LinkedIn ads are a great way to reach professionals, business owners and key decision makers, especially for B2B marketing.
They can be very powerful, but how well they work depends on several factors, including your strategy, your goals, how carefully you target your audiences and how engaging your ad copy and creatives are.
LinkedIn provides great targeted reach among professionals and key decision makers. As paid social media marketing, it comes at a higher cost per click than Meta or Google ads but conversions often carry more value.
Overall, LinkedIn ads are great for lead generation, brand awareness, recruitment and event promotion and running a full-funnel strategy will help maximise return on investment (ROI).
Read on to learn how to use LinkedIn ads to drive results for your business.
Are LinkedIn ads effective?
Yes, LinkedIn ads are effective for boosting brand awareness, engagement and qualified lead generation.
The platform provides very precise targeting, so you can choose your audience based on their job title, company size, skills or seniority, enabling brands to reach key decision-makers efficiently.
The platform offers creative ads and A/B testing, which significantly improves engagement.
When ads are creative, they work significantly harder for B2B brands – decision makers are 40 per cent more likely to consider purchasing from the brand if their ad is seen as “creative” according to research published by the platform.
But, many are currently underwhelmed by the LinkedIn ads they currently see due to their lack of humour and emotional appeal.
How do LinkedIn ads work?
LinkedIn ads work best when aligned with a clear strategy and marketing funnel.
Top-performing campaigns typically follow this tried and tested formula:
- Awareness – via video or display ads
- Moving to engagement – via carousel or content ads
- Ending with lead generation – via lead gen forms or conversion ads
Businesses which use these sequenced campaigns typically see stronger ROI in the long term.
Thought leadership ads on LinkedIn
A feature underused by brands on LinkedIn is thought leader ads.
Campaigns of this nature have a 1.7x higher click-through rate and a 1.6x higher engagement rate than other single-image ads.
People are three times more likely to trust content from individuals, as opposed to fully branded content. A higher trust level from the audience is a great argument to include them in your strategy.
Many cross-channel marketing strategies will include thought leadership as part of PR outreach, so it can be as simple as repurposing existing expert commentary to optimise it for LinkedIn, while maximising your marketing activities.
Is LinkedIn good for business to consumer (B2C) marketing?
Though typically seen as a B2B platform, LinkedIn can also be effective for B2C brands because professionals on LinkedIn are also consumers in their personal lives.
Since many B2C brands focus on platforms like Meta, there’s less competition on LinkedIn for B2C brands, which can help you stand out from the crowd.
How to use LinkedIn ads
If you’re struggling to get started, the platform offers an easy-to-follow guide to create your first campaign.
LinkedIn’s built-in Campaign Manager allows you to choose your objective (awareness, consideration or conversion) and ad format (Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Text Ads or Dynamic Ads).
You can then tailor creatives to your audience’s professional context and track performance using metrics like cost per click (CPC), cost per lead (CPL) and ROI.
We recommend building multi-step campaigns and refining them through A/B testing, where you run two LinkedIn ads alongside each other with different parameters to see which performs best.
How targeted can LinkedIn ads be?
Targeting is one of LinkedIn’s most powerful features. You can reach users by job title, seniority, company name, industry, education and even specific LinkedIn Groups.
For more advanced precision, LinkedIn supports Matched Audiences (e.g. CRM uploads, website visitors or engagement lists) and Lookalike Audiences.
Need our support with LinkedIn ads?
Want to learn more about how we can support your brand and help tell your story on LinkedIn? Contact our team to learn how we can add value to your paid social media marketing.
