Optimizing Your LinkedIn Ads Strategy

Since Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn for $26 billion, interest in the site has surged. It already boasts a community of 467 million total users in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

LinkedIn has been called “the king of B2B marketing,” with experts claiming it’s responsible for most online B2B leads. Yet, many businesses don’t have a robust LinkedIn ads strategy.

Understanding LinkedIn Ads: Start With Your Audience

LinkedIn is second to none when it comes to gathering professional information about its users – your prospects. So, you need to approach the platform with its unique value in mind.

Ask these questions:

  • What job titles do your prospects hold?
  • Where do your prospects work?
  • What skills or interests do they have?
  • What role do they have in their firm?

LinkedIn lets you target ads by company size, job title, level of education, and industry. You can also eliminate positions, skills, or companies from targeting – for example, to ensure competitors won’t see your ads.

Wide or Narrow Targeting for Your LinkedIn Ads?

Once you develop an audience for your ads, LinkedIn provides an estimated figure for their potential reach. While many brands start by experimenting with wide campaigns, smaller campaigns effectively micro-targeted to a niche audience often convert better.

If your audience is too small, select some Suggested Keywords to expand it. Suggested Keywords are automatically compiled by LinkedIn based on your audience. They include skills, brand names, and other terms closely related to your existing choices.

You can also use the Audience Expansion option. Audience Expansion extends your reach by targeting your ads to users LinkedIn deems “adjacent” to your core audience. While this can provide interesting insights, it also means a less targeted – and more costly – campaign.

Getting Right to the Point With Your Ads

LinkedIn recognizes that users are rarely looking for you at the moment they encounter your ad. The platform has some of the most succinct (some might even say restrictive) display options around. Every character counts!

LinkedIn’s standard Text Ads have the following parameters:

  • Headline: 25 characters to directly address a user pain point.
  • Description: 75 characters to entice and issue a call-to-action.
  • Image: 50×50 – images of professionals are often effective.
  • Destination URL: A customized offer landing page is best.

Text Ads appear only on desktop and see click-through rates between 0.005%-0.020%.

To boost these, consider Sponsored Updates. Sponsored Updates use updates from your Company Page that appear directly in users’ feeds. These can be items directly from your Company Page or they can use new content served only to your advertising audience.

No B2B brand should overlook LinkedIn. As with any digital ads, a long-term, analytics-focused strategy will yield the best results.