Recently we have seen huge growth in ways through which brands and advertisers are able to reach their target audience through a variance of social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are increasingly providing opportunities to reach these target individuals on a personal and contextual level. Delivering content that fits user motivations, lifestyle and brand preferences.
Whilst the above offers an abundance of opportunities for the B2C marketer, we must also begin to transfer such tactics and apply these to the B2B environment. Here, LinkedIn has emerged as the obvious platform. As the largest professional networking platform with 430 million users, LinkedIn instantly provides the ability to connect with like minded business individuals. Although classed as a social platform, the network permits and accepts the direct and corporate approach that is within the very nature of building B2B relations.
When looking further into the profile of LinkedIn users, not only are these individuals more likely to be educated to a degree standard or higher, they are also more likely to have high household incomes and hold positions of authority within organisations. LinkedIn has also been identified as the only social networking platform that has a higher usage among individuals classified within the age category of 50-64 years old than those of 18-29. Each of these user demographics provide further confirmation as to why LinkedIn, should at the very least be tested for those brands and organisations looking to reach out and establish relationships with other businesses!
Where specific users are able to connect with individuals on a personal level, LinkedIn has begun to offer increased opportunities of advertising your business using an array of advertising formats and targeting criteria. Here, we can explore these further:
LinkedIn Advertising Formats
The more popular LinkedIn ad formats are Sponsored Content and Text Ads. Sponsored Content is a Company Page update (shared posts with company, promotions, industry news articles, presentations etc) promoted and pushed out to a pre-defined and targeted audience. Sponsored Content ads appear in the feed located on the homepage profile of each LinkedIn user. When planned correctly, and given the value of the content being used, this format has been suggested to generate 15 times the rate of engagement of job postings on the platform!
Text & Image Ads usually appear on the right hand column of the LinkedIn interface under ‘Ads You May Be Interested In’ and also as text link advertisements located at the top of the homepage (desktop device only).These ads feature a headline, description and optional 50 x 50 image.
Other LinkedIn ad formats include Sponsored InMail, Display Ads, and Dynamic Ads. When considering using each ad format, the platform allows advertisers to create up to 15 variations of the advert allowing for consistent optimisation and testing!
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the platform, Fantastic Media will be testing such formats over the coming weeks as identified above. In relation to this, we will look forward to reporting back our results and providing further recommendations and tips on the platforms best advertising practices!
