3 Quick Steps For Making Successful LinkedIn Ads

Because LinkedIn is a growing social media platform, it expands the advertising space and opportunities. Therefore, it would be best to take advantage of LinkedIn ads. You can hire a LinkedIn marketing professional or develop your LinkedIn ad strategy. This article discusses three things you can do to shape your LinkedIn ad strategy.

#1 – Setting Your Goals

If you have no plans for what your ads should achieve, there is no point in running them. Although ads can fulfill several goals, regardless of your aim for using the ads, you should focus on the objective and plan towards it. Having a clear goal makes it easier to follow the other steps discussed in this article. A list of goals ads can accomplish are;

Clicks: Traffic is a common goal for LinkedIn ads; You only want people to click on an ad and visit your website. 

Engagement: this aims at using your content and profile to increase engagement

Product promotion: this aims at promoting a new product or service such that your target audience is aware of its launch

Employee prospecting: if you’re hiring new employees, you can use ads to target them, and LinkedIn is perfect for advertising to potential employees.

Although goals you can achieve with LinkedIn ads are not limited to this list, hopefully, you have an idea of how to frame your ad campaign goals. Also, it would be best if you kept in mind that LinkedIn campaigns are not the same as a traditional campaign.

#2 – Aiming For The Right Audience

Precision is the most crucial thing in advertising. Having a firm grasp of your audience before thinking about the kind of ads you’ll use is essential. It is best to know who you’re targeting, what they like, and what they want to see; only then can you figure out what you want to show them.

With LinkedIn ads, you can target your audience using several filters, including job title, company name or field of work, experience, skills, education, and social factors like gender and age.

The filtering options help you tailor your LinkedIn ads to the precise people you want to see them. You only need to figure out how to use the tools for targeting the right people and let the algorithm do the rest.

#3 – Picking The Right Ad

After knowing your target audience, the next big step is picking the correct ad type. LinkedIn gives you various options to choose from when looking for ads to run. The three most significant ad types on LinkedIn are Sponsored InMail, Sponsored Content, and Text ads.

When LinkedIn members use the website or app, sponsored content ads appear on their feeds. These ads and other updates show on a user’s feed. The exposure level you want your ad to have on people’s feeds is used in calculating the cost of running the ads upfront. You can choose to use simple text or multimedia content like images or short videos to complement your text.

Text ads show on the LinkedIn website’s sidebar. Compared to sponsored content ads, text ads are not integrated into the LinkedIn experience. Therefore, they operate similarly to pay-per-click ads, which is, you pay for the ad based on how many people click on it. The advantage of text ads is that you get to know how effective your ad is by looking at the clicks. Nevertheless, text ads are not the most straightforward choice because it is more intrusive than sponsored content ads. Although text ads are usually cheaper, they are less effective than other ad types. Furthermore, because you are limited to using only text in text ads, you don’t have as much freedom as other ad types.

Sponsored InMail ads are sent directly to a user’s inbox. Although they are not seamlessly integrated into LinkedIn’s user experience, they directly address users. Sponsored InMail ads are more like personal messages sent privately and less like giant billboards shown to everyone. Since they function through LinkedIn’s messaging function, they’re text-based; however, you can add multimedia to the ads. The disadvantage of sponsored InMail ads is that they can be a hit or miss. Many people dislike advertising in their inboxes, giving off the wrong message to the people you’re trying to attract. It is necessary to be careful of your tone and approach. A dry approach may put people off quickly, while a too comfortable approach may look like a conversation instead of an ad, making people attempt to respond. You don’t want to manage many discussions. 

The ad type you choose depends on your target audience. Sponsored InMail or sponsored content ads are great if personalization is your goal. You can use text ads to reach a broad audience if you can get away with less. In addition, for the most exposure, you can use multiple ad types if it fits in your budget. Nevertheless, you have to be careful; overexposing your target audience to ads can put them off.

In the end, using LinkedIn as your only advertising and recruiting avenue or as part of your general marketing plan is a prudent investment.