What You Need to Know Before Taking the Leap
LinkedIn is known as a formidable force in B2B advertising, offering marketers an opportunity to engage with an audience in a professional mindset. However, the power of this ad platform extends far beyond just B2B companies. B2C companies, nonprofits, universities, and other organizations can leverage LinkedIn Ads to achieve remarkable success.
LinkedIn advertising offers an exclusive opportunity to connect with a professional audience and enhance your online presence. However, the decision to invest your precious advertising dollars in this platform can be overwhelming if you’re unsure whether it aligns with your brand’s goals.
To help you navigate the world of LinkedIn ads, we’ve compiled essential information you need to know before taking the plunge:
LinkedIn is an ideal platform for reaching young professionals and decision-makers.
LinkedIn caters mainly to professionals and businesses, making it vital to assess if your target audience aligns with its demographics.
The platform’s most significant user segment consists of individuals aged 25 to 34, with a staggering 46 million students and recent graduates. This demographic makes it an ideal platform to connect with young professionals and decision-makers.
Moreover, LinkedIn is home to business leaders who are highly engaged on the platform. When they spend time on LinkedIn, they are in the right mindset for business interactions, making it an ideal space to engage with them.
Knowing your audience is a key determinant of the success of your campaign
LinkedIn provides advertisers with advanced targeting options, including specific job titles, education levels, experience, and seniority, enabling precise audience targeting. However, this targeting power is only valuable if utilized effectively in your marketing efforts.
Before creating an ad, take time to identify your ideal customer by developing a comprehensive buyer persona. Consider customer background, key demographics, relevant identifiers, problems, challenges, and the solutions your product or service can offer.
Establish key targeting parameters once you have a clear picture of your ideal customer. Avoid hyper-targeting in your first campaign and focus on where your audience is primarily located. Starting with a broad audience allows LinkedIn to optimize your campaign during its early stages, and gives you the possibility of creating custom audiences later on based on their behavior and interactions with your ads.
LinkedIn hosts a competitive advertising landscape
With LinkedIn playing a significant role in the marketing strategies of various industries in recent years, its advertising landscape has become intensely competitive. Your ad will be vying for the attention of business leaders and high-powered professionals.
This sought-after audience is a prime target for B2B companies seeking sales leads and B2C companies aiming to boost their brand visibility among individuals with significant purchasing power.
To make the most of LinkedIn ads, it’s essential to have a standout brand that can hold its ground against competitors and a well-established offering complemented by the right ad creative. This way, you can captivate an audience that carefully considers their decisions and values meaningful interactions.
Understanding your objective is vital to your LinkedIn success strategy
Effectively understanding your objectives is the most important way to succeed in LinkedIn Advertising. At the most basic level, you need to decide whether your goal is generating awareness, consideration, or conversions.
Yet, aligning your expectations with campaign objectives that suit your current online presence is equally crucial. This alignment sets the foundation for a successful campaign and paves the way to achieve your desired outcomes.
Let’s consider an example: Imagine your ultimate goal is to drive conversions and boost sales. However, if you’re new to LinkedIn campaigns and have never posted organically on the platform, you might find yourself trying to sell to an audience completely unfamiliar with your brand. This situation sets your conversion campaign up for failure right from the start.
If this sounds like your current situation, taking a step back and considering an awareness campaign could be a smarter move. Awareness campaigns form the top of your digital sales funnel and serve as the starting point of the customer journey. Embrace this discovery phase as an opportunity to build a positive brand perception.
To boost your brand’s performance even further, consider taking one more step back with organic content on LinkedIn before launching your first paid campaign. Companies with a complete, active LinkedIn Page see 5x more page views garner 7x more impressions per follower, and 11x more clicks per follower.
While your audience is in the discovery phase, they might want to learn more about your business and visit your LinkedIn page. However, finding an empty or inactive profile may diminish your chances of making a lasting impact on potential prospects. So, keeping your LinkedIn page active can make a significant difference in your campaign’s success.
Analyzing industry insights can help you determine whether LinkedIn ads are a good fit for your brand
Before diving into your LinkedIn strategy, take some time to research your industry’s presence on the platform. While LinkedIn is renowned for boosting B2B sales, it doesn’t mean that your B2C brand won’t find a good fit there. Often, people assume LinkedIn caters primarily to financial executives, making it challenging to envision their brand in such a professional setting. However, various other industries have found success on LinkedIn.
For instance, the higher education sector thrives on LinkedIn using a B2C model by connecting with students and adult learners who are keen on advancing their careers. So, exploring LinkedIn’s potential beyond traditional B2B settings can yield promising outcomes for your brand.
A good place to start is looking at LinkedIn industry insights and benchmarks. The top industries on the platform as of 2023 are:
#1: Professional Services
#2: Manufacturing
#3: Technology, Information and Media
#4: Government Administration
#5: Financial Services
#6: Accommodation Services
#7: Hospitals and Healthcare
#8: Entertainment
#9: Education
#10: Retail
Setting a budget that matches your objectives is essential to an effective LinkedIn campaign
To kickstart advertising on LinkedIn, the minimum daily budget required is $10, adding up to $300 per month. However, considering the competitive nature of LinkedIn ads, ensuring your brand leaves a lasting impact on your audience is essential. For a top-of-funnel campaign, it’s advisable to start with a minimum of $30/day, bringing your monthly budget closer to $1,000.
That being said, a lower funnel campaign (consideration and conversions) will typically require a budget closer to $5k per month, as evaluating how well your campaign is performing at this stage requires more time and resources. While it’s not an absolute rule, analyzing KPIs will help you make informed decisions in the long run. But, as a general guideline, $5k a month is a recommended benchmark for lower-funnel campaigns.
It is also best practice to run multi-funnel campaigns when you’re implementing a conversion objective. Running both conversion and awareness campaigns enables you to engage your audience at various marketing funnel stages. This approach continuously feeds data to your custom audiences, providing valuable insights for campaign optimization and improved performance.
Ready to get started with LinkedIn ads?
LinkedIn offers an exceptional opportunity to reach a highly engaged, business-oriented, and valuable audience. To make the most of this platform, it’s crucial to tailor your approach according to the unique behaviors and professional focus of LinkedIn users.
Strategic planning is essential to ensure your LinkedIn ads align with your business goals, expectations, and online brand presence. In this competitive environment, a dedicated content strategy can yield significant results.
If you’re unsure whether your brand is ready for LinkedIn ads or need help crafting a customized strategy, our team at Glacier Media Digital can help. We can assist you in evaluating your readiness for LinkedIn ads and guide you in developing a tailored approach that perfectly aligns with your objectives.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can create an impactful LinkedIn ads strategy for your business.