LinkedIn has come a long way since its beginnings in 2002 and has become a big part of how many B2B businesses create demand and grow their revenue. In 2018, as many as 65% of B2B marketers have acquired customers by using ads on LinkedIn. For many, LinkedIn isn’t always the go-to choice for pay-per-click campaigns with Facebook and Google Ads being the first port of call.
Despite this, advertising on LinkedIn does have its benefits and will help certain brands reach specific business goals. Forward-thinking companies are using the platform as an awareness channel to push users down the funnel and ultimately create more B2B business opportunities.
Decision-makers on Linkedin are more predisposed to research for possible tools and services for his/her company. But also, to listen to proposals, sales pitches, and react to relevant ads that offer solutions.
Currently, the platform has over 660 million members, but many are still asking: should my company be advertising on LinkedIn?
What is the true potential of LinkedIn?
Many advertisers are drawn to LinkedIn targeting abilities which include targeting users by job title, company name, years of experience, member groups, location, and more. Combined with some decent retargeting options and ad formats, the platform does provide you with all the tools to reach the decision-makers that matter to your business.
The cost per click on the platform is much higher than Facebook or Google ads, there’s no denying that, but it’s the specificity with which you can reach people within certain organisations or people at a certain level in an organisation.
Being able to get your product or offering in front of these highly sought-after audiences is why you pay a premium on the platform.
Who should use it?
From our experience, there’s no ‘perfect fit’ for the platform but companies that fit into the below 3 categories do tend to have more success in general
1. Your customer lifetime value is £10k and above
2. Your target audience regularly engaging on the platform
3. You have a strategy to nurture users (an effective sales team)
Before you do anything, you should identify what stage of the buying cycle your audience is. If you have a product with a longer sales cycle or consideration phase then you can safely assume the majority of your audience isn’t ready to buy yet.
Once you know this, you can then decide which content you can show your audience to move users down the funnel.
Account-based Marketing Opportunities
LinkedIn is a great tool for companies that need to target specific accounts. The platform gives you a wide variety of criteria to do this that many other advertisers don’t. As well as being able to target specific attributes you can also upload your account list.
Demand Gen vs Lead Gen on Linkedin
Most of your audience is not ready to buy. So, the goal of marketing on LinkedIn is that when they are, your brand is front of mind. If you’re advertising on LinkedIn for short-term, transactional wins then the platform can be very costly and perhaps isn’t right for your business.
But how are companies making the most of the platform? The majority of companies advertising here tend to have two mindsets:
1. Demand Generation (lead by brand awareness)
2. Lead Generation
Demand Gen
This is breaking free from a transactional lead gen mindset & adopting new metrics for awareness channels. Demand gen focuses on brand awareness and education at the top of the funnel. Once you gain the trust of your audience, you’ll start collecting compound interest in the form of warmer leads, inbound opportunities, and much higher close rates.
When visibility from LinkedIn is optimised correctly, marketing spend decreases, or you’re able to scale advertising profitably.
Lead Generation
This is mainly using the platform to generate new business opportunities via a lead gen form or an external landing page. LinkedIn Ads are more expensive, so you want to do everything in your power to keep performance high and costs low. LinkedIn does not excel when your ads encourage users to ‘book a call’ or ‘Get a demo’ because your offer is too heavy. It’s not uncommon for your cost per lead to be around £100-£150 when you shoot straight for the bottom of the funnel.
This leads nicely onto one of the most important parts of LinkedIn Ads, you’re offer.
Offer
Your offer is by far the most important part of advertising on LinkedIn.
If your offer is too light, ie: “come and read this blog post”, you’ll end up paying LinkedIn premium prices for traffic to go to a page with an inherently low conversion rate. You’re certainly providing value, but at some point, you’ll have to explain why you’re paying so much for someone to simply read a blog post.
If your offer is too heavy, ie: asking for a phone call with a sales rep, get a demo, trial a software, or even buying something right now- LinkedIn doesn’t excel here unless the offer is incredible.
Work on your offer fitting into the middle zone. Gated content can work well here where the subject of the content is something valuable that people are willing to give their email address and contact information in exchange for it
That’s all from me today folks. Thanks for taking the time to read this blog and if you’re wondering if LinkedIn advertising could be a good option for you then don’t hesitate to get in contact with us. We’d be glad to help!
