The world of LinkedIn is a paradise for businesses and professionals. The ability to share content and tips with like-minded individuals, minus the influx of internet trolls is powerful. Even further, the network is approaching 600 million users, all who associate their job title, industry, and skill sets with their profile.
 
Many B2Bs have resolved who their target audience is, down to the industry and job title. Using this associated user information on LinkedIn allows B2Bs to reach the exact demographic their business is targeted to, easily.
 
Even further, LinkedIn advertising tools allow marketers to sponsor updates and customize how LinkedIn users engage with their content. We’ve developed a high-level guide for LinkedIn advertising to get you started.
 

Pros of LinkedIn Ads

 
As we’ve already highlighted, LinkedIn has a wealth of information on millions of professionals in every industry. This information is unique to the social network because it’s required for each user, whereas Facebook and Twitter are optimized for more personal interactions. When setting up your advertising campaign, you can filter the reach to only include professionals with exact traits, such as a certain number of years of experience, or within a geographic region.
 
Companies are also incentivized to be active on LinkedIn. Since it’s the largest network of professionals, companies flock to use it as a recruiting tool. It is a channel to show off company culture, upcoming roles, and reach out to potential recruits. Company size, ownership, industry, and region are all associated with the company profile. Further, individuals are able to associate roles with particular company accounts.
 
LinkedIn advertising allows you to use all of this information. Tailor your campaign to include companies in particular industries, with a range in size, as well as individuals with particular job titles, in the target industry or not. Though Google advertising allows you to reach searchers based on their search intent, LinkedIn advertising puts your ad in front of your exact audience match seamlessly.
 

Types of Ads

 
LinkedIn advertising is similar to Facebook, in that you can ‘sponsor’ company updates. Say you recently shared on your company page an exciting service announcement – you can quickly sponsor that to reach a larger audience.
 
The tool also allows you to create a new post, if you don’t have time to invest in consistent organic LinkedIn posting. You can attach a video or image, as well as customize the post text and link text. If you choose this route, make sure you put together a targeted landing page that entices visitors to fill in a form, or perform some kind of action where you can follow up.
 
This kind of ad, called ‘sponsored content’, is great to grow your audience and reach individuals that you typical don’t reach organically. It improves engagement, they will show up directly in a user’s feed, and grows qualified traffic to your LinkedIn account or landing page.
 
Another type of LinkedIn ad is the ‘text ad’. These ads show up on a user’s side bar, or top of their page. They tend to look more like traditional ads, in the sense that they aren’t integrated natively into a user’s feed. Typically, these ads are better suited for highly targeted audiences or special offers.
 

How to Set Up Your Ad

 
Setting up your advertising campaign is quite a simple process, once you decide the goal of your campaign and budget. Simply go to your company page, select the drop down called ‘Admin Tools’, and click ‘Sponsor Updates’ – this will bring you to the campaign manager.
 
From there, you can set up an advertising account, which is where you’ll associate the advertising account with your company page. Next you’ll set up your campaign group: this is where you specify timelines and a budget if you’ve already decided on one. From there, you’ll build your campaign and ads: check out this useful guide directly from LinkedIn to get started.
 
Once you’ve put everything together, you’re ready to launch! A few things to note:
 

• You’re able to edit campaigns after they’ve launched. Don’t worry if you have an epiphany about your ad content after the fact – you can make the change.
• Make sure you set a daily limit if you have gone with a lifetime budget. LinkedIn is designed to spend as much of your budget as quickly as possible. If you’d like the campaign to run for an exact period of time, you’ll need to specify a daily limit.
• When putting together the ad, use eye-catching images that’ll stand out from the typical mundane business stock photos.
• Draw users in with your text. Keep it simple and to the point, but make sure you articulate the exact benefit your product/service can provide a user.

 
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