Introduction
LinkedIn, also known as the professional facebook, is a social network site that caters to professional networking, and helps in career development. People present their business profiles on LinkedIn, and build connections as well as list down their skills on their profile. Businesses too, have pages on LinkedIn, and are able to list down their company information as well as employees on the site. It may not seem like a very big thing, but LinkedIn advertising can help your business to grow, and give you an edge on social media marketing. iClick Media is experienced in handling LinkedIn ads for our customers.
Types of Ads
There are a few types of ads, which we will go into detail about:
- Sponsored Content
- Direct Sponsored Content
- Sponsored InMail
- Text Ads
- Dynamic Ads
- LinkedIn Audience Network
- LinkedIn Advertising Partner Solutions
Sponsored Content
Sponsored Advertisements are posts on LinkedIn that are promoted and boosted. They come in 3 different types: single image, video and carousel. Campaigns for sponsored content can be run as native newsfeed advertisements, as well as Lead Generation Forms. LinkedIn has reported a growth of 50% in feed engagement from 2017 – 2018, so posts have a higher chance to achieve better engagement.
Direct Sponsored Content
Direct Sponsored Content looks similar to Sponsored Content, just like a regular LinkedIn post. However, they are not published on the LinkedIn page feed and you can use this feature to tailor ads to your target audience. There is also an option to test out different kinds of ads without it having to affect your page.
Sponsored InMail
InMails are LinkedIn members’ message inboxes. What this Ad type does is to send individual messages to your target members in their inboxes. According to LinkedIn, sponsored inMails are more effective than regular emails. Just like how normal emails work, members can also opt out and unsubscribe from InMails that they do not wish to receive.
Text Ads
On the desktop version of LinkedIn, text ads are the kind of ads that appear at the right rail and top banner of the screen. Ads like this typically have a headline, short description and a small icon. The cost for these ads are measured by pay per click, or cost per impression.
Dynamic Ads
Similarly to Text Ads, Dynamic Ads also appear in the right rail of the website and have a similar look, except that this ad can address viewers by their name and target them with their profile photo. The different formats that this type of ad offers are: follower, job, content and company spotlight ads.
LinkedIn Audience Network
This particular type of ad is a feature that uses thousands of partner apps and websites for advertisers to target their main audience. When enabled while making a campaign, this can allow your ads to not only be seen within LinkedIn, but also in other websites online.
LinkedIn Advertising Partner Solutions
The LinkedIn Marketing Partner program consists of businesses that have been selected to provide tools and services that can aid the user to reach their marketing goals.
What to take note of
Target Audience
It is important to know your focus and goals for your campaigns and marketing desires. Marketing on LinkedIn has to be intentional, meaning that you know which specific group you would like to target before carrying out your campaign. It is not recommended to set a target group that is too big, or too small, or you might miss the target. LinkedIn’s marketing and ad capabilities allow users to market to their target audience based on location, company, industry, age, gender, education, job experience, current job, interests as well as many others.
Understanding LinkedIn member demographics to look for a common ground with your customers is a way to start the ball rolling, before looking into other areas to focus on, such as location. Separating campaigns by region can help you to target more effectively based on the time zones.
Content
Content should be short, and convey the main point of the message effectively. Too long, and your viewers might just scroll past it.
Statistics and Quotes
People like to see stats and quotes, but they must be delivered in an easily digestible format. It would be good to include a highlight or something that is interesting, followed by your call to action for an offer. LinkedIn has found that posts with statistics perform better than those without one, and posts with quotes perform even better than the ones with statistics. Many of the content that are well performing on LinkedIn are people centric, hence you should aim to do the same.
Call to Actions
When writing a post, it can be easy to just offer a great incentive before including a Call-to-action. However, there are specifics when talking about how to deliver a great call-to-action to compel the audience to react the way you want. Such is the phrasing of your Call-to-action. Some of the top sponsored InMail keywords are:
- Try
- Register
- Reserve
- Join
- Confirm
- Download
You can try these keywords and see which work best for you.
Personalisation
When marketing to customers, it can sometimes be difficult as it can be hard to personalise the ads to target different groups of people. However, research and testing done by LinkedIn has shown that personalisation indeed does help posts to perform better as you are directly addressing them. It can seem difficult to do so, but with some tweaks and improvement, you would be able to connect better with your target audience.
People Centric
When doing ad marketing, one must always remember that we are marketing to individuals, regardless of B2B or B2C. The person that you are eventually going to strike a deal with is an individual, so it is important to always be people centric and humanise your marketing. LinkedIn is a platform where people make connections, hence, content that centers other people and shows images of people perform better. LinkedIn stated that posts with larger visuals have a higher click-through rate. Approximately 65% of engagement on LinkedIn is on mobile, so choose images with people that are up close and not at a far distance where they do not seem to be obvious.
Test, Test, Test!
Lastly, don’t forget that things won’t always go right on the first try. LinkedIn has many different ways and opportunities for businesses and individuals to market themselves and target their audiences, but what works for each person is unique to the individual. Something that worked for another person may not work 100% for you too, it might need some tweaks and adjustments, or even just a unique way of marketing that works just for you. Always be open to testing and change, that even if one campaign does not seem to be very successful, you can always try to look for the issue and tweak it to see if it can improve it. You will never know what will happen in the end!
LinkedIn Advertising is just one of the ways in the space of social media marketing that can help you to boost your business and improve lead generation. It isn’t easy, but with these steps, and the right tools and advice, you can definitely be able to benefit from it. iClick Media is your trusted agency to entrust your online marketing to. With abundant experience in aiding customers in social media marketing and other areas in the digital space, we are definitely able to help you with what you need.
