Tips for Successful LinkedIn Ads

In a world where digital is becoming more and more important, companies are constantly looking to stand out and reach their potential customers. LinkedIn, as a professional social network, is an ideal platform for reaching a targeted and engaged audience. LinkedIn ads allow you to promote your brand, your products, or your services to a qualified audience and thus generate leads and increase your visibility.

In this article, we'll share with you key tips for successful LinkedIn ads, based on many hours of experience and testing on the LinkedIn Ads platform. You'll learn tips for optimizing your campaigns, avoiding common mistakes, and getting the most out of different ad formats and targeting options. Whether you're new to online advertising or an expert, these tips will help you improve your performance and maximize your return on investment.

Points covered in this article

1. Advertising formats and their effectiveness

2. The bidding and targeting strategy

3. Managing contact lists and audiences

4 . Mistakes to avoid and tips to improve performance

5 . The importance of content and creativity

6 . Conclusion

Carousels: originality and creativity

Carousel ads offer the ability to display multiple images or videos in a single ad, allowing you to showcase different aspects of your product, service, or business. To make the most of this format, it is essential to be original and creative in the design of your visuals and your message.

For carousel ads on LinkedIn to work and grab your audience's attention, it's crucial to be original and creative. Here are some tips to achieve this:

Tell a Story: Use the carousel format to tell an engaging, step-by-step story to drive user interest and engagement. Build a cohesive narrative that guides users through the various slides and leads them to a final call to action.

Use appealing visuals: To capture the attention of LinkedIn users, use high-quality, aesthetically pleasing images or videos. The visuals must be representative of your message and in line with your brand identity.

Play with visual continuity: Exploit the visual continuity between different slides to create a surprise effect and entice users to scroll through the slides. For example, you can use a visual that crosses multiple slides, creating a panning effect.

Take care with your titles and descriptions: The titles and descriptions of each slide should be concise, powerful, and relevant to your audience. They should inspire users to learn more and continue discovering your content.

Call to action: End your carousel with a clear and inciting call to action, related to the objective of your advertising campaign. Whether it's to generate leads, increase brand awareness, or promote an event, the call to action should be consistent with the carousel content.

For your carousel ads on LinkedIn to be effective, bet on originality and creativity to capture the attention of your audience, tell a captivating story, use attractive visuals, take care of your texts, and end with a clear call to action. and relevant.

Ads with images: ideal for generating traffic

Image ads are a simple and effective format for grabbing LinkedIn users' attention and getting them to click on your ad. This format is particularly suitable for driving traffic to your website or a specific landing page. To maximize the impact of this type of ad, be sure to use high-quality images that are representative of your offering and stand out in the News Feed. The choice of text that accompanies the image is also crucial: opt for a clear, relevant, and powerful message that arouses the interest of your target audience.

The bidding and targeting strategy

The choice between manual bidding and maximizing circulation

Bid management is a key element in optimizing your advertising campaigns on LinkedIn. You have a choice between manual bidding, where you set yourself how much you're willing to pay for each click, impression, or conversion, and outreach maximization, where LinkedIn automatically optimizes your bids to achieve the largest number of users possible. In the majority of cases, manual bidding provides better control over your budget and goals and generally performs better than maximizing circulation.

The importance of retargeting for paid B2B

Retargeting, or retargeting, is an advertising technique that involves targeting users who have already interacted with your brand, In the context of paid B2B, retargeting is particularly effective in converting prospects into customers because it allows you to reach an audience already interested in your products or services. To get the most out of retargeting, consider segmenting your audience based on their level of engagement (e.g. key page visitors, video viewers) and tailoring your advertising message accordingly.

The different targeting options: job title, interests, company lists

LinkedIn offers several targeting options to help you reach the most relevant audience for your campaign. Available targeting criteria include job titles, user interests, and company listings. Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages, and it is important to fully understand how they work in order to use them effectively.

The pitfalls of targeting: the illusion of targeting by job title, targeting by industry

Targeting by job title may appear to be very specific, but in reality, it can be as broad as targeting by function. For example, targeting “marketing managers” can include profiles ranging from specialists to marketing directors. Additionally, job titles can vary widely from company to company, making this type of targeting less reliable.

Industry targeting also has limitations, as many companies are associated with multiple industries on LinkedIn. It is therefore possible that your targeting is less precise than expected and that you reach companies that are less relevant to your campaign.

To circumvent these pitfalls, it is recommended to combine several targeting criteria and to regularly adjust your strategy according to the results obtained.

Management of contact lists and audiences

The importance of a well-stocked contact list

Having a well-stocked contact list is essential for optimizing your LinkedIn ad campaigns. By providing complete and up-to-date information about your contacts, you increase the likelihood of matches between your list and LinkedIn profiles, which in turn helps reach a more relevant audience and improves your campaign performance. Consider including data such as names, email addresses, job titles, and company names of your contacts to facilitate correspondence.

The different types of ads for cold and warm audiences

Depending on how engaged your audience is, you can choose from different types of ads. For cold audiences, i.e. people who have not yet interacted with your brand, it is recommended to use image or video ads to grab their attention and generate interest. For hot audiences, who have already shown interest in your brand, Text, Dynamic, or Followers ads are best suited to build engagement and drive action.

Optimizing the display frequency of ads

The frequency with which your ads are displayed is an important element to take into account to avoid saturation and maintain the engagement of your audience. A frequency of 3-4 appearances per content is generally considered ideal. Feel free to experiment with different frequencies and adjust based on the results to find the best balance between visibility and efficiency.

Tools to facilitate ad management, such as Hubspot

Using an ad management tool like Hubspot can make it much easier to create, track, and optimize your LinkedIn ad campaigns. Hubspot offers features like ad duplication with unique tracking codes for each campaign, integration with your CRM, and detailed analytics of your ad performance. By simplifying the management of your campaigns, you can focus on improving your targeting and content strategies to get even better results.

Mistakes to avoid and tips for improving performance

Features to avoid: LinkedIn Audience Network, Audience Expansion

Some features of LinkedIn may seem interesting but are not always effective for your campaigns. For example, the LinkedIn Audience Network, which allows your ads to appear on third-party sites, is often rated as underperforming and unreliable. Similarly, Audience Expansion, which broadens your target audience by including similar profiles, can dilute your targeting and lead to a performance drop in 95% of cases. It is better to focus on more precise targeting strategies and to segment your audience well.

Performance criteria: benchmarks and PLC

Performance benchmarks, such as average click-through rate (CTR) or cost per lead (CPL), can be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. However, it is important not to limit yourself to this and to take into account the specific context of your company and your market. Analyze your results against your business goals and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Best practices for segmenting and analyzing your audience

Segmenting and analyzing your audience is essential to optimize your campaigns and improve performance. Start by defining audience segments based on criteria such as level of engagement, interests, or behaviors. Then, use LinkedIn's analytics tools, like Insights, to get detailed insights into each segment and adjust your strategies based on their needs and preferences.

Advanced targeting techniques: promoted KPIs, KPIs linked to your competitors

To further refine your targeting, you can use advanced techniques, such as targeting Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) who have just been promoted or who have recently changed jobs. These people are more likely to be looking for new solutions and new partners, which makes them particularly attractive for your B2B campaigns. You can also target KPIs who are connected to your competitors on LinkedIn, in order to present them with an alternative to your competitors' offer and try to convince them to choose your company.

The importance of content and creativity

The crucial role of visuals and content in the success of a campaign

The visuals and content of your LinkedIn ads play a huge role in their success. Attractive and original visuals will capture the attention of your audience and encourage them to engage more with your brand. Content should be relevant, informative, and tailored to your target audience to spark interest and drive action. Remember that creatives are the first thing users see, so giving them special attention is essential.

The importance of experimenting and offering a variety of content

To keep your audience engaged and maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns, it's important to experiment with different types of content and formats. Test various approaches, like customer testimonials, case studies, blog posts, or infographics, and measure their performance to determine what works best for your audience. By offering a variety of content, you are more likely to reach and engage a larger and more diverse audience.

Don't be afraid of saturation: the first impression is not always enough

It is common to think that the first impression is the most important and that you should avoid saturating your audience with too much similar content. However, it is important to remember that users are constantly exposed to many advertisements and may not remember your brand after a single interaction. Feel free to repeat your key messages and offer varied content to build brand awareness and create multiple engagement opportunities with your audience. By adjusting the delivery frequency and diversifying your content, you can avoid saturation while keeping your audience engaged.

Conclusion

The success of your LinkedIn advertising campaigns is based on several key elements:

• Choose the right ad format based on your goals.

• Adopt effective bidding and targeting strategies adapted to your audience.

• Carefully manage and analyze your contact lists and audiences to optimize the display of ads.

• Avoid some common mistakes and apply tricks to improve performance.

• Give particular importance to the content and creativity of your ads.

We encourage you to put these tips into practice to optimize your LinkedIn Ads campaigns and get the most out of this advertising platform. Remember that the key to success lies in adaptation and experimentation: test different approaches, analyze the results, and adjust your strategies accordingly to achieve the best possible results in online advertising