Why we're all talking about LinkedIn Advertising

Okay, a quick explainer about LinkedIn’s new advertising platform.

Sound a bit dull? Au contraire. This technology merits a blog post because we’ve found it to be just about the surest way yet for B2B professionals to reach their audiences and we’re recommending the tool to more and more of our financial services clients.

There are particular advantages when what you sell is big and expensive, like tech or investment solutions* for example, but the number of people you have to impress is small.

We know you wouldn’t think poorly of us, but I’ll be clear anyway: MRM has no relationship with LinkedIn at all. We’ve been frisked and we’re clean. Lets continue with two immediate advantages LinkedIn has over other publishers:

• First, LinkedIn is very likely to be better-read by your audience than any traditional publisher. That’s true whether your audience is made up of financial advisers, wealth managers, IT procurement people, investment managers, board members or CEOs. And it’s true whether you’re comparing it to The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, Money Marketing, Forbes Magazine, Investment Week or whatever else you think they read.

• Second, LinkedIn is better at targeting your audience than any other online publisher. That’s true whether you’re comparing it to the Guardian website, Mail Online, Facebook, Twitter or Google Ads.

 So how good is LinkedIn’s ad targeting?

Good question. It’s good. Really good. You can target people with ads using any or all of the following filters:

1. Location (required field): You can select multiple locations from the continent to the city level
2. Company Name (current employer listed on member’s profile)
3. Company Industry
4. Company Size
5. Job Title
6. Job Function
7. Job Seniority
8. Member Skills
9. Member Schools
10. Degrees
11. Fields of Study
12. Member Groups – up to 100 active groups
13. Member Gender
14. Member Age

Yes, you read that right: if you want to show your ad to people from a particular target company, you can. I know – you didn’t realise it was that easy, right?

So let’s talk about three ways to pay to reach your exact audience.

• Sponsored Update, which is a way to broadcast your content to the update feeds of potential prospects. Your content will appear in their update streams when they login or visit their profile page. You can do this using your firm’s Company Page and can reach others outside those who already follow that page. Don’t forget your targeting.

• Text Ads,which show to the right of profiles on LinkedIn and introduce your service with a brief sentence or two about your firm

• Sponsored InMail, which allows you to contact prospects directly and privately outside the environment of their work email – and, let’s face it, they’re not going to read a normal email. Sponsored InMails have always used the successful tricks of traditional email marketing, like using your prospect’s name. But  a recent change that makes the tool so compelling is that will now only be sent to members when they’re actively on LinkedIn.

Which one should I use?

It depends what you want to do but it’s worth experimenting with combinations, including all three at once. The combined effect of the three used together is to deliver a stream of regular relevant content to a target audience of decision-makers in different forms. Remember the old advertising adage: if you want someone to understand something, tell them 10 different times in 10 different ways. We’re running several successful campaigns now for clients so please , email MRM if you’d like some help with a LinkedIn advertising campaign and a chat through how it can all be measured.

All that remains to be said is….”Go do!”**.

 

 

*Sorry for using the phrase ‘solutions’ – I was in a hurry!

**Sorry for using the phrase “Go do!” – I just like it!