Compared to other social channels such as Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn is still an undiscovered golden mine for many advertisers. Despite its 660 million members, many companies are still asking themselves: why advertise on LinkedIn?
Today, we will see some of the key reasons that make this social channel so efficient and unique, especially for businesses within the B2B industry.
If you are here for the short answer, here it is.
Why advertise on LinkedIn?
Many companies can benefit from advertising on LinkedIn because it offers unique targeting criteria, rich retargeting options and engaging ad formats. Although LinkedIn ads can be expensive, with an average Cost per Click of $5.26, they often yield higher conversion rates than other platforms, which makes them perfect for lead generation.
And now, let me explain the reasons in more detail:
1. Unique targeting
The first reason why you need to avertise on LinkedIn is because it offers unique segmentation attributes that can’t be found on other advertising channels.
Every advertising platform collects its own and unique set of data. For example, Google has information that Facebook doesn’t have, such as users’ historical search on millions of topics. Or what they are looking to purchase in the next hours or days.
On another hand, Facebook collects data that Google doesn’t. For example, who your family and friends are, how you interact with them, what games do you play, or where do you live. It even knows if you have a dog!
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 1: Unique targeting criteria to reach your target audience
The point is, the information that the different platforms collect from their users will be later used by advertisers to reach their ideal target audience.
So, just as Google and Facebook are able to offer unique segmentation features and attributes to reach the desired audience, the same applies for LinkedIn as well.
Because LinkedIn is a professional network rather than a traditional network for interacting with family and friends, it allows you to work with much more professional data. In fact, LinkedIn allows you to target by very exclusive criteria that you will not find anywhere else, such as:
- Company names – in which companies does your audience work?
- Company growth rate – so you can reach fast-growing organizations;
- Degrees – what is the educational background of your target?
- Member schools – where exactly did they study?
- Job Seniorities – do you want to reach interns, or top-level executives?
- Job Titles – so you can target by the exact job title you want to reach;
- Member Skills – find people with very specific skills and qualifications;
- Member Groups – target people within certain industry groups;
And many others. The platform gets this data by extracting it from the LinkedIn profiles of its members, organizing it in relevant, anonymous clusters that advertisers can use later on within their Marketing campaigns.
With this data, companies can reach more than 90 million senior-level influencers, 60 million decision makers, and 10 million C-suite members. Which is something that no other advertising platform can offer.
2. Rich retargeting possibilities
Why advertise on LinkedIn? The second reason for considering this platform as your next Marketing channel is because of its rich retargeting and remarketing options.
In fact, they have 8 types of matched audiences that you can use to re-impact your audience once they’ve interacted with your business.
This allows you to re-impact them with a second, more personalized message, depending on the stage of the funnel in which they are at the moment of the Marketing action. Some of these audiences include:
Website retargeting
Website retargeting allows you to collect cookies from visitors who are coming to your website from your LinkedIn campaigns. This way, you can re-engage these visitors again later to encourage them to go further down the funnel.
It tends to be highly effective for many businesses. However, keep in mind that you need a volume of at least 300 cookies before you are able to launch your retargteing campaign.
Contact targeting
If you are still wondering why advertise on LinkedIn, we also have the awesome tool of contact targeting.
With contact targeting, you will be able to upload your existing database of email adresses of leads or customers. This database will later match against LinkedIn’s database so you can reach these contacts on LinkedIn.
Of course, one thing to keep in mind is that not all contacts will exist among LinkedIn’s database. Which means that the list that you’ve uploaded may get reduced by up to 50%.
Account targeting
Account targeting works the same way as Contact targeting, except that this time, you upload a list of accounts (company names) to match against LinkedIn’s database. This allows you to target hundreds of companies at the same time.
As an alternative, you can use the attribute Company Name within your campaign’s segmentation, but it allows you to enter only 100 names. If you want to target more than 100 companies, go with Account targeting instead.
Lookalike audiences
With this option, LinkedIn will use your existing data to create new audiences similar to your current ones. You can build lookalike audiences based on your contact lists, company lists, or website audiences, among other options.
Events audience retargeting
Another tool that you have is events audience retargeting – it’s a way to re-impact people who have marked as “attending” your LinkedIn live events. This is a relatively new option, but a great one! This way, you are leveraging both the opportunities of live events as well as re-impacting the attendees later.
Lead Gen form retargeting
Another new, but extremely powerful retargeting tool that you have at your disposal is Lead Gen form retargeting. If you are not familiar with the concept, Lead Gen forms are LinkedIn’s native forms that extract data from user’s profiles automatically.
This way, users don’t have to go to your website, and can quickly fill out a form without having to fill out almost any data manually.
Well, now you have the possibility to retarget people who have opened your Lead Gen form, but didn’t end up submitting their data, to re-impact them further with a more personalized and enticing message.
You can learn more about retargeting and lookalike audiences here.
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 2: Rich retargeting and remarketing possibilities
3. Engaging ad formats
If you are still not convinced of why advertise on LinkedIn, we are not done yet!
From Sponsored Content to Sponsored InMail, LinkedIn offers a variety of engaging ad formats so you can reach the right decision makers. The majority of other advertising platforms do not offer as many possibilities to find out what works for your audience.
Some of them, like Sponsored Content (Single image format), blend perfectly with the feed of the user, making them significantly less intrusive than a Google display ad, for example.
Others, like InMail, recently rebranded to Message ad, will arrive directly to the user’s inbox.
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 3: An awesome variety of different ad formats
- Sponsored Content, or Single image ad, appears on the feed of the user as a regular post, blending perfectly with the environment. It is a very efficient and non-intrusive format.
- Carousel image ads are great for catching the attention of the users with something different and out of the box. They “break” the monotony of the feed.
- Video ads are perfect for increasing brand awareness and attracting the attention of your audience for a couple of minutes.
- Text ads are a more simple and shy format that appears at the top of the feed, or the right side of it. They offer a smaller “real estate space” than other formats.
- Spotlight ads are a part of the so-called LinkedIn Dynamic ads, which include Spotlight, Follower, and Content ads. They are quite unique to LinkedIn.
- Message ads – as we already mentioned, Message ads, previously known as Sponsored InMail, deliver messages right into the users’ inbox.
- Conversation ads – and last but not least, conversation ads are a new format that LinkedIn has been developing, but it’s still in beta. It allows you to have a conversation with your audience.
4. High-quality leads
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Here is our fourth reason: high quality leads.
One of the biggest benefits that LinkedIn offers for B2B companies is the possibility to generate high-quality leads. In the B2B industry, reaching the right decision makers is even more important than in B2C. They are less in quantity, and the time for making a decision – significantly longer.
For this reason, it is essential that companies find where their decision makers “live” on the Internet. But not only that; what is their intention when visiting a certain website or social media channel.
And, let’s be honest, even if the CEO of a huge company spends his free time on Facebook, he is probably not there with the intention of making an important decision. Usually, he is there to interact with his friends and family, or to upload photos from his latest experiences.
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 4: Reaching professionals and executives on the spot
However, when the same CEO goes to LinkedIn, he is now in a more professional environment. Which means that he is more “predisposed” to research for possible tools and services for his company. But also, to listen to proposals, sales pitches, and react to relevant ads that offer the solutions that he is looking for.
For this reason, it is very important not only to locate your target audience, but also to reach it in the right moment. And this is one of the biggest reasons to advertise on LinkedIn – so you can generate high-quality leads that are in the right mindset for a possible purchase.
5. Lead Gen forms
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 5: Making the most out of Lead Gen forms
If you are still wondering why advertise on LinkedIn, let’s talk a little bit more about the company’s super effective Lead Gen forms.
The majority of advertising networks can only offer lead generation through a landing page. Facebook also offers Lead Gen, but it has a couple of additional steps, increasing the chances for a user to drop out before submitting the form.
Lead Gen forms are native forms that companies can create instead of sending the user to a landing page. These forms extract the required data automatically from the users’ LinkedIn profiles, which means that they will only have to fill out a couple of fields manually.
This increases the number of submitted forms, and also reduces the Cost per Lead. But it is also beneficial for users because they don’t have to leave LinkedIn to go to a third-party website, and they do not have to fill out as many fields as on a landing page. Which, although necessary, can be very frustrating.
6. Account-based Marketing
LinkedIn is a great tool for companies that invest in account-based marketing (ABM). Why? Because it offers a wide variety of criteria to target specific accounts or clients that many other advertisers don’t.
We already covered these attributes briefly in the first section, but I wanted to highlight their importance in relation to ABM as well.
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 6: Implement Account-Based Marketing actions
Also, besides from choosing from ready-made attributes such as Company names, you can also upload your own account list. This means that you will be able to target key decision makers within companies with impressive accuracy as you are able to reach a huge amount of professional information.
LinkedIn’s possibilities for account-based Marketing will allow you to refine your campaigns in a way that companies can resonate with them. Which is highly efficient for driving better results and increasing your sales.
7. Personalization
Additionally, the extensive demographic and professional details with which you can refine your perfect audience give you the incredible opportunity to personalize your ads. In a way that you can’t with many other advertisers.
Why advertise on LinkedIn? Reason 7: Personalize your audience to a whole new level
For example, being able to target by Member skills can allow you to advertise specific tools that can help people continue enhancing these skills. Think of a person who has already mastered Semrush’ SEM tools. You can use this data to offer them another tool they can master next.
In a similar manner, being able to target by Company industries can also help you personalize your ads. For example, if you target companies in the Finance sector, you can tailor your ad with a specific finance message. Even if it’s just something like “Are you a Financial service company looking to increase your sales…”
Personalization is always an efficient way to make people resonate with your message. And LinkedIn offers a variety of tools and segmentation tools to achieve that. So, we have yet another reason why advertise on LinkedIn!
That was all from me, folks! If you were one of the companies asking themselves why advertise on LinkedIn, I hope that you now have some solid reasons why. As always, thank you for taking the time to read my article, and I hope to see you in the next one.
Do you want to become an expert in LinkedIn advertising? Get my ebook “The Complete Guide to LinkedIn Advertising!”
Featured image source: tracebits.com
