Social media marketing is constantly changing to improve both advertiser and consumer experiences. LinkedIn has made some important changes to its advertising settings that will help marketers reach greater audiences, drive leads, and improve their marketing strategy.
16 Years of Evolution
LinkedIn and its advertising platform have come a long way from their inceptions. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn did not actually offer any advertising opportunities until 2005. In the following decade, LinkedIn massively expanded and introduced its advertising options.
Today, LinkedIn is the top social media channel for lead generation and is to thank for 80% of B2B social media leads. Not only does LinkedIn drive leads, it also has helped 90% of B2B marketers reduce cost per lead.
LinkedIn recognizes the importance of advertising for many users and thus are constantly updating to improve user experience and increase the return on your advertising.
Here are 4 new features from 2019
Objective-Based Advertising
Where campaigns were previously launched based on ad type, LinkedIn has seen the value in making your marketing goals the main objective of your campaign.
LinkedIn breaks down these marketing goals into three groups- Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
Awareness
Brand Awareness– use impression-based campaigns to increase your online recognition
Consideration
Website Visits– increase traffic to website
Engagement– increase clicks, social interactions, and followers
Video Views– use video to educate viewers about your brand
Conversion
Lead Generation– drive leads with smart forms using user’s LinkedIn information
Website Conversion– track important site actions like new leads or content downloads
Job Applicants– advertise job opportunities
This new feature allowing you to focus on specific marketing objectives empowers marketers to prioritize individual goals. Basing advertising campaigns on ad format limits how you are engaging your audience by prioritizing format over goals.
Forecasted Results
Expanding its features to compete with other sites like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn advertising now offers Forecasted Results. Now, when you create a new campaign, you can see estimates of what you can expect from your advertisements.
These results can be found on the right side of the Campaign Manager page when creating a new campaign. These values are estimated in real-time as you build your campaign, taking into account the effects of different settings like audience, budget, and ad format.
Forecasted Results estimates 6 metrics:
- Target audience size
- Breakdown of target audience by segment
- Projected cost
- Projected number of impressions
- Projected number of clicks
- Estimates for the KPI related to your selected objective (ex., clicks)
Of course, these metrics are estimated, so there is no guarantee that your campaign will perform as projected. This tool is especially helpful for marketers who might be new to LinkedIn advertising or are looking to try something new in their next campaign. This feature will teach you how to build an ad campaign on LinkedIn and how each metric and goal can affect the outcome.
Interest Targeting
Social media allows marketers to connect with audiences based on more than just interest in a product; the massive amount of personal information we share online can all be used by marketers to better target content to create more personalized experiences.
LinkedIn is different because most users are sharing their professional information, making interest targeting especially helpful for B2B advertisers. With the content users share and engage with on LinkedIn, you can find audiences that are most likely to be interested in your products, services, and/or content.
Choose from over 200 professional interest categories, including arts and entertainment, politics and law, science and environment, technology, culture, and more. Each of these categories help you better target your ideal buyer and expand the impact of your advertising.
Click Demographics
This feature works similarly to LinkedIn’s Insight tag for your website by pulling user information from LinkedIn profiles to create a better understanding of your audience. This personal information is anonymized to tell you the company name, size and industry and the user’s job function, titles, seniority, and location.
This basic information is very important for online advertising campaigns as this information is the very basis of your campaign specifications. Basic information regarding your audience demographics is necessary to appropriately and effectively target your advertising.
Every day marketers are finding new ways to reach and engage their ideal audiences, and social media marketing is currently a leading strategy in increasing the reach and impact of your branding and advertising campaigns. Using the many convenient and helpful tools offered by sites like LinkedIn will help you fully utilize the advertising resources available to create optimum campaigns.
