A Beginners Guide To LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn ads are a useful tool for expanding your brand’s reach and getting your brand’s message and voice across to your target audience.

There are many misconceptions about the influence of  LinkedIn. Many business owners focus on the more “trendy” social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, when they craft their marketing strategies, falsely believing that LinkedIn is a dying platform or that it is difficult to engage users on LinkedIn.

However, these thoughts could not be further from the truth.

LinkedIn is a thriving platform, and it offers one-of-a-kind advertising tools that can help brands significantly boost their leads, conversions, and profitability.

This guide will walk you through the types of advertising available on LinkedIn, as well as ways you can use LinkedIn ads to grow your business.

Types of LinkedIn ads

While LinkedIn offers many types of advertising that you have probably seen and used on other social media platforms, they also have some unique advertising features that can help you take your brand to the next level.

Here are the types of LinkedIn ads that your business can use:

Sponsored content

These ads show up in the LinkedIn newsfeed:

• Single image ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Event ads

Sponsored messaging

These ads allow you to have direct communication with specific users and members of your target audience:

• Conversation ads
• Message ads

Text and dynamic ads

These personalized ads show up on a LinkedIn user’s right rail:

• Pay-per-click text ads
• Spotlight ads
• Follower ads

Because there are so many different types of advertisements available through LinkedIn, your business is able to use LinkedIn ads to fulfill specific business goals.

For instance, if your brand is trying to increase its number of followers, LinkedIn’s follower ads will be beneficial. If your brand wants to use a “choose-your-own-path” communication strategy to converse with a potential customer, conversation ads will help. If your brand wants to draw users to a specific page on your website, spotlight ads will make a difference.

The precision, accuracy, and customization of LinkedIn ads helps them stand out from traditional advertising platforms and allows them to give brands distinct advantages that they aren’t able to gain from other social media sites.

Benefits of LinkedIn ads

When most people talk about social media ads, they are referring to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

But just because LinkedIn doesn’t seem like a conventional social media platform does not mean that there aren’t benefits to creating and using LinkedIn ads.

Here are a few advantages that can come from using LinkedIn advertising campaigns:

Outreach

LinkedIn ads can help you get your message across to influential people. 

With many social media platforms, your advertisements are reaching consumers who you hope will purchase your products or services.

While you can still reach this goal on LinkedIn, an added benefit is that LinkedIn has many stakeholders and decision-makers that will help you spread your reach to other businesses as well as professionals, executives, and other major stakeholders.

There are over 830 million professionals on LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn, four out of five of these professionals drive business decisions.

If you are advertising on LinkedIn, you are reaching people who have the power to make influential business decisions on behalf of different businesses and organizations. This can help your B2B outreach and significantly increase your conversion rate.

Targeted advertising

LinkedIn ads allow you to target a niche audience so that you can reach your performance and advertising goals.

You can target an audience based on a variety of factors, including industry or field, job experience, location, educational background, job title, professional interests, and more.

When you use LinkedIn to advertise, you gain access to industry-related filters that help you target your audience with more accuracy than what is possible on any other platform.

Why waste money advertising to people who aren’t going to convert? With LinkedIn ads, you can advertise to the audience that is going to benefit your brand, allowing you to make the most of your advertising budget.

Lead generation

A LinkedIn report shows that the platform is the #1 platform for generating leads. With LinkedIn’s lead ads, businesses can generate, nurture, and convert leads with ease.

Unlike most social media platforms, brands have to entice users to visit their website to start the sales funnel or gain conversions. LinkedIn has tools that help brands boost conversions without needing to attract platform users to their website.

LinkedIn also offers Lead Accelerator, a tool that, according to LinkedIn, helps businesses identify and target high-value audiences, provide relevant advertising, and increase conversion rates.

When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn ads are one of the most effective tools a brand can integrate into their marketing strategy.

Personalization

LinkedIn offers Sponsored InMail, which allows your business to send customized messages to active users that you are trying to reach.

Sponsored InMail messages receive higher click-through rates than traditional emails, and they are a unique advertising tool that only LinkedIn has to offer.

You can use this tool to market a specific product or service, connect with specific users, and encourage users to complete specific calls to action. 

With the level of personalization LinkedIn provides through Sponsored InMail, you can be sure that your message is reaching your intended audience and providing information that they will find valuable and relevant.

Increased conversions

Research shows that LinkedIn ads convert users to leads at higher rates than many other advertising methods, including Google search ads.

If you’re looking for a way to boost your conversion rate, LinkedIn ads are a tried and true resource that will make a difference for your business.

Creating an ad on LinkedIn

Considering the benefits that LinkedIn ads have to offer, you may want to start using these ads as a part of your brand’s marketing strategy.

Here are the steps you need to take to create and launch an ad on LinkedIn:

1. Create a LinkedIn page for your business. Make sure you are creating a company page using a company name and email address.
2. Create a Campaign Manager account. Campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s advertising platform, and you will need to have an account in order to launch any advertising campaigns.
3. Set an objective in Campaign Manager. This will help you see the specific ads that will be right for your brand’s goals.
4. View the different types of advertising formats available on LinkedIn. Consider your specific goals and the types of LinkedIn ads that will best help you reach these goals.
5. Create a target audience in Campaign Manager. 
6. Choose your desired LinkedIn ad format.
7. Set your daily budget and schedule for your advertising campaign.
8. Create and preview your ads. Don’t forget about LinkedIn’s A/B testing features.
9. Launch your advertising campaign!

Best practices for creating LinkedIn ads

While there are only a few simple steps that you need to follow to create and launch an ad campaign on LinkedIn, there are more factors you will want to consider for your advertising campaign to be successful.

As you follow the steps above, here are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Personalize everything. For your dynamic ads, make sure you check the box allowing your target user’s profile photos to show up in the right rail ads. For sponsored messaging ads, include the user’s first name and job title.
• Customize your ads. Use custom background images for your spotlight ads.
• Expand your reach. When you use follower ads, make sure you aren’t including existing followers when you are creating a target audience. Get your follower ads in front of a new audience.
• Be clear. Make sure your headlines and copy are as clear as possible. Your audience shouldn’t be confused about your call to action or any other information you present in your ads.
• Be concise. Try to keep your headlines under 150 characters and your descriptive copy under 70 characters to increase engagement.
• Include a call to action. Make sure the people who see your ads know exactly what actions you would like for them to take. Each and every one of your LinkedIn ads should have a clear call to action.
• Test everything. Test your headlines, images, copy, and advertising layout to see if there are changes you can make that will improve your ads and make them more effective.
• Use images. Include images in your pay-per-click text advertisements to attract users. Add visuals to your LinkedIn ads whenever possible.
• Add hyperlinks. Adding hyperlinks to your sponsored messaging ads can increase engagement and click-through rates.
• Provide value. Switch up your content regularly, and provide information that your target audience will find useful, interesting, and valuable. Try analyzing a recent news event related to your field, sharing information about an innovative new product in your industry, or answering frequently asked questions with your content.
• Track your results. Campaign Manager provides reports that can help you track the performance of your advertising campaigns. Keep a close eye on the metrics in these reports so that you know if and when you need to adjust your campaigns.

When used effectively, LinkedIn ads can be a game changer for your brand. 

Create a free company account on LinkedIn today, and see how LinkedIn ads can step up your marketing strategy and positively impact your business.