LinkedIn - Paid Ads with Matthew Dahly
In 2021, digital advertising was $183.1 billion accounting for 64.2% of all ad dollar allocation (1). It was reported that $58.8 billion in ad spend including platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter (1). LinkedIn alone was estimated to be around 1.6B making up 32% of B2B display ad spend (2). It’s clear that social media paid advertising is making a big impact on how marketers are reaching their customers. But how can you make sure that your ad is having the impact you want.
Matt Dahly, Paid Media Planner at the Razr Marketing Agency, has worked in digital marketing for the last ten years. He has managed successful campaigns for clients across different industries and platforms. Matt took the time to explain the when, how, and why of paid advertisements on LinkedIn.
Who should and should not use LinkedIn Advertising?
LinkedIn advertising is a phenomenal resource for B2B marketers. LinkedIn is the only platform that offers extensive data on users’ work history and professional skillset, allowing marketers to target very specific industry and job title data points that are not available on any other platform.
Due to this detailed targeting, LinkedIn tends to have a slightly higher price tag on results and would not be recommended for smaller businesses getting started with advertising. Medium to Larger businesses with higher budgets will have more room for testing and optimizing to get in front of these specific audiences. The higher price tag does provide higher quality and highly targeted leads/traffic, and is a great base to get users into a business’s funnel to use in remarketing efforts.
Businesses looking to target B2C users will benefit more from other channels such as Paid Search and Social Advertising, as these platforms are better for targeting users based on their interests and online activity rather than their professional details.
What are the biggest mistakes you see people make when approaching digital ads?
One of the biggest mistakes I see marketers make on LinkedIn is trying to go straight for the lead using “Lead Form” ads. While this ad placement is fantastic for users who are further along in the funnel and familiar with your brand, it is not the most efficient first touch for users seeing your ads for the first time.
Targeting users with lead forms too early can provide a barrier to entry that they are not ready for, which will then create a high cost per lead result. Targeting users too early also opens up room for obtaining too many leads that are not right for your business, or not ready to take that next step.
To avoid this, utilize more awareness content and video content that you can then use to retarget users who have visited your website or watched your video. These engaged users are much warmer for then providing valuable content that would require a form completion.
What are some of the different types of ads people can run on LinkedIn, and when should they be used?
There are some great ad formats available on LinkedIn, the most commonly used is the “Newsfeed” ad placement, which appears in the feed for each user. Ads appear every 4-5 posts. Other placements, sometimes underused but valuable, are the “Text Ads”, which can appear at the top or right column of a user’s page, as well as “Dynamic Ads,” which always appear on the right column. Users may be familiar with Dynamic ads as they are commonly used for recruiting (Ex. “This company is hiring!”) and the user’s profile picture is paired with the company logo. Dynamic ads are also the placement for gaining new followers to a business’s page, giving the user the option to follow a company right within the ad.
Message and conversation ads can be a very expensive option and are only used to target users in a low funnel stage. These placements should also only be used for businesses with higher budgets, as LinkedIn will only send a user so many messages in a certain time period, making this placement type much more competitive.
How can you make your ad stand out on LinkedIn?
Ensuring your ads stand out is important now more than ever with the overflow of content available to users. Marketers can do this by incorporating more video/animated content in their ad placements, to grab the user’s attention. It is also helpful to ensure you have multiple ads within your campaign so LinkedIn can both optimize and show the top-performing creative more often. And to ensure that the placements do not go stale, LinkedIn will only show your ad a certain number of times to each user.
How do you keep up with the changes LinkedIn makes to its platform?
As a media strategist, I am always keeping up-to-date with changes from Podcasts and YouTube videos. LinkedIn also has a fantastic advertising course that gives you all of the current details on their platform and best practices in building out campaigns for users of all skill levels.
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1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2021/12/08/agencies-agree-2021-was-a-record-year-for-ad-spending-with-more-growth-expected-in-2022/?sh=1dbd1cf7bc69
2 - https://www.emarketer.com/content/linkedin-holds-third-of-all-us-b2b-digital-display-ad-revenue
