Advertising on social media is an easy and profitable way to increase your sales leads. While some may see Facebook and Instagram as a little more difficult to navigate than other platforms, LinkedIn can bring you the results you want—and with minimal effort.
LinkedIn provides a social platform but for business-oriented advertisements, especially for the B2B market. As a LinkedIn member, you’re not looking to catch up with Aunt Susie; LinkedIn is an online business hub for members to communicate their newest endeavors and advertise their own services. You can find or post jobs, learn more about a new industry or company, and do lots more.
When it comes to sponsored content, LinkedIn provides an easy way to post your own advertisements and target the right people. You can create a budget based on your target specification, as well as your own copy and images to align with your brand.
You can accomplish lots of things with LinkedIn sponsored content, but there are five simple steps you should always follow:
- Know who you want to target
- Make your advertisements mobile friendly
- Keep your ad copy short
- Budget accordingly
- Monitor analytics and make needed changes
Know Your Target Audience
When creating LinkedIn sponsored content, you can target demographics, job titles, industries, and more. Depending on the specific goal for your ad and industry, you may choose to prioritize specific types of targets over others.
For example, if you’re an IT service company, you may target various IT job titles in the specific geographic region that you service. The narrower you can get with these filters while still targeting a sufficiently large talent pool, the better your response and engagement rates will be. In fact, LinkedIn will automatically alert you if your target pool is too small and allow you to make changes before you launch your ad.
Make Ads Mobile Friendly
Mobile is the way of the world, so you need to be sure any advertisement you launch on LinkedIn’s website also works well on mobile. In fact, LinkedIn notes that more than 70 percent of clicks on its platform come from mobile users.
Keep this stat in mind when you create your design piece to accompany your ad. Find the image dimensions that work best for you and stick to them; most likely, you should be using 10 mm x 10 mm.
Keep Your Ad Copy Short
To direct your target audience’s attention to your content, you want to include brief copy that speaks to them and (usually) includes a question compelling them to take some sort of action. Using a call to action is encouraged, but just make sure to keep your copy short. In fact, Buffer found that the ideal LinkedIn post copy should be around 25 words. That may seem short, but it should be plenty to get your point across.
Mind Your Budget
You can choose to spend your money through cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPI). We recommend using CPC, as CPI can spend your money faster without much engagement. However, if your main goals are increasing visibility and brand awareness, a lower-budget CPI can get you there. Spending good money on CPC leads to higher engagement in a small target audience.
LinkedIn provides a target budget you can follow depending on your total spend and the size of your target audience. It will also give you a range indicating what others are spending on ads similar to yours. We recommend staying within the lower end of this range, but if you feel that your post is not getting enough engagement, consider upping the budget a bit. You can also set a daily budget cap, ensuring that your full budget doesn’t get spent in one day, as well as an end time for your ad.
Monitor Analytics Daily or Weekly
The LinkedIn analytics tool allows you to track your performance in real time. Understandably, you may not have time every day to check your ads’ performance, but doing so really can help the more you update and adjust. This is especially important for ads that are A/B tested, as you may want to pause the ad that’s performing poorly and pour the rest of your budget into the high-performing ad.
For single ads, you can still adjust your budget according to performance. For some, you may need to up your daily budget to increase engagement. You may also discover a new target you want to include in your audience in order to expand your search area as well as increase engagement.
Final Thoughts
Every business should take advantage of the great analytics that LinkedIn provides for ads on its platform. With in-depth targeting capabilities and the freedom to create your own graphics and ad copy, you can advertise your brand the way you want and to the right people.
And if you need any help along the way, you’re not alone—LinkedIn also has customer service capabilities for issues that arise when sponsoring content. You can also set up appointments with ad professionals who can explain these details in more depth as well as provide insight into their performance measuring tools.
Take me home!
Read more blogs.
Contact us to learn more about LinkedIn sponsored content.