Effective advertising on LinkedIn — a platform for professionals
The most significant difference that stands out when comparing popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter with LinkedIn comes down to the users’ intentions. General-topic platforms allow publishing any content (permitted by their terms), which is then commented on or shared. LinkedIn users visit the platform for completely different purposes, with the most important being:
- job or employee search,
- gaining knowledge from industry specialists,
- obtaining expert opinions,
- finding business partners,
- building personal and company image.
LinkedIn is not limited to just these aspects. It is currently a truly dynamically growing platform for professionals. Currently, LinkedIn boasts approximately 600 million active users (including over 2.6 million in Poland) across more than 200 countries and is undisputedly the most popular and effective platform for conducting active B2B activities. The ability to directly contact specific individuals, usually with established industry positions, acquire business contacts, and even the possibility of headhunting puts LinkedIn at the forefront of business platforms in Poland and worldwide. The overwhelming majority of Polish managers maintain and manage their profiles on LinkedIn.
Reaching decision-makers from selected management areas, acquiring new contractors, or recruiting for specialist positions on LinkedIn are now even more effective thanks to LinkedIn Ads — the platform’s comprehensive advertising system. Skillful management of LinkedIn Ads campaigns, although more expensive compared to Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaigns, allows for valuable results in the context of business development. LinkedIn Ads’ advantage over other advertising campaigns stems directly from the ability to precisely reach a narrow group of specialists in a given field, the ability to target advertising messages to various precisely defined industries, and options for automatic bid optimization to achieve the most favorable conversion cost possible. LinkedIn has one more significant advantage. It’s the high level of trust in published content. Thanks to this, there is a very high chance of achieving the desired advertising results. LinkedIn is most commonly used to build and develop such business aspects as:
Professional brand image
A few years ago, LinkedIn was mainly associated with HR activities. Currently, with an increasing number of over 600 million users, it is a place to establish valuable business relationships and build a professional company and brand image.
Customer base
Targeting offers to precisely selected audience groups (based on selected user characteristics), as well as using forms to obtain specific responses from potential customers, allows for building effective databases and tailoring offers to users.
Competitive advantage
The great potential that LinkedIn Ads capabilities represent is still not widely utilized. For this very reason, advertising campaigns on LinkedIn can be an excellent place to gain an advantage over competition.
LinkedIn Ads advertising is a promotion channel that cannot be ignored. Take advantage of the experience of Upseo SEO/SEM internet marketing agency and gain valuable leads on LinkedIn.
Personal profile vs. LinkedIn Pages
Contrary to appearances, company pages (known as LinkedIn Pages) are still not very popular on the platform. Individual private profiles dominate, effectively replacing traditional business cards, and adding someone to your network is equivalent to exchanging business cards in real life. A private profile linked to a LinkedIn Page significantly affects the company page’s ranking and is an excellent place to work on brand image through building consistent communication within the company. For this purpose, it’s worth engaging company employees in active LinkedIn participation as part of a defined business strategy. This can be done using options for publishing articles, commenting or recommending others’ content, and expanding the network of contacts. The effectiveness of individual private profiles can be verified using the Social Selling Index — a tool measuring the level of effectiveness and efficiency of individual users’ activities.
LinkedIn Page, or company page, has completely different features and capabilities. First and foremost, it’s important to remember that LinkedIn requires its administrators to maintain high-quality personal profiles and have an extensive network of contacts. The benefits of having a LinkedIn Page are underappreciated in Poland. However, just looking at the most important attributes of a company page on LinkedIn shows that it’s an interesting tool worth including in your marketing strategy:
- LinkedIn Page ranks in Google search,
- the company page indicates professionalism,
- it’s a very effective company business card,
- it can be a place for publishing job offers,
- every employee can tag the company page on their private profile,
- potential customers prefer to buy from brands they already know.
Building a positive company image through LinkedIn Page is still an underappreciated and slowly gaining popularity way to promote a company. Nevertheless, it’s worth implementing a company profile on LinkedIn into the marketing and communication strategy of every business.
Besides company pages and private profiles, LinkedIn also enables creating additional pages on the platform:
- Showcase Page, or brand page — this is an unusual solution focusing users around a specific brand or product, rather than the entire organization, as is the case with a company page. Showcase Page is therefore a kind of element of the company page, through which you can present a selected brand, product, or even initiative. A LinkedIn Page administrator can create up to 10 individual Showcase Pages.
- Affiliate Pages — their task is to present a network of companies within one organization. If employees of a given organization also identify with another company (besides the main one), it’s worth linking these pages together.
Company profiles are a very important element in the communication strategy of every business. The range of benefits resulting from having a company profile allows for organic company reach development. However, if you’re interested in effective and efficient action within PPC (pay per click — paid per click) campaigns, namely paid LinkedIn Ads, learn what possibilities the world’s largest business social network offers.
LinkedIn Ads for Your Business
LinkedIn Ads is a comprehensive advertising system allowing for effective actions in terms of:
- acquiring customers and business partners,
- recruiting specialists,
- building company and brand image.
LinkedIn Ads advertisements are displayed on the largest social network designed for professionals, thus allowing promotional messages to reach company owners, directors, and specialists from many industries. The LinkedIn Ads system has very extensive capabilities for precisely targeting people who meet assumed criteria. Ads can be targeted using the following characteristics, among others:
- position,
- role in organization,
- professional experience,
- years of experience,
- competencies,
- company’s area of operation,
- company size,
- people connected to company profile,
- names of companies employing the user,
- education level,
- completed schools,
- group membership.
To start effective actions within LinkedIn Ads, having a Premium account is not necessary. However, it provides many possibilities. LinkedIn offers four areas in which a Premium account can function. It is definitely the most expensive social media advertising option on the market. Therefore, it’s worth carefully analyzing the possibilities of each one, and above all, ensure a strong image in the basic version. The areas in which you can operate within a Premium account are:
Career
Premium account targeted at people actively seeking employment. Premium users in the Career area are more frequently searched by headhunters and also receive more personalized job offers.
Business
Premium account for users focused on building company image and expanding network of contacts.
Hiring
Premium account for HR specialists involved in conducting large-scale recruitment processes. The account enables job posting and provides access to an advanced search engine for potential job candidates.
Sales
The most comprehensive version of Premium account, enabling, among others, creating target groups and advanced potential customer search. It’s also possible to upload your own recipient list to the system in csv format.
Premium options are not the easiest to use. However, LinkedIn provides its users with a free month to familiarize themselves with Premium profile functions and effectiveness. This time should be used as best as possible to learn all Premium options and capabilities to avoid burning through a considerable budget.
Combining organic activities with the extensive capabilities of a Premium account and LinkedIn Ads campaigns allows for fully utilizing all the platform’s advantages and effectively reaching the selected target group.
Sales Navigator on LinkedIn
LinkedIn offers additional tools supporting promotional and sales activities. One of the most interesting is the paid ($239.99 monthly) and exceptionally well-developed Sales Navigator platform. This is an additional tool functioning independently of the user account, through which you have the ability to:
- precisely define the target group and search for users best matching the assumed criteria; searching can be done based on demographic and company data, as well as keywords, content, or tags.
- obtain recommendations for potential leads,
- monitor user activity on the profile,
- monitor target group activity in the context of changes in their professional situation,
- send 20 InMails in the package.
Particularly interesting is monitoring the activity of users from the selected target group in terms of their activity on LinkedIn. Thanks to this, you gain the ability to establish effective and lasting contact with selected people using the platform.
Sales Navigator is a powerful tool supporting advertising activities on LinkedIn. However, its full utilization may be difficult at first. Getting to know the vast amount of additional options requires time and full understanding of the possibilities. To achieve high effectiveness, it is definitely more beneficial to outsource promotional activities on LinkedIn to a professional external company. The Upseo.net SEO/SEM internet marketing agency has extensive experience in conducting effective PPC campaigns. Contact us now and discover the possibilities that cooperation with Upseo.net offers!
Types of LinkedIn Ads
Currently, LinkedIn Ads offers users several types of basic ads, as well as expanded ads, known as LinkedIn Dynamic Ads. The choice of specific ad type should depend on the campaign goal.
Text ads
Most commonly used to generate more traffic on the company profile on LinkedIn or on an external landing page. On LinkedIn, text ads are displayed while browsing the portal at the top or on the right side. Text ads have significant content limitations, so it’s worth considering what CTA (call to action — call to action) should be included in the headline and ad content. The advertiser has 25 characters for the headline and 75 characters for ad content at their disposal. The graphic (company logo) should be added in 100×100 pixels format, however, there is also the possibility of adding another graphic — tall, horizontal, and long.
Image ad (sponsored content)
This is undoubtedly one of the most popular ad formats on LinkedIn. Sponsored posts are image ads that will be displayed to users in the news feed, but also to groups to which the ad will be targeted. Sponsored content can take different forms and usually consists of text and a single image, carousel, or video.
Single image ad
Can serve several purposes, depending on the format — direct to the advertiser’s website, encourage following a selected page on LinkedIn, and direct to filling out a form or job application.
Carousel image ad
Sponsored content with image carousel has the option of linking from each image to different websites, allowing you to direct from one ad to different advertiser offers. Carousel images can also direct to forms, increasing chances of acquiring valuable leads.
Video ad
The purpose of this form is to direct traffic to an external website or to a form.
Sponsored InMail messages
InMail ads are sponsored content sent from the advertiser’s private account to platform users. InMail messages can be personalized as desired (e.g., add recipient’s first and last name, company name, position, industry, etc.). Sponsored messages go to users’ inboxes, their content can direct to external pages and collect leads through forms. For proper use of InMail, it is necessary to correctly complete the LinkedIn user account data sending such messages. The position of the user sending InMail messages is extremely important for the success of the InMail campaign.
LinkedIn Dynamic Ads, or expanded formats of dynamic ads, is a solution enabling automation of promotional message personalization in relation to specific people to whom the ad is targeted. For this type of ads, LinkedIn Ads provides four formats:
Follower Ads
Ads focused on acquiring new followers for the company profile on LinkedIn. This is a type of advertising suggested for companies building brand awareness.
Spotlight Ads
This type of ads works similarly to popular remarketing. They can be targeted to people who have previously had contact with the brand, product, or offer. Spotlight Ads direct traffic to a website or other landing page, using service or product presentation and call to action. Thanks to this, they can effectively encourage following LinkedIn Pages.
Content Ads
Advertising aimed at downloading various content from the advertiser’s website (e.g., guide, brochure, infographic, case study, etc.) or directing to a blog article, profile post, etc. Configuring Content Ads requiring signing up for a mailing list enables effective building of remarketing lists.
Job offers
HR support is an important element of LinkedIn’s functioning. Job offer ads based on user data, including experience or interests, display encouragements to review job offers on the advertiser’s profile
Using different ad formats in the context of company goals, it’s worth considering the following solutions:
- text ads — increasing brand awareness, directing to WWW, generating leads,
- image ads — increasing brand awareness, directing to WWW, generating leads (on the website and through form), increasing number of LinkedIn followers, video views, collecting job applications,
- InMail ads — directing traffic to WWW, generating leads (on the website and through form),
- dynamic ads — increasing brand awareness, directing traffic to WWW, increasing number of LinkedIn followers, collecting job applications.
