Maybe you’ve been around the digital advertising block more than once. You’ve got paid search happening. You’ve run Facebook Ads, and dabbled in some video advertising and digital display. You’re one of those curious advertisers, always looking for a new network or platform to test out.
You’ve heard some good things about LinkedIn. What’s going on over there? It looks like a bunch of suits, talking about dry business stuff. And it is. Which also makes LinkedIn a great network for advertising to exactly that demographic… engaged business people who are looking for opportunities and new ways to advance their careers.
In other words, there are tons of business verticals that should not be advertising on LinkedIn — straight-up business-to-consumer stuff doesn’t always go over well. But if you are selling business to business, LinkedIn opens up myriad creative ways to get your product or service in front of exactly the right people.
A smaller, more engaged network with laser-sharp targeting
Statista tells us that LinkedIn had 467 million users as of Q3 2016. The network is not huge when compared to Facebook’s 1.8 billion or Google’s minimum two trillion global searches per year. Still, LinkedIn’s numbers have grown by 100 million in the past 12 months, and we don’t see this growth slowing down anytime soon.
Laser precise targeting is ultimately what differentiates LinkedIn Ads from these other two networks. If you know your market and demographic, you can go precise and deep… for example: target your ads to New England marketing managers in the insurance vertical with five or more years experience. We kid you not.
What to know
There are five types of LinkedIn Ads. All can be either CPM or CPC:
Sponsored Content: Much like Facebook boosted posts, you can create a post on LinkedIn, and then pay to have it seen by a bigger, and more targeted audience.
Sponsored InMail: You can send targeted, sponsored messages to LinkedIn members. This is ideal for lead generation, events or prospecting.
Text Ads: Similar to Facebook Ads, you can create targeted text ads, which include an image thumbnail. Can be targeted by demographic or geo.
Dynamic Ads: These are personalized ads that dynamically pull in content from member profiles.
Display Ads: Advertisers and agencies can run digital display ads on LinkedIn through their programmatic buying platform.
Who you will be reaching
Maybe LinkedIn’s audience is smaller, but it’s active and affluent. According to Pew Research Center’s 2016 Social Media Update half of all LinkedIn users have a college degree; a third of the network’s users are 30 – 49 years old; and a whopping 45% of users earn more than $75k per year. Those are some pretty lucrative demographics.
Apart from its engaged and prosperous users, we are crushing hard on the targeting options in LinkedIn. Above and beyond the usual targeting options such as geography, LinkedIn Ads let you target members by industry, profession, company, job title and beyond… These options open up so many creative strategic possibilities for individual advertisers, it makes our heads explode.
For example, an advertiser who wants more media exposure could target LinkedIn members in specific media companies and roles. A sales rep could zero in on members who have buyer in their job titles. Or a young startup looking for investment could run sponsored content targeted to members who work in venture capital. The possibilities are almost mind boggling.
Understand your niche and work it
In other words, LinkedIn can be a very effective advertising choice, especially for business-to-business products and services — but you need to think about it differently.
Your strategy needs to revolve around what LinkedIn users are directly and indirectly looking for when they are on the network. The difference: these users are searching in a purely professional context, for opportunities that will advance their careers. Tap into this desire and you’re ready to do the LinkedIn hustle. Work it.
Read it first:
Get new articles delivered to your inbox
Share this: