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Wind Up and Throw a Screaming Fastball of a Linkedin Campaign

When you’re starting to get your name out there, you’ve got to reach out in several directions at once. LinkedIn is a powerful social networking tool that provides an amazing platform to connect professionals across the globe. Though not as flashy as its counterparts, it’s a very potent marketing tool provided your ads reach the right people. Like Facebook ads, Linkedin campaigns provide flexibility so you can target specific audiences based on different criteria, giving you a better chance of good timing.

Barrels of Free Money Delivered to Your House!

Create a catchy headline for your ad that’s descriptive and interesting. You’re competing against a lot of other advertisers trying to reach the same audience, so be creative. A visually appealing small display image with your company name will help as well. Your picture doesn’t have to be of yourself or your logo. Be creative and try to make a lasting impression. From there, ensure that your descriptive text is as potent as your headline. You’ve got a limited amount of space here, so be efficient and easy to understand. Finally, add the URL of the page where you want clicks to land. Create specific landing pages for your ads so you can later track success.

Variety is the Spice of Marketing

LinkedIn allows you to create up to 15 different ad variations for each campaign. Take advantage of this and split test different ad elements or audience targeting. Experiment a bit and tweak until you nail an excellent ad. The next important step is to target a specific audience based on the criteria below. You need to have a minimum of two targeting criteria to help you reach the right audience. You should aim to get coverage of at least 100,000 members.

Location: Pick locations where your product or service is sold, and don’t pick areas where your offerings aren’t available.

Organizations: If you want to publicize your product or service to specific companies, then you have the flexibility to enter the names of the companies. If you want to target specific industry sectors and subsectors, then you have an option to do that, too. You can also select companies based on their overall size.

Job Function and Job Title: You can select the people you want to target by choosing either their job titles or their job functions and roles. For instance, if your service is typically purchased by project managers in the software industry, then you can confine your choice by selecting job function as “Information technology” and seniority as “Project manager.”

Specific Groups: If you want to target your products or services to specific schools or groups, then you can enter those school or group names.

Gender and Age Group: Depending upon the market segmentation of your product or service, you can target your ad campaign to specific gender and age groups as well.

Monetize

Select your campaign’s pricing to follow either pay per click or pay per 1000 impressions. You can try an ad campaign on both to see what works best for you. Set your daily budget and wait for approval by Linkedin, usually within 24 hours. Upon approval, your ads may appear in the below areas on LinkedIn:

  • LinkedIn Home Page
  • Inbox
  • LinkedIn Profile
  • Search Results
  • Profile Statistics
  • Contacts
  • LinkedIn Group Pages

Linkedin makes it easy to set up an ad campaign to publicize your products or services. The user interface is simple, and overall, the features provide excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs to market their brand and successfully reach their audience at a low cost. How about you? Have you run a successful Linkedin ad campaign before? Let us know with a comment.

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).

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