When it comes to the world of B2B, LinkedIn has become the web’s go-to social platform. Originally created to connect professionals with new career opportunities, LinkedIn is now used by businesses to increase their visibility, improve their brand image, promote their services, and generate engagement.
LinkedIn has approximately 850 million members1 (including 211 million in North America alone) and nearly half of them are monthly active users. 58 million businesses have a LinkedIn page3.
Today, LinkedIn generates an astounding 80% of B2B leads2 (which is more than Facebook and Twitter), with a majority coming from LinkedIn Ads.
These figures should convince you to give it a go! Read on to find out why advertising on LinkedIn is a must when it comes to B2B.
What is LinkedIn Ads?
Put simply, LinkedIn Ads is LinkedIn’s marketing tool that allows users to target professionals with paid advertisements. You can use it to promote your company, products, and services. With LinkedIn Ads, you can tailor your message to the audience you want, when you want, and exactly how you want.
5 good reasons to advertise on LinkedIn Ads
1. Target your ads to reach a B2B audience
Compared with other digital ad tools, LinkedIn Ads can collect data about your target’s professional profile. This is a key to a successful B2B campaign.
In fact, you can play around with 200 targeting options to fine-tune your campaign, even in niche markets. For instance, you can define the following:
- Location: country, region…
- Organization: name of the company, sector of activity, number of employees, sales revenue…
- Professional experience: job title, duties, rank, seniority…
- Education: schools, majors, degrees…
- Demographics: age, gender…
- Interests in line with pages and content followed
- And much more
Example of targeting options on LinkedIn Ads (source)
LinkedIn Ads’ Matched Audiences (similar to Facebook Ads’ Lookalike tool) allows you to customize your campaigns. It can be used to create a target audience based on criteria associated with users who have already interacted with your page or using an imported contact list.
2. Test a wide range of engaging ads
With LinkedIn Ads, you can choose from among different kinds of ads:- Sponsored Content: This type of native advertising will appear in a user’s feed alongside organic posts (which are not ads). You can sponsor all kinds of content such as a carousel, a banner with an embedded link, images, text, videos, job postings, events, etc.
- Sponsored messaging: This option allows you to send messages directly to your targets via LinkedIn’s messaging system. The open rate and engagement rate of a sponsored message is twice as high when compared to traditional emails3. However, there is a limited number of sponsored messages you can send to protect users from spam.
- Text ads: This is text that is displayed above the fold or on the right side of the user’s newsfeed.
- Dynamic ads: Dynamic ads are personalized to the user and can feature their first name, photo, company, job title…
Example of a dynamic ad (source)
If you’re unsure which type of ad would suit your campaign, you can launch an A/B testing strategy to try different versions of your ad. The system will automatically pick the one with the best results.
3. Generate qualified leads
LinkedIn’s network can help you increase your visibility, refine your brand image, and boost your employer brand. But with LinkedIn Ads, you can do so much more. It is a powerful tool with hundreds of features that will generate leads and attract prospects to your website or contact form.
For instance, you can embed a link that leads your landing page (contact form, link to download a document, etc.). It can be embedded within the copy of your ad or on an image.
Moreover, LinkedIn has designed a new tool to help you collect new prospects: Lead Gen Forms. How do they work? A user clicks on the link to the form – it can be embedded in content or a sponsored message – which then automatically fills with their LinkedIn profile information. In other words, Lead Gen Forms will automatically provide you with more information about your leads.
Example of a Lead Gen Form (source)
4. Make your small budget go far
Advertising on LinkedIn Ads is less expensive than most other B2B options such as specialized publications or ads on websites targeting professionals. For the best results you’ll need a minimum budget of $10 per day.
Depending on the type of ad you have in mind and your marketing objectives, LinkedIn’s auction system will determine what you will pay. Here is the average cost associated with each type of action:
- Cost-per-click (CPC): $2
This is the amount you pay when a user clicks on your ad. - Cost-per-thousand/cost-per-mille (CPM): $7.19
This is the amount you pay to obtain one thousand views of your ad. - Cost-per-send (CPS): $0.80
This is the amount you pay for every sponsored message you send. - Cost-per-open (CPO): $1.70
This is the amount you pay for every sponsored message that is opened.
Keep in mind that these figures are approximate. They will vary depending on your campaign settings, your audience, your competition, etc. You can also increase or decrease your budget throughout your campaign.
Not sure where to begin? We can help you determine the budget you need. Get in touch with us for more information.
5. Easily measure the ROI of campaigns
Just like Facebook Ads and Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads provides you with a plethora of stats so you can easily assess the return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns. The platform’s campaign manager gives you access to dashboards where you can view plenty of information about the performance of your ads.
Other than the performance indicators (KPIs) mentioned above, you might also want to keep an eye on the clickthrough rate (CTR) of a link, the conversion rate (CVR), and the cost-per-prospect (CPL) associated with your Lead Gen forms. Find out which KPIs to monitor on LinkedIn. (French)
Keeping track of these KPIs will give you a good idea of what is and what is not working so you can refine your strategy and optimize your ads to get the best results possible.
An agency specialized in advertising on LinkedIn Ads
If your business relies on a B2B strategy, you know how important it is to advertise on LinkedIn, no matter your objectives or size of your budget. Before you get started, you’ll need the right marketing vision and the know-how to get the most out of the platform. It might be a good idea to partner with an agency that specializes in digital advertising. As Solocom, we know everything there is to know about LinkedIn Ads.
Together, we’ll define your objectives to build a bespoke campaign that aligns with your strategy and marketing plan: targeting criteria, ad formats, type of auctions and budget, messages, visuals… Rest assured that our digital marketing specialists will closely monitor your campaign so they can optimize your ads to deliver the best results.
Need help for your digital campaigns? Contact us today.
