LinkedIn ads are great for advertising, especially for businesses dealing with B2B customers. Because LinkedIn is a leading social media platform, over 774+ million professionals currently network on the platform. Therefore, you can find potential customers for your B2B business on LinkedIn. In addition, you can directly contact potential customers to generate leads, using target market research.
Although there have been recent complaints about spam messages, not-so-useful connections, and being sold continuously, this article discusses the best way to set up LinkedIn ads to connect your target customers without irritating them. In this guide, you can also learn how to choose a LinkedIn ads expert.
Dive in to find out how to use LinkedIn ads as your primary customer acquisition channel.
Choosing Your Target Audience
Although LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities are undisputed, it’s not worth it if you can’t use the platform’s targeting power in your marketing campaigns.
Before creating an advertisement, it is best to determine your ideal customer. You can make your marketing plan more comprehensive when you have a buyer persona. All marketing plans need a buyer persona, especially when targeting an audience. Furthermore, buyer personas effectively get you into the right mindset for creating an appealing and successful advertisement.
Ideally, your buyer persona should include your customer background, key demographics, and final goals. You should also include relevant identifiers, buzz words, problems and challenges, and the solutions you offer in the buyer persona.
You can create a buyer persona for LinkedIn ads in two ways;
1. Assessing Current Customers
You can create a buyer persona based on your previous and current customers. This method is especially suitable for businesses with much experience in the market and familiarity with the people involved
2. Identifying Key Traits
When narrowing down your audience on LinkedIn, the best identifying characteristic is the ideal job function. Therefore, a great way of marketing a high-value B2B product is by targeting customers through their job functions when searching on LinkedIn.
Afterward, looking at each profile can help you identify patterns, giving you insight into your niche audience’s potential similarities. These patterns help create a persona to target. Furthermore, you’ll be able to explore new areas on LinkedIn, helping you learn more about the market.
Creating LinkedIn Ads
After choosing your target audience, you’ve done most of the work. The next step is to create effective LinkedIn ads that resonate with your ideal clients. Since there are several ways of advertising on LinkedIn, you can customize each ad format to suit your target audience.
1. LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads
The LinkedIn sponsored content ads are suitable for delivering native ads to your target audience’s LinkedIn feed. These ads show on your audience’s desktop, tablet, or mobile phones. Furthermore, LinkedIn sponsored content ads are a way of advertising on social media, especially for businesses with content marketing efforts that reach the right people.
LinkedIn sponsored content ads can be further subdivided into;
Single Image Ads
Single image ads are easy and effective for reaching your target audience. They also contain only one single image.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads have a swipeable sequence of cards, allowing you to display multiple offers and products. Offering value and insight to your target audience are straightforward with this ad.
Video Ads
You can publish video ads through your LinkedIn Campaign manager or sponsored content. Recently, video ads have proven especially effective because the average customer watches about 100 minutes of video content daily.
Running a brand awareness program is great. Nevertheless, small businesses often do not have enough money for the program. There should be at least one conversion goal or measurable CTA for a successful sponsored ad campaign; this makes calculating how to gather leads once someone engages your content easier.
2. Text Ads
There is a clear distinction between LinkedIn text ads and the content that shows on your feed. Text ads are displayed on the side-tabs or banners on LinkedIn, helping you stand out from social media noise. Furthermore, designing text ads are simple since you only need to pay attention to copy and images.
Testing different versions of a text ad is easy. Although you can rely on A/B testing, text ads are very effective when you set them up properly. Nevertheless, running them can be costly.
Because LinkedIn specializes in B2B markets that can afford higher prices, the platform charges more for advertisements than other social media sites. Furthermore, LinkedIn does not have the same inventory compared to Facebook or Google.
Therefore, many advertisers compete for the same advertising space, increasing the price. Before creating text ads, be sure that you’ll get a return on investment.
You can make your text ads stand out by including your target audience’s job description in the click-through rate. Also, using a human face, preferably your friend, as your advertisement design instead of a logo, yields better results.
Furthermore, your tone should be clear and friendly. Writing in clear sentences ensures that your copy sounds natural and conversational.