A LinkedIn Ads Guide To Get You Started

When it comes to social media ads, it is often disguised as an easy way to market your products and services. But in reality, it takes a lot of effort to actually yield some benefits from those ads. With an array of social media platforms, picking up the right one is crucial to make it discoverable to the right target audience.

There are Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other major platforms where you can place your ads. But here, we will focus on different types of LinkedIn ads with some best practices you can follow.

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Now, let’s delve right into the article!

Why LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn Ads lets you target a clearly defined target audience, thereby increasing the effectiveness of an ad. This unique segmentation of the audience is one of the unique features that most advertising channels lack. In fact, it offers more than 200 targeting characteristics, and when paired with multiple engaging ad formats, LinkedIn ads are one of the best methods to drive high-quality leads.

It also provides us with enough opportunity to personalize our ads according to the needs of your audience, therefore, helping you make people resonate with your message.

LinkedIn may not be a popular choice for online advertising, but these reasons probably hint that it is an extraordinarily dedicated platform where quality is served as the main ingredient.

Types Of LinkedIn Ads

#1. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content, also known as native ads, helps you push out content your company produced to a broader audience irrespective of whether they are your followers or not. It enables you to raise your brand awareness, build a relationship with professionals and attract quality candidates to your company. These contents are labelled as ‘promoted‘ to differentiate regular posts from the sponsored content.

The sponsored content ads can be single image ads, video ads, or carousel ads.

Here are some of the best practices to be followed:

  • Keep your headlines concise under 150 characters to get more engagement.
  • Keep descriptive copy under 70 characters to avoid getting truncated on a desktop.
  • Include larger visuals (1200 x 627 pixels is recommended) as it tends to get higher click-through rates (CTR).
  • Feature a CTA (call to action) to guide them on their interest.
  • Choose targeting criteria such as audience, location, etc., so that the most relevant LinkedIn users receive your ad.

#2. Sponsored Messaging

Once called sponsored InMail, these are direct messages sent to your target audience or prospects to spark immediate action. Note that LinkedIn controls the number of sponsored messages a member can get within a stipulated time frame.

There are two forms of sponsored messaging which are message ads and conversation ads. In message ads, your targeted message can only accompany a single call-to-action button, whereas in conversation ads you can include multiple offers and content types in a single message. Both these techniques are known to drive a high engagement rate.

Here are some of the best practices of sponsored messaging that you should definitely follow:

  • Study your customer’s journey to determine the stage you want to influence. This makes it easy to reach the right person at the right time with the right message.
  • Based on where in the customer’s journey you want to focus, audit and organize the assets that can accelerate the buying decision. Assets can include the details, further information or any data that they might be interested in knowing.
  • Identify the right place where you can incorporate those content and the assets meaning understanding at which stage of your customer’s journey do they need this asset.
  • Craft messages centring on customer’s needs.
  • Get insights on your campaign and evaluate what worked and whatnot. You can access the analytics in the ‘Campaign Manager‘ option.

#3. Text Ads

Text ads are ads displayed on the right-hand side or at the top of the LinkedIn desktop feed. These are similar to Google ads and works on the basis of PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Impression). These simple ads are easy to create, optimize and manage and works wonders for driving high-quality leads on a budget. You can also select your text ad in various sizes and ratios, such as square or horizontal.

Here are some recommendations to make your text ad stand out:

  • Include visuals for additional benefits. It helps in attracting the attention of your target audience.
  • Link your text ad to a landing page that matches the content of your ad.
  • Grab attention with strong headlines.
  • Use CTA to explain what to expect as a next step, such as ‘Register Now‘ or ‘Sign Up Today!‘.
  • Try different versions of your text ad to mark the ad that performs better.

#4. Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are those right rail ads that appear on the right side of a user’s profile based on the areas of their interest. As it is personalized for every individual, it results in better engagement and prominence. There are even multiple ad formats that you can use in dynamic ads, which includes follower ads, spotlight ads, job ads and content ads. To create a dynamic ad campaign, you have to first log in to your profile and head over to the campaign manager. There you have to select your objective, ad format and finally build your ad. That’s it!

Here are some best practices you can follow to create an awesome dynamic ad:

  • Enable your target audience’s profile picture to be shown in the ad, also known as visual personalization.
  • You can go for a preset ad template to keep everything easy.
  • Always include one main message with one call to action button. You can refer to LinkedIn ad specs to make sure your ads are in the best format.

How To Create These Ads? Here Is How You Can Do It!

Step 1: Create a LinkedIn Page to get started.

Step 2: Log in to the Campaign Manager.

Step 3: Decide your ad objective, meaning the goals you want to achieve with your ad campaign.

Step 4: Select your target audience.

Step 5: Pick an ad format that best serves the purpose.

Step 6: Plan your budget and schedule.

Step 7: Create your ad.

Step 8: Provide payment details to run the campaign.

Step 9: Measure and review your ad performance.

Conclusion!

There you have it! A mini LinkedIn ads guide to clear all your basic ambiguities related to the functioning of the LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn ads often seem to be more complex than other social media ads but the flexibility it offers can go a long way in attracting the right prospect.

With LinkedIn ads, you can access a tremendous audience as well as target them accurately. Also, it’s a great platform that gives enough options in selecting different ad features that work best for you.

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