The powerhouse of professional advertising, LinkedIn might be just the answer to your business challenges. Here’s a detailed tour of everything you need to know about running an ad campaign on the platform.

Statistically, LinkedIn has proven to be an incredibly effective platform for professional networking. Compared to other social network marketing giants like Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is capable of generating over 270% more leads, an impressive feat.

The reason why the platform is so effective is that LinkedIn members are, more often than not, decision-making professionals with double the average buying power of Facebook users. Besides this, LinkedIn has specialised algorithms for maximising content reach.

With all of this combined, you get a powerful platform that can become your best source of conversions.

And in this article, you’ll learn all about LinkedIn advertising, its potential, and how to set up your campaign.

What Are LinkedIn Ads?

‘LinkedIn Ads’ is the name of a paid marketing tool that offers you various methods, such as sponsored posts, of gaining access to LinkedIn users.

This is one of the best digital advertising platforms available. It can help you generate brand awareness, drive more traffic, and increase your sales, both for B2C and B2B companies.

Does LinkedIn Advertising Work?

While LinkedIn advertising can be extremely effective, the platform might not be as friendly to every type of business as, for instance, Facebook. This has led some people to believe that LinkedIn ads simply don’t work.

But on the other hand, you might’ve heard similar complaints about Facebook ads, too.

The truth is that it’s more likely that these people didn’t set up their campaigns right than anything that has to do with the platform.

There’s no better way to prove that LinkedIn advertising works than looking at the audience. Here are some stats that showcase the power behind the platform:

  1. LinkedIn has over 750 million members spanning more than 200 countries. There are 11 million LinkedIn members in Australia alone, which represents about 85% of the total workforce.

  2. When it comes to audience trust, LinkedIn ranks first among the nine largest platforms. Over 70% of users agree that the website protects their data privacy to some extent.

  3. In terms of audience quality and buying power, LinkedIn members surpass those on other platforms. Besides the double buying power mentioned earlier, four out of five LinkedIn members directly affect business decisions.

  4. As a testimony to LinkedIn’s growing popularity and the ability to connect people, conversations on the platform have increased by 43% in Q3 FY21.

  5. Those who come across brand and acquisition messages on the platform are six times more likely to convert compared to other platforms. This drives LinkedIn’s incredible conversion rate of 277% higher than Twitter and Facebook.

Demand Marketing vs. Brand Marketing

There are two strategies used in LinkedIn advertising: demand and brand marketing. If you want to set up your campaign on the platform, it’d be best to understand what these strategies are.

Demand marketing focuses on immediate growth. This strategy uses offers and services that create urgency, excitement, and demand. While the effects of demand marketing are much more powerful initially, they diminish over time, particularly for longer campaigns.

Brand marketing is all about creating a relationship with and nurturing your audience. This strategy aims to build trust, which makes it more effective in the long term.

Nine Steps to Create a LinkedIn Advertising Campaign

Launching a LinkedIn ad campaign can present a challenge if you don’t have any experience. However, it’s really a breeze if you follow this step-by-step process:

    1. Create a LinkedIn Advertising Account

    2. Create a LinkedIn Campaign

    3. Choose one of the seven campaign objectives offered:

      1. Brand awareness

      2. Website visits

      3. Engagement

      4. Video views

      5. Lead generation

      6. Website conversions

      7. Job applicants

    4. Choose the right audience using these methods:

      1. Saved Audience Attributions, which are classified by:

        1. Company

        2. Demographics

        3. Education

        4. Job experience

        5. Interests and traits

      2. List uploads

      3. Lookalike

      4. Retargeting

    5. Choose your Ad format from the following options:

      1. Single Image

      2. Carousel

      3. Video

      4. Message

      5. Conversation

      6. Text

      7. Follower

      8. Spotlight

      9. Other Ad Types

    6. Choose the placement of the ad

    7. Determine your overall budget and ad schedule by going through the following:

      1. Budget

      2. Schedule

      3. Bidding

      4. Create a conversion Ad

    8. Create a conversion – if you wish to create conversions and drive traffic with your LinkedIn Advertising Ad, you might want to install an Insight Tag.

You have two options for doing so:

    • Install the tag yourself directly on your website

    • Use a tag manager, such as Google Tag Manager

  1. Create a conversion goal. To do this, go to Account Assets and click on ‘Conversions’ to create a new conversion. Then, set up the following parameters:

  1. Conversion Name

  2. Conversion Type

  3. Conversion Value

  4. Clicks Window

  5. Views

  6. Attribution Model

After you’ve done the final step, you’ll be ready to launch your LinkedIn ad campaign.

How to Maximise ROI from LinkedIn Advertising?

Once you’ve started your LinkedIn ad campaign, you’ll want to shoot for the best ROI possible. To that end, the following principles apply to all types of advertising:

  1. Define your objectives

  2. Build organic reach

  3. Understand your target audience

  4. Measure ad performance

  5. Optimise for better results

Like any other ad campaign, your LinkedIn advertising will perform better with a more specific strategy and active metrics monitoring.

Leverage the Best Professional Advertising Platform

It can’t be denied that LinkedIn offers great benefits to those who can set up their ad campaigns properly.

Using this guide, you’ll be able to create a campaign and achieve success in your conversions and sales, assuming you successfully target the right audience with the right content.

If you want to learn more about high-performance marketing, we’re ready to help. Contact GMS and schedule a free consult to get started!