Author’s Note: This post was originally published in 2020. It has since been updated for 2024! 

LinkedIn has gotten a rep in the past that it’s only useful for B2B marketing. And while that is somewhat true—and we’ll provide a few Linkedin ad examples below—we’ve also seen great success testing the channel for B2C efforts, too! LinkedIn’s member base consists of a more engaged, professional audience than some other channels, so it’s a great place to be if you’re looking to promote a product or service that may best be served to this particular audience when they’re paying the most attention.

Let’s take a look at some of the LinkedIn campaigns we’ve run over only the past 6 months for our partners and some of the results those campaigns have yielded!

Driving free sign-ups to SaaS organization Nulab’s core software products

Goal: Driving free sign-ups to Nulab’s core software products through a variety of messaging – content-based and action-based

Campaign Objective: Website Conversions

Ad Format: Sponsored Content → Static Image

The Linkedin ad format you likely think of (or see while scrolling on your feed) is Sponsored Content, which essentially appears as a promoted post and can feature a static image, video, carousel, or even an article. Images tend to perform well when driving site traffic or conversions, and video or carousels work best as upper-funnel awareness-building content. A square ad ratio is recommended for Sponsored Content ads due to its ability to take up a larger portion of the screen across both desktop and mobile placements. Don’t forget to include text overlay and branding to catch the audience’s attention quickly and form strong brand associations!

We’ve tested a variety of static image creative for Nulab, whose product suite includes a project management software and online, collaborating diagramming software. In an effort to position their products to their target audience on LinkedIn, we promote a lot of their educational and value-based content to engage with users. 

Driving B2B MQLs for EdTech organization Multiverse by promoting valuable pieces of content

Goal: Driving marketing qualified leads that will be nurtured in their down-funnel sales pipeline to ultimately become deals by promoting valuable content that’s relevant to their target audience

Campaign Objective: Lead Generation

Ad Format: Document Ads

Want to take promoting content a step further? Why not check out Document Ads?

Multiverse, one of our EdTech partners based in the UK, has a very robust content strategy that involves several new reports, white papers, and case studies being published every quarter that are relevant to the ICP they’re trying to reach and what is going on in the industry at the time. In late 2022, we identified the new-at-the-time Document Ad format as a great vehicle to get this content in front of our target audience – GATED – without them ever needing to leave their LinkedIn feed to access it.

Linkedin Document Ads are especially a great format to test if you are a B2B organization looking to promote the content you already have on hand. They appear native to the platform because they are essentially an embedded slideshow presentation that you can swipe through to read, like turning a page or moving to the next slide. For gated Document Ads, we usually recommend previewing the first 1-3 pages and requiring users to fill out the lead form to download and view the full document. Since this format allows you to share a Document directly in the feed, there’s no need to click off to a different landing page, making the content easier and more convenient to read and engage with – and we’ve found that LinkedIn users prefer to stay on LinkedIn when they’re there.

In order to run a Document Ad, you just need to incorporate your content into a PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX file type that is no greater than 100 MB in size and no longer than 300 pages (we recommend anywhere from 10-20 as a sweet spot because the more pages = the longer it will take to upload to the platform, and users are less likely to download a resource longer than 20 pages). To follow LinkedIn’s best practice of 5-8 creative concepts per campaign, we recommend creating several cover variations of your report/white paper/e-book so that you can swap them onto new versions of the PDF and run each version as its own creative concept!

The types of content we have historically promoted via Document Ads for Multiverse include case studies, reports, and white papers.

From the content we’ve promoted, we’ve taken away some learnings around what works well to drive click engagement and leads from this type of ad format:

• Case studies that feature well-known organizations or companies
• Relevant content that is being talked about in your industry – for Multiverse, this is skills gaps, upskilling, and AI
• Clear messaging around what the content is about and what value a prospect will be getting if they down this content

We tend to see Document Ads being a bit more costly than other formats as it’s a hot commodity in terms of ad formats to promote, but we’ve found a sweet spot with promoting it alongside other formats, such as Sponsored Messaging campaigns, to get more bang for your buck.

Driving leads for FinTech organization Acres by promoting content through personalized messages

Goal: Driving leads to that will be entered into nurture workflows in their CRM by promoting their latest, science-backed report on land value data

Campaign Objective: Lead Generation

Ad Format: Message Ad

Another one of the formats that is unique to LinkedIn that we love testing, especially alongside Document Ads or other in-feed ads to further ramp up high-quality lead-driving campaigns, are Sponsored Messaging campaigns. Whether you’re testing Message Ads or Conversation Ads, both formats offer the ability to reach audiences in a personalized and conversational way through the use of dynamic fields that auto-populate with a member’s first name, last name, company name, or job title, creating a tailored message experience at scale.

This ad format performs best when the designated sender has a Director or higher job title relevant to the content of the message, plus a welcoming profile picture. 

Key Message Ad Components: 

• Subject Line: A short and engaging hook
• Body: The sender introduces themselves and then leads into a clear and concise description of the offering, ideally 500 characters or less for better performance
• CTA Button: Customizable text, up to 20 characters

TIP: Bullet point formatting helps drive home the main points of the Message Ad and subtly guides a user’s eyes toward the CTA button (like we did just now!)

We tend to find that, when paired together, Document Ads and Message Ads are a real powerhouse together when you are promoting the same content and targeting the same audience: you stay in front of your target audience while they’re scrolling their feeds with a visual asset, grabbing their attention, and then you follow up on that with a personalized message delivered directly to their LinkedIn inboxes, where they may be more engaged.

We’ve promoted Acres’ land value report across both ad formats simultaneously and have generated over 100 leads that their team has been able to nurture down the funnel.

Taking it one step further

If you have the resources and bandwidth to do so, leveraging various ad formats at once allows you to capture your audience’s attention in several ways – whether that’s through informative document ads with in-depth insights or personalized messages that directly tap into the value that your organization is offering. And if you’re not sure what would work for you? Test, test, and test again! LinkedIn specifically is a great paid social channel to test on – they even introduced their A/B test tool late last year so you can now do this on your own – so you can take your learnings and apply them to your future strategy.

By taking advantage of the channel’s features, we’ve been able to layer LinkedIn into our paid social channel mix to reach our target audience in new ways and with new messaging, and there is so much more to explore! If you’re looking to take your LinkedIn advertising to the next level, let’s talk!

The post LinkedIn Advertising in 2024: LinkedIn Ad Examples From Tuff Clients appeared first on Tuff.

How can I scale while maintaining lead quality? That’s a question that many B2B marketers often face. Scaling growth relies on a mix of marketing channels—which often includes paid media. Along with the right channels, you need the right mix of campaign objectives and formats for efficient results.

Ad creative, audiences, and landing page experience aren’t the only levers to pull. We’ve found success by testing different campaign formats on LinkedIn to generate more qualified leads at more efficient cost-per-lead rates. Especially for partners where we’re executing an account-based marketing strategy on the platform. One of those formats is LinkedIn Document Ads.

Paid Strategy 🤝 Content Strategy

If you’re allocating time, money, and resources to developing your content strategy, then you probably want to squeeze everything you can from the high-quality content you’re producing. We know how valuable content is to your audience, no matter the industry, and how imperative it can be to attracting new customers and contributing to engagement.

If you’ve historically driven traffic to a landing page with gated content or used in-platform lead form ads, you should consider testing LinkedIn document ads in your next campaign. While gating content is a way to get efficient MQLs, it’s not always the easiest user journey. The fact is that consuming content that requires you to input personal information can deter people from engaging with your brand in a meaningful way. But what if you could streamline this process to deliver a valuable resource to your audience AND collect their information at the same time? 

Meet LinkedIn Document Ads. 

What are LinkedIn Document Ads?

LinkedIn Document Ads are LinkedIn’s latest addition to their ad format directory. They were released last fall as a way to promote Documents, which have taken the platform by storm as a new way to showcase high-quality, relevant content. You’ve likely seen a Document post or maybe even an ad on your own feed.

It appears as an embedded slideshow presentation that you can swipe through to read, like turning a page or moving onto the next slide. Since this format allows you to share a Document directly in the feed, there’s no need to click off to a different landing page, making the content easier and more convenient to read and engage with.

By running a Document Ad, you’re able to put ad spend behind this format and promote it to an audience that is most relevant to your products/services. You can choose between un-gating this Document, which would freely generate awareness and grow your company’s thought leadership, or gating it, which allows people to unlock the full document after filling out an in-platform lead generation form. 

At Tuff, we have tested the latter as a way to collect leads, especially with our B2B partners whose primary goal is lead generation.

What types of content should you promote via Document Ads?

At this point, you’re probably already thinking about what types of content you’d like to promote through this ad format. Since you’re able to showcase a lot more than if this was a static image ad or even a video, you can look at Document Ads as a really great way to promote long-form content you have, like ebooks, guides, reports, white papers, or case studies. However, there are a few important factors to think about when choosing this content.

Questions to ask when identifying content to promote: 

Can I make this content visually appealing?

Since people will see the title page of the Document and possibly a few more pages (we’ll expand upon this more soon!), you’re going to want to make the content as visually appealing as possible by repurposing it into a designed resource, if it isn’t already. This means brand colors, logos, images, and other design elements. Since the goal is to get people to stop in their scrolling tracks and take a moment to review the ad and what they can see of the Document before deciding to download, you’ll want to take some pointers from the insights we’ve learned testing performance creative on paid platforms.

Is this content relevant to my audience?

Before taking the next step to package your content up work for a Document Ad, take a moment to consider if the content makes sense and is relevant to the audience you can reach on LinkedIn. Is your content step-by-step guidebook of how they can approach a facet of their business in a new way? Or does it report on findings you learned from a test you ran? How about a case study that features clear results from a company that worked with you? It’s likely that all of those, especially with the right cover and ad copy, would immediately appeal to your audience if that content makes sense to them. If your content is long-winded and doesn’t provide much to walk away with, or even connect with you post-download, then you may want to reconsider the content you’re planning to put your ad dollars behind.

How to set up LinkedIn Document Ads

Setting up a Document Ad campaign is a pretty seamless process and mostly similar to setting up the other ad formats on the platform. When you set up your campaign, you can choose any of the campaign objectives with the exception of anything web or video-based. This means that if you’re not interested in driving leads and want to leave your Document ungated, you cannot drive to your website. People will just be able to download the Document with one click and then move along. This is why we have mostly tested Document Ads with the Lead Generation objective. 

In the “Ad format” section of the campaign set-up, select “Document ad.” You can save your campaign and move onto the ad creative section. Click to create a new ad and fill out your ad name, the introductory text (your ad copy), and your headline. You’ll then upload your Document. 

Document ad specs:

• File types: PDF, DOCX, DOC, PPT, PPTX
• Limits: 300 pages (although we don’t necessarily recommend this because it will take you quite a bit to upload, and your audience quite a bit to download)
• Aspect ratio: vertical, horizontal, or square
• Size: 100MB

Your Document will take a minute or so to upload, depending on the file size, so we recommend uploading the Document itself and then filling in the rest of the components of the ad for the most efficient set-up process. A slider right before where you upload the Document will indicate how many pages you’d like as part of the “preview.” This means how many pages a user can see before choosing to download.

Choosing Your Preview

This is a decision you can go back and forth on – including only the title cover of the Document in the preview may cause more intrigue and encourage people to download to learn more, whereas it could also not make it super clear what the document is about, therefore deterring people from filling out. On the flipside, including a few more pages in the preview could give people a better idea of the content, but it also might not lead them to download if they feel they’ve learned enough in a few pages.

If your campaign objective is set to Lead Generation, select the form you’d like associated with the ad. Once someone fills out this form, they’re not taken to a thank you page screen of the form but rather the form will close and they’ll have access to scroll through the rest of the Document in their feed and download it to their device.

Once you have set up one Document Ad, you can move forward with setting up additional ones and testing different Document covers, ad copy, or headlines. LinkedIn recommends 5-8 creatives per campaign as a best practice. One nuance with setting up Document Ads if you cannot duplicate them at this time, so you will need to build each new ad from scratch.

LinkedIn Document Ad Results

Now for the exciting part! When it comes to leveraging the success and efficiency of Document Ads, we have optimized solely for Marketing Qualified Leads and cost-per-MQL. We’ve also leaned on CTR, which was originally trending higher than Sponsored Content campaigns but has since been relatively the same (anywhere from 0.30% to 0.80%). Document Ads have shown to be a little more expensive than Sponsored Content campaigns in terms of CPCs and CPMs, and thus we have allocated more budget to this format to accommodate increased competition.

How utilizing Document Ads contributed to our B2B partner’s LinkedIn performance:

For one of our B2B partners, a company that specializes in working with large companies to design and execute apprenticeship programs, we have been testing Document Ads since late last year. On the surface, before digging into particular campaigns, we generated a 280% increase in MQLs when comparing MQL data between October and November when we started introducing the new format. In addition to more MQLs, we also generated a nearly $4,000 lower CPMQL despite spending almost double in ad spend. 

We also began testing them alongside Sponsored Content campaigns that were promoting the same content. For one particular content piece, where we ran an Engagement objective Sponsored Content campaign driving to a landing page where people could fill out a form and download the guide, we saw 6 more MQLs driven from the Document Ads in a month.

Are you ready to get started with Document Ads?

If driving more leads through LinkedIn at an efficient cost-per-lead and finding new ways to leverage the content strategy your team is working hard to produce is a goal of yours this year, we recommend giving Document Ads a try. Test different audiences, test different content pieces, test different ad copy and headlines! Test it all to see what works best for your product or service. If you’re looking to get started with LinkedIn advertising or take your existing strategy to the next level, let’s talk!

The post Boosting Your B2B Content Strategy with LinkedIn Document Ads appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: This post was updated on March 13, 2023, with updated data, resources, and templates for you to use. 

It is a simple truth that success in business requires success in advertising. As businesses evolve and learn to operate and diversify their channel mix, growth marketing becomes more important with each passing day. As a growth marketing agency, it is our job to test new channels with clear metrics, kill ones that do not work and scale up the channels that do. 

For many business owners, online advertising begins and ends with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. While LinkedIn Ads typically cost more, savvy businesses recognize the specialized benefits this platform offers.

If you need a new channel to generate leads and traffic, LinkedIn can present the ideal solution. With a reach of 900 million unique users, and a 5% growth rate in the 3 months leading up to January of 2023, Linkedin is one of the largest social media platforms. If you work in the B2B space, LinkedIn offers a goldmine of potential customers. According to data collected in 2022, Linkedin is the most used organic social media platform for B2B marketers at 96%.

LinkedIn Ads Cost: Is It Worth It?

Though LinkedIn stands as a juggernaut in the world of B2B commerce, its advertising opportunities can provide clear benefits for companies of all shapes and sizes. Whether you own or market for a university, nonprofit, or another type of organization, you can utilize LinkedIn for targeted goals to achieve success. 

Also, keep in mind that the ROI on your LinkedIn Ads cost is not only apparent in new customers, but also in potential employees. Any savvy business owner knows that finding the right applicant is less about dangling a hook, and more about finding the right spot and casting a net.

That said, B2B companies do represent the standard candidates for LinkedIn advertising. Before you commit resources to the platform, ask yourself whether a career-minded professional would have an interest in your service, product, or offer. If your answer is “yes,” then LinkedIn likely offers a good avenue for you to follow. 

Remember, people join and engage with LinkedIn to further their careers, network with other professionals, establish business contacts, and find new jobs. Whatever your offer or message, it needs to appeal to people engaged in these activities. 

How Do LinkedIn Ads Work?

Though LinkedIn advertisements do not appear as obvious as ads through other platforms, an engaged user will encounter them on a daily basis. As typical with online advertising, LinkedIn Ads cost different amounts and exist in different forms. If you decide to advertise on this platform, you can choose between Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Text Ads and Dynamic Ads.

Sponsored Content

The native advertisements users see most frequently, Sponsored Content operates on the LinkedIn Ads cost-bidding structure to surface in users’ news feeds. When it appears, a piece of Sponsored Content will look similar to any typical LinkedIn post. You can create Sponsored Content in a few different formats. 

Single image ads are typical feed ads composed of a single image paired with some text. A video ad allows you to substitute a short clip for the static image. Lastly, carousel ads consist of a swipeable series of images that allow advertisers to tell a story, display multiple offers, or provide an audience with business insights.

Some example of what sponsored content looks like👇

Sponsored Messaging

With Sponsored Messaging, you use LinkedIn Messaging to send advertisements to specified prospects. This program only targets people who engage with LinkedIn frequently. It also comes with delivery caps that increase the chance your messages actually get read. With the use of dynamic fields your message can pull in the person’s first and last name to make the ad feel more personal. Sponsored Messaging is ideal for a few types of goals, including:

• Reach your audience in a personalized way
• Keep potential clients engaged to drive qualified results
• Accelerate your lead pipeline

In addition to your unique goals, you can also choose between two different messaging ad formats- Message ads and Conversation ads:

• Message ads: Drive stronger engagement and responses than traditional emails. Message ads also offer one call to action button.
• Conversation ads: Turn conversation into quality conversions. Conversation ads offer multiple call to action buttons that can link to specific landing pages or lead generation forms.

Examples of what a Sponsored Message ad would look like👇

Text Ads

Text ads appear on a desktop in LinkedIn’s right column area. You can choose between four formats for these ads: horizontal, long, tall, and square. With text ads, you can directly target a premium audience to derive top-quality leads. Text ads also allow for tight control of how much your LinkedIn Ads cost. For example, this type of ad has no contract or commitment requirement. You only pay for ads that work via clicks or impressions.

Examples of what a Text Ad would look like👇

These ads capture immediate attention with ads automatically personalized for the individual user. Dynamic ads feature a LinkedIn member’s own profile data, including company name, profile data, job title, a photo, and more. Thanks to automation, you can launch dynamic campaigns quickly with individually populated ads across the LinkedIn desktop. Dynamic ads are ideal for a few types of goals, including:

• Personalizing the experience for your audience members.
• Automated individual campaign at scale
• Customizable ads for the specific market objective you are looking to capture.

Examples of what a Dynamic Ad would look like👇

Document Ads

Document ads are one of the newest offerings from Linkedin. These ads offer a preview of a document and require a user to submit information in the form of a lead to unlock the full document. Since a Linkedin user’s profile contains all of their professional information, the lead form fields will be automatically populated from the user’s profile.  

The document (in PDF, PPT, PPTX, DOC or DOCX formats) can be an E-book, a white paper, a guide or case study. The goal behind this ad format is to capture the interest of your audience while also educating them further on what the awesome capabilities your company has to offer. 

The cherry on top is the valuable information you received to follow up with the potential prospect who has expressed interest in your Document ad – For a more in depth dive into Document ads check out this blog here!

Examples of what a Document Ad would look like👇

What Is the LinkedIn Ads Cost Breakdown?

With LinkedIn, you customize the amount you spend and bid on ads. This means that LinkedIn Ads cost different amounts from campaign to campaign. Typically, advertisers on Linkedin pay an average price of $5.26 for every click. 

LinkedIn requires a minimum bid of $2 for CPC and cost-per-impression (CPM) campaigns. This results in averages of $5.26 for the clicks and $6.59 for every 1000 impressions your ads generate. Sponsored InMail presents the most expensive option, with an average of around $.80 for each send in the campaign.

Your actual LinkedIn Ads cost will depend on three factors.

Target Audience

Advertising on LinkedIn centers on competition between advertisers for a target audience. If you want to go after a high-demand audience, you will pay more for your advertising campaign. There are two reasons for this: the audience’s perceived value, along with the number of competitors for their attention.

Bid Amount

Of course, the amount of your bid also influences your LinkedIn Ads cost. Though you will never pay higher than your bid amount, you will pay some percentage of it. This occurs because LinkedIn’s advertising auctions require the winner to pay one cent more than the runner-up bid.

Ad Relevance Scores

The relevance and value of your ad plays a huge factor in your LinkedIn Ads cost. If you achieve a high score in regards to ad relevance, your expenses will actually decrease. This occurs because LinkedIn actively wants to provide engaging content to its users.

Your Budget and Bidding Options

Advertisers on LinkedIn have three options for the control of an advertising budget.

Total Budget: You set a total budget for the entire ad campaign. This works best for those who want to quickly deliver a campaign for a set amount of money. The minimum you can spend is $10 per campaign.

Daily Budget: Another type of budget with a $10 minimum, the daily budget suits those who want to design a campaign that runs on a continuous basis. Daily budgets give you more freedom when looking to scale up  campaigns. With a daily budget you can scale campaigns without interrupting performance. Whereas with a total budget you will have to duplicate your campaign to adjust budgets. This will send the campaigns back into the learning phase, and kill any momentum your campaign had.

Setting Bids: As discussed above, setting a bid means that you identify the maximum amount you will spend for impressions, clicks, or sends. You will never pay more than your bid. For this option, LinkedIn has established a $2 minimum for every click.

You have three options when you bid for LinkedIn Ads. The first is cost-per-click (CPC). This means that you pay when users click on your ad. If you want to drive traffic to a website or generate leads, this presents a great bidding option.

Cost-per-impression (CPM) ads are the second bidding option. With these, you spend money each time your ad generates 1000 impressions. An impression means that someone has seen your ad, but not necessarily interacted with it. This bidding option typically appeals to companies who want to increase brand awareness.

The final bidding option, cost-per-send (CPS) applies only to those engaged with Sponsored InMail. When you bid CPS, you set the maximum price you will pay for every user that receives your Sponsored InMail advertisement. Since this lands advertising directly in a user’s mailbox, it works best for companies who wish to target specific users with a product or service.

How Do LinkedIn Ads Compare to Other Platforms?

Put simply, LinkedIn Ads cost more than advertising on other platforms. For example, one study showed that the median CPC for Facebook Ads comes in at $0.97. The same study pinned LinkedIn at $5.26 CPC. Though this represents nearly a 10x multiplier, however, the leads found through LinkedIn tend to generate much more value. 

In addition to higher-quality leads and a better ROI, Linkedin converts at an astonishingly high rate compared to competitors. A recent Hubspot study showed, LinkedIn site visitors’ conversion rate is 277% higher than other competitors. If you operate in B2B sales or an industry that targets high-value professionals, these lucrative, quality conversions are exactly what you want. 

As for Google Ads, LinkedIn again proves its superiority for more targeted, niche marketing. In terms of costs, Google Ads cost between $1 and $2. However, this price can increase a great deal if you need to compete for popular keywords. Google Ads is also best utilized for intent-driven searches. This means that it delivers ads to users who search for a specific thing. 

LinkedIn, on the other hand, can catch people before they have shown intent. In other words, with LinkedIn, you can target potential consumers before they know they need your services or products. Since you establish audience criteria as part of your campaign, you benefit from refined targeting that exposes your business to entirely new markets.

Though LinkedIn Ads cost more than other social media outlets, they stand out on the strength of their audience. Furthermore, LinkedIn’s unrivaled options for specific targeting make each of its ad formats highly effective investments. No one wants to feel as if their advertising budget has gone to waste. If you know your market and are willing to spend some money, LinkedIn Ads will not disappoint!

The post How Much Do LinkedIn Ads Cost In 2023? appeared first on Tuff.

Whether it’s Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat, or Facebook, each major social media outlet has its own audience, targeting, ad formats, and process.  

As a business owner or marketer, one of the most important choices you can make is identifying the right channel and tactic for your audience. Exposure in the world of paid acquisition does not come cheap, and you must make sure that your advertising reaches the right audience. For businesses that wish to target business professionals or promote B2B content, LinkedIn advertising stands as a preeminent choice. 

Why LinkedIn Advertising?

The venerable LinkedIn launched at the end of 2002, more than a year before Facebook. Since then, it has grown tremendously to become one of the leading social media platforms in the world. It has also carved out a unique niche for itself. While sites like Facebook and Twitter cater to any use whatsoever, LinkedIn remains dedicated to a professional network. As a result, it has a clearly defined user base that relies upon the site for important things like job searches and professional development. 

Despite these qualities, LinkedIn’s advertising opportunities often get overlooked. This can represent an egregious oversight on the part of a marketer, as LinkedIn advertising can prove massively successful for the right type of business. Its large membership aside, LinkedIn offers several benefits that clearly distinguish it from other channels.

Let’s take a look! 

The Benefits of Advertising on LinkedIn

Many people use social media almost exclusively to share their personal information. Whether it’s vacation photos, or your personal opinions on the future of democracy, sites like Facebook offer a forum where users broadcast a steady stream of personal data. LinkedIn offers a singular advantage in this regard. Though users on other platforms share insights into their personalities, daily lives, beliefs, habits, and preferences, they rarely reveal their work history or place of employment. In fact, many people actively keep their career and social media presence squarely separate.

With LinkedIn Ads, your company gets access to accurate data about a sizable professional audience. Among other things, LinkedIn shares info about location, work position, prior work experience, professional skills, and education. This sort of information is a goldmine for savvy marketers, as it allows them to identify specific demographics for the effective placement of ads and content. When you launch a LinkedIn advertising campaign, you can choose among targeting options that include:

• Location
• Job Title
• Company Name
• Industry
• Degree
• Professional Interests
• And more

LinkedIn also allows for variability in content. LinkedIn’s ad options allow you to choose between the best type of media to engage your audience, whether it’s text, video, or images. LinkedIn advertising also offers a variety of formats, including email and carousel ads.

For proof of LinkedIn’s success as a marketing forum, you need simply look at the statistics. These 15 LinkedIn advertising stats not only showcase the potential of this social media mainstay, but also whether it represents the right choice for your investment.

Vast Exposure

LinkedIn’s membership is massive. The social networking giant has over 660 million users, about half of which access the site regularly. Of that number, 40 percent use LinkedIn on a daily basis. Many users visit the site multiple times a day for content, messaging, networking, job searches, profile management, and other purposes. In addition to its individual users, LinkedIn also has membership from 30 million companies. The vast size of this network means that ads on LinkedIn can reach a staggering 12 percent of the world’s entire population.

The Promise of Growth

Since 2003, LinkedIn has grown at an astronomical pace. The site started off well, and amassed 1.6 million members shortly after its launch. In 2011, when LinkedIn had 160 million members, it went public. This lured a massive influx of new sign-ups, and the LinkedIn user base nearly tripled. As for continued growth, consider this: for every second that you spend reading this sentence, LinkedIn has acquired more than two new members. That works out to nearly 173,000 new users each and every day, and 62 million additions every year. 

A Professional Audience

Of this user base, the 303 million who use LinkedIn regularly are active and engaged professionals. When you consider that a major purpose of LinkedIn is to connect business professionals for career development, it’s not surprising that the site’s users tend to be mature, accomplished adults. 

Danielle Hollembaek is a marketing professional for Minute Suites, which offers air travelers private retreats in terminals around the country. She has used LinkedIn Ads to great success in the growth of her business.

“We have really focused on growing our LinkedIn audience. Through the use of LinkedIn advertising, we expanded our reach almost 1,000 followers in less than 6 months,” says Hollembaek. “Frequent flyers, business travelers, and business professionals were our main targets. With an investment of $1,000, we saw almost 223,000 impressions and 950 clicks to our website.”

The Cream of the Crop

If you break down LinkedIn’s membership, you’ll see that most users are over the age of 35. The most common age falls between 46 and 55, a range that should capture the focus of almost any advertiser. This is the age when many people attain the pinnacle of their professional achievement. If you analyze the income of U.S. adults organized into 5-year age groups, people between 50 and 54 make more money than anyone else. What’s more, the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company is 58. In other words, if you want to aim your marketing at people who have some money to spend, LinkedIn advertising is the way to go.

The Go-Getters

While most LinkedIn users are older, that doesn’t mean millennials consider the site irrelevant. Users between the ages of 25 and 34 represent one of the most rapidly growing segments of LinkedIn’s membership. This is another excellent demographic for marketing, as young professionals have a lot of purchasing power and room to grow in their careers. As of 2020, millennials count for an astonishing 50 percent of the U.S. workforce. As the engine of our economy, this age group presents a gold mine of prospects readily accessible through LinkedIn advertising.

A Trusted Source

Advertising does much better when it appears in a respected forum. Among 91 percent of marketing executives, LinkedIn rules the roost as the most trusted source for quality content. Twitter, on the other hand, only gets approval from 29 percent of marketing executives, while Facebook inspires confidence among only 27 percent. 

Equal Opportunity Advertising

If you want to reach a general audience reflective of the actual population, LinkedIn once again presents a way. Many social media sites skew toward men or women. For example, Facebook has more female users than male, while most YouTube users are men. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is split right down the middle, with virtually identical numbers of male and female members.

Influence the Influencers

Advertising on LinkedIn reaches a very different audience than on other social media platforms. An incredible one-third of LinkedIn’s users have positions of authority and count as upper management in the place of their employment. In 2019, LinkedIn could count among its users 90 million influencers of senior-level position, 63 million decision makers, 17 million industry opinion leaders, 40 million mass affluent professionals, and 10 million C-level executives.

The Dominant Channel for Content Distribution

LinkedIn has proven so successful for B2B marketers, that nearly every professional in the fields employs it for content distribution. An incredible 97 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as their main outlet channel. This number, calculated in 2018, represented a 3 percent increase from the previous year. The second-most popular platform for B2B content, Twitter, actually saw a 2 percent decline over that same period of time.

High Returns for B2B

Among B2B marketing professionals, 58 percent identify LinkedIn Ads as producing a high return on investment. Emarketer’s ROI stats show that, along with Facebook, LinkedIn represents the top choice among social media platforms for value derived from paid advertising. Twitter comes in at third in this regard. According to this research, YouTube, despite its massive number of users, is four times less effective than LinkedIn for B2B marketing.

The B2B Social Media Leader

Another B2B-related statistic concerns LinkenIn’s dominance among social media leads. LinkedIn not only has a high lead conversion rate, but also accounts for an incredible 80 percent of all B2B social media leads. Facebook, by comparison, generates a paltry 6.73 percent of B2B leads.

The Top Choice for Content Marketing

If you plan to create and distribute B2B-related content, LinkedIn advertising is an indispensable forum. The vast majority of professional B2B marketers, nearly 80 percent of them, identify LinkedIn as the most effective choice for content marketing across social media. This puts LinkedIn far ahead of its rivals Facebook and Twitter, which respectively see use from only 42 and 48 percent of B2B marketers.

Global Traction

While the United States represents LinkedIn’s biggest individual market, 70 percent of the network’s total users live elsewhere in the world. This type of global reach is indispensable in the world of ecommerce. In addition to its 167 million users who reside in the U.S., LinkedIn boasts 211 million European members and 179 million from Asia-Pacific. Available in 24 languages, LinkedIn advertising allows marketers to reach across borders into practically any market they want.

The Impact of InMail

Anyone who does email marketing knows that most people will simply ignore their message. LinkedIn’s InMail, however, has a remarkable open rate of nearly 52 percent. How does this compare to normal email campaigns? According to data from MailChimp, only 21.3 percent of email advertisements garner so much as a glance. InMail, on the other hand, connects more than half the time. This type of LinkedIn advertising can prove particularly effective among the busy decision-makers in companies and sectors you want to target.  

Carol Li is the growth marketer and co-founder of CocoFax, a secure and reliable online fax service. She has seen great success with the use of InMail.

“Sponsored InMail is highly personalized, due to the fact that you are sending a direct message to a LinkedIn user who is in your target audience,” says Li. “With LinkedIn, you can do this to reach high-quality audiences such as target influencers, decision-makers, and business executives.”

LinkedIn Advertising Will Only Get Better

As of 2019, the steady growth of LinkedIn, along with its proven ROI for advertising, led 42 percent of marketing professionals to increase their investment in the service. This showcases a great deal of confidence in LinkedIn advertising, along with faith that returns will continue to grow in pace with the network’s community of users.  

One final thing: money matters in advertising. You need your marketing investment to generate a measurable return, and every dollar spent ineffectually can represent untold amounts of lost revenue. 

Ellen Jantsch

Ellen is the founder at Tuff and one of the team’s core growth marketers. She is a versatile marketer with expertise in multiple channels – from ppc to seo to email to others – responsible for the experiments and testing.  She is happiest when she’s on the ski hill or outside pointing her mountain bike downhill.

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