As the biggest professional social network in the world, LinkedIn has grown with more “normal” percentages than the other big giants, but now counts over 700 million registered users and is growing rapidly.
Its mission is to “connect professionals from all over the world to make them more productive and successful”.
LinkedIn users can upload their resumes, search for new positions, learn about training opportunities, and update information about their career advancements and news.
Additionally to this “functional” use of the platform (to find work and / or customers), there is a softer one which is just as effective in the long run. It is a method for personal branding (promoting one’s position on the market as a professional) and employer branding (attracting the best professionals to a business). LinkedIn is visited by a good slice of users occasionally, but according to the data that can be interpreted by the LinkedIn campaign tool, there are millions of active senior profiles, including those of those in management and decision-making roles. LinkedIn is most active in the following sectors: IT, construction, retail, medicine, fashion, architecture, food & beverage, accounting, higher education, and financial services. Clearly, there are quite a few different areas to choose from.
“Pros” of LinkedIn Ads
No other social network has as much information about the professional profiles of its users.
Linkedin, on the other hand, has access to not only sociodemographic data, but also information about skills, roles, business functions, and the seniority of users, as well as information about companies (types of company and size, industry sector, location, etc…)
Therefore, it is easy to understand that every activity aimed at lead generation (generation of valuable contacts), especially from a B2B perspective, is unlike anything else on any other social platform if it is carried out on LinkedIn.
What are the cons?
As of today, there are still two main reasons why this platform should be used with caution for business purposes, certainly when combined with other channels.
Campaign costs: it’s not for everyone With the exception of Google Ads, which targets markets of manifest demand, LinkedIn Ads is the most expensive social advertising platform: CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) start at a base of € 2 and rise to a global average of $ 5.5, which allows you to test in a more limited way. CPC costs on Facebook can be as low as a few cents. The platform immediately gives a clear idea of the amount to invest, setting the minimum budget per campaign at € 10 a day: you realize how quick it is to spend thousands of euros every month. As a result, the best company for this type of advertising is one that is able to retain customers for a long time, because it can afford to spend a lot on reaching a lead.
In order to maintain the price within sustainable and profitable figures, it’s also important to design your sequential content well, and to master the technical aspects of LinkedIn advertising. Coverage and quality of the target are both important, since the topic has several facets. LinkedIn has more than 14 million members in Italy, with a penetration of 28% among over 18s (the data shows that France is 37% and the USA is 62%). Facebook, for example, has more than 34 million users.
From a qualitative standpoint, these are more profiled contacts, with a more business-oriented presence, and it isn’t as much of a “mass” social network as Facebook is. However, some data also lead to doubts about the quality of contacts in specific areas of business. It is possible that many users for your company are either not present or not actively using it. LinkedIn hasn’t taken off in so many areas, and it probably won’t. One of my clients, a Construction School, theoretically has the best business model to operate on LinkedIn (B2B, loyal audience, territorial target, etc. ), but the public of construction contractors hardly uses the platform at all, so we had to choose completely different channels.
LinkedIn advertising tools
Even so, it is a very useful tool when incorporated into an overall B2B web marketing strategy.
The Linkedin Campaign Manager tool allows you to create campaigns for all the main marketing objectives (from message coverage to conversion, through awareness and interaction).
Targeting
Platform tools can be strategically used to gather audiences at the middle of the marketing funnel. Examples include:
A target list based on job function, seniority, skills, as well as based on socio-demographic and psychographic variables The “Insight Tag” tool, which allows you to monitor all the people who visit your website, so that you can follow them on LinkedIn. Tracking tool compared to users who view certain video content on the platform. Having access to all the people whose email addresses you have on your platform, in compliance with GDPR regulations.
Lastly, it is now possible to create “lookalike” audiences, i.e. ones that are similar to the people in their address books or those who have already visited their websites in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics, interests, skills and qualifications. It is a very powerful tool, already widely applied in Facebook and Instagram advertising, which allows you to automate a whole series of steps, as long as you start from a target of customers (or potential customers) that are very homogeneous in terms of characteristics and intentions of purchase.
Placing ads
When it comes to positioning in the eyes of users, however, there are a number of possibilities (some of which are unique compared to other social networks): Text ads
This is the easiest and cheapest option. The most important elements of this type of advertising are text, images and a title, which can be arranged in several ways and displayed in different places on the platform, such as the top or right.
Messages in InMail
It is possible to send private messages through LinkedIn Messenger, similar to conventional email marketing methods.
Therefore, this is a very risky option, since you enter a space that the recipient of the message has not been given permission to enter, and therefore there is a high chance that the recipient will be blind to the message.The copy of the email is very important in this context.
Sponsored Content
As on Facebook, brands can publish content and promote it to an audience segmented by interests (not just articles and links, but also dynamic elements and videos). The solution is most appropriate for all those contents that are in the upper part of the marketing funnel, i.e. those that are more informative and entertaining than explicitly sales oriented.
Dynamic ads
Advertising that is generated dynamically, that is, based on the activity and profile of the user. Accordingly, if the platform detects similarities between a user and a brand, such as a similar location or skills, the advertising in the user’s feed will relate the user’s profile to that brand.
Display ads
In the case of display ads, which are similar to Google ads, they are programmatic advertising tools inserted in pages with the most traffic. Coverage and brand awareness are more important than conversions. Video and audio elements can also be incorporated into this type of advertising, along with the classic images and texts.
