With all the buzz surrounding LinkedIn lately, now is the right time for business-to-business companies to invest resources in this social network. LinkedIn ads are an excellent, cost-effective option for instantly reaching new prospects. By following these four steps, you too can leverage this professional social network to grow your customer base and build relationships.
Setting a Budget
Before your organization gets too deep into planning your LinkedIn ads, it’s important to set a realistic budget. Use this budget to guide the frequency and type of online advertising you choose.
Just like pay-per-click ads on Google, your company can target a demographic and location, and then set a budget for individual clicks and total expenditure.
Or, you can pay according to impressions (how many people are exposed to your ad).
Your ad campaign may be stopped at any time, because LinkedIn does not require long-term contracts or commitments.
Defining Your Target Audience
LinkedIn enables your business to target customers accurately, because the site’s targeting is informed by user behavior, including the Groups they join and the content they share.
Targeting options include:
- Job title and function
- Industry and company size
- Seniority
Choosing a Type of LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn ads are now a go-to business resource, because they have the ability to impact every stage of the sales funnel.
LinkedIn Display Ads
Since LinkedIn only shows two visual ads at a time on each page, Display Ads allow your business to reach potential customers in an uncluttered environment.
Sponsored Updates
Sponsored updates are a great way to build credibility for your brand by educating your target audience, because they are native to the LinkedIn platform. These paid updates aim to capture the attention of a captive audience who are already reading their news feed. It’s good for brand awareness as well as conversions. Sponsored updates include performance analytics to help you analyze and improve your campaigns.
Sponsored InMail
Sponsored InMail is a way for your business to reach high-value, targeted prospects with messages that appeal to its interests. InMail, which may be segmented according to geography, job role, company size and other criteria, is designed to be highly-visible to the members you are targeting.
- Works on desktop or mobile.
- Send personalized messages directly to followers.
Text Ads
Text Ads, which can include a headline, description and a 50 x 50 image, may be placed on prominent LinkedIn pages. Budgets may be set as low as $10 per day on a cost-per-click or impression basis.
LinkedIn Lead Accelerator
B2B marketers are increasingly choosing to advertise on LinkedIn, because it drives more traffic to their blogs and websites than Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is considered the most effective social network for B2B lead generation (66 percent of all social media B2B leads originate on the professional network).
The LinkedIn Lead Accelerator boosts your lead conversions, pipeline contribution and customer acquisition by seamlessly combining display and social advertising as well as content marketing. It enables your business to engage and nurture potential customers with relevant ads and content.
Monitoring Your Progress
With full-funnel analytics and reporting available, LinkedIn Ads makes it easy for your business to monitor their social media marketing campaigns. This arsenal of data is perfect for helping you build the success of your last campaign into something bigger and better than ever before.
