Top 5 LinkedIn Advertising Tips for B2B Marketing

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful tools in your digital marketing arsenal and is perfect for B2B.

Here are some top tips for creating LinkedIn ad campaigns for your business:

1. Creating Your Account

If this is your first time advertising on LinkedIn, you’ll have to create an advertising account. If you’re logged in to your personal account and you set up your ads account, this will be your advertising account. All of the billing will go to your email address and if you want to give anyone else access to work on the ads, you’ll have to give them access to your personal LinkedIn account.

If any of the above points may cause you issues now or further down the line, create a company personal account, this way anyone can log in and view or amend your LinkedIn ads campaign.

To set up your account simply visit LinkedIn Ads Manager here. You’ll have to set up an initial campaign to launch the ads account, so make sure you have your payment method ready to hand!

2. Your Campaign Strategy

LinkedIn ads have a tendency to drain your budget if you don’t have a very specific campaign in mind. For example, it’s best to select an individual element of your offering and focus solely on that for the best results.

In the creation of you’re strategy you’re also best to have:

·       A specific goal in mind – this could simply be awareness, it could be engagement with your LinkedIn content, maybe you want users to click through to your site or you’re simply looking for more followers on your page

·       A destination – If you’re running a click-through campaign you might think about creating a specific landing page on your site for the service your campaign is about

·       An audience – LinkedIn has some real niche targeting capabilities but you’re best off making sure you have an audience in mind, from industry to job title

·       Creative – Having your campaign creative ready makes the process a lot smoother. Here are the specs you’ll need.

3. Choosing Your Ad Type

There are three types of ad campaigns to choose from on LinkedIn:

• Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is great if you want your organic posts to gain a little more reach and engagement. 

Similar to a ‘boost on Facebook, you’re adding budget to ensure your content is seen in the newsfeeds of the people who matter to your business.

Sponsored content also brings new users into your company page and builds your audience. ‘ 

• Text Ads

Text ads can bring users either to your company page or to your company website. 

If you’re running a certain campaign on your site or you would like to highlight a particular service or product, these are the ads for you. Although the title may not suggest it, you can add images to all ‘text ads’.

• Sponsored inMail

Sponsored inMail brings your ad into the inboxes of LinkedIn users, It’s a very direct and some might even go as far to say invasive route to getting your message across but it can be quite effective. If you do decide to go down the Sponsored inMail route, ensure your campaign is very tightly focused in terms of aim, call to action copy and audience.

4. A/B Testing

For every ad you create it’s best to design two or three versions. You can change the title, call to action, copy and images. Ensuring you have multiple versions of the same ad means that when you come to report on the campaign you can deduce which of the elements of the ad were the most effective based on the results, whether that be click through, engagements or follows.

5. Test, Report, Test Again

Once you have your various ads in the campaign, leave it to do its work for a couple of days, then check back. Refining of the campaign is what gives it it’s reach and means you really squeeze the value out of it.

Take a look at what’s performing from your A/B tests and simply cull ads that are not performing, use the elements from ads that do perform well and bring them together to make new ads. Always introduce fresh, new creative and copy to the campaign throughout its lifetime.

If you’re looking into LinkedIn ads, or any other type of paid social media for your business and need some expert advice, either contact us here or click here for information on our Social Media Training Sessions.