LinkedIn offers a wide range of great advertising options that allow you to reach a targeted audience through advertising campaigns. Using the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, one can set their own bids and advertising budget, choose what metrics to focus on, get informative data about the performance of their campaign, and even stop it any time they want.
All of that makes LinkedIn a great advertising platform with plenty of advantages. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of LinkedIn advertising and provide what we consider to be the main benefit of using this ad platform.
So, what is one advantage of advertising on LinkedIn?
Getting started with LinkedIn advertising
LinkedIn allows users of its marketing platform to utilise several different advertising options to reach out to their desired audience(s).
In order to start advertising through LinkedIn, go through the following process:
How to advertise on LinkedIn
Create the ad campaign
- First off, sign in to your business account and then click on Go to LinkedIn Ads, which you will find in the upper-left corner of your screen
- Once again, on the upper right of your screen, you will find a button called New Ad Campaign. Click on it
Upload the graphics
Then, follow the steps written on the screen to create an ad and then upload a small graphic. By small, we mean something that isn’t bigger than 50 by 50 pixels. LinkedIn supports .jpeg files, .png, and .gif with a size of no more than 2MB. If the dimensions of the graphic that you uploaded are too big, LinkedIn will automatically resize it. Still, we recommend that you upload a high-resolution image so that the quality of the final product is satisfactory.
Link to your landing page (or website)
Insert a link to the ad that leads to your landing page, as well as a headline and an ad text. The headline has a 25-character limit, while the ad text has a 75-character limit. LinkedIn reviews your ads before they are published, which usually takes around 24 hours or less. They will provide you with a canned explanation of why they approved or disapproved of your ad. There’s an option to appeal the decision.
You can create up to 15 different variations of each of your ads. You might want to test different ad headlines, different graphics, different landing pages, etc., just to see what works best. The task of creating alternative versions of an ad is to make it easier for you through the “edit” and “duplicate” functions.
Define your audience
Next up, set up the geographic area that you will be targeting, then select the different options that will help you define your target audience. You will notice an estimation in the upper-right corner of the size of your target audience, depending on the changes you make to your targeting parameters. LinkedIn allows you to target people based on industry, job title, age, gender, and more.
Set your budget
Last but not least, set the budget for your campaign. If your focus is on generating leads and clicks, then you’re better off bidding on CPC. However, if you’re running a market awareness campaign, then we recommend that you go with CPM (cost per thousand impressions) instead. In other words, your method of bidding solely depends on the main objective of your ad campaign.
LinkedIn Ad formats
Okay, before we answer the question of what one advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is, let us first dive into the different types of ads that you can rely on using the Campaign Manager.
Text ads
Text ads are pretty easy to set up; you basically write a headline of no more than 25 characters with a description of up to 75 characters. They are a great way to improve brand awareness, increase website visits as well as conversions.
Image ads
Images ads appear on the homepage of LinkedIn users, and they look like usual posts, but with a catch, they have a “promoted” tag attached to them indicating that they are paid for.
Video ads
Video ads are a great way to highlight a new product or service, provide an insider’s look into your company, tell a brand’s story, and much more. Of course, you would want to utilise the potential of a video ad to its fullest. In other words, show whatever you want to highlight instead of telling.
Conversation ads
Conversation ads provide your audience with a sort of choose-your-own-path experience. You basically start a conversation with them, and they can select through a selection of different responses the one they think resonates most with them.
This sort of ad is great for showcasing your products and services as well as enticing people to attend future seminars and events.
Follower ads
Follower ads, as the name suggests, are dynamic and personalised ads that adhere to the personalities and preferences of your audience. These ads can be used to promote your LinkedIn page to users in hopes that they end up clicking on that follow button. In other words, follower ads are a great way to improve brand awareness with the potential of gaining website visits and conversions down the road.
Carousel ads
A carousel ad is an ad that contains a maximum of 10 cards that can be swiped through. They are a great way of showcasing a new product or service, telling your brand’s story, or sharing new bits of information about the industry that you operate within.
The key to a great carousel ad is to rely on good visuals while keeping text to a minimum with the aim of encouraging your target audience to swipe through the whole thing.
Spotlight ads
Spotlight ads are a tool for you to shed light on your brand, products, or services. These ads will immediately lead to a landing page of your choosing.
Similar to follower ads, spotlight ads are very dynamic and personalised according to your target audience.
Message ads
According to LinkedIn themselves, more than 1 in 2 prospects open up a message ad when they receive one. You basically send a direct message to your target audience with an attached CTA.
What is one advantage of advertising on LinkedIn
So, the one big advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is the fact that the platform is filled with professionals, and targeting the right groups out of these professionals has never been easier. In other words, it presents a great opportunity for B2B marketers to initiate new business relationships. Over 80% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn. Such a number cannot simply be ignored.
That’s not the only advantage, though
However, don’t go around thinking that advertising on LinkedIn is exclusively B2B-based. B2C marketers also flourish on the platform as well as companies whose sole aim of advertising on LinkedIn is to recruit new employees. Numerous B2C industries are active on LinkedIn, these include but are not limited to:
- Financial services
- Legal services
- Automotive
- Travel
- Education
It should come as no surprise then that LinkedIn is the most trusted social media platform among millennial B2B professionals, especially when it comes to gathering information about jobs and industries in general.
Most of these professionals use other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, they won’t be able to find the marketing effectiveness that LinkedIn has in these platforms. A 2019 Content Marketing Institute & MaketingProfs survey found that in the case of North American B2B marketers, 95% used LinkedIn as their primary digital marketing platform.
More targeting options
Going back to the point of targeting, LinkedIn is brilliant in the fact that it allows you to target people based on what company they work at, how long they have been working there and what position they hold.
In other words, you can go beyond the regular demographics-based targeting parameters such as age, sex, and location and get much more specific. And while other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram provide alternatives for such parameters such as interests and behavior, these are still unparalleled with LinkedIn job-related targeting, especially for B2B marketers.
An ever-evolving platform
LinkedIn is seeing the great potential behind this and is continuously adding new benefits and features for people who are looking to advertise on the platform. One example of this is objective-based advertising which gives advertisers the ability to customise their goals based on three primary objectives: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
To put it briefly, if your audience is into anything professionally, they are definitely into LinkedIn.
Need to generate more leads and conversions using LinkedIn?
Unfortunately, running LinkedIn ads isn’t as easy as it seems. Worry not, though, as we can take care of the heavy lifting for you. Contact us today, and we’ll help you get your business to the next level using LinkedIn ads.
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