LinkedIn is a great place to market your business. Statistics indicate that the audience on LinkedIn has twice the buying power of the average site. That’s why it should be part of your social media marketing strategy. If you are starting LinkedIn marketing, one option to consider is using ads.

With over 1 billion users, LinkedIn ads enable you to reach a vast audience. They can be a good choice for reaching your target audience, finding new leads, and promoting your brand. This article will guide you in using LinkedIn ads to take your brand to the next level. We will also share some of the best practices while using these ads.

Types of LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn ads run on the social media platform with the aim of reaching the target audience. The ads can range from a boosted post to a comprehensive campaign aimed at a well-defined audience. The good thing about LinkedIn ads is that they allow you to create highly targeted ads according to criteria such as job title, company size, and industry. That said, there are different types of LinkedIn ads. These include:

Sponsored Content

These native ads are usually shown in the user's desktop and mobile LinkedIn feed. They appear like regular posts but with the Promoted label, distinguishing them from the other types of content. The Sponsored ads can be in different formats, such as:

• Single image ads
• Carousel ads
• Video ads
• Document ads
• Events ads
• Thought leader ads
• Carousel ads

Sponsored Messaging

With sponsored messaging, you can send personalized messages that target your target audience. These ad formats are usually categorized into conversation ads and message ads. They appear as DM messages in the users' inboxes and include a call to action button leading users to an external website link. Users are more likely  to see these ads since they don't appear in the highly crowded feed. In fact, according to LinkedIn, this ad has the highest engagement rate.

Text Ads

Text ads are the simplest form of LinkedIn ads as they are usually clear and to the point. They only feature a simple headline, a small image, and a short description. While they may lack the color and glamor of the sponsored ads, they are beneficial, cost-effective, and appear prominently on the LinkedIn page. 

Dynamic Ads

These are great ads for personalizing and automating your campaigns. They are, therefore, an excellent choice for brand awareness, conversion, and driving traffic. Also known as Spotlight ads, they feature the name of the target LinkedIn user. That enables them to catch their eyes and leave a lasting impact.

Choosing an Objective For Your Linkedin Ad

LinkedIn has an objective-based advertising model where advertisers can choose the objective they want to build their campaign around. That lets them use LinkedIn to meet their business goals. Therefore, businesses can create ads targeting the three sales funnel stages. These are:

Awareness

Advertising in this stage aims to make LinkedIn users aware of the existence of your business and position it as an expert. That means you will aim to get people to talk about your brand when you run ads for the awareness stage. Some of the goals of running this kind of impression-based marketing can be to:

• Increase views.
• Improve engagement.
• Gain more followers

All the ad formats we discussed earlier can help to increase awareness. However, single-image and carousel ads are the most effective ways to achieve this goal.

Consideration 

A consideration ad is a good choice for targeting an already familiar audience with your brand. That means when running these types of ads, you can have different objectives, such as:

• Website visits. You may have a goal of more people visiting your site and landing pages.
• Video views. You can use ads at this stage to share more about your latest product, business story, or behind-the-scenes videos.
• Engagement. The aim could be to increase comments, likes, and shares. You may even want to drive traffic to your other social media pages.
• Messaging. In this stage, you can use ads to engage with your connections through direct messages in their inbox.

There are different ads that can help you nurture leads in the mid-funnel. These include videos, conversations, carousels, and text ads.

Conversion 

Conversion ads aim to convince users to take action as they are already familiar with your brand. The aim could be generating leads, making sales, reaching job applicants, or boosting your job search on Linkedin. These ads can have different objectives, such as:

• Website conversion. Conversion ads aim to make users take action, such as buying a product, downloading an ebook, or filling out a lead generation form.
• Lead generation. Use a prefilled form with your audience's profile data to get leads. 
• Job applicants. At this stage, LinkedIn ads can be used to find the right people willing to join your team.

Some of the ads that can help you achieve these goals are:

• Text ads
• Conversation ads
• Job ads
• Carousel ads
• Lead generation ads

How to Set Up Your LinkedIn Ads

Follow the steps below to set up your LinkedIn ad:

• Go to the campaign manager. You will see a small icon at the top right corner labeled Advertise on your profile. You will be taken to the campaign manager when you click on it. Tap on it and then click the Create button. You will be required to add a campaign name followed by the currency. You can connect your company page to access the different ad formats.
• Choose an ad objective. Once you tap the Create button, you will open an object for your campaign. As discussed earlier, the aim could be awareness, consideration, and conversion.
• Choose a campaign group. Have a group name for your campaign to define your spending method and frequency. You can automatically distribute your budget by toggling on budget optimization, ensuring a better ROI.
• Select a target audience. Under the Audience menu, you can change the details of your target audience with job title, profile language, location, skill, or industry. Add your desired attribute and exclude the one you don’t want. If you aren't sure of the right target audience, you can select one of the LinkedIn options.
• Choose an ad format. As explained above, your chosen format will depend on your ad goal.
• Change ad settings. You can see the guide for adding your URL tracking parameters. You can also add where to place your ad from LinkedIn to other third-party publishers.
• Set budget and publishing schedule. You can now add how much you are ready to spend and how often you want to run the campaign. You can set your campaign to run daily, for a lifetime, or both. You can change your bidding strategy and LinkedIn optimization strategy.
• Conversion tracking. Conversion tracking measures people's actions when they visit your site after clicking your LinkedIn ad. You should tap Create New to add an introductory text for your ad and the destination URL, then upload the image. You can also add the headline and call to action. Finally, click on Save Ad.
• Add an ad variation. You can add a variation to the ad by tapping on Create New Ad.
• Launch the ad. You can now review the details of your ad before clicking on Launch Ad. At this point, you must add your billing information, such as company information and credit card details.

Best Practices When  Creating LinkedIn Ads

To increase your chances of success when creating LinkedIn ads, there are several tips you should follow. These are:

Personalize the Message

You want to ensure that you create an ad that speaks directly to your audience, inspiring them to take action. One ad format that is good for doing this is dynamic ads. However, even as you personalize your ad, you want to avoid making your audience feel like you are spying on them, as you may lose them.

Keep Testing

While LinkedIn allows you to create a maximum of 15 ads for a campaign, they recommend making at least three ads for split testing. You can change a few things, like the headline and the call to action, to find your best-performing ad. This is one of the fastest ways to grow your LinkedIn account.

Bid Higher Than the Suggested Range for a Higher Click-through Rate

When bidding for a LinkedIn ad, you can easily be tempted to bid in the suggested range. However, this may not be a good strategy for a higher click-through rate, as you will not have an edge over the competition. That is why we recommend bidding 10% higher than the suggested range. Doing that will help you increase your average click-through rate and, at the same time, compete with others.

Bid Within Range for Higher ROI

If your goal is to get the highest return on investment, it's advisable to bid within the suggested range. Bidding higher will mean you will not receive the best value for money while bidding lower will result in fewer impressions. To get the best ROI, we advise you to bid within the suggested range.

Use Concise Copies

Like other social media sites, many LinkedIn users have a short attention span. That's why creating content that is concise, useful, and creates a sense of urgency is advisable. The ad should have a clear call-to-action. Therefore, every word in your ad should add value and showcase the value you want to offer.

Get a Sweet Spot for Your Audience

When you have good targeting for your ad, you can improve its performance. Refine targeting your ad to enable it to resonate with your audience.

Mistakes to Avoid When Creating LinkedIn Ads

To ensure the excellent performance of your LinkedIn ad, you should avoid several mistakes. These are:

Wrong Messaging in the Ad

When creating a LinkedIn ad, you should talk to the person reading the ad instead of talking about your company. You want to use a timely message to get leads that solve the audience’s problem. Therefore, use ad messaging that shows you understand the audience’s situation and have a solution.

Optimizing Early Enough

During the early days of an ad campaign, you can expect to see high fluctuations. If you rush to see results, you can be tempted to start adjusting your campaign. However, this is wrong as LinkedIn takes a  few days or weeks to determine the right audience for your campaign when they are online, and the best context for showing them the ad.

That means if you adjust the campaign before the learning phase is over, this can impact the LinkedIn algorithm's ability to understand the ad and its target audience. Therefore, avoid making significant changes to your ad audience, budget, or format before seven to ten days are over. Otherwise, you might be taking your ad back to the learning phase.

Overspending on Ad Traffic

When you create an ad that focuses on driving traffic, there is a chance that it may not deliver your desired results. This is because LinkedIn gauges the performance of an ad by considering different metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and click-throughs. The ads with the highest engagement are given the highest engagement.

When you invest a lot of money in your ad’s learning phase, you will blow the budget before you are provided with precise results. Most ads also have a frequency cap limiting the number of people shown the ad every 48 hours. It is advisable to create multiple formats of an ad to see which one brings the best results.

Final Thoughts

Social media advertisements sometimes feel like they do not generate the desired results. However, this can be attributed to most advertisers using the wrong approach. With the right LinkedIn advertising method, it's possible to get your desired results with social media advertising. By following our guide above, you can quickly get a high return on investment in your LinkedIn ads. We also recommend you learn how to boost your career by growing your Linkedin followers.

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