Savvy marketers use LinkedIn Sponsored Content for growing their brand, generating leads and building website traffic.
With 756 million members, LinkedIn offers a promising opportunity for digital marketers to reach relevant audiences with their content.
The platform is popular among B2B marketers, with 96 per cent using LinkedIn to reach carefully targeted audiences of professional decision makers.
LinkedIn offers advertising options with various features to help you target and connect with your ideal audience. One of those options is LinkedIn Sponsored Content, which allows advertisers to expand brand awareness, build relationships throughout the customer journey and generate quality leads.
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What is LinkedIn Sponsored Content?
LinkedIn Sponsored Content is a type of paid advertisement that allows companies to deliver page updates in different formats to audiences beyond their page followers.
Ideally, sponsored content resembles other content on the platform and offers value to the reader. The seamless inclusion of sponsored content into the main LinkedIn feed creates a less disruptive experience for the audience you’re trying to reach.
It helps your brand to be seen as a credible and trustworthy source of information. It also lets you avoid the use of more intrusive ads.
There are different types of sponsored content ad types available when you create an advertising campaign on LinkedIn:
- Single image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel image ads
- Single job ads
- Event ads
LinkedIn also includes tools to allow you to do more with your campaigns. For instance, you can enable lead generation forms to collect qualified leads or use the audience expansion tool to reach people similar to your target audience. You can also use the LinkedIn Audience Network to expand your reach beyond the LinkedIn platform.
Who will see my LinkedIn Sponsored Content?
You’ll select your target audience using a range of parameters. This audience will see your sponsored content in their LinkedIn feed on both desktop and mobile devices. As well, single image and video ads may be displayed throughout the LinkedIn Audience Network.
How often will it be shown?
How often your sponsored content is displayed in a user’s home feed depends on the parameters you select for your target audience, your budget and how competitive your ad is compared to other ads in the system. As you build your campaign, the options you choose will affect how frequently your ads are shown.
How is it different from LinkedIn Direct Sponsored Content?
LinkedIn Direct Sponsored Content allows you to test different iterations of your ads by showing them only to the campaign target audience. These ads will never show on your main LinkedIn page.
How is it different from Targeted LinkedIn Page updates?
Targeted LinkedIn Page updates are free and visible on the LinkedIn page or in the feed of existing followers only. Administrators of the page can tailor content to specific audiences and target these audiences when publishing. These ads will show both in the main LinkedIn feed and on your page.
Why is LinkedIn Sponsored Content an effective way to promote my business?
Many businesses use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote themselves. Still, with LinkedIn’s established professional network and impressive marketing numbers, smart marketers are exploring what it has to offer for advertising options.
LinkedIn Sponsored Content allows you to:
- Reach an engaged audience of decision-makers through their newsfeeds.
- Set and reach goals for brand awareness, lead generation and relationship building.
- Target relevant audiences and expand your reach beyond your existing network.
LinkedIn already has a highly engaged audience spending time on the platform while in a business mindset. Offer this audience valuable content that’s relevant to their needs and you’ll gain traction. Use LinkedIn’s precise targeting parameters to reach your ideal audience for maximum effectiveness.
Is LinkedIn Sponsored Content worth it?
Here are a few impressive LinkedIn statistics that might help convince you to give their sponsored content a try:
- LinkedIn offers 9 billion content impressions, with 15 times more content impressions than job postings.
- LinkedIn drives 46 per cent of social traffic to company websites.
- According to eMarketer, LinkedIn is considered the most trusted digital platform.
- Eighty per cent of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn ads.
- LinkedIn offers 200 targeting characteristics for precise audience targeting.
- Lead conversion rates are nearly three times higher on LinkedIn than other major ad platforms, including Google Ads.
How to create Sponsored Content on LinkedIn
Ready to give sponsored content a go? You’ll want to get familiar with the steps you’ll take to create your campaigns and ads. Next, make the most of your budget with tips and best practices for creating effective ads using LinkedIn’s free tools, testing and ad optimization.
Creating LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns and ads
Here’s a quick overview of the steps you’ll take to create your campaign and ads. You can find detailed instructions for each step in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager:
- Create a campaign.
- Define your audience with targeting features.
- Choose your ad type or format.
- Set your budget and schedule.
- Create your LinkedIn Sponsored Content ad.
- Launch and monitor the campaign.
- Measure and adapt.
Tip: It’s a good idea to create multiple ads in each campaign as you’re likely to gain more traction with more ads.
Keep these best practices in mind when creating LinkedIn Sponsored Content
If you’re going to invest time and resources, you’ll want to be sure you get the most out of your efforts. Keep these tips in mind and, if you want to learn more, dig into LinkedIn’s best practices:
- Follow general LinkedIn advertising guidelines.
- Refer to LinkedIn advertising specifications to be sure your ad can be approved.
- Plan relevant campaigns and share mindfully to avoid spamming your audience.
- Test your content ads by changing one element and comparing results.
- Test audiences to see where you get the most traction.
- Start small; then expand as you see what works.
Tip: Make sure to install the LinkedIn Insight Tag, a small piece of JavaScript code, on your website so you can track conversions and access demographic information from your website visitors. This tag offers you analytics that will help you measure the effectiveness of your ads by tracking conversions, targeting website visitors and revealing other audience insights.
How much does LinkedIn Sponsored Content cost?
The cost is one of the first things marketers will ask about when scoping out new advertising options. Of course, you want to grow your business, but you have a budget and need to see a solid return on any marketing investment.
While LinkedIn advertising isn’t the most affordable option out there, learning how to build targeted campaigns will help you take the best advantage of this platform and reap measurable gains over the long term.
The range of ad formats LinkedIn offers helps marketers build the best campaigns suited to their goals and budgets. As you explore these options, you’ll see some ad formats – such as video ads and carousel ads – cost more than a single image ad.
It’s also important to understand that many social platforms, including LinkedIn, use a bidding model for sponsored content advertising. Therefore, your cost will vary depending on ad format, your target audiences and competition for those audiences.
You can keep the costs of your campaign down by targeting audiences carefully and creating relevant sponsored content to deliver to those audiences. The more relevant your content, the less you’ll pay overall.
If you want to grow your brand and connect with relevant, engaged audiences, LinkedIn Sponsored Content could be a valuable option. With precise targeting and a wide range of ad formats, there are plenty of ways to customize campaigns to suit your business and budget.
