Imagine you’re the owner of a small business. You’ve been working hard to grow your company, and you’re ready to take it to the next level. You know that advertising is a great way to put your business in front of a highly targeted audience, and you’ve heard that LinkedIn is a great platform for advertising. But is LinkedIn advertising worth it?

Is Advertising on LinkedIn Worth it?

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face when it comes to LinkedIn advertising is figuring out whether or not it’s worth it. The truth is, there’s no simple answer to this question. It all depends on your specific business and marketing goals.

That said, there are a few things you should keep in mind when deciding whether or not to advertise on LinkedIn.

• LinkedIn is a great platform for reaching B2B customers. If your business sells products or services to other businesses, then LinkedIn is definitely worth considering.
• LinkedIn has a very engaged audience. People aren’t spending time on LinkedIn, they’re investing time. This means that your ads are being served to people who are actively looking for solutions to their business problems. And if you target your ads correctly, you’re going to see success.
• LinkedIn offers a number of different advertising options. LinkedIn has a unique set of advertising options which gives you a lot of flexibility when creating your ads. This makes it easy to find the right advertising option for your business.

So, is LinkedIn advertising worth it?

The answer to that question depends on your specific business and marketing goals.

But if you’re looking to reach a highly targeted audience of business professionals, then LinkedIn advertising is definitely worth considering.

How Does LinkedIn Advertising Work

LinkedIn advertising is a great way to put your business in front of a highly targeted audience.

But how does it work?

LinkedIn advertising is unique in that it uses object-based advertising. This means that advertisers can build their ad campaigns around specific business goals, rather than simply targeting a general audience.

Now that you understand the basics of LinkedIn advertising, it’s time to build your ad.

How to Create a LinkedIn Advertising Campaign

Creating a LinkedIn advertising campaign is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is follow a few steps:

• Choose a campaign objective. Your campaign objective will determine the overall goal of your campaign.
• Target your audience. This is arguably the most important step in creating a successful LinkedIn ad campaign. You’ll need to target your audience by location, job title, company size, and more.
• Select your ad format. LinkedIn offers a variety of different ad formats, so you can choose the one that best suits your business. Some of the most popular formats include text ads, sponsored messages, and lead generation forms.
• Set your budget and schedule. You’ll need to set a budget for your campaign and decide when you want it to run. You can also choose to have your campaign run continuously or for a specific amount of time.
• Build your ad. Once you’ve selected the type of ad you want to create, it’s time to create the actual ad. This is where you’ll add your headline, description, creatives, and call-to-action button.

LinkedIn ad objectives

LinkedIn offers a variety of different advertising objectives, each with their own goal. The most popular objectives include:

• Awareness: Brand awareness
• Consideration: Website visits, Engagement, and Video Views
• Conversions: Lead generation and Website conversions

Next, target your audience.

Target your audience

LinkedIn makes it easy to target your audience by providing a number of different targeting options.

Location

First, you want to select your audience location.

• Make sure to click on the edit icon on the right, and;
• Click on the “location” dropdown menu to select “permanent location”

This ensures your ads are being served to the people who live in the location you’ve targeted. This is a small, but important detail.

Attributes

Next, you need to select the attributes of your audience.

When targeting your audience, it’s important to select the attributes that best match your business. LinkedIn offers a variety of different attributes, including:

• Company: Company Growth Rate, Company Names, Company Revenues, Company Size
• Demographics: Age, Gender
• Education: Degrees, Field of Study, Member Schools
• Job Experience: Job Functions, Job Seniorities, Job Titles, Member Skills, Years of Exp.
• Interests and Traits: Groups, Interests, Traits

Each of these attributes can help you target your audience more accurately.

For example, if you’re a B2B company looking to target other businesses, you’ll want to target job titles like CEO, CFO, and CIO.

If you’re looking to target high-growth companies, you’ll want to select Company > Company Growth Rate > 20%+ company growth rate.

Here is a quick note: when targeting job experience, avoid using job titles because job titles are inconsistent across organizations (unless it’s the C-Suite). Instead, focus on job functions. Job functions tend to be more consistent amongst non-executives rather than job titles.

🔥 Another tip: Don’t forget to use the “exclude” function. Specifically, under Job Experience > Job Seniorities we will almost always exclude “unpaid,” “training,” and “entry” from our audiences.

Select Ad Format

LinkedIn offers a variety of different ad formats, so you can choose the one that best suits your business goals.

Types of LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn has a unique set of ad placements for media buyers to use, including the Sponsored Messages, which we will discuss below.

Single image ads

Image ads are a great way to grab attention and stand out in the LinkedIn newsfeed. With image ads, you can include a photo or video, as well as a headline and description. You can also include a CTA button, which will allow users to click through to your website or landing page.

Carousel image ad

Carousel ads are a great way to show off your products or services on LinkedIn. With carousel ads, you can include up to 10 photos or videos, as well as a headline and description. You can also include a CTA button, which will allow users to click through to your website or landing page. These ads show in the news feed.

Video ad

Video ads are a great way to engage your target audience on LinkedIn. With video ads, you can include a short video, as well as a headline and description. You can also include a CTA button, which will allow users to click through to your website or landing page. Your video ads are going to show up in the LinkedIn news feed.

Text ad

Text ads are a great way to reach your target audience on LinkedIn. With text ads, you can create a short headline and description that will be displayed in the right-column or top of the page on LinkedIn.

Message Ads

Message Ads deliver targeted messages featuring a single call-to-action (CTA) button. You can generate conversions using a Lead Gen Form or drive traffic to a landing page.

Conversation ad

LinkedIn conversion ads allow you to use up to five CTAs using different kinds of content in a single message. You can drive prospects to different landing pages or Lead Gen Forms and see how many people click on your content. This helps to determine how engaged they are in the conversation so you can optimize subsequent campaigns.

Select your placement

As you can see below, we almost always un-select “LinkedIn Audience Network” because (a) I don’t even know what the Linkedin Audience Network is, and (b) I want to ensure my ads are 100% on LinkedIn and not some obscure network I’ve never heard of.

Budget & Schedule

Finally, set your budget and schedule.

You’ll need to decide how much you want to spend on your campaign and when you want it to run. You can also choose to have your campaign run continuously or for a specific amount of time.

As you can see below, I am running a “daily budget” and I am running it “continuously,” meaning I don’t have a specific end date in mind.

🔥 Another tip: Don’t set an end date because… if your campaign is crushing it you don’t want the campaign to stop and interrupt your campaign’s momentum.

Build-Out Your LinkedIn Ad

Creating an effective LinkedIn ad campaign isn’t just about targeting the right audience or setting a budget.

It’s also important to create strong headlines and creatives.

(Interesting thought 🤔: as platforms rely more-and-more on machine learning, copy and creatives become more-and-more important because they are the last levers humans can pull.)

The headline is the first thing that users will see, so it’s important to make sure that it grabs their attention and makes them stop scrolling.

The same goes for the creative.

You want to make sure that it catches users’ attention and makes them want to learn more about the business.

Here is one of my favorite ads that I produced for a client. While it’s not perfect, what I really like about this ad is it has a great hook and uses video/motion to grab people’s attention.

LinkedIn Advertising HOT TIPS

🔥 Try targeting people based on “Job Function” as opposed to “Job Title” because a lot of decision-makers have weird job titles.

🔥 Combine the “Job Function” option with the “Seniority” option to reach decision-makers with a specific expertise.

🔥 If you’re looking to reach experience professionals, try combining “Years of Experience” with a “Seniority” level of “senior” and above.

🔥 Target educated professionals who might be interested in advanced degrees or continuing education by combining “Years of Experience” with “Degrees”.

🔥 Reach seasoned professionals by targeting “Years of Experience” with “Functions”.

🔥 Get in front of skilled experts when you combine “Years of Experience” with “Skills”.

🔥 We always EXCLUDE the following seniorities – unpaid, intern, and entry-level.

🔥 If you’re targeting small businesses – EXCLUDE 501-1000, 1001-5000, 5001-10,000, and 10,001+ under “Company Size”.

🔥 When using the “Interest” targeting option, pair it with “Seniority” or “Functions” to create a more relevant audience.

🔥 Use Message Ads to drive prospects directly to you Lead Gen Form for an easy way to generate more leads and higher-quality leads.

🔥 Test your audiences by setting up separate campaigns with a different audience in each campaign. For example, you might want to test “Job Titles” vs “Job Functions”. Isolate them in their own campaigns to track performance.

🔥 Don’t forget to use the “AND” feature to narrow your audiences. [It’s easy to miss this feature. Leaving you annoyed that your audience is too broad when you’re trying to narrow it. It’s because you have the “OR” option selected and not the “AND” option selected. Click on “OR” to change it to “AND” so you can narrow your audiences.

🔥 If you’re looking to generate B2B leads, use a 2-3 minute video in the top of the funnel. Then retarget people who have viewed at least 50% of the video with a lead magnet to collect their contact information.

The purpose of this strategy is to eliminate unqualified leads on the front-end. If somebody watches 50% of our 2-3 minute video then we can confidently assume they’re interested in our service. So when we hit them with our retargeting ad and lead magnet we know we have a high change of converting them into a lead.

To Wrap it Up

Linkedin Ads are a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes looking to reach a targeted and professional audience. Ready to see how Linkedin advertising can improve your business? Schedule an audit today.