Many companies already rely on social networks for their digital marketing. But not every platform is suitable for the specific target group. Especially if you are active in the business-to-business sector, the use of LinkedIn Ads can be interesting for you. We present the advantages and disadvantages of LinkedIn Ads and which formats the career network from the USA offers advertisers.
The Advantages of LinkedIn Ads
Professional Targeting
LinkedIn Ads manages to do what Facebook, Google Ads, and Co. cannot do, or only to a limited extent: A targeting based on information about the user’s profession and career as well as attributes of the employing company. Finally, LinkedIn users willingly disclose this information on the network, allowing advertisers to leverage the information shared. Want to play your ads only to decision-makers? No problem! Only mid-sized companies are of interest to you? Here you go!
The B2B Secret Weapon
As intended by LinkedIn, its users want to network here with like-minded people or seek new contacts that can be of use to them professionally. So, if your business objective is not to sell sneakers but to find business and collaboration partners or to do digital recruiting, LinkedIn Ads are perfect. After all, the primary motivation is already there when you sign up for LinkedIn.
No Detours: Lead Gen Forms
With Lead Gen Forms explicitly created in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, you can get your recipients to fill out a contact form directly in LinkedIn. The detour via a possibly foreign website is eliminated, and the user remains in the environment that is familiar to him.
Personalized Advertising
Thanks to various macros, you can customize your sponsored messaging to the recipient in an automated way, making it seem more personal.
The Disadvantages of LinkedIn Ads
The Costs of LinkedIn Ads
No matter which format you choose (more on this below), LinkedIn requires a minimum budget of CHF 10 per day. Furthermore, click prices are sometimes relatively high, depending on your target audience and how many other advertisers are vying for this user base. Therefore, click prices between CHF 8 and 10 are not uncommon.
Not A Sales Channel
As good as LinkedIn Ads is for making new contacts, it works poorly for selling products. We, therefore, advise against selling products via LinkedIn, even if you only sell shoes for restaurateurs or glasses for IT professionals.
No Affinity Targeting
Unlike Facebook, Google Ads, and Co., affinity targeting is currently not (yet) possible on LinkedIn. So you cannot focus on marketing specialists with a penchant for hiking. But who knows, with Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn in 2016, we cannot rule out that this feature will be rolled out in the future. After all, it is now already possible in Microsoft Bing to focus on LinkedIn profiles. So why not the other way around: Use the Affinity Audiences from Bing in LinkedIn one day?
Difficult Remarketing and Contact Targeting
In principle, it is possible to use existing contacts as targeting for LinkedIn Ads. However, the implementation is becoming increasingly difficult. To do this, you need a list of at least 300 LinkedIn contacts, for each of which you know the mail address, name, device ID, and Google ID. Presumably, things will also change here in the future, and more CRM providers will enable an import.
Even for simple remarketing of your website visitors, you need at least 300 visitors, each with a LinkedIn profile. Especially for smaller website operators, some browsers only store cookies for a few days, making things even more difficult. Thus, sometimes this list doesn’t fill up. And with Apple’s iOS 14 security update, you can almost completely exclude remarketing for users who use the LinkedIn app.
Overview of LinkedIn Ads Formats
- Single Image Ads: Use an image and up to 150 characters of posting text to attract attention in your target audience’s LinkedIn feed.
- Carousel Image Ads: You already know the carousel format from Facebook or Google Discovery? You can also use it on LinkedIn to combine different content in one ad.
- Video Ads: Use up to 30-second MP4 videos to attract the attention of LinkedIn users. But beware: especially on the job, most use LinkedIn without sound, so your video needs to be meaningful even when muted.
- Text Ads: You don’t want to appear in the LinkedIn feed at all? With Text Ads, you can easily create ads without image assets shown on the website’s right-hand side.
- Message Ads: Send messages to your target audience that, with the relevant sender, even look quite personal and arrive in the recipient’s inbox as a tagged message.
- Conversation Ads: Send messages with which your recipients can interact, like with a chatbot. Different call-to-action buttons allow the recipient to customize their interaction to their needs.
Conclusion
LinkedIn Ads offer companies with B2B objectives many opportunities to reach their target audience. The more extensive portfolio of ad formats allows you to customize the ads to your key message and generate leads accordingly.
If you are unsure which format best suits your approach, do not hesitate to contact us!
