Social media has become a part of our everyday life. As a result, there are billions of social users in the world. Businesses have seen this as an opportunity to increase their profits. They use advertising on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to attract people and turn them into customers.
At the beginning of 2018, LinkedIn alone had over 500 million users. These users include graduates, senior-level influencers, management, and IT decision-makers. People sign up for LinkedIn mainly to look for jobs, network, share content and make business connections. Overall, LinkedIn attracts business professionals.
So, when it comes to whether the platform’s ads work or not, we would say that it depends on the type of business and the targeted consumers.
Do LinkedIn Ads Work for Reaching Consumers?
Advertising on LinkedIn is more useful for companies that offer their products or services to other companies. This is also known as business-to-business (B2B) advertising. However, they are not limited to that as it is also a good platform for recruitment and higher education. This shows that LinkedIn members are there to advance their careers, personal development, and professional development.
Thus, you should be asking yourself if your product or service relates to what LinkedIn users are looking for. It would be best if you also kept in mind that they are most likely not there intending to buy a product or service when a person joins LinkedIn. They are looking to better themselves professionally. When advertising on LinkedIn, specifically if you are targeting individual consumers, you are advertising to people hoping that they will develop an interest to at least read more on what you are promoting.
However, compared to other social media platforms, LinkedIn is the most successful for getting B2B quality leads. The reason behind this is that 20% of company decision-makers have a LinkedIn presence. Additionally, organizations part of this platform generates 80% of their social media marketing leads. Of course, this depends on the kind of company you have. Research has previously shown that LinkedIn ads do not work for small businesses.
When it comes to targeting options, they are also considered great for B2B companies. You can use targeting methods such as location, age, and gender. LinkedIn also allows you to go beyond these three methods and look for members based on more specific details. These details include company name and size, industry, job title and function, job seniority, schools, degrees, fields of study, LinkedIn member groups, and more. This makes it possible to reach the targeted decision-makers of other organizations.
Advertising Options Offered
Since you can post both visual and verbal content on LinkedIn, you can easily advertise your services for free. However, it is not as effective as the two offered options, which you have to pay for. The advertising options are the ads and sponsored content.
Read more on what they entail below.
LinkedIn Ads
These are quite costly than other social media ads, and even google ads campaigns. Nevertheless, they are considered the best for B2B as they bring more quality leads than other platforms. This is mainly because of LinkedIn’s audience of business professionals who are actively looking for connections.
What some people find disappointing about these ads, though, is their size. They are very small as they comprise one sentence that appears above the newsfeed. It does not even pop out at the user’s face. There is a very high chance of the member not even seeing it.
Another option of LinkedIn ads is a logo of your business appearing at the right of the newsfeed. This option also invites the targeted individuals to follow your company.
We can imagine that the question you now have is: Do LinkedIn ads work?
We believe that they do work. However, they are less impactful but more cost-effective.
LinkedIn Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is considered the smartest way of building leads for B2B companies. These ads look like a normal post. They usually consist of an image, text, and a link. The ad appears on the homepage feed of the platform’s members suitable for your target market.
They are beneficial because of their format, which allows you more control over the advertisement’s content. Creating a post-like ad gives you enough space to direct your target consumer to the authentic part of your company’s page. This helps not to annoy the audience by an advert of a company trying too hard to sell.
The targeting criteria here also allow you to select who sees the ad. This assists in getting your post seen by people beyond just your followers. You can also easily edit this. If you have added something or missed something that you feel may be why people are not paying attention, you can edit the ad.
You can use this advertising system to share your company’s content, case studies, promote webinars, conferences, events, and more. It will help you capture quality leads, reactions, comments, and shares that can increase social reach.
Conclusion
LinkedIn adverts can be costly compared to other social media platforms, but they are the best for B2B companies. Considering your targeted audience when you are planning to advertise through social media is important. LinkedIn ads may not work very well for those targeting individual consumers and for small businesses. Also, even when promoting for B2B connections, you should know that LinkedIn ads are not as effective as LinkedIn sponsored content.
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