I have worked within marketing, specifically digital marketing, for roughly 15 years. One area often overlooked is LinkedIn B2B paid ads and the potential return that simple creative and the copy can often deliver to your business.
Business owners, Director and CXO, will often return to what they know works. This usually means average results at best, from audiences and a network already exhausted of its best lead producing potential. A marketing budget is a hot topic at this time of year, especially in the middle of a global pandemic where we are all embracing a new normal.
This is not an article to convince you to redirect your traditional advertising budget away from print, editorials and exhibitions. This article aims to help educate you towards the power of online B2B marketing, more specifically, LinkedIn B2B paid ads.
Print advertising may get your brand in front of the right audience. But, qualifying any results against budget is often very difficult if not impossible, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
Social media advertising, however, offers complete control as well as visibility on results. You are in control of defining your target audience and customer avatar whilst dynamically adapting the creatives, messaging, and budget based on performance.
You may wonder what the options are out there for Online Ads? The short answer is that there are many options from Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube advertising. However, throughout this article, I want to bring your specific attention to LinkedIn B2B paid ads.
Article Contents
Why LinkedIn B2B Paid Ads?
LinkedIn’s network is business professionals and key decision-makers with a profile and presence throughout the world.
Unlike most Social Media sites out there, LinkedIn has many unique B2B niches. This makes their advertising platform far more desirable for many businesses looking to advertise their products or services effectively. At present, LinkedIn has an active user base of over 675 million. This comprises of decision-makers, senior-level influencers and CXO.
For me, this makes it a platform that any company owner shouldn’t ignore, especially if you’re in the B2B sector.
Target Your Ideal Audience
Online advertising is a fantastic tool offered by many social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. However, within these platforms, advertisers’ information, especially those with a B2B background, tends to be diluted.
For example, I have a completely different presence on Facebook and Instagram than I do on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn profile highlights towards my experience, skillset and professional achievements. In contrast, Facebook and Instagram are focussed more towards my family and lifestyle. As a result, I get very different advertising aimed towards me on all social media platforms.
So, how does LinkedIn advertising differ?
In quite a few ways. Those who have used Facebook and Twitter Ads will be familiar with the normal demographic and interest-based advertising options. However, things become interesting, when you start to look at how you can target ultra-niche B2B audiences using LinkedIn Ads unique audience targeting tools.
Got a product or service to be promoted to people with a specific job title?
To individuals who follow certain groups or work for specific companies?
To finance leaders in a specific location?
To business owners who work for SMEs?
Not a problem as LinkedIn’s incredible level of targeting allows you to narrow your audience right down to the people that truly matter most for your advertising campaign. As a result, making your advertisement budget work incredibly hard for you is unheard of with average traditional marketing methods.
This allows you to refine your audience right down to your specific customer avatars and deliver content specifically for them through your campaign.
Make every penny count.
Before we go any further, LinkedIn advertising is not cheap. It is, however, incredibly targeted. So as long as you have all functions of a great campaign together, you can expect to see results.
As with all online advertising channels, you have complete control over budget (overall and daily), targeting, creative and messaging. Something traditional advertising still struggles with on its own, even today, making it impossible to predict results.
LinkedIn provides each of its advertisers with a result forecast that adapts every time you tweak and edit the campaign before launching. This unique insight helps guide the results you could get for your budget, helping set and manage your expectations.
Produce advertising creative that’s unique and refined.
Now you have your audience defined and budget set it is crucial to have eye-catching creative to bring it together. If you are setting this up for yourself, my advice is to consider what adverts appeal to your target audience.
Do they read whitepapers?
Do they react to facts and figures?
Will they watch a video?
Will they be mostly mobile or desktop users?
Creative is a vital component of any campaign. After all, the creative is the bit your target audience will see and hopefully respond to, giving you the results you require.
A good exercise at this stage is to A/B test two sets of creative with the same audience, and you will be amazed at what little differences can make to your results.
LinkedIn B2B Paid Ads discovery and learning process.
There’s a strong chance that your first advertising campaign will not bring in the results you expect, especially if you are setting them yourself. Don’t be put off at this stage; it is perfectly normal.
Why?
Because your first expectations will more than likely have nothing to base themselves on, secondly, like anything you do more than once, you’ll begin to discover areas to improve.
With each paid campaign, you launch and complete a wealth of knowledge will be earned that you will utilise the next time around. What’s great about this discovery process is that eventually, you will have multiple refined campaigns, all of which you will be able to switch on and off as and when your business requires.
Don’t be put off with LinkedIn B2B Paid Ads.
It is key not to be put off, either through fear of setting it all up or not receiving the results you want the first time around.
If you have tried LinkedIn B2B paid ads in the past or have a campaign running now that’s perhaps not delivering the results you desire please let me know.
You can comment below or contact us directly with any questions.
