Creating LinkedIn ads

To create ads on LinkedIn, you need a LinkedIn company page – not just your own personal profile.

To ensure you reach the right audience, LinkedIn paid ads give you a choice of:

• Target audience
• Advertising campaign objectives
• Advertising formats

Combining these together increases conversion rates because your advertising is very focused.

For all LinkedIn ads, you need to specify where in the world you want them to be seen. This can be as wide as the whole country or as specific as a particular town or city.

You can further refine your target audience with the demographics you want to reach, including education, work experience, seniority, company size and interests.

LinkedIn also allows you to target your advertising at specific industries though audience selection. The category ‘Company industry’ means you can focus on members who work in a particular sector. (The one small downside of this is, where a company operates in several sectors, only the primary industry sector listed on its LinkedIn profile will be recognised.)

LinkedIn offers three different advertising objectives, to help businesses build their advertising around specific goals.

They are:

• Awareness – get your brand name known
• Consideration – if your brand is already familiar to your audience, this will help with website visits, engagement, visits to other social media etc.
• Conversion – the audience is already familiar with your brand and ready to make a decision to buy

LinkedIn has 11 different ad formats to help businesses meet their objectives.

These are:

• Single image ads – look similar to regular content, but are marked as ‘promoted’. Good for brand awareness, website visits, engagement and job applications
• Carousel ads – swipeable row of images to tell your brand’s story or showcase products. Use three to five images (cards) to start with and test by adding more at a later date. Good for brand awareness, website visits and lead generation
• Conversation ads – like a flowchart, with the audience able to choose their own path. These can have multiple calls to action (CTAs). Good for brand awareness, website visits, engagement and lead generation
• Document ads – allow you to share PDFs, presentations, reports, white papers and more. Good for brand awareness, website visits, website conversions and lead generation
• Video ads – can be used to showcase your brand and products in a variety of ways. The most effective videos are 30 seconds or less. Good for brand awareness and video views (eg YouTube content)
• Event ads – increase an event’s reach and highlight important details (you must first create a LinkedIn event on your page before making an event ad). Good for brand awareness, website and landing page visits and event sign-ups
• Follower ads – these are dynamic ads personalised to your audience. They promote your LinkedIn page to encourage them to hit the follower button. Good for brand awareness, engagement and website visits
• Lead generation forms - available for message ads and sponsored content. They help you discover more qualified leads eg by connecting a lead gen form to your CTA. Good for lead generation
• Spotlight ads – highlight your products, services, content and more. These use personalisation to connect with audiences. Clicking a spotlight ad will take a visitor straight to your landing page or website. Good for brand awareness, website visits, lead generation and job applicants
• Single job ads – job ads promoted directly in your audience’s news feed. These ads have a 25% increase in click to apply rate and 52% decrease in cost per applicant.
• Thought leader ads – are used to promote content from a thought leader within an organisation – whether that is the founder, CEO or a team member. You can’t add headlines, explanatory text or CTAs to thought leader ads. Good for engagement and brand awareness
  

Whatever ad format you choose, you should craft your ad copy around a clear call to action. Your audience is busy. They want to know what to do next when they see your ad, so make it easy for them! Effective CTAs include ‘Sign up now!’, ‘Start now’ or ‘Tell me more’.

The important thing is to make sure your CTA matches the objective you originally selected for your ad (ie awareness, consideration or conversion).
Once you have selected your target audience, your ad objective and your ad format, you need to work on creating your budget and schedule. The cost to advertise with LinkedIn will vary. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager will provide a budget range based on other competing bids for your ideal audience. This allows you to place competitive bids for your ads to win placement in the best possible positions to reach your target audience.

Campaign Manager is also where you will see how your ads are performing and converting. The initial two to four weeks of an ad campaign are generally where you find out what works and what doesn’t, so you can make changes for future ads.

If you are running a B2B company and want to reach an engaged audience of business professionals, you need to be using paid ads on LinkedIn. They are a cost-effective way to promote everything from webinars and job ads through to product and service launches.

Research by HubSpot shows that LinkedIn ads have a 6.1% conversion rate, compared to 2.58% for Google search ads. By using LinkedIn’s paid ads, you have the potential for real business success.