If you want to target business professionals more intelligently, then you need to go where they hang out, that’s where LinkedIn Adverts come in. The biggest business network online is, of course, LinkedIn. Using their advertising platform can put you in contact with a host of companies and their employees, helping create fresh new leads, attract followers and reach your target market more successfully.

What are LinkedIn Adverts

LinkedIn Adverts offer two methods of displaying your advert. Choose either Sponsored Updates which appears in among the organic wall posts or a Text and Image Ad. You also have two options of paying per action, these are: PPC (pay per click) advertising or pay per impression. With pay per click a charge is incurred every time someone clicks on the link in your ad. Or you can pay per impression, which means every time your advert appears on your selected target markets timeline it incurs a cost. Which you choose will depend on what you want to accomplish. If you want to drive traffic to your site or product then pay per click is a great option for you, if you want to raise brand awareness, advertise an event or for any other purpose that doesn’t require a visit to your website, then per impression may well be the best option for you. There are a lot of variables to take into consideration when choosing which payment method will work best – if in doubt do a small test on each.

The Benefits of LinkedIn Adverts

• LinkedIn is home to some 175 million users the majority of which view LinkedIn as a social media platform for business professionals. Making it an especially effective forum to place B2B ads.
• LinkedIn ads are still the new kids on the block and you may be able to benefit from less competition because other businesses are currently spending most of their marketing budget on Google, Twitter or Facebook adverts.
• You can target people with certain job titles or descriptions, seniority, company size, in fact there are a number of useful demographics to choose from.
• There are no contracts, you can set your daily budget and stop at any time.
• You can choose between a standard text and image ad or a sponsored update for new content posts.

Where Do LinkedIn Adverts Appear?

Much depends on the type of ad you want. Text ads are only for desktops and won’t show on mobile devices but do allow you to push a targeted ad message. These can appear at the top of the home page or in the right hand column. Sponsored ads appear on both desktop and mobile in the news feed of your selected target audience.

Selecting Your Audience

You can choose to target specific demographics on LinkedIn including: industry, geographical location, skills, job function, seniority, as well as gender and age, to name just a few. You can also utilise a tool scalled Audience Expansion which allows you to reach a wider target audience that has similar interests or characteristics to your chosen demographic.

LinkedIn Adverts Targeting Numbers

While you can pick and choose who you target, LinkedIn stipulates that you need an audience of 1,000 or more for their metrics to be able to work effectively. The best performing campaigns tend to have a potential audience of between 60,000 and 600,000 users.

Cost of Advertising

There are two ways to pay for advertising on LinkedIn. You can either decide to pay a certain amount for each click, or you can opt to pay a set price per 1,000 impressions, irrespective of the number of clicks you receive (useful if you are more concerned about getting your ad in front of as many people as possible).

Measuring Performance

As with other PPC tools, you can get various metrics to monitor performance and adjust your advertising message accordingly. Watch this closely throughout the life of your campaign.

If you are a B2B company who wants a more targeted approach, away from the competition of platforms such as Google or Facebook, then opting for LinkedIn adverts is well worth the experimentation. While perhaps not as flexible yet compared to the industry leaders, there are plenty of demographic options to choose from to help you reach out to your target audience and boost your online visibility.

The Last Hurdle Top Tip: As with all online advertising it pays to test the effectiveness of your ads, try doing small campaigns first to monitor how effective your wording and images are, when you find a good combination then you can go live with a decent budget. But don’t stop there… keep monitoring your advert and if the responses are not as good as you hoped, then pull the advert and tweak again. Constant monitoring tweaking and development will enable you to always gain the most ROI from digital adverts regardless of what platform you use.

If you need specific advice about running a LinkedIn advertising campaign then get in touch with our Social Media Marketing experts on 01604 654545 or email sales@thelasthurdle.co.uk