If you’re thinking about doing LinkedIn advertising, you will already know that you want to target a certain demographic of professional people. While you may be sure about who you want to reach, how do you know if it will pay off?
Investing in digital advertising on any social platform can be a bit of a gamble. Especially if you’re not sure where to start.
The benefit of LinkedIn advertising is that your audience is already tailored. Unlike Facebook, where you have to sift through the masses to find who you want to target. However, it is important that you do your research to limit the risk of effort, time and money being wasted.
The LinkedIn audience
While LinkedIn is the number one place for targeting professionals, you can take your targeting even further. With LinkedIn advertising, there is still every possibility that you can restrict your ads and miss the chance to make valuable connections. Usually this is done when advertisers try to appeal to too broad or too little an audience.
Luckily, LinkedIn offers elite targeting technology. When setting up an ad, you can edit your search based on location, industry, age, gender, education, experience, job title plus more. Your main challenge is working out exactly who you want to reach and how you plan to reach them.
In this blog, we have outlined how you can see return on your investment from LinkedIn advertising. First, here’s a closer look into the different types of LinkedIn ads you can explore and how to achieve maximum return on investment from each one.
Types of LinkedIn advertising
LinkedIn is a business social networking site. Despite this being a common attribute between users – the LinkedIn audience is vast.
LinkedIn offers many ad options you can use to target your ideal demographic. These multiple ad types cater to a variety of digital advertising needs:
Sponsored content ads
Sponsored content ads are basically promoted to LinkedIn posts. They can appear in the form of an image, video or carousel. They also fit seamlessly into the newsfeed on both mobile and desktop devices as they look like organic posts.
This is an ideal option for reaching highly-engaged professionals, who are scrolling with the intent to consume content. Usually, sponsored content ads are chosen to showcase expertise and get specially made content in front of a wider audience.
How do I succeed?
If you want your sponsored content ad to be noticed, we recommend using direct language to call to your target audience. This will catch the reader’s eye and raise your chances of getting click-through returns.
Also, for a higher engagement rate and easy formatting across both mobile and desktop, we advise using less than 100 characters in your description. This helps avoid clunkiness across all modes of the site which can be off-putting for viewers.
Message ads
This ad type is similar to email marketing, yet more effective. They are messages that appear in users’ LinkedIn inboxes. This way, you can send a message directly to your target audience, creating a more conversational, personalised experience.
They also drive stronger engagement, with more than one in two prospects opening a message ad. This instant call-to-action also means you can easily track conversions and determine the success of your ad.
How do I succeed?
To achieve maximum results from this ad, messages should be under 1,000 characters including the link. In this case, less is more when it comes to sparking intrigue and encouraging higher click-through rates.
We recommend that you personalise your greeting as much as possible by using names and job titles. Also, try to use simple, direct and proactive words. These include ‘join’, ‘try’ and ‘register’ as they drive more impact.
Text ads
Text ads are small ad units that appear at the top and the right of the LinkedIn newsfeed. They include a short headline, blurb and a small image. However, they are only available to desktop users.
They are a simple and useful way to reach engaged, targeted audiences in the LinkedIn newsfeed. You can also pay per click or per impression, so you can monitor your ad’s success and ultimately, the return on what you invest.
How do I succeed?
We advise that because you do not have a lot of characters to work with, be upfront and concise with your message. Use the headline as an opportunity to personalise your message and directly address your audience. For example: ‘Are you an engineer?’ or ‘Calling all engineers’.
Dynamic ads
LinkedIn’s Dynamic ads are different because you can create a personalised experience using a professional’s own LinkedIn profile data. Their name, photo and job title can be used to tailor your ad specifically for them. This makes them feel like they are being related to and that their values align with yours.
Whether you want users to follow you, read your articles, apply for jobs or download your content – Dynamic ads can be customised to suit your marketing objectives. They are there mainly to build brand awareness, drive traffic and convert prospects.
How do I succeed?
Make the most of Dynamic’s unique features and enable the profile picture of the viewer to appear in your ad. This personalisation sparks immediate interest in the ad, making the viewer far more likely to click on it.
We also suggest that you keep the text short and only use the primary headline, leaving the secondary one if possible. This way, the more succinct your message is – the more the viewer will want to find out more on top of the added Dynamic profile picture feature.
Advertising on LinkedIn offers many opportunities to reach professional people and obtain powerful results.
We hope this introduction into each ad option, along with our top tips, will give you confidence in investing your company’s budget into LinkedIn ads. This innovative social media platform can see a significant return on investment, especially if you follow this guide.
If you have more questions about using LinkedIn, check out our blog about the benefits of having a LinkedIn account.
If you want to know more about digital advertising or are thinking about boosting your social media marketing strategy, simply say hello using the links below.
