Which Type of LinkedIn Ad Campaign is Best for Your Target Audience?
LinkedIn is a powerful and under-utilized social media.
It is a gateway to company executives, business-driven people and many other influential users.
80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. Why?
Because LinkedIn’s Ad targeting strategy is so comprehensive and has so much data from users to take from.
LinkedIn is set apart from other social medias because it is made up of:
- 500 million active users
- 45 million decision-makers
- 73 million senior level executives
Now that you know the impact LinkedIn Ad campaigns, it’s time to find the best targeting options for your needs!
1. Sponsored Content
Sponsored content on LinkedIn is native ads that you come across when scrolling through your feed.
The goal of sponsored content is to engage viewers quickly while simultaneously delivering the objectives of the ad.
Sponsored content builds relationships through the use of relevant content based on the LinkedIn algorithm. This has been proven to be an effective method of creating leads and engagement. In fact, 25% more consumers look at sponsored content than display ad units.
LinkedIn is great for sponsored content because of their audience targeting software. You can build you perfect audience using your own profile’s audience. You can even move beyond that target audience using LinkedIn’s Audience Network.
The best part is that you can follow the campaign performance within the LinkedIn Insight Tag.
2. Sponsored InMail
Sponsored InMail is used for your core audience.
Using LinkedIn’s messaging system, you can send custom messages to the active members. Think of this type of advertising to be similar to a newsletter.
55% of organizations give their personalization efforts a grade of C or lower, this is the perfect method to change that.
One of the best features within sponsored InMail is the call to actions. These CTAs are optimized for conversions and leads. On both mobile and desktop, the CTA is always visible while the user scrolls, giving them every opportunity to go further down the funnel.
Not only is it viewer friendly, but it’s user friendly too! Anyone can have a perfectly formatted layout without worrying about its responsiveness. InMail automatically formats the content you provide it to look good on any screen.
3. LinkedIn Text Ads
This is a perfect choice for those looking to expand their reach within LinkedIn without breaking the bank.
Text Ads are simple ads on the right side or top of your LinkedIn desktop feed. It is what it says it is: text and a small icon to accompany it.
Create a text ad using bids based on pay per click or cost per impression. You control how much you want to spend.
How can you make the most of text ads?
You will always get the best results if you have accurate audience targeting. When creating your ads, in order to tailor the ads to the desired audience consider:
- Using creative visuals
- Using CTAs that link to a landing page that also matches the ad
- Continuously test and make adjustments, 3-4 ads in each campaign is best practice
When it comes to running a LinkedIn ads campaigns, there’s no set way. It’s all dependent on who you’re targeting and what you want out of the ads. LinkedIn allows you to take control of everything, even your own profile, and get the traffic you want.
Why You Can’t Just Set and Forget Your Ad Campaigns
The most important thing for any business is relevancy.
Countless businesses question why they don’t see their products on Google.
How do you go about doing that? By creating ads that you check and test regularly and making adjustments to improve performance.
Think Like a Customer
One thing to change about your ads is to tailor them to what people would search for.
Structure your ads how a user would search for the product. Titles, descriptions, images, and other attributes play an important role because it is what Google sees to recommend.
For example, say you’re selling Beatles t-shirts from a tour. You title the product “Band T-shirt.” Instead of this, you should include all relevant information for the user. This could be:
- Brand
- Colour
- Size
- Descriptive nouns or adjectives
A new title could be: “Beatles 1965 US Tour T-shirt Black.” This system not only will increase sales, but customers are less likely to bounce, and they feel like they are not misled.
Don’t Forget About Your Ads
With any industry, especially online, your competitors are innovating and creating new products to compete with the rest of the market.
Leaving your ad campaign without constantly optimizing it, hinders your relevancy. Letting the ad just run its course may lead to negative feedback or even errors that you could have prevented by monitoring the ad.
Split Testing
If your ads aren’t doing as well as you wanted, why not change them? Once you set an ad live, you have countless opportunities to see what might generate more leads for you.
One of those tests that may be beneficial is split testing.
Split testing is the idea that you take the same ad and make minor changes to the title, description, layout or the creative and monitor which generates more traction and sales. It’s then important to understand why those changes benefited your campaign.
One way to analyze this is through A/B testing. In order for this to be effective, it need to randomly subdivide your products into test and control groups. This then is presented to the customers and feedback is recorded.
A/B testing specifically for titles can end up with products performing 60% in cost per click and ad spend metrics.
The Benefits of Product Groups
When it comes to identifying which products to invest advertising budget, grouping products can be extremely helpful.
It’s important to not “put all your eggs in one basket.” Let’s say you have an ad group that consists of women’s t-shirts and it received 1000 clicks in the past month. You want to invest in ads to amplify these results, but this group is far too broad.
Some shirts will have done better than others. When you identify that the V-neck style actually had half the clicks, you can invest in that group and find better results.
Most strategies that include product groupings have a catch-all for the remaining loose ends. Check this group regularly for traction. If a particular product is gaining impressions, then it may be beneficial to add the product to another group or create its own.
This way you can advertise only what will result in meaningful impressions and clicks.
Utilizing the Custom Labels for Better Results
Custom labels should not be static because of the flexible nature of them.
They are a powerful tool for managing shopping. For testing purposes, you can use label segments such as:
- Clearance items
- Price buckets
- Margin buckets
These dynamic performance labels are used to pull data from your A/B tests.
Remove the Negative Keywords
Keywords are used to let Google know that you have products that people are searching for. They are useful for enhancing both titles and relevancy.
When we say negative, we don’t mean actually negative sounding keywords. Negative keywords bring unwanted traffic, or traffic that is not desirable for the products you sell.
Google’s goal is to appropriately match information to what people are searching for. Strong keywords help gain that traction but does not prevent all the unwanted traffic.
If a keyword that alludes to something that you think is irrelevant, then remove it.
When you research keywords, keep an eye out for poor conversion words or irrelevant terms and add them as negatives. It’s important to then follow-up on those work blocks to ensure the the traffic is filtered effectively.
There’s Always Room for Improvement
Today, there are countless opportunities to segment performance and bids. Even if your performance is doing great, you can almost always make small modifications and optimizations in order to improve in another area.
Since everyone else is also trying to remain relevant in the industry, you must always be on the ball. Monitoring and testing your ad campaigns is key to this.
Without proper monitoring, you’ll never know how your ads are doing and where you can improve.