LinkedIn advertising is a powerful tool for reaching B2B decision-makers. Learn how to harness the power of these ads and get the most of it.
B2B marketing is challenging. LinkedIn advertising is a powerful tool for reaching B2B decision-makers. You’re working to find decision-makers within an organization, trying to influence an entire team, working with procurement protocols, and building relationships with people whose roles or employment could change at any point.
You might feel like you’re spinning your wheels as you look for ways to reach the right person. That’s where LinkedIn advertising comes in.
LinkedIn ads can help you find decision-makers and drill down to specific industries you have a history of success with. The professional networking platform can tell you far more about a person and their role than any other platform or advertising avenue. Use that knowledge to begin building relationships with greater meaning and purpose.
You need a defined strategy to see the most from your LinkedIn advertising. Here’s how to reach its 1 billion members distributed throughout 200 countries worldwide.
You should never start an advertising campaign without first outlining your goals. Decide whether you want to:
The clearer your objectives are, the more successful your marketing campaign will be.
LinkedIn offers specific ad criteria. You can target job titles, industries, company sizes, interests and more. But that isn’t worth anything if you don’t know who your target audience is. You need to outline these details to reach your audience effectively.
When defining your target audience, use a buyer persona so that you do more than outline what LinkedIn allows you to filter for. You want to understand what is motivating your buyers and why they might be considering switching or adding a service or product like yours. Are they unhappy? Do they have unmet needs? What pain points have they experienced throughout the buying journey?
Now that you know your goals and your audience, you can begin developing compelling ads that will engage your audience. Keep your ad concise and avoid meandering language that distracts your audience from your main message. Use visuals, including videos, when you can. As you design your ads, think about how you’ll be one of many ads and messages that a user sees as they scroll through their feed. You need a way to stand out, be attention-grabbing and speak directly to the pain points you’ve outlined in your target audience.
You need a way of speaking directly to the buyer’s needs. For example, you might touch on ways to increase revenue or improve employee retention.
Like most advertising platforms, you have options for the ad format you use. Here’s a look at some options you have on LinkedIn.
And within those options, you have many formats to pick from.
Go back to your goals for the campaign to decide which format is right for you. Don’t just pick the one you’ve heard the most about or that you’ve had success with in the past.
Determine your Linkedin advertising budget. This needs to match your goals. Within your goals should be an ROI. You can bid in a variety of ways on LinkedIn, including cost-per-impression (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC). CPM is generally best for awareness campaigns.
Be meticulous while setting up your ads. Take your time because this process can dictate your ad results. Be specific about your audience. While you can always go in and limit your audience further, you might waste hundreds of dollars in the process and reduce your ROI overall for the campaign if you cast your net too wide.
Use LinkedIn’s targeting options, including Matched Audiences to reach users based on the interactions you see on your website, other ad campaigns, etc. This will help you reach users that are most likely to show interest in your products and services.
Once you set up your ads, you can’t just expect them to start generating results. You often need to improve the ads. Spend time reviewing what’s working and where you can reduce your expenses by reducing your fees in audiences that are not as effective. This process is pretty complex as you’ll be diving into analytics for the ads. Look at the clicks, impressions and conversions for your ad. Refine your audience based on what’s working.
Test various messages and content to see what resonates best with your audience. Use A/B tests to see what delivers the best results with maximum impact. Ask various marketing team members to write ad content to get different ideas and strategies. Remind them of the target audience and let them go to work reaching that audience. Then test those ad strategies to find a good ad.
Retargeting engaged users is a wise move. They might have been distracted and unable to complete the action you wanted them to. Or they might have needed to counsel other parties within their organization before purchasing your products or services. Using LinkedIn’s retargeting to show your ad to relevant users.
Go back to your goals for the campaign and measure your results against those goals. Dig deep into your analytics to determine whether your campaign was successful. Take this opportunity to iterate on your campaign to improve it for the future.
Engaging in LinkedIn ads offers you another avenue to reach your audience. But it provides a host of other benefits for B2B businesses. Here’s a look at those benefits.
Because LinkedIn is a place to network for business, people note that they view ads there as more credible. The brands they interact with on LinkedIn tend to have a more positive connotation in their minds than other brands. This positive impression of your brand can result in greater ROI.
Customers who interact with your brand on various platforms state that they can easily recall the brands that they have interacted with on LinkedIn. Research shows that consumers who interact with brands on LinkedIn are 6 times more likely to convert than those who only interacted with the company on one platform, such as their website.
LinkedIn makes retargeting simple. Matched audiences help you engage with people similar to those who have interacted with you on your website. That data is not readily available elsewhere, making LinkedIn ads especially beneficial.
Every company will experience LinkedIn’s benefits differently. Start seeing how this ad platform could benefit you by starting a campaign. If you’ve had limited results in the past, a fresh perspective and deep expertise could be the answer. New Light Digital is a team of digital marketing experts who know how to get the most from ad platforms like LinkedIn and integrate it into a full digital marketing strategy. Schedule your free consultation now.
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