LinkedIn has helped reinforce and establish business relationships. With over 575 million professionals, the platform provides opportunities for businesses to thrive. If you are a B2B company trying to build brand awareness, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for you.  Here are 9 tips to guide you in running effective ads on the professional network.

1. Choose an Appropriate Ad Format

Experimenting with various ad formats helps you learn the type of ad content that resonates best with your audience. There are three main types of ads on LinkedIn: 

• Sponsored Content – appears like a native post and fits in with the other content on a user’s feed. The perks of using sponsored content is how well it blends in with other content that the user enjoys seeing, preventing interruption of the user’s experience. This ad is best to use when boosting engagement as it will appear on the user’s feed for them to interact with.

• Sponsored InMail: engages with users directly by sending tailored messages to their inbox. This ad is best to use if you are aiming to drive traffic to your website or provide a call to action. This can be done by providing a hyperlink to your website or a call to action button in your InMail message.

• Text Ads: These ads are seen on the sidebar of LinkedIn and act like a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad. This type of ad is best to use to get high click-through rates, leads and driving traffic to your website.

Now that you know each ad format, let’s explore a few ways to leverage them: 

• Sponsored Content 
  • If you are promoting brand awareness, advertise posts that received the most engagement and promote videos or posts that include brand storytelling 
  • When promoting videos, add subtitles to accommodate users watching videos with their sound off 
• Sponsored InMails 
  • To promote brand awareness, share blogs from your website, eBooks and information on trends happening in your industry 
  • If you’re aiming to increase your conversion rate, advertise product demos, customer testimonials, or an upcoming event
• Text Ads 
  • For your call to action, use bold words that stand out and is easy to spot by viewers
  • Regardless of the title of the ad, make sure to use strong visuals as it is appealing to the eyes of the viewers 

2. Tailor Your Ads to Your Sales Funnel

If you’re advertising on LinkedIn for the first time, it can be tempting to try out all the ads without having a specific goal in mind. There are different ways to advertise to different types of LinkedIn users. Using Sponsored InMails as your first ad might not be the best idea. A user who isn’t well aware of your brand will easily choose to ignore your InMail. In order for them to move from the awareness stage, you must spark their interest. This can be through running Sponsored Content that highlights your brand’s product differentiation from your competitors. Once your target audience gets a better understanding of your brand, they will move on to the consideration stage. In this stage, use Sponsored InMails to ask users for their contact information and in exchange, provide them valuable offers such as eBooks, buying guides, free trials, product demos and special offers.

3. Use LinkedIn Conversion Tracking 

LinkedIn conversion tracking shows whether your LinkedIn ads are driving results for your business or not. This feature shows the click-through conversions for your website that came from LinkedIn. 

Using LinkedIn’s conversion tracking feature, you can track various LinkedIn conversions including leads, purchases, add to carts and app installs.

4. Use Advanced Targeting Options

LinkedIn’s ‘Matched Audiences’ feature targets users that you already know. Using the data that you already have, the Matched Audiences feature reaches audiences with account, contact and website targeting. 

Let’s take a closer look at the three targeting capabilities: 

• Website Retargeting: LinkedIn’s Insight Tag feature tracks visitors who visit your website and analyzes demographics such as the visitor’s job title, company size and company.
• Account Targeting: This is a great feature if you are doing account-based marketing. With account targeting, you can target up to 300,000 companies. The feature also lets you target professional demographics such as decision-makers. Targeting professional demographics is a huge benefit on LinkedIn as LinkedIn states that decision-makers have two times the buying power of regular LinkedIn audiences. 
• Contact Targeting: Targets LinkedIn members who are on your email list. You can customize your ads based on the sales funnel stage each of your customers are in. Also, this feature is helpful when reaching out to users that have been lost to churn. 

5. Provide Gated Content

Gated content is a type of content that is only available to the user after they provide their email to you. Examples of gated content include eBooks, webinars, infographics and case studies. This is a great method to use on LinkedIn because professionals would prefer receiving extra information on industries and businesses. The purpose of gated content is to help you increase your leads and increase site visits. Users are more likely to share their information when they need something and because you have gated content that they want to access, they would provide their information to you. Through this, you can add to your email list which will be helpful for contact targeting.

6. Personalize Your Ads

Personalization is used to develop brand loyalty. In fact, 77% of customers choose and pay more for brands that personalize their experiences. Using personalized ads can improve customer experience, drive conversions and show a positive perception towards your brand. It’s not guaranteed that everyone is going to like your business for the same reason, so create ads that tailor to each user’s needs. LinkedIn Dynamic Ads are great for personalization. This feature personalizes your ad based on a user’s profile information such as name and company name.

7. Create Credible Ads

Users on LinkedIn are aware of distinguishing unprofessional content to professional ones. Make sure to provide ad content that makes you look as credible as possible. Ensure your ad is informative and your ad copy is free of grammatical errors. LinkedIn ads do not limit you to write up to a certain word count so include as much text as you can. Make use of the text option by using bold words in your ad, highlighting a strong call to action. You’ll also want to include high-quality images – try using stock images. This will grab the attention of your audience and will prevent them from scrolling past your ad.

8. Use Objectives that Resonate with Your Goals

Objectives help you focus on a specific goal and make your ad purpose clear.

Types of objectives include:  

• Website Visits: Helps you see how much traffic your LinkedIn ads drive to your website 
• Engagement: Promotes your ads to LinkedIn users who interact with you through liking, sharing, commenting, clicking and reacting. 
• Video Views: Allows you to bid based on cost per view. 
• Lead Gen: Encourages users to sign up for something or attend an event. When users click on your ad, a form will open up on their screen. The forms will take information from users’ profiles and fill their forms automatically, creating a simple user experience. Using a lead gen form, you can encourage users who are interested in your free content to sign up and receive gated content which can increase the number of users who visit your landing page.

9. Use an Appropriate Bidding Strategy

A bidding strategy can help you stay on budget.

Bidding strategies on LinkedIn include: 

• Automated Bidding: automatically sets your bids, allowing LinkedIn to decide the amount 
• Maximum Cost-Per-Click Bid: you get charged every time a user clicks on your ad. This bid will allow you to have full control on your money and be able to spend the maximum amount that you desire. 
• CPM Bidding: you will be charged each time your ad is seen by every 1000 users on LinkedIn. 

The best time to use automated bidding is when you’re trying to achieve more ad visibility. Automated bidding charges by impression. You can also use this bidding strategy if you are launching a LinkedIn campaign for the first time. The best time to use CPM and CPC bids is when you are aiming to drive quality traffic. Using CPC or CPM bids can give you total control over your costs and will only charge the amount that you set up.

Let Growvare Help! 

LinkedIn ads can help you reach top professionals in key industries and increase your sales. With AI, Growvare can help you reach your ideal target audience in minutes and monitor your campaigns 24/7. Book a meeting with us to find out more!