‘Test and learn’ is a mantra for marketing professionals and your approach to LinkedIn ads should be no different.
If you have yet to explore the power of LinkedIn for B2B advertising, here’s our guide to help you understand how it works, how to get set up and our recommended prep. We have maritime marketing teams in mind but, in truth, the process applies to any industry.
Set your objectives
The advantages of paid advertising on social media channels can vary, so it’s a really good idea to have clear objectives at the outset. You may want to build awareness among prospective customers, grow your LinkedIn followers or even generate leads for a particular product or service. Setting goals will enable you to benchmark your results and learn from your initial trial ads, so consider what you want to achieve before selecting the ad format and building your audience.
Set up an account
To advertise on LinkedIn, you’ll need a Campaign Manager account. There are some useful resources on LinkedIn to help you get started, such as this short training course about creating a campaign. You’ll also need appropriate page admin permissions to run ads for your company page, so if you’re not already assigned as super admin or content admin on LinkedIn, you’ll need a colleague to grant that permission to you.
Note: you must have a personal LinkedIn account to be set up as an administrator for your company page.
Build your audience
Targeting your ads to the right audience is crucial for your campaign’s success, and this stage of the process can take a bit of time. You have several options here, too, including the ability to upload customer or prospect data that you already have and to build an audience of companies and professionals who fit your criteria, such as relevant industries, job types and geographic locations. Relevant industry segments for maritime marketing include Maritime Transportation, Industrial Machinery Manufacturing and Shipbuilding, though some customers may fall under Technology or other related categories, so it’s a good idea to research your target customers to determine how to identify them on LinkedIn.
You can also integrate your LinkedIn advertising with your CRM platform for enhanced analysis and engagement, as LinkedIn has partnered with many leading providers, such as Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics.
Note: you can exclude specific companies from your campaign to help protect valuable relationships with existing customers
Work up your ad content and creative
You have several options and formats for your ad creative, such as repurposing existing content and assets to appear in your audience members’ news feed and sponsored messages, aimed at starting conversations with your targets. What to choose will depend on your objectives and you may want to experiment with several formats to see which achieves the most engagement and the best results. A/B testing can be very beneficial for testing the efficacy of certain imagery, assets and messaging.
Consider the journey
If you’re aiming to drive your target audience to a web page or online questionnaire, think about the whole journey from the LinkedIn ad right through to the end goal and beyond. You may need to set up or update a landing page and consider what you want your targets to do from there. If there’s a data capture form involved, test it thoroughly and have a process established to maintain contact with your new prospects. Your sales team may be critical here, as your leads may need to be allocated to, and nurtured by, a specific colleague.
Set your budget
It’s easy to control costs with LinkedIn advertising as you can set a budget for your campaign as well as cost caps to ensure that ad bids are limited. Once your audience is set, LinkedIn Campaign Manager will forecast your results, so you can see the likely return on investment and any variations in results per segment. You can also pause campaigns if you need to.
Brief your colleagues
As with all marketing activity, it’s important to ensure your wider marketing and sales teams are aware of the campaign set to launch so they can be suitably prepared for any subsequent enquiries or lead nurture required. Key members of the team may have already been involved in the campaign creation process but providing a full briefing during a sales meeting, or at least sharing details by email, will help ensure your campaign’s success.
For more information on setting up LinkedIn campaigns please contact our Head of Campaign Management richard.neighbour@wake-media.co.uk
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