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LinkedIn ads have undergone a significant transformation over the past 18 months, becoming a highly effective tool for businesses looking to target their ideal audience. We’ve seen firsthand how our clients have benefited from this platform, achieving impressive results by putting their ads directly in front of the right people.
Some have gone as far as to push the majority of their marketing budget this way, and boy are they reaping the rewards.
With LinkedIn’s advanced targeting options, advertisers can now reach a highly specific audience that is more likely to convert, resulting in a better return on investment. We’re excited to see how LinkedIn Ads continues to evolve, and we highly recommend that you consider this platform as part of your digital marketing strategy ASAP.
That’s why we’re going to outline some of the key information you need to know about LinkedIn Ads right now, in the hopes it could help you better diversify your marketing budget and improve brand awareness and conversions for your business.
LinkedIn Ads vs Google Ads: Which is Right for Your Business?
How do they work?
Google Ads is geared toward people actively searching for a product or service, making it an effective way to generate quick sales inquiries. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is more about building up to a future sale, and building brand awareness.
LinkedIn is very effective at advertising to specific audiences, based on job title, industry, and other factors (we’ll get to these), making it a more powerful brand awareness builder than Google Ads. It can promote awareness to potential customers who may not need your services right now, but will likely need them in the future. You get in their feed and stay on their mind. As such, LinkedIn advertising may take longer to generate sales inquiries than Google Ads, but those sales can be significant.
LinkedIn can also help keep competitors at bay. By building relationships and establishing trust with potential customers, businesses can set themselves apart and become the go-to provider for their target audience. This includes your current customers.
So which do you use?
Ultimately, we recommend using a mix of both Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads in your digital marketing strategy. This allows you to reach both audiences who are actively searching for your product or service and those who may need more relationship building before making a purchase.
How can we help? At Brookstone Creative, we can help you determine the best approach for your business and create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that drives results.
Where Google Ads can fall down
So Google Ads is great for those quick sales inquiries, but it does have its limitations. Especially when it comes to standing out in a crowded market. With so many providers of similar products or services vying for attention on the platform, businesses can struggle to differentiate themselves and capture the attention of potential customers.
This can also drive up the cost. Google Ads can be expensive, with bidding wars driving up the cost-per-click and making it difficult for businesses with smaller budgets to compete.
Advertisers also need to be constantly monitoring and tweaking their campaigns to stay ahead of the competition. Maximising ROI, navigating the audience manager and binning those irrelevant keywords.
Of course you can remarket to these audiences using your website’s data, but how do you know these are the right people? Perhaps they were a B2C customer stumbling on your B2B website. If only there was a way to target by sectors, industries, job titles, interests, even job seniority!
It also has no organic content, unless you count Google Posts (although these are worth updating, we certainly don’t count them in the same space). That means people will probably end up on your LinkedIn anyway.
How LinkedIn Ads can solve these headaches:
Time is precious and people tend to take the fastest route. Lets make sure that leads straight to you.
LinkedIn Ads is able to accomplish this by providing a more targeted approach, allowing businesses to reach a highly specific audience based on the factor mentioned above. This not only increases the likelihood of conversion but also helps to establish relationships and build trust with potential customers. You become a name they know, not just another Google listing.
Furthermore, with LinkedIn’s professional focus, you can position yourself as a thought leader in the industry and gain credibility by sharing valuable content and engaging with your target audience. This can be a powerful way to build brand awareness and establish long-term relationships with customers.
We’re not sure anyone has ever achieved that on Google without getting in the news, and that’s some pricey PR!
Ready to dive into LinkedIn Ads Audiences?
We’ve already touched on the wide range of powerful features that allow businesses to create highly targeted marketing campaigns that reach their ideal audience. At Brookstone Creative, we’ve seen great success using the following key features and would recommend this is where you start. By understanding the audience attributes!
Company targeting
Demographic targeting
LinkedIn Ads allows you to target demographics such as location, age and gender. You can even look at if a location is their base or if they just travel through that area regularly. This ensures that your ads are seen by the most suited targets for your business.
Interest and Trait targeting
Job experience targeting
Education targeting
LinkedIn Ads also allows you to target by education, from degrees to fields of study. This can be great for hiring, attracting talent or reaching specific education levels based on your product’s use case.
Overall, LinkedIn Ads provides businesses with a powerful suite of targeting options that can help to create effective campaigns and maximise ROI. You don’t need any existing data to utilise these and can even complete market research for free using LinkedIn.
At Brookstone Creative, we can help you navigate these features and create a customised LinkedIn Ads strategy that meets your business's unique needs and goals.
What if you want to be more data driven in LinkedIn Ads?
Now we turn to the audiences tab. This is the section that allows you to reach known contacts and accounts or upload data. You can even retarget website visitors.
This is great because it allows you to create highly targeted campaigns based on specific audience data. You can even combine the data with the audience attributes mentioned previously.
This powerful tool is often overlooked by many. This is because you generally need to input more, be it data, connection to your website or specifics in the set up. But there are several reasons why we push clients to focus on it.
Reach known contacts and accounts
Retarget website visitors
Refine Your Strategy with Predictive Audiences and Audience Expansion
While lookalike audiences were once a cornerstone of LinkedIn’s ad targeting, the platform has evolved its offerings, meaning you now have the choice between Predictive Audiences and Audience Expansion.
Predictive Audiences allow you to target users who are akin to your customer base, utilising data sourced directly from LinkedIn. This data can include interactions from LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms, your contact list on the platform, and conversion activity tracked by the LinkedIn Insight Tag. This method focuses on LinkedIn-specific data, potentially enhancing the accuracy and relevance of your audience due to its alignment with LinkedIn’s unique insights.
Meanwhile, Audience Expansion can be used to extend your reach even further. This feature broadens your campaign’s audience to include users with similar interests or skills. For instance, if your target audience includes members with the skill “CNC Machining” Audience Expansion might also target users who have listed “Metalworking” as a skill. This strategy allows you to tap into new segments, enriching your marketing funnel with high-quality prospects who share related interests.
By shifting to these advanced tools, your business can continue to expand its ad audience effectively, leveraging LinkedIn’s detailed data to drive stronger results and maximise ROI.
At Brookstone Creative, we can help your business navigate this feature and create a comprehensive LinkedIn Ads strategythat meets your unique needs and goals. These are clever campaigns that willget people that matter to your business talking about it.
Use cases for these audiences:
If you’re just getting started with LinkedIn Ads, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the vast array of targeting options available. However, there are some easy starting points that can help you get to grips with the platform and start driving results for your business. At Brookstone Creative, we recommend setting up some of the following audiences as a tried and tested way to get started:
Have you considered targeting:
- People on your mailing list
- Specific companies you wish to target
- People who have visited certain pages on your website
- People who have visited your LinkedIn company page
- People who have taken an interest or joined one of your events
- People who have interacted with a lead gen form
- People who have interacted with your videos
- People who are attending an exhibition or who visited yours
Struggling for ideas? We’re on hand to help. 🙂
It’s not just who you target:
While it’s important to target the right audience for your business, it’s equally important to exclude those who are not a good fit.
This ensures that your ad spend is being allocated effectively and reaching only those who are most likely to convert. For example, if your product is aimed at small businesses, you may want to exclude large corporations from your targeting. If you’re looking for a decision maker then trainee or entry-level roles might not work for certain ad copy.
You can set up exclusion with the exact same tools as the inclusions above. This will prevent your ads from being shown to those who are unlikely to convert, increasing the ROI of your campaigns.
Excluding audiences can also help to avoid wasted spend and ensure that your budget is being used effectively. By taking the time to carefully craft your targeting options and exclude those who are not a good fit, you can create highly effective LinkedIn Ads campaigns that drive a higher ROI and results for your business.
Next steps?
LinkedIn Ads can be a highly effective tool for businesses looking to reach a highly specific audience and increase their ROI.
While it does require a bit of time and patience to achieve success, the results for our clients have been incredible, making it one of our favourite go-to marketing tools.
At Brookstone Creative, we can help you navigate the platform’s various targeting options and develop a comprehensive strategy that meets your business’s unique needs and goals. This includes creating copy and creative for your ads that will convert.
If you’re interested in learning more about achieving success for your product or service on LinkedIn Ads, feel free to get in touch with us.
And if you’re already using LinkedIn Ads, we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences over on our LinkedIn page! Remember, by targeting the right audience and excluding those who are not a good fit, you can create highly effective campaigns that drive results for your business.
