Leads created by Linkedin have a purchase rate 12 times higher than those created by Facebook and Google: the reason is the possibility of directly reaching B2B decision makers in companies with very little margin for error .
This article is intended to be a mini guide to help you understand how Linkedin Ads works and begin to understand if it could be right for you (if you have no idea how this social network works in general, first read this article on how Linkedin works ).
Summary
Comparison with other channels:
Facebook/Instagram : People rarely fill out the "work" section and in any case the use of these social networks is recreational; often there is no due attention for technical or work-related topics.
Google Ads : Leads created with SEA cannot be screened for "seniority". This means that when someone searches for your products or services they may not be the final decision maker, reducing the efficiency of the channel.
Email marketing/phone calls : Decision makers are often filtered by the company secretary and rarely have time to answer the phone. It is therefore rare to be able to create a direct connection.
On the contrary, Linkedin allows you to reach the right person directly, in a channel that they deem reliable and in which they spend (little) quality time.
Linkedin Ads can help you speed up lead generation with campaigns that support or replace the manual work of nurturing relationships (for example, when there is no time to do it).
Advantages and disadvantages
Compared to other advertising platforms it has both advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
Very precise targeting based on reliable profiles and company functions
Higher conversion rate to purchase of leads created
Little use of advertising by your competitors (if you are an SME)
Disadvantages
High cost of clicks (up to €8-15 per click in Anglo-Saxon markets)
Minimum daily budget per campaign higher than other platforms (€10, but keep in mind that Tik Tok Ads for example asks you for a minimum of €20 per day...)
It requires a completely different strategic setting of campaigns and content compared to Google and Facebook, for example (I'm not going to go into the different characteristics of those who are on Facebook or Google, if you want more information click here )
Account Structure and Available Goals
The ad account contains a default campaign group that you must keep as is and cannot delete or rename. The campaign group is just a container, it does not have any important settings inside it.
Aside from this strange detail, you can create campaign groups to organize your account and collect campaigns related to different products/services or different stages of the funnel (although on Linkedin it is wrong to think that you can create efficient retargeting funnels like on Facebook Ads, for example). Personally, I am inclined to the first option.
As with other platforms, it is recommended to always use the same group of campaigns by changing the ad sets to progressively increase the relevance score of the campaigns and thus reduce advertising costs.
Complex funnels on Linkedin Ads are expensive and inefficient
Within a single campaign, you can choose between the main objectives (Facebook Ads style) asking the algorithm to optimize the campaigns for an action you want your advertising audience to do:
Linkedin Ads gurus recommend always starting from "Website Visits"
Awareness Goal
This category of objectives contains only one type of sub-objective called “brand awareness”. Campaigns created with this objective are based on maximizing impressions and designed for a TOFU phase.
Objective Consideration
Website visits : Choose this objective to target people who are likely to click through to your website.
Engagement : choose this objective to get people to interact with your posts by clicking on them, with social actions (likes, comments, shares) or by increasing your company's followers.
Video views : bid based on cost per view. Videos can still be used as ad format without using this lens, but cpv is only available with this lens.
Lead Generation Objective
Lead Generation : objective that is based on the use of pre-filled forms with the profile data of the person receiving the ad. The form recommended by Linkedin to do Lead Generation on the platform.
Website conversion : optimized to get conversions on your website (after setting them up in the platform), it must therefore use Linkedin conversion tracking
Types and characteristics of audiences
The first aspect to take into consideration in Linkedin Ads is that unlike other platforms that use people's interests, on Linkedin you can target them based on their job position.
The only mandatory parameter in your targeting settings is location: you can be very specific (e.g. a city or metropolitan area), or target a region, country, or more.
The location refers to the one declared in the profile or to the IP address: the location can also be recent + permanent or only permanent.
Audiences are divided into: saved audiences , templates and matched audiences .
Audience size
Too small an audience is counterproductive for campaigns: Linkedin recommends not using more than 2 or 3 combined filters.
For Sponsored Content and Tex Ads, the platform recommends an audience of more than 50,000 contacts, while for sponsored messages it recommends an audience of more than 15,000 contacts.
The Campaign Manager displays an estimate of the audience size with the selected parameters on the right.
To do A/B testing you need to duplicate the campaign and change a few parameters in the audience to understand how the performance changes.
Experts recommend working on audiences that contain between 20,000 and 80,000 people.
Fields to customize saved audiences
You can build an audience using the following company parameters : product category, first-degree connections who work at a company (500+ employees), company followers (LinkedIn page), growth rate, company name, company size.
As for the school path you can choose these 3 parameters:
As for work experience, you can choose the following parameters. Member skills are those of the relevant section of the profile, mentioned in the profile texts or deduced from Linkedin.
Groups , in addition to being a privileged place for thematic discussion, can also be used to target members. If someone is registered in a group, it is very likely that the topic interests them a lot.
As you can see from the image below, you can also choose to sub-target by the interests of members of a group, or by the "traits" of the members:
Public templates
These are pre-set audiences of the platform to identify figures that are commonly the target of advertising campaigns. You can find the expanded list by clicking on it in Linkedin Ads:
Matched Audiences
These audiences are generated with the data your company has . They are used to re-engage your website visitors with retargeting (website retargeting), cultivate prospects whose data you have ( contact targeting ), or create account-based campaigns (e.g. company lists).
It is best not to use audience expansion, as it will add unnecessary people to an otherwise precise audience. A similar argument can be made for lookalike audiences, especially if they are not very very specific (e.g. purchase event).
Retargeting
Retargeting can be done on the following categories of "audiences":
You can retarget visitors to any page on your website or specific pages or groups of pages. To do this, you must have the insight tag installed on your website.
You can target people who have clicked "attend" on one of your events
You can target people who have “ opened but not sent ” or “ opened and sent ” your lead generation form .
Video : Target people who have seen 25%, 50%, 75%, or 97% of your video ad. If the video is less than 30 seconds, the platform recommends choosing 50% or more; for longer videos, 25% or more.
Company Page : People who visited or clicked on your Linkedin page CTA in the last 30, 60, 90, 180, or 365 days.
Since many people use Linkedin 2-3 times a month, it is always a good idea to combine retargeting on Linkedin with retargeting on other platforms (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.), also because for example Linkedin cannot track IOS users.
Furthermore, matched audiences (which are used for retargeting) are slow and expensive to fill (minimum 300 users to activate an audience).
Advertising formats
The 4 categories of campaigns are « sponsored content », « sponsored messages », « text ads » and « dynamic ads ». The main difference between them is:
CPC/CPM/CPV and CTR of the format (or in the opening rate in the case of sponsored messages)
where they are published (sponsored content in the feed, messages in recipients' inboxes, text and dynamic ads on desktop to the right of the newsfeed ).
With the lead generation objective, the possibility of directly collecting the lead is added
Sponsored content and lead generation campaigns can use single images, carousels, video ads.
Text ad and dynamic ad campaigns allow you to use very little text and data taken from the recipient's profile, while messages (conversational and non-conversational) allow you to send a message with a link or a small bot (both with an optional and recommended banner).
Sponsored content
Recommended ad headline under 150 characters
Description under 70 characters
Large image, recommended 1200 x 627 px
Clear CTA linked to the target's interests (among those proposed)
Using image, or video or carousel
Sponsored Messaging
It's like email marketing, but in a protected environment without interference and directly to your interlocutor.
You have a single CTA in the sponsored message version
You can directly insert the lead generation form
In the conversational format, you can insert different follow-ups and conversational insights and send traffic to different landing pages (as well as having data on where people click)
* Sponsored messages have been discontinued in the European market starting December 2022 to comply with the European GDPR. The feature is still available in other markets.
Text Ads
Image 100 x 100 px
Title up to 25 characters
Description up to 75 characters
Destination URL
Include 3-4 ADV variations
Every 1-2 weeks pause the worst performing ADV to increase your relevance score and win more auctions.
Carousel
They are designed to create an interactive story (maximum 10 cards)
They can create brand awareness by telling about your company, clicks, offering different links for further information or leads by telling people why they need your services/products.
Start with 3-5 cards and then add more after an initial test.
If you tell a story, put the main content in the last card to increase the chance that the whole carousel will be seen.
To get visits use CPM, for leads use CPC, to get more clicks use automated bidding (source Linkedin, in reality advanced bidding strategies are a bit more complex).
Dynamic Ads
These are Ads that use photos and profile data of those who receive them and are divided into spotlight ads and follower ads.
Budget
I won't describe the advanced budgeting techniques because they are very expensive and aim to make you naturally spend all the budget to cover the selected audience (and if you are reading this article you probably need to start understanding how Linkedin Ads works rather than learning advanced techniques; if you want more info comment below in any case)
I am therefore reporting the official indications from Linkedin, to be taken with a pinch of salt, as they say.
General budget guidelines:
The minimum budget to start a campaign is €10 per day
Linkedin's recommended budget to start with is €100 per day for 2-4 weeks or €5000 for a month
Linkedin recommends investing 70% of your budget on bottom-of-the-funnel conversion campaigns and the remaining 30% on those that generate awareness or engagement and fuel them
To win the auctions, enter a bid value that is €1 or €2 higher than the recommended one: the system will only make you pay the minimum available.
Relevance score decreases advertising cost
Linkedin recommends using the highest possible budget at the beginning and then decreasing it after the testing phase.
Bidding
Ways to participate in Linkedin auctions:
Automated bidding : Automated bidding works by spending your entire daily budget as quickly as possible. It is only available with sponsored content and is recommended for maximum visibility.
Target cost : the cpc, cpm and cpv mentioned in the previous slides. It is used to have greater control over costs. They are available depending on the campaigns and can have a cost of 30% higher than what is defined in the daily average.
Maximum cost : define the maximum amount you are willing to spend
Enhanced CPC : For website visits, lead generation and website conversions campaigns, increases the set cpc when it thinks a conversion is likely. It is recommended for generating conversions and leads.
Again: Linkedin Ads gurus generally recommend using the minimum CPC available and when the campaign exceeds a CTR threshold, switching to CPM. But I've already told you too much about that ;-)
Conclusions
Well, if you appreciated the monstrous effort of summarizing Linkedin Ads in this post I ask you to share it to help those who could benefit from it.
If you have any questions you can comment below or in our Facebook group Marketing for Small and Medium Businesses .
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