Finding and following the correct advertising approach is vital to driving effective outcomes with your LinkedIn campaigns, and Instigo is here to give you some super-solid tips on how to maximize your ROI!
Since room for advertising on LinkedIn is getting more and more crowded, advertisements have to compete with each other all the time to win the auction through the bidding system. LinkedIn bidding system helps you develop an offer, which is the amount an advertiser is happy to pay for a specific activity.
LinkedIn Advertising Process with Updated Features
Let us begin by briefly discussing new LinkedIn Advertising features, how to choose the right audience, understanding various Ad formats, how to select the right ad budget, and internalizing effective Bidding Strategies to get the most out of our next LinkedIn campaign.
Objective-based Advertising
Objective-based Advertising, introduced in 2019, gives you the power to advertise directly on the basis of your marketing goals. What is it that you are looking for? Is it traffic to your website? Views on your new video? Or do you want to collect leads? Choose your goal, and you are clear to designate your ad the right audience.
Choosing the right audience
Where do those people live whom you want to reach? What language do they speak? Which company do they currently work at? Are they predominantly male or female? Do they belong to a specific age-group? What is their educational background?
Answer these questions and you can use these filters to deliver your ad to the most relevant audience.
Once the audience is set, it is time to choose a suitable ad format to maximize your conversions.
Ad Formats
LinkedIn features multiple ad formats, each serving its unique purpose. Let’s have a quick look!
Sponsored Content promotes a piece of content that is already posted on your LinkedIn page. With more text and large images, this ad type encourages user engagement and drives users to your landing page. You can expect around 80% of your traffic to come from mobile devices, a 0.4% click-through rate, and a cost per click anywhere between about $8 to $11.
Sponsored InMail allows you to drive more leads and engage your target audience by delivering personalized, private messages right to their LinkedIn inboxes. These messages are purchased on a Cost Per Send basis with 100% deliverability.
Text Ads are suitable for aquick campaign that is easy to set up and manage. They have a lower CPM than other ad formats and are displayed only to desktop users.
Dynamic Ads are highly engaging and very effective at driving traffic to your landing page or company page. You can also dynamically insert users’ first name, their job title, and even their company name as variables. These ads are suitable for advertising job openings and collecting users’ Full Names and email addresses without them having to type anything.
Lead Gen Form, an absolute game-changer, allows you to collect even more quality leads with pre-filled forms with user’s LinkedIn profile information. They can be used in Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail ad formats.
Choose an ad format that best suits your objective and marketing goal. Once selected, move on to the interesting part of budgeting your ad.
Prediction Feature – Forecasted Results
While choosing an Ad Format, LinkedIn also allows you to get the Forecasted Results on your screen. This prediction feature helps you know how many impressions, sends, spend, and clicks you can expect, so you can modify your campaigns accordingly to best hit your marketing goals.
Choosing the right ad budget
Set a daily budget according to your company’s marketing spending. Pro tip here is to test and measure your campaign’s success before investing loads of money into it. Therefore, start with a moderate budget and then scale accordingly.
The budget is set; we are ready to dive into the LinkedIn Bidding system.
How LinkedIn Bidding works
When you set up an ad campaign, you set an offer for the amount you’re willing to pay to show an advertisement to LinkedIn users of your choice.
Types of bidding
The most commonly utilized type of bidding is CPC, aka Cost Per Click. This means that you are only going to pay when somebody makes some sort of positive move on your promotion, which sounds pretty practical.
The second is CPM, which is Cost Per Mille (1,000 impressions). That is when you will pay for every 1,000 times, LinkedIn shows your promotion to its users, whether they engage with it or not. It just attempts to augment whatever your goal is.
Then comes CPV – Cost Per View. This is appropriate when you’re running a video views campaign. Furthermore, this is one you presumably need to bid low on because the goal is to get as many views as possible without spending grands.
Last but not least, we have a CPS bidding system – Cost for Every Send. This bid type is available when you are running an InMail campaign, discussed above.
Deciding between CPC and CPM
When deciding between CPC and CPM, think about your end goal.
If you are trying to get as many people as possible to see your ad to help with something like a branding campaign, CPM might be your best option.
However, if you want more people to click on your ads to drive traffic to your website or generate quality leads, CPC might be a better option for you.
Keep playing around with your bids and see when you get the best return on your investment.
Conclusion
This was a super-brief yet comprehensive guide by Instigo to help you start your LinkedIn Advertising journey. Now that you are equipped with the fundamental knowledge of how LinkedIn Advertising works, feel confident to create your next campaign, and do not forget to share the results with us.
Please give us your valuable feedback in the comment section below. Also, let us know the topic you want us to jot down the next article about.
Happy advertising!
