It's no secret that LinkedIn is making rapid advancements to their advertising platform to better compete with the likes of Facebook and increase revenue from ad sales. This recent and continued evolution has helped make LinkedIn a more effective and robust tool for marketers.  However, for many organizations LinkedIn advertising is still a completely untapped opportunity. If you are wondering if LinkedIn can be an effective advertising channel for your organization, here are 5 questions you can ask yourself before you get started.

Q1: Can I find my target audience on LinkedIn?

A: Most of the time the answer is yes. LinkedIn gives you the ability to target by location, job title, industry, company, gender, age, job seniority, job function and more. This is ideal for B2B organizations but can also work for B2C products and services too. For example, a company selling luxury watches can target C level executives or a company selling a fitness product can target personal trainers. In addition, LinkedIn allows you to retarget your website visitors and lead database so you can build your own audience outside of LinkedIn's targeting parameters.

Q2: Is what I'm looking to promote appropriate for LinkedIn?

A: This depends. As we mentioned in the previous question, you can likely find your target audience on LinkedIn. However, there are a few restricted products and services including dating services, financial products, soliciting funds, health matters, tobacco products, weapons, alcoholic beverages and more. Also, you need to consider the ROI you will be able to achieve from LinkedIn advertising. Generally, it will be difficult to achieve a cost per click on LinkedIn lower than around $3. Let's say you are able to convert 5% of your clicks to a lead or sale. At 100 clicks, you would generate 5 leads or sales at a $60 cost per lead/acquisition. For most B2B organizations, the revenue generated from each customer is likely in the thousands, so a higher acquisition cost can still net out a strong ROI. For B2C organizations, you would need to be offering a product or service at a higher price point (over $100) or have a great offer that allows you to convert a high percent of the clicks you receive. Lastly, you can promote much more than products or services. LinkedIn ads can be used to promote job openings, events, content - even things that don't drive direct revenue but help with awareness such as a major press release or announcement.

Q3: What type of advertising budget will I need?

A: You can advertise on LinkedIn with any budget. Since you determine how much you want to spend, you can choose to allocate a few hundred dollars or several thousand. However, given the generally higher cost per lead or acquisition we mentioned previously, you will likely need a budget of at least a few thousand dollars (can be over the course of a few months) to have enough data to make decisions on how to optimize your campaigns. We recommend a test budget of at least 10x your average cost per acquisition. So if your other display channels come in around a $400 cost per lead, you should test into LinkedIn with at least $4,000.

Q4: What timelines do I need to operate under?

A: Just like your advertising budget, this is also up to you. While LinkedIn advises a 24 turnaround time for reviewing new ad creative, it is possible to have a new ad live within an hour of creating it. Then, depending on your budget, you can set parameters to have your campaign run for just a few days or indefinitely. Short term campaigns of a few days would be ideal for promoting events or limited time offers while all other promotions should be given a longer period to run to ensure you a gathering enough performance data to optimize.

Q5: What resources will I need to set up and manage my campaigns?

A: You have a few options for managing your LinkedIn advertising campaigns. First, you can set up and manage campaigns on your own or with a dedicated, in-house resource. You will need to develop ad copy and creative, build out your ads and targeting criteria in the Campaign Manager, determine where you will be sending traffic and how you will track it and manage tests and optimizations once your ads are live. Second, if you don't have the bandwidth or expertise in-house, you can work with a 3rd party agency, consultancy or freelancer to manage it all for you.

Get Started

If after reading this, LinkedIn advertising is something you are ready to test and you would prefer to have a 3rd party do it all for you, we can help. In Linked Consulting specializes exclusively in LinkedIn advertising campaign management. Contact us today to learn more and get started.