Successful LinkedIn Advertising in 4 Quick Steps

LinkedIn is a growing social media platform, offering expanding opportunities for professional outreach. LinkedIn advertising is a form of paid social media marketing that allows businesses to connect with a professional audience directly on the LinkedIn platform. Utilizing LinkedIn ads is a significant opportunity you should be taking advantage of. Here are four things that should shape your successful LinkedIn ad strategy.

1. Have Your Goals Set Out

There's no point in running LinkedIn ads if you don't have a specific plan for what you want your ads to achieve. These ads can be used to fulfill several goals. It doesn't matter which one you are using ads for as long as you keep your eyes on your ultimate objective and plan for it. If you have a clear goal, you will have an easier time getting the other steps in this article down. Here's a list of goals that help you optimize your LinkedIn Ad Performance:

• Clicks: You want people to click on the ad and visit your website. Driving traffic is probably the most common goal for LinkedIn ads.
• Engagement: This is when you want to increase engagement with your content and your company profile.
• Product promotion: When you have a new product or service you wish to promote to make your target audience aware of its launch.
• Employee prospecting: If you're looking to hire new employees, LinkedIn ads are an excellent way to reach them. LinkedIn is the perfect place to advertise to potential employees.

The list of goals isn't limited to this, but hopefully, this gave you an idea of how to frame your ad campaign goals. Remember that all this is on LinkedIn; it will not always be the same as a more traditional ad campaign.

2. Aim For The Right Audience

The most important thing when it comes to LinkedIn advertising is precision. You want to understand your audience before considering what ads you will push out. You need to know exactly who you're targeting and what they like and want to see, and then you can figure out what you will show them.

LinkedIn ads let you target people through a variety of filters, such as:

• Job title
• Experience
• Company name or general field of work
• Education
• Skills
• Social factors (age, gender, etc.)

Thanks to these filtering options, ads on LinkedIn can be tailored to precisely the right personages you want to see them. All you need to do is figure out how to use these tools to target the right people and let the algorithms do the rest of the work for you.

3. Pick The Right LinkedIn Ad Type

Once you know who you're targeting, picking the correct type of ad is the next big step. LinkedIn advertising offers a fair amount of variety when choosing the right ad. The three most significant options are Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Text Ads.

• Sponsored content ads are native advertisements that appear on the feeds of LinkedIn members while they use the website or app. These LinkedIn ads are mixed in with other updates on a user's feed. The cost of running sponsored content is calculated upfront based on the exposure you want on people's feeds. You can use simple text or complement your text with multimedia content like images or short videos.

• Text ads are advertisements that show up on the sidebar of the LinkedIn website. They are not as integrated into the LinkedIn experience as sponsored content ads and operate more similarly to pay-per-click ads—the more people click, the more you pay for the ad. The upside of text ads is that you can get a more precise idea of how your ad is effective (by looking at clicks), but given that it's more intrusive than sponsored content ads, it's not always the most straightforward choice. Text ads are usually cheaper but less effective than other LinkedIn ads. The most significant disadvantage of text ads is that you're limited to using text and don't have the same freedom as in other ad types.

• Sponsored InMail ads are a type of LinkedIn ad sent directly to a user's LinkedIn inbox. They are not integrated seamlessly into LinkedIn's user experience, but they are more directly addressed to them. Sponsored InMail ads feel less like giant billboards being shown to everyone and more like personalized messages being sent privately (because that's what it is). You have the freedom to add multimedia to these ads, but for the most part, they're text-based since they operate through LinkedIn's messaging function. The downside is that this ad type can be very hit or miss. Many people dislike having advertising directly in their inboxes, and you could give the wrong message to people you're trying to attract. Be careful with your tone and approach. If you're too dry, then people could easily be put off by you. If you're too comfortable, people may not even realize it's an ad and may attempt to respond—and you don't want to be managing that many conversations.

The type of ad you want to use will change depending on your target audience. If personalization is the most important thing, consider sponsored InMail or sponsored content ads. If you can get away with less and want to reach a broad audience, look at text ads. If your budget allows it, you can pick multiple ad types for the most exposure. Be careful, though - you don't want to overexpose your target audience to ads; it could put them off.

4. Pick The Right LinkedIn Ad Format

Each ad type allows for different ad formats, depending on your chosen type. Your ad's structure will largely depend on what kind of content you choose to include in your ad. Remember that some ad types cannot involve some formats (for example, text ads cannot incorporate videos), so not all formats can be applied to all ad types. Here are the main formats you can choose from:

• Single-image ads are a popular format on LinkedIn that consists of a simple ad with one carefully selected image accompanying some text.

• Carousel ads are an ad format exclusive to sponsored content where you can use more than a single image. They come in handy if you're trying to show off more than a single product you're launching or can't get the message across with just one image.

• Video ads are an interactive ad format that can deliver more information than text in the same space. With a video ad, you can show more than you could with one image and can also incorporate music or other sound effects to complement your ad better.

• Follower ads are a format designed to drive people to your LinkedIn page and get more followers. These ads are not about selling products and services; they are about growing your following on LinkedIn.

• Spotlight ads are an ad format specifically designed to advertise products and services. If you have a specific product you just launched and want to focus your ads on that product, spotlight ads are the best option.

• Job ads are a format used to invite potential employees to check out your company and see if they want to work with you. While not the most common ad format on most websites, there's no better place than LinkedIn to run job ads.

Overall, including LinkedIn as a part of a general marketing plan or as your only avenue for advertising and recruiting is a prudent investment.