5 Best Practices for Success with LinkedIn B2B Ads
Updated August 2022
Finding the right audience is essential to any B2B paid advertising campaign. To reach B2B buyers, it is no surprise that companies are leveraging a platform that provides direct access to more than 850 million business-focused individuals, including key decision makers and C-suite executives.
With such a broad reach, it’s clear that LinkedIn advertising is a gold mine for B2B advertisers. But how do you make the most of advertising on the platform?
1. Before You Create a LinkedIn Ad, Create Measurable Goals
Before rushing into advertising on LinkedIn, it is important to understand the goals you want to achieve. Ultimately, the choice of running ads on LinkedIn depends on what you want to achieve. Ideal goals for LinkedIn ads include:
- Building a Contact List: By offering a white paper or informational reports, companies can build out their contact list to further advertise to them in the future.
- Getting New Leads: Advertisers can also simply go right after the sale by offering a promotion or free demo of their product or service.
- Generate Brand Awareness: If leads are not the goal, advertisers can simply gain exposure through LinkedIn ads. Promoting specific events or a company blog are ways to help generate awareness.
- Attract New Talent: LinkedIn is also an ideal place to find highly skilled employees.
Make sure your goals are measurable and specific, for example: “generate 100 new qualified leads a month” or “increase contact list by 25%.” This makes it easier to track performance and tell when you’ve met your goals.
2. Monitor Bids Carefully; Expect to Pay More
LinkedIn’s ad space is highly competitive, so high bids can be necessary to remain competitive. In 2022, the average CPC for LinkedIn ads was $5.58. However, it’s worth noting that different industries and the type of person you’re trying to reach can impact the average CPC.
For example, reaching a junior employee will cost you $4.40 per click, while a senior decision maker can cost $6.40.
The high cost per click can make it difficult for advertisers to find the same success they see on other platforms. With an average CPC 5 to 6 times higher than Google Ads, conversion rate goals need to be increased that much to see the same cost per conversion.
That said, there are many successful strategies B2B advertisers can implement to get their conversion rate as high as possible, which will be discussed in the next steps.
3. Use Segmentation to Reach Your Target Audience
LinkedIn’s bread and butter is its ability to bring the business world together. That means if your target audience is more consumer-focused, LinkedIn might not be a good fit.
For users who are targeting business professionals, as most B2B businesses are, LinkedIn offers a wide variety of targeting options to hit the right target audience. These options include:
- Company & Job: Advertisers can drill down to a user’s job and company information, including job title, seniority, company name, industry, and company size.
- Demographics: Target users based on location, age, and interests.
- Remarketing Lists: Upload a list of current customers or site visitors and show ads to users who have already interacted with their site.
- Email List: Advertise to LinkedIn users already on your email list.
4. Choose the Right LinkedIn Ad Type
LinkedIn offers several types of ads with specific goals, including:
- Sponsored Content: These ads resemble a piece of content in users’ LinkedIn feed. They include multiple lines of text and an image. LinkedIn even offers the ability to put a form right in the ad, making this an ideal choice for advertisers looking to build a contact list.
- Text Ads: With text ads, advertisers can craft a small message with a company logo next to it. These ads are best for companies looking for more brand awareness on LinkedIn.
- Direct Messages Ads / AKA Sponsored InMails: InMail ads allow advertisers to send a personalized message to their target audience using LinkedIn’s internal messaging system. If you want to be a bit more direct and detailed, this type of ad is a solid choice.
5. Continually Test Your LinkedIn Ads
Just like all paid advertising, it is important to continually experiment with new ad copy to find the images and text that resonates with the target audience. It can also help ensure ad copy remains fresh, so users don’t see an ad more than a few times.
A true A/B test means changing just one feature of an ad to see which converts at a higher rate. For example, using a different CTA or image or ad copy. Run ads for a few days (ideally a week) and keep the version that converts.
With LinkedIn ads, however, it gets more complicated. You’ll also want to ensure you’re getting quality conversions, so keep an eye on metrics further down the funnel, such as average order size or time to conversions.
Pay attention to how long an ad runs. If you’re advertising to a small group of people, a single user might see your ad multiple times, which can get annoying. Create a consistent schedule for rotating ads. The time frame for ad rotation depends on how big your audience is. If the group is small, look into rotating every week. If the group is big, every other week or once a month would be fine.
While the goal can remain the same, elements such as images and ad copy should be changed regularly to keep the content fresh. Ultimately, this will help avoid ad fatigue and improve an ad’s click-through rate.
Final Thoughts
As B2B companies look to find new ways to reach their target audience, LinkedIn immediately comes to mind thanks to its unique, business-focused audience. It should be recognized that the platform is different from other social media platforms, such as Facebook, and should be treated as such in order to drive results.
By following these best practices, advertising success in the B2B world of LinkedIn can be found.
For more guidance and information on LinkedIn Ads, check these other helpful KoMarketing posts: