Using LinkedIn Ads is a great way to reach new audiences on LinkedIn. Coming up with a LinkedIn Ad strategy that will drive results may feel daunting, but we’ve created a roadmap to get you started.
Ads now makeup 13% of users’ feeds, with an additional 34% of the feed dominated by Promoted Content. As organic Company Page posts continue to dwindle (at just 2% of the feed as of November 2024), paid Ads are becoming more and more necessary to reach people on LinkedIn.
We recommend a three-phase approach during a period of at least three months. And ad budget of at least $1,000/month is ideal.
Phase 1 of Your LinkedIn Ad Strategy: Top-of-Funnel
Start with exposure. Create a top-of-funnel campaign to expose your Ads audience to your brand. We recommend creating an engaging video that addresses your audience’s unique pain points and shows how you can help. Don’t talk about your specific product or services here.
Technical Details:
- 1:1 Square format
- Include captions
- Headline in intro that calls out audience (specifically company name or job title) with a challenge they are facing
- 2–3 minutes
- More specs from LinkedIn
We recommend running this campaign for 3–4 weeks.
Phase 2 of Your LinkedIn Ad Strategy: Middle-of-Funnel
A middle-of-funnel campaign for phase two should retarget to engaged video viewers (50% video completion). A 50%+ view of a 2 minute video shows that your content is resonating. This is a great way to ensure cost-effectiveness since you’ll only deliver these ads to an engaged subset of your audience.
Your intention here is to build trust and expose your audience to your product or services for the first time. We recommend a traffic-focused campaign that links to your website or landing page.
We recommend running this campaign for 4–8 weeks.
Phase 3 of Your LinkedIn Ad Strategy: Bottom-of-Funnel
For the third and final phase, you’ll want to run a bottom-of-funnel campaign focused on lead generation.
Here, you’ll retarget folks from the first two phases. At this point, these folks are at least familiar with your brand and may be aware of your products or services. In this phase, sales enablement content such as testimonials, webinars, demo videos, ebooks, and blog posts are great options to bring people into the buying cycle.
Use LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms for webinar signups and ebook downloads to begin generating marketing qualified leads.
We recommend running this campaign for 4–8 weeks, or ongoing!
Here’s how we employed this strategy for our client to generate awareness and leads.
Post-Ads: What Comes Next?
Now that you’re generating marketing qualified leads, continue to re-market to those folks with email marketing, organic LinkedIn marketing, and direct outreach.
Measure Your Performance
Don’t forget to measure your LinkedIn Ads performance! Here are 9 key metrics and industry benchmarks you can measure against.
As a Certified Databox Benchmarks Partner, we host a free Benchmark Group that calculates the median, top quartile, and bottom quartile B2B LinkedIn Ads performance. Members can join anonymously and see how their performance compares to the group. The group is made up of around 360 other B2B, Enterprise, and SaaS companies.
Are your LinkedIn Ads performing well, or is there room for improvement? Are your Impressions higher than others? Are you getting an average amount of Clicks and Leads? Join our Benchmark Group to find out or book a no-cost consultation with us.