August 31st, 2011
by Amy Dunn
I spent some time recently researching LinkedIn advertising options, and quickly realized that promoting your company’s profile or webpage on LinkedIn could be well be worth your time.
I was happy to learn the process is very similar to Facebook advertising (you create a campaign, set a budget and target your reach). Like Facebook advertising, you can set up a Pay per click (CPC) campaign or you can pay per impressions. Each click will cost between $2.00 (the minimum cost per click) and your bid.
In addition, LinkedIn advertising has some great options to help you target your ideal audience based on industry and position (in other words, you can reach the decision makers) resulting in more leads and visibility among your target audience.
Here are some highlights and tips I found on their Best Practices Guide:
- You can target your audience by job function (teachers, marketers, sales) and seniority in an organization: ex/Individual Contributor, Manager, Director, Vice President, Chief X Officer, Owner. You can also target to members of specific Groups to reach more people in your industry. You also target by Geography, Company, Job Title, Gender and Age.
- You can link ads to your Company Profile, your personal profile, or to your Webpage. I recommend trying both company profile and webpage….I am finding people who are on their social network of choice (Twitter/FB/LinkedIn) want to stay on that social network as long as possible so it is helpful to accommodate that.
- To be effective you must (in very few characters) give people a reason to take notice and click to learn more by highlighting special offers, unique benefits, whitepapers, free trials or demos.
- Clearly explain the product or service you offer and wse words and phrases that will grab the attention of your audience; Include strong call-to-action phrases like “Try” or “Request”.
- Include an image with your ad that’s relevant to what you offer. The maximum size of the image is 50 pixels wide by 50 pixels high.
- To maximize ad performance, create multiple ads for each campaign (LinkedIn recommends at least 3 and you can create up to 15 different ads) and track which ad performs the best. You want a click-through rate (CTR) greater than 0.025%.
The Bottom Line: Running ads on any social network does not replace consumer engagement; but depending on your marketing goals, LinkedIn ads could be a viable option for you to consider because of the targeting options. If you are going to try it take the time to read their Best Practices Guide to ensure you are maximizing your success.
Please leave a comment: Have you tried LinkedIn ads? What was your experience?
Lori D.
(August 31st, 2011 at 12:40 pm)
I’ve only tried LinkedIn ads once.. and the lack of success has me very careful and leery to suggest them as an option for my clients. I’ve had great success with Facebook ads.
But for my one client in particular, LinkedIn ads were disappointing to say the least. I believe that they were highly relevant to the audience and we had a fantastic “Free Trial Project” offer — Additionally, the suggested bid that we got from LinkedIn started closer to $4.00. That seems quite pricey to me for PPC ads!
I’d love to hear from someone who has had success with the platform. I might be inclined to give it another shot. It SEEMS LIKE the perfect platform for certain companies/campaigns. I have a hard time believing that many companies are seeing a 0.025% CTR. (wow, don’t I sound like the pessimist?! Lol)…
Lorrie
(August 31st, 2011 at 12:50 pm)
Lori,
I like your healthy skepticsm. We have one client in financial services who had great luck targeting C-level executives through LinkedIn.
It’s all about using tools (like online advertising) strategically. The fact that you are critical thinking is healthy so you don’t spend money but instead make healthy investments.