LinkedIn is the quieter cousin of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
While LinkedIn might seem passive compared to other social networks, it’s the social network where you’ll normally find decision makers, founders, entrepreneurs, CXOs, and several other professionals available and within reach.
With more than 500 million users (and over 50% of those are active users), LinkedIn is a highly-targeted, concentrated, and ever active professional social network.
LinkedIn is purely business-centric, and fires off in so many different directions for businesses – You could…
- hire people
- connect with others in your industry
- check out competition
- build relationships with others
- maintain thought leadership (with regular updates and with LinkedIn publishing)
- engage in direct social selling
- and so much more…
Of course, you could also advertise directly on the LinkedIn network. The self-service LinkedIn advertising product gives you options such as:
- LinkedIn Sponsored ads
- LinkedIn Carousel
- Lead Generation Forms (just like Facebook)
- LinkedIn text ads and
- LinkedIn Sponsored InMail.
While the cost per click on LinkedIn is slightly on the expensive side as Igor Belogovsky of Kissmetrics points out, with the average CPC starting at $1 or $2. The actual cost depends on your target locations and click-through rate among others.
Maximizing LinkedIn Ads impact and ROI
If you are considering LinkedIn Ads, take note:
- You want the maximum bang for your buck. From the start, you’d have to focus on the value of your offer, the ad images, and the ad copy. Being mediocre on LinkedIn can get really expensive.
- Make use of dedicated landing pages and sales funnels for your LinkedIn Ad campaigns. Get on a call with us to allow us to help you formulate the right advertising strategy.
- Consider your LinkedIn Ad format options based on your campaign objectives. You can’t be random about it.
Types of LinkedIn Ads
With that out of the way, here are various LinkedIn Ad types and how they can help your business:
Use LinkedIn Sponsored Posts for high-impact content
Let’s say you have a blog post that performs really well to get you what you need (leads, branding, building authority, etc.). You could use LinkedIn Sponsored Posts to promote your content.
These campaigns are clearly top of the funnel campaigns and are best used for branding, getting traffic to your website and/or landing pages. For LinkedIn Sponsored Posts, you could just use one of your blog posts; an actual ad with an image, copy, and a link to your landing page; or a video ad.
LinkedIn Sponsored Posts are the staple of LinkedIn advertising. Chances are that this is the ad type that you’d want to start with.
LinkedIn Lead Gen forms
You can add LinkedIn Lead Generation forms to your LinkedIn Sponsored Posts or ads or you could also use LinkedIn Lead Generation forms with your Sponsored InMail.
Using LinkedIn Lead Generation forms improves your conversions by 2X or 3X compared to standard campaigns. Some companies are known to have increased lead generation from their ads by over 400% and up to 20% conversion rate, according to LinkedIn’s Official Marketing Solutions blog.
As with any form used for marketing, “less is more”. Keep your ads direct, and don’t add too many fields or questions for your prospects to ask.
Sponsored InMail
LinkedIn’s InMail — by itself — allows you to craft highly-customized emails that you could use to reach out to absolutely anyone within the LinkedIn network. You’d use this type of LinkedIn Ad to reach those who are out of your 1st degree or 2nd degree network of contacts.
You could also use InMail for hiring, for sales prospecting, for publishing outreach, and more.
Sponsored InMail is like direct mail on steroids. With Sponsored InMail, you can craft personalized messages to drive up conversions.
You can reach audiences that matter the most to your business on both desktop and mobile, and you can also A/B test your subject lines, offers, or InMail copy to see what clicks with your audience.
Humble LinkedIn Text Ads
Just like text ads on Google AdWords and on other third-party publishing networks, LinkedIn also gives you access to a regular inventory of ads. As you’d expect, you can create simple text ads that will show on the sidebar and other areas of your LinkedIn user interface after you login.
Charged by the click or for impressions, these text ads are often the most simple to create.
But to benefit from text ads, as usual, you’ll still need complete sales funnels set up.
While LinkedIn Ads might be slightly expensive, they’re still uncrowded; With LinkedIn Ads, you are likely to not only target very high-intent audiences but also open another channel of opportunities for marketing your business.
Would you be interested in discussing how LinkedIn Ads might be a great addition to your PPC strategy and quality lead generation? Get on a scheduled call with us.