Leveraging LinkedIn Advertising for Reaching Business Goals
Anyone familiar with social media platforms knows about the existence of LinkedIn. Touted as the social media for professionals, users mostly use the platform to connect with other professionals on work-related topics. This could be anything from sharing news, fulfilling recruitment needs and discovering industry news. However, with time, LinkedIn has started to integrate a host of other functions as well.
Just like other social media platforms, LinkedIn also offers an Ads service for businesses. It has the ability to reach specific business-related goals with online advertising for any brand. LinkedIn ads can be directly compared with Facebook when it comes to their functionality and style of targeting.
How do LinkedIn Ads increase a brand’s online presence?
Online brand building is one of the strongest strategies in marketing for companies to use. In this case, LinkedIn Ads can do a fine job of building a trusted and sustainable brand online among professional markets. For B2B companies, LinkedIn Ads can effectively build a strong online presence. Marketing spending will also be lower when visibility from LinkedIn is optimized correctly.
What advantages do LinkedIn Ads provide to an organization?
Compared to other social media platforms, LinkedIn Ads work differently. Whether it is to target professionals of a particular industry or to generate B2B leads, LinkedIn Ads can be a perfect tool for bolstering any marketing strategy.
- For reaching a more professional audience
The quality of the audience is the main differentiator between LinkedIn and other online advertising platforms. Numerous types of research conducted have pointed out that LinkedIn on average has higher levels of education, have higher incomes and is focused only on professional networking rather than casual socializing. This is ideal for businesses and organisations which cater to educated professionals, business owners and managers, as they can easily establish and foster professional relationships.
- Variable budgets
LinkedIn is a great option for companies which do not have a steady amount of money they can allocate towards ads. It allows companies to choose their own pricing by picking from CPC or CPM pricing. Another function is sponsored InMail, which allows markers to pay only when a message is delivered. This gives them more control over the bidding, the budget and the ad schedule. Expert marketing agencies launch LinkedIn ad campaigns and other paid search campaigns simultaneously.
- Better optimization
Optimising the benefits of specific advertising tool always help companies get better returns from their advertising campaigns. Like many other social platforms, LinkedIn has several features and ad types that a brand can leverage to increase exposure, clicks and conversions. LinkedIn offers some specific advertising tools such as lead gen forms, text and dynamic ads, sponsored messaging and sponsored content. All of these ad types mentioned above feature layouts such as event ads, carousel ads, video ads and single image ads.
- Better targeting
Normally, other online advertising platforms focus only on raising awareness and generating leads only after a user has clicked on an ad. However, LinkedIn takes this one step further. It allows marketers to directly message members of their target audience with their own sponsored messaging. Marketers can thus, gets immediate access to their leads’ inbox using conversation and message ad formats.
- Customising budget
At face value, LinkedIn can seem more expensive per click. However, LinkedIn ads can be cost-effective when configured properly. As a results-based advertising solution, LinkedIn Ads can be customized according to their ad budget, depending on desired conversions and campaign performance.
Special LinkedIn Ad Features
There are some special features on LinkedIn which is not available on most other social media platforms.
- Special Message Ads
Message Ads from LinkedIn are private messages that can be sent to a specific target group. This ad can be displayed on all platforms and placements. These message ads are personalized as the users receive them directly in their inbox. This increases interaction with the ad which can lead to a conversion or clicks.
- Dynamic Ads
Dynamic Ads are special personalized ads that can be seen only by a particular audience. They can be used to increase a business’ page followers and increase views for shared organic content. It functions similar to sponsored content posts, where marketers send traffic to a website or landing page to promote specific products or services. Dynamic ads consist of the following use cases:
- Spotlight ads can share content with the target audience.
- Expanding audiences with follower ads.
- Gaining leads by promoting downloadable content with content ads
- Getting more applicants for job listings with job ads.
- Text Ads
In LinkedIn, Text ads are shown on the side of the main feed and are applicable only to desktop users. Since they are small in size, the ads are slightly hidden from view for users compared to other ad formats. They should thus, be used in tandem with other ad formats to increase the potential reach of the ads.
- LinkedIn Elevate
LinkedIn Elevate is a LinkedIn exclusive marketing solution which can boost content marketing efforts by using the employees of the company creating the ads. This tool allows marketers to share content that matches the interests of employees. When the employees share the content, marketers can specifically track key metrics such as website traffic and leads.
- LinkedIn Ads Analytics
Similar to other ad platforms, LinkedIn has its own ad solutions analytics that marketers can use to improve their results and overall performance of ad campaigns. By utilizing collected data from ad campaigns, marketers can easily improve a brand’s performance. From analytics, marketers get all they need to form an opinion on customer behaviour, the basic building blocks for building a successful enterprise.
Conclusion
LinkedIn has undergone a transformation since it was first launched. What was once considered a site only for job seekers has now become a networking and information hub. LinkedIn ads are constantly being added to marketing strategies by many companies as it allows them to target decision-makers and key audience members in a variety of effective ways.