If you read my previous blog, "Why you need a LinkedIn Company Page" or just want to learn more about LinkedIn Advertising, then this is for you.
Let's review the different types of ads you can run on LinkedIn, how to target your prospects and how to evaluate your campaigns.
Sponsored Content
You are probably most familiar with sponsored content ads, these ads show up in a prospect's LinkedIn newsfeed.
Sponsored content is great for lead generation campaigns as LinkedIn forms tend to perform better than sending people to your website to fill out a form. They auto-populate, thus making it faster for prospects to submit their information. The highest converting forms have under five fields, so keep it short and capture only what is essential.
Quick tips
- Use shorter copy for brand awareness campaigns and longer copy for middle or bottom-of-funnel campaigns
- Ensure clear branding and a clear Call-to-Action (CTA) to increase performance
Video ads are a great way to engage your audience and capture their attention
Video ads work great for retargeting because you can actually segment your audience by how much of the video they watched. This usually translates to how much interest they have in what you are offering. Ttell your audience what you want them to hear within the first 10 seconds and keep your videos under 30 seconds long for brand awareness.
Quick tips
- Retarget people that watched more than 75% of the video with a lead form ad
- Remember to add subtitles to your videos as most people watch videos on mute
Message Ads
Message ads show up in the form of direct messages in a prospect's inbox or LinkedIn InMail.
Message ads work best when you have a free offer like a downloadable piece of content or a free event. It is not recommended for scheduling meetings because it takes several touches to warm people up to take that step, so don't go straight to trying to set up meetings. According to LinkedIn, the highest open rates are on Tuesdays.
Quick tips
- Keep body text under 500 words and use bullets to highlight the main points
- Tell people exactly what you want them to do by including a CTA as a close-out to your message. For example "Download" or "Exclusive Access", "Complementary" or "Free"
Now that you have a better idea of the types of Ads, let's look at the Campaign Objectives
LinkedIn offers different campaign objectives for each stage of your funnel.
Awareness (top of the funnel) - I want more people to learn about my business
- Ads should be optimised for impressions
- The goal is to generate brand awareness
- Ads should tell people about your product, services, company, or LinkedIn Event
Consideration (middle of the funnel) - I want more people to visit my website, engage with my posts, or watch my videos
- The goal is to engage with your target audience
- Ads should encourage your audience to visit your website or watch a video to learn more
Conversion (bottom of the funnel) - I want more quality leads or more purchases, registrations or downloads
- Optimised for lead generation
- The goal is to get people to fill out a contact form or take a desired action on your website like download a whitepaper or register for a webinar
- Ads should include a Call-to-Action (CTA) that tells prospects what you want them to do
Targeting the right audience takes careful planning, here is how to do it
Try not to use more than two or three targeting facets, you don't want too narrow of an audience otherwise it will be harder for Linkedin's algorithm to optimise your campaign.
- Aim for 50,000+ for sponsored content and text ads
- Aim for 15,000+ for message ads
If you are having trouble reaching those target audience sizes consider using audience expansion or lookalike audiences to reach similar people
Top-of-funnel targeting options from LinkedIn
- Company name (if there are more than 300 employees in the audience)
- Company industry
- Company size
- Job title
- Job function
- Job seniority
- Member schools
- Fields of study
- Degree
- Member skills
- Member groups
- Member gender
- Member age
- Location
- Company connections
- Company followers
- Company growth rate
- Company category
- Years of experience
- Member traits
- Member interest
As an example, my background is in Financial and Business Management Software solutions, so my typical audience to reach would be:
- Annual company revenue between $5M and $200M
- Director job titles and above
- CFO
- Controller
- CEO
- CTO
- President/Founder/Owner
Middle and bottom-of-funnel targeting options from LinkedIn
Middle and bottom-of-funnel campaigns require a warmer audience and this is where matched audiences come in handy. Matched audiences allow you to upload a list of contacts or retarget people who previously took an action on your website or ad. Just remember that matched audience campaigns take up to 48 hours to start serving ads
Retargeting is another option and focuses on people who visited a page on your website, engaged with an ad, viewed a video ad, opened or submitted a lead gen form or engaged with your company page.
How to measure your ad performance
Here are some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the performance of your LinkedIn campaigns.
- If the Cost-per-Click (CPC) is low and the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is high, then the targeting is on point and the message/creative is resonating with the audience.
- If the CPC is high and the CTR is low, then the message and/or creative needs to be tweaked.
- If the CPC is low, the CTR is high, and the Cost-per-Conversion (CPI) is high, then there is a disconnect between the ad and the landing page. Make sure the landing page is optimised for mobile and try changing the landing page copy first. If people don't start taking the desired action on the page then that is a good indication that the offer is not resonating with the audience and needs to be changed.
- If you’re receiving high engagement but low conversions, check your landing page, try a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form ad, and try targeting a lookalike audience based on people that converted.
- If the CPC is low, the CTR is high, and the Cost-per-Lead) CPL is low, then the campaign is optimised!
Evaluate your campaigns at least once a week, but wait a week to make changes. That way the ads have time to optimise.
What is Tracking and how does it help?
Installing the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website will allow you to view the demographics of visitors and retarget them. Keep in mind that you must have at least 300 unique visitors to view data.
You can also Set up conversion tracking to see when people take the desired action on your ad, for example when they fill out a form or download a whitepaper.
How to set up conversion tracking.
You will now have a better understanding of how to use different types of ads to achieve specific goals, use campaign objectives, target your key decision makers and evaluate your campaigns to get the best results.
