LinkedIn has a reputation for being the social network for business professionals. Even B2B (business-to-business) companies benefit tremendously from an active LinkedIn presence.
Because of the information displayed on most user profiles, it’s only natural that LinkedIn allows companies to purchase PPC ads. LinkedIn profiles usually display occupation and professional interests. Both are extremely important bits of information for marketers. Armed with that info, it’s not hard to single out the perfect members of a target audience – the first step in launching a successful PPC campaign.
LinkedIn allows marketers to choose how much to pay and whether to pay by click or by impression, just like Google’s PPC platform. In addition, LinkedIn offers four different types of PPC ads for purchase: poll, video, group and social.
Polls Ads
Create polls to conduct your own market research. This could be to better identify to whom you need to be marketing. Or it could determine what kind of content your audience appreciates most. Whatever market questions you have, a LinkedIn poll can provide an answer… and traffic on top of that!
Video Ads
Experienced marketers know that video is a powerful tool for inbound marketing. Visually attractive content usually performs better and has more chances of becoming viral. Create a 30-second video and see just how much punch it packs.
Group Ads
These ads show up in LinkedIn Groups, where they can lead to conversation(s) about your company, product or service. Ads in Groups boost thought leader status and familiarize group members with your face/logo/emblem. For those who regularly engage in LinkedIn Groups already, Groups Ads are no brainers.
Social Ads
Social ads rely on information from another social network. Information about age, gender, hobbies, interests, experiences and more help to put together a more attractive ad that reaches out to highly qualified audience members. LinkedIn’s business community doesn’t delve a lot into personal information. But other social networks – like Facebook– offer info that marketers can use to target ads on LinkedIn.
Different businesses will have different strategies. There’s no need to burn yourself out trying to create ads in all four categories at once.
Based on what you’ve learned about your audience from prior inbound marketing, pick an ad type and get started building referral traffic to your website from LinkedIn. With time, you’ll find out which PPC ad format is your moneymaker.
By applying best practices for creating PPC ads on LinkedIn, B2B companies can start to see more qualified leads and consequently, better sales.