We’d recommend testing some different ad variations to see what factor is contributing to lower performance.
There are a few ways that you can A/B test your LinkedIn ads. For example:
- Edit the headline
- Change the featured image/images
- Change your targeting
- Try a new call-to-action
- See what language or tone your audience respond to
Sometimes, you might find that something as simple as changing the image you used could draw in more valuable customers. Remember to keep track of your findings for your future campaigns. This is especially helpful if you’ll be targeting the same or a similar audience again.
Keep researching your audience
One mistake that businesses can make is sticking to the same target audience for too long. Assuming your audience stays, the same could be causing your campaign performance to drop.
We’d suggest checking over your target audience at least once a month. This could be just reviewing your buyer persona and working out if it still aligns with your product, service or brand.
For example, a new product might be suited to a slightly younger audience which would require some tweaks to your targeting. Or, if you’re advertising a managerial position as opposed to an assistant role – you’ll need to change the settings.
Small changes like this can help to ensure the most relevant LinkedIn users are seeing your ads.
What next?
LinkedIn ad campaigns can lead you towards a group of highly relevant and valuable users. A well-targeted and optimised campaign could bring your business the results it’s looking for.
If you have any questions or you’re interested in getting started with advertising on LinkedIn, feel free to get in touch.