How you could benefit from working with a LinkedIn advertising agency

The benefits of LinkedIn advertising

Starting with the fundamentals, what are some of the results and benefits you can expect to gain by advertising on LinkedIn?

A strong B2B focus

B2B marketing, advertising and lead conversion is a very different proposition to B2C, with longer, more complex sales cycles and a more intensive decision-making process involving a range of people and stakeholders.

If the target audience for your social media advertising is business buyers, you need to be highly visible on the networks where they’re most active, and LinkedIn is at the top of that list.

According to the site’s own statistics, it is the number one platform for B2B lead generation.

Good conversion prospects

LinkedIn’s figures also show that its users have twice the buying power of the average online audience and are six times more likely to convert.

These are encouraging numbers if, like most brands, you’re using social media advertising not just to generate leads but to turn them into customers.

Positive brand representation

Your choice of social media platform is a hugely important part of every marketing or digital advertising campaign you run, partly because the environment in which your ads appear affects how your brand is perceived.

Research has shown that, after seeing a company’s LinkedIn ad, people are likely to perceive that brand as more professional, intelligent and respectable, and generally of a higher quality.

Effective retargeting

Retargeting can be an important and valuable element of an advertising campaign on social media or in any other digital space. It lets you focus your efforts on prospects who have previously shown an interest in your company, products or services but haven’t converted.

LinkedIn facilitates this with its Matched Audiences feature, which you can use to retarget user accounts that have taken actions such as:

• Visiting a page on your website
• Previously engaging with a LinkedIn ad
• Interacting with your company LinkedIn page
• Opening or submitting a lead generation form

What is typically included in a LinkedIn advertising campaign?

LinkedIn advertising comes in various forms and can help you achieve all sorts of digital marketing goals, but there are some core elements that should always be at the heart of every campaign you run.

Clear goals

The first step in devising a LinkedIn ad campaign is to identify an objective you want to pursue. The most common goals can be broken down into three broad categories:

• Awareness: Increasing brand visibility and target audience familiarity with your business on LinkedIn.
• Consideration: When prospects start to pay closer attention to what you offer, through activities such as website visits and video views.
• Conversion: The generation and nurturing of leads, to the point where they take a key action such as completing a purchase on your website.

A well-defined target audience

Careful audience targeting is an essential factor in effective LinkedIn advertising, and indeed all forms of digital marketing across social media and all other channels.

As you build your campaigns, you will have the opportunity to describe and refine your audience using a number of attributes, including:

• Company size
• Member interests 
• Skills 
• Job title
• Level of seniority

Your choice of LinkedIn ad formats

LinkedIn gives you the option to choose from four broad categories of ads, which can be combined, expanded and deployed in whichever way works best for you. 

• Sponsored content such as single-image ads, video ads and carousel ads can be placed directly in the LinkedIn feeds of professions that fall within your target audience.
• Dynamic ads focus on personalisation, using LinkedIn profile data to tailor your creative to specific members of your audience.
• Text ads let you take a direct and simple approach to targeting LinkedIn users, and are priced on a pay-per-click or cost-per-impression basis, meaning you only pay for ads that prompt an action.
• Sponsored messaging gives you direct access to prospects through LinkedIn messages, which can aid engagement with individuals and lead the way to productive conversations.

Budget and schedule

The way you budget and pay for your LinkedIn advertising service will depend on the goals you’ve established and the ad formats you’re using.

Among the main options are:

• Cost per send: When running message ad campaigns, you pay for every message that is successfully delivered.
• Cost per click: You pay every time a prospect takes a specific action, such as registering for an event.
• Cost per impression: Based on the number of times your ads are viewed, this is a common billing method for advertisers looking to raise brand awareness.

You can control your spend on every LinkedIn campaign by setting a daily and total budget, as well as a start and end date.

Powerful creative elements

Creativity is the key to how you set your LinkedIn marketing apart and make a lasting impression on your target audience.

When planning and producing your ad creative for this platform, make sure you’re considering the following questions:

• Are you using imagery that gives a strong representation of your brand and is distinctive enough to capture people’s attention?
• Have you dedicated sufficient time and care to your ad copy, ensuring it’s concise and compelling?
• Will you use a range of LinkedIn ad formats to maintain and build audience interest?
• Do you have a plan for ongoing testing and iteration to ensure your creative elements are always improving?

Ad campaign analytics

Launching your LinkedIn advertising campaign is not the end of the journey. Once your ads are live, you need to monitor key performance metrics such as impressions, clicks and message responses.

This is how you measure the impact of your advertising and collect the data required to demonstrate return on investment, make well-informed budgeting decisions and plan your future strategy.

Why work with a LinkedIn advertising agency?

If keeping up with all of the tasks and priorities listed above seems like a big ask for your team, you could benefit greatly from working with a LinkedIn ads agency.

Save time

All forms of social media marketing – if you want to do them effectively and generate worthwhile results – take time.

Outsourcing your LinkedIn marketing and advertising to an agency will enable you to get things done quicker and more efficiently, as well as helping you gain more time to spend on other, more holistic activities such as tailoring your overarching digital strategy to align with business goals.

Access specialist skills

If you have a relatively small marketing team, it can be difficult to acquire, develop and retain specialist skills in focused areas such as LinkedIn advertising.

Partnering with an agency gives you instant access to the expertise you need, at significantly lower cost than would be required to hire and retain in-house employees.

Monitor and report results

A full-service LinkedIn marketing agency will be able to offer support with one of the most critical elements of your advertising: tracking performance and giving you regular updates on results.

With this information at your fingertips, you can keep a close eye on your ROI and ensure that every decision you make is driven by data.

Keep moving forward

Based on the insights gained from ongoing data collection, analysis and reporting, a trusted agency partner can give you relevant, actionable recommendations regarding the next steps for your LinkedIn advertising.

This helps to ensure that you’re constantly moving forward, evolving and refining your strategy, which is essential to achieve lasting success in the dynamic world of social media marketing.

Do LinkedIn advertising agencies specialise in other areas?

Absolutely – in fact this is one of the biggest benefits of working with a full-service marketing agency such as Axonn.

As well as looking after every aspect of your LinkedIn advertising, we can support you with other key components of your broader digital marketing strategy, such as regular content creation, search engine optimisation and website design.
Take a look at some of the work and results we’ve delivered for our clients, or if you would like to start a conversation about how we can help you, just get in touch.