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Your 2020 Guide to LinkedIn Advertising

LinkedIn is big for 2020. With so much change in demand for skills and businesses needing to pivot, it’s a valuable environment for many organisations. Yet lots of businesses have a tough time advertising on LinkedIn. It’s a relatively expensive platform and without a solid strategy, your cost-per-click is going to shoot up, and you won’t have much to show for it. In fact, LinkedIn asks companies to bid a minimum of $2 per click – that’s around £1.57. And the average cost per thousand impressions is around £6. 

In this article, we’re talking you through our 2020 guide to LinkedIn Advertising and the pros and cons of investing in paid media. You can also download our very helpful PDF LinkedIn Advertising Guide for free because we’re nice like that.

Why pursue a LinkedIn ad campaign?

If your product or service is relatively costly, this higher cost-per-click isn’t necessarily an issue. Especially when you’re able to position your brand in front of professional people, decision-makers and industry specialists. With four out of five members driving business decisions, it makes sense to factor LinkedIn into your marketing mix.

Companies that tend to do well on LinkedIn have high-value products and services. They are normally in the B2B sector and are happy to make an investment in advertising because they’ll likely turn a profit.

But to make a strong return on ad spend, your strategy has to be airtight. This is where plenty of businesses fall short. And why you need to think about where your customers are, what content they want to see, and how you can add value.

What does your acquisition funnel look like?

We’d always recommend thinking about your marketing acquisition funnel. In real life, this means thinking about where your customers are, and what content they need to see from you to encourage them to invest their brainpower, and eventually, their money. This will prevent budget wastage.

Mapping out your audience against a funnel will help you to understand how to treat people who know nothing about your brand, right through to those who may be ready to convert.

In terms of your LinkedIn campaign, this means drip-feeding your ad content. For people who are strangers to your offering, consider more brand-heavy stuff to help build awareness. Formats like Direct Sponsored Content and Dynamic Follower Ads can be effective here.

For those at the consideration phase, you need to help them research your brand. You could consider Conversation ads. These ads are delivered to a member’s inbox and provide them with several buttons to click on. This helps the recipient to research your brand, from one central point. Perhaps you could link to a white paper, a case study, and a contact page.

At the end of the funnel, you’ll find your ‘hot prospects’. Best case scenario: these people have witnessed your awareness content, engaged with your consideration content, and are now ready to convert. You can fire very specific message ads or more detailed Direct Sponsored Content at these people. This nudge tactic will help to push them into a buying decision.

Building an audience that works

Your content needs to be person-focused. People on LinkedIn aren’t searching for your ad content, they’re served your content based on who they are. Creating content that appeals to them directly will give you the best chance. To do this, the first step is to create your target audience. There may be several, and they may start quite broad (for your awareness content) and become more niche (when you reach the end of the funnel) but at all stages, they must be carefully built. 

LinkedIn lets you develop a refined audience that makes sense for your brand. You can curate audiences around job experience, education, demographic data, their company and interests. 

The better your initial builds, the more effective your campaign will be from the start.

A certain level of persona research needs to be conducted. This will help you to understand how to layer your targeting to create an audience that’ll help you get the most from your budget. 

Working with a performance media expert can help you to understand how to create audiences that work, using real data from your business activities.

A 2020 guide to LinkedIn advertising

Get to grips with B2B opportunities with our guide to LinkedIn ads. You’ll learn which ad formats suit which objectives, how price modelling works on the platform and how you can use Message and Conversation ads to drive conversions. Simply click below to download.

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