Advertising on LinkedIn: Are You Taking Advantage?

Is your business advertising on LinkedIn? You should be – it’s a great source for targeted outreach. We’re sharing everything you need to know here.

Advertising on LinkedIn is a powerful way to generate leads for your business.

LinkedIn boasts 450 million users. Professionals of all industries, incomes, and experience levels are using it to connect with each other.

What makes advertising on LinkedIn so useful is the ability to customize your audience to create highly targeted ads that reach the right people. You can target according to industry, company, age, gender, job title, seniority, skills, and more.

With LinkedIn, you have the option of choosing between two different payment models. You can pay for ads either per-click or per-impression. This choice helps you get the most for your money depending on the needs of your campaign.

Used the right way, LinkedIn advertising can be a highly profitable component of your social media marketing strategy.

LinkedIn Advertising Features

The beauty of LinkedIn lies in the variety of advertising options it offers. You have lots of different ways to reach potential clients.

1. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content are posts from your company page that you share with a targeted audience.

When posting, it’s best to think about who you’re trying to reach and the message you want to convey. This helps you determine the best content to share.

Text and images can be very effective. You can also use Vimeo and Youtube videos, SlideShare presentations, and graphics. Be creative, buy also clear and concise.

The ads you post as sponsored content show up in two places: in the homepage feed (mobile and desktop) and on the right side of the page (desktop only).

Sponsored content is best used for announcing special offers or new products, or if you want to share content that will get users into your funnel.

2. Text and Image Ads

These are only viewable on a desktop. Even so, advertising on LinkedIn with text and image ads can lead to great results.

That’s because of their distinctive placement at the top of the page. It’s very easy to catch readers’ eyes with text and image ads.

The key is to create an extremely attention-grabbing piece of copy and photos. Your text should be no more than 100 characters and invite the reader to learn more on your website.

It’s also important to keep your image dimensions right: 50 by 50 pixels is the ideal size.

3. Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are a way of advertising on LinkedIn that lets you target your audience and measure your performance.

With LinkedIn dynamic ads, you can create a personalized “call to action” button. You can easily use this feature to grow more followers for your company page.

4. Sponsored InMail

Sponsored InMail is a paid enhancement of the native InMail function. Think of it as LinkedIn’s version of direct mail.

LinkedIn offers high visibility and opening rates by placing Sponsored InMail messages at the top of the receiver’s inbox.

You also have the option of including a call-to-action, an ad unit, and a co-branded landing page. And you send your messages to an audience that you specifically create based on your demographic preferences.

Sponsored InMail is a handy way of directly reaching people who are outside your immediate network.

5. LinkedIn Groups and Ads

Creating and running a LinkedIn group is a smart way to build your network and position yourself as an authority.

You can use LinkedIn Group ads to grow your community. LinkedIn provides you with a template to which you can add a custom message seen by users who meets your specifications.

6. Spotlight Ads

These are fantastic if you’re advertising on LinkedIn for recruitment.

Spotlight ads show up below a user’s profile picture. Your company logo appears along with the words “Picture Yourself at [Your Company]” and a job title.

If the user clicks on the message, they’re taken to the landing page of your choosing.

Spotlight ads don’t look like an advertisement at first glance, which increases their click-through rate. Plus, the visualization of forming part of your company really draws people in.

Tips for Advertising on LinkedIn

LinkedIn can work wonders for your business, but it’s best to follow these best practices to maximize your investment.

Budgeting

Remember, LinkedIn lets you choose between pay-per-click and pay-per-impression.

If the goal of your campaign is to get a direct response, like a website click or page like, then it’s better to choose per-click payment. That way, you only pay for what you get.

On other occasions, your goal may be a higher level of brand awareness. In these situations, cost-per-impression works best. You pay for every thousand views and get your message across to as many people as you can.

Map Out Your Target Audience

The key to successfully advertising on LinkedIn is to carefully plan out who your want to see your ads.

If your company is B2B, you probably want to target decision-makers at an organization, in which case the job title filter is highly useful.

If your product or service wouldn’t be useful to individuals of a certain skill set, then you can likewise filter out users with these skills.

Measure Your Results and A/B Test

Many LinkedIn advertisers fall into the trap of simply launching a campaign, then forgetting about it as it as the ad eats up their money.

Effective advertising on LinkedIn calls for a greater level of involvement.

Check in on your ad performance regularly, at least on a weekly basis.

Test out different images, copy, and content. See which ones get you the best results and use your observations to constantly perfect your campaigns.

Create Targeted Landing Pages

If you’re advertising on LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, those visits may be wasted if you’re not funneling them to a custom landing page.

Don’t just send them to your homepage! Make a landing page with captivating fonts, colors, and pictures, just as you would for your SEO campaigns.

Include sign-up forms and pop-ups to capture visitors into your lead database. Add retargeting code to your website so that you can continue to market to visitors later on.

Conclusion

You can have tremendous results advertising with LinkedIn. Choosing the right ad format, targeting the appropriate users, and A/B testing your ads will help you see a positive ROI.