Should You Try LinkedIn PPC?
While lots of people have heard of the platform LinkedIn, for many LinkedIn Pay Per Click is an unfamiliar term unaware of the benefits to their business – mostly if they are selling in a Business to Business capacity.
In this article, I cover the basics of what LinkedIn PPC is and how to get started. Hopefully, I'll encourage you to put some advertising budget towards this excellent source of traffic to your website.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social network concentrating on professional networking and career development.
Like Facebook, you create a profile, have a newsfeed, send messages, but, unlike Facebook, you socialise in more of a professional capacity rather than personal. Think articles around industry rather than lots of cat pics!
Profiles are in a CV format so you can see where a person is currently working and previous work history. It is also great because you can review recommendations from their peers too.
What is LinkedIn PPC
LinkedIn PPC (pay per click) is paying to post an advert or article out to a selected audiences news feed, and you pay either per click or per thousand impressions.
The audience you build is based on the criteria you set (within available parameters) which can give you super-specific targeting.
For example
Let say you sell online software specifically for accountants running small practices (2-50 employees) in the UK. You have identified that senior accountants would be decision-makers in the firm, so you create an audience based on that criteria to target your visual adverts too.
- Location: UK
- Job Titles: senior accountant
- Company Industry: accountancy
- Company size: 2-50 employees
Within LinkedIn audience builder, this selection would give you a potential audience of almost 5,000 people. Now imagine serving your adverts only to their news feeds. That's pretty targeted!
In my experience, I do see that LinkedIn pay per click can be more pricey than other pay per click platforms such as Google Ads or Microsoft Ads. Yet the level of targeting is excellent and if it works is worth the investment.
How do you get started with LinkedIn PPC?
To get started using LinkedIn PPC, you will need a LinkedIn company page like mine. I would recommend starting by adding some articles or blog posts that your target audience may find interesting.
Next, you will need to go to LinkedIn Campaign Manager and create an advertising account and link your company page to the new account.
Once you have set up the billing, linked the company page to your account it is then onto building your first advertising campaign.
There are several types of ads you can choose from, and it will depend on what your campaign objectives are. For example, if you want to generate more traffic to your website, you may select a single image advert that entices people to click through.
But, if you are running a webinar demonstrating your software, you may want to send a sponsored InMail message to all your targeted audience personally inviting them to attend.
It pays to think about what your objectives are before you create any content or adverts. Planning will help ensure your budget is spent carefully and not wasted.
Sounds good but struggling to find the time to learn LinkedIn PPC?
No problem, I'm here to help you! I can work with your team or my professional contacts to create a series of adverts and ensure they are targeting the exact audience you need.
In my view, LinkedIn is an excellent asset to anyone's advertising strategy, especially for B2B businesses. While it may not work for everyone, I have seen great success with client's campaigns. I would encourage anyone thinking about it to do a test campaign and see the outcomes for themselves.
