LinkedIn has been championed as the future of B2B marketing for quite some time, yet the platform's advertising options are certainly far from reaching the maturity of competitors such as Facebook Ads Manager or Google Ads.
We certainly see distinct advantages of using a platform geared towards professionals. Primarily, when using such a platform individuals will be donning a 'business hat'. This is important as it increases likelihood that decision makers are ready to consider business decisions when on this platform, as opposed to their mindset when casually browsing instagram content. But, despite LinkedIn existing for almost two decades, many social media critics would argue their advertising platform is still very much in its infancy.
The first concern advertisers have expressed, is value for money.
LinkedIn has a higher minimum spend requirement, and on average yields less successful results. By this, we're focusing on reach, impressions, and engagement. As always, we judge our effective adverts on quality, not quantity: therefore, we're never quick to rule LinkedIn out.
From extensive research and data sharing, marketing expects predict that advertisers should expect to increase their average budgets... it's simply more expensive to get quality results.
In fact, Impact suggests that, in order to see a positive return on investment (ROI) on LinkedIn, companies should prepare to spend between $2,000 to $5,000 every month.
Part of the reason for this higher expenditure can be accounted for by minimum bidding values. WebFX reports that the minimum bid for LinkedIn is $2 per click, which is astronomically higher than Facebook or Google.
Yet one simply shouldn't choose to ignore a B2B and B2C platform that is ripe with professionals that are scouring for business content. So we've found a solution to maximise opportunity whilst reducing the necessary spend.
LinkedIn's guide to effective targeting is a solid foundation for any B2B campaign:
Firstly, our method involves having advertising accounts active on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google. For the purposes of this explanation we'll dive in to the approach of achieving the Facebook quantity results with the LinkedIn quality.
With LinkedIn, we'll be leveraging data such as job titles, companies worked for, general industry data, and narrowing our target markets by specified locations and interests or/and behaviours.
Our top level of this advertising funnel begins by running adverts within LinkedIn, using our clearly defined target audience. It is important to ensure you are using the LinkedIn InsightTag (also known as a pixel) to capture data from your adverts—as this is needed for remarketing purposes.
For example, at Mäd, we may wish to target FinTech companies in our region and direct them to case studies of related work—or service pages populated with key materials to influence decision-makers to work with our agency. The initial targeting within LinkedIn will undoubtedly prove useful as a shortcut for entering specific professional spheres at speed.
Our next level in the funnel is to shift our focus to Facebook advertising. We can take the LinkedIn Pixel data and export it as a Facebook remarketing audience. Now we can gain a much lower cost-per-click than LinkedIn, yet maintain a key focus on our target market—ultimately leading to better conversion rates.
This simple solution is taking the traffic to our landing page generated from one platform and remarketing them via more powerful existing platforms. This strategy will also work via Google Ads, which includes their expansive display network and Youtube.
Growth is exciting. When businesses are ready to scale they may revisit previously targeted audiences and examine what expansions can be made. For instance, if a web design team had only been advertising in a single city they may expand to other cities or countries to increase their reach and opportunities.
While there's merit in starting new campaigns with a blank canvas, existing data can catapult ROI and reach an ideal demographic at speed.
The 'Lookalike Audience' is an invaluable tool for such growth.
This option will use a proprietary algorithm to build upon your previous audience. By using LinkedIn member data and company attributes, the advertising platform generates audiences that possess similar characteristics—up to 15 larger than your original audience range. To keep everything tidy, the original audience segment is not included within lookalike audiences...allowing you to confidently target new potential customers.
Requirements:
With your newly expanded target market you can continue with your remarketing strategies at a larger scale, armed with confidence that your previous successful advertising demographics have generated intelligent opportunities.
