LinkedIn is the most popular platform for B2B marketing, and 80% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn advertising. Whether you are networking with other professionals, creating dynamic content, or building a digital ad campaign, prioritizing LinkedIn will help you reach your digital marketing goals.
Read on to learn more about the importance of LinkedIn advertising for B2B brands, and check out our LinkedIn Campaign Manager Guide below.
B2B Social Media Marketing
There’s a reason LinkedIn is so popular among B2B professionals. For both small and large businesses managing a digital marketing program, LinkedIn can connect you with specific audiences so you can prioritize the strongest leads.
According to Hubspot, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, about 277% higher than Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%). HubSpot also found that LinkedIn has a conversion rate 3 times higher than Google Ads.
LinkedIn Campaign Guide
Our LinkedIn Campaign Manager Guide gives step-by-step instructions for creating your first ad campaign, creating new ads, and monitoring existing campaigns.
There are three key elements to creating a LinkedIn campaign.
1. Create a Group
To begin a new campaign, first log in to Campaign Manager and select your account.
Campaign Groups are the overarching groups your ads will be stored under in the Campaign Manager. We suggest leaving the Status as Active, as setting an end date could cause issues with editing later on.
2. Create a Campaign
Now you will need to create a Campaign within your new Group. We suggest using a specific, descriptive name and including the date.
You will have to choose your campaign objective; we recommend choosing website visits if you are targeting an unfamiliar audience and website conversions if the audience is familiar with your brand.
When filling out your audience demographics, you will only be required to include a location; the other attributes are optional.
We recommend adding your relevant contact list in this section so you can reach prospective customers and share new services with your current clients; you can also create client lists at this point if you do not already have them uploaded. You can use the provided template to create a list using whatever information you have available; it will take several days for LinkedIn to create this list.
For additional targeting, there are other attributes to choose from, including job titles, company size, educational background, member interests, etc. Use the OR/AND option to expand and narrow your audience targeting; note how this changes your projected reach. These settings can be edited later, unlike Objective and Ad Type.
You will also need to choose your ad type for the campaign. We recommend single image ads, carousel ads, and video ads. This setting cannot be changed once you have saved the campaign!
You will also need to set your budget. Choose your daily budget, which you will want to base on your monthly campaign budget; note that the lowest daily budget is $10 and LinkedIn may spend up to 50% more than your limit some days. Unless you have a hard end date for this campaign, make the schedule run continuously; if you add an end date, it will be much harder to add new ads to this campaign after that date.
You will also want to choose manual bidding; using the lowest bid will help to stretch out your budget. You should also enable bid adjustment for high value clicks to help find the strongest leads. You can also enable Conversion Tracking if your website is set up to support this feature; choose Use my site-wide Insight Tag and define what URL would indicate a conversion. We use the “thank you” page of the form users were guided to as the indicator that the lead has been converted.
3. Create an Ad
Select create new ad and you will see the option to create ads using existing content. This is a great way to promote new content and create ads quickly and easily.
You will need to fill out the ad information, including the name, body text, destination URL, headline, and description. You can also include an image, which can help to draw the viewer’s attention, and a Call-to-Action to encourage a certain action is taken upon seeing the ad. You can repeat this step until you have created all the ads for your campaign, and then select launch campaign.
Maximizing Campaigns
LinkedIn makes digital advertising easy enough that you could just set up a campaign and let it run until the funding ends, but doing so would mean missing out on huge opportunities to optimize your advertising strategy and learn more about your target audience.
We recommend reviewing your campaign performance once or twice weekly.
1. Campaign Metrics
Look at the cost-per-click (CPC) to gauge how your budget is holding up, and review impressions, clicks, and average click-through-rate (CTR) to gauge the overall success of your campaign. This marketing data can be useful throughout your organization.
It may take a bit for your campaign to take off; it can take up to three weeks to see results, so be patient and trust that your strategy will pay off.
2. Ad Performance
Under the campaign, you will be able to review each ad. If an ad is underperforming, deactivate it so you can prioritize the best performing ads.
Like the campaign, review individual ad metrics like impressions, CTR and CPC to see which ads have the highest ROI.
Figure out if there are any common threads between your best performing ads, whether it be content, audience, or formatting. These metrics and details will help you to identify what advertising strategies have the biggest impact on your target audience.
3. Content Engagement
Social media advertising can collect invaluable data for your company. Just like ads work to deliver information to your target market, those ads will also deliver information to you about your market.
Track and analyze what content performs best on your LinkedIn page. Review audience demographics to learn more about what type of consumers are engaging with your brand. The content they engage with can tell you more about the buyer’s journey- where they get stuck, when they have questions, and what turns them from a lead to a client.
Understanding a viewer’s experience from start to finish will help you fine tune your ideal buyer’s journey.
LinkedIn is the number one social platform for professional networking. If you are looking to engage current and potential B2B clients, odds are they are already on LinkedIn. Create a social media advertising program today to tailor your marketing strategy to your unique business.
