LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network with over 722 million members worldwide. As such, it represents a major opportunity for companies looking to reach and engage with professionals in their target demographics. But is investing in LinkedIn advertising actually effective for generating leads and driving sales? Here we’ll examine the pros and cons of LinkedIn ads and look at data and examples to help determine if LinkedIn ads are worth it for your business.
The potential benefits of LinkedIn advertising
Here are some of the main ways LinkedIn advertising can benefit your business:
Targeted reach
With over 722 million members, LinkedIn offers access to the world’s largest professional audience. But more importantly, LinkedIn allows you to slice and dice that audience using detailed targeting options. You can target by job title, company, industry, seniority level, and a range of other professional criteria. This makes it possible to very precisely target your ideal customers.
Engaged user base
LinkedIn members tend to be very engaged while browsing the platform. They are there specifically to network, educate themselves, and advance their careers. This means they are often highly engaged with content and ads when scrolling through their feeds. The average clickthrough rate on LinkedIn is 0.90% compared to just 0.35% on Facebook.
Purchase intent
Many people are on LinkedIn specifically to advance their careers, connect with brands, and stay up-to-date with industry news and insights. This means they typically have much higher purchase intent than some other social platforms where users are there for entertainment and to connect with friends. Higher purchase intent means higher chances of converting your ads into sales.
B2B connections
LinkedIn is heavily used by business professionals. This makes it ideal for targeting decision-makers and connecting with customers at large companies for your B2B sales. The platform makes it easy to identify and connect with just the right people you need to reach.
Multiple ad formats
LinkedIn offers a range of ad formats to choose from including text ads, dynamic ads, sponsored content, and more. This allows you to select the ad type that is most suitable and effective for your specific brand and campaign goals.
Potential drawbacks and challenges with LinkedIn ads
However, it’s not all positive when it comes to LinkedIn advertising. Here are some of the potential downsides to consider:
Low clickthrough rates
While LinkedIn clickthrough rates are higher than some social platforms, they are still quite low compared to search ads and elsewhere around the web. The average CTR is just 0.90% as mentioned above. This indicates users are quite immune to the ads while browsing LinkedIn.
High cost per click
Due to the perceived value of the LinkedIn audience, LinkedIn ads can be quite expensive on a cost per click basis. Average CPCs tend to fall between $8-$12 across most industries which is high compared to other platforms. This makes LinkedIn ads more viable for high-ticket products and services.
Slow campaign optimization
LinkedIn’s algorithm and AI is not as advanced as Facebook or Google when it comes to optimizing campaign performance on the fly. This means it may take longer to gather data and iterate to improve results over time. Marketers should plan for 2-3 week ramp-up periods when testing LinkedIn ads.
Limiting ad targeting options
While targeting options on LinkedIn are robust, they still don’t offer the level of advanced targeting and segmentation available with platforms like Facebook. There are limits when it comes to things like interests, behaviors, and connection targeting.
Potentially irrelevant audiences
While targeting by job title and company can be powerful, it’s still possible your ads end up being displayed to peripherally relevant or completely irrelevant audiences. CMOs or CEOs aren’t necessarily your ideal customers, even if they work at companies in your target industries.
Advertising objectives LinkedIn is best suited for
Based on its inherent strengths and limitations, here are the specific campaign objectives where LinkedIn advertising makes the most sense:
B2B lead generation
With access to professional demographics and purchasers, LinkedIn ads excel when it comes to driving B2B leads. You can accurately target decision-makers and those involved in evaluating solutions and making purchasing recommendations.
Recruitment and hiring
There’s no better platform for targeting and connecting with quality job candidates in your industry. Sponsored job posts are a great tool to get your openings in front of relevant professionals open to new opportunities.
Driving event attendance
In any industry focused on professional education, events, and conferences, LinkedIn provides access to the types of audiences most likely to attend your events. This makes it a great platform for promoting your conferences, webinars, and other events.
Raising brand awareness
While LinkedIn may not be the first choice for branding campaigns, it can still be an effective platform for getting your brand in front of relevant audiences, establishing thought leadership, and steadily growing brand affinity.
Professional education
Whether promoting a new ebook, whitepaper, online course, or other educational content, LinkedIn gives you access to professional audiences keen to consume educational material relevant to their careers.
5 examples of successful LinkedIn advertising campaigns
To understand how LinkedIn ads can be applied effectively, here are 5 real-world examples of successful campaigns on the platform:
Adobe
Adobe used LinkedIn to generate high-quality leads by targeting audiences researching and evaluating solutions like theirs. They targeted by relevant job titles and company attributes. Their LinkedIn ads generated 38% of overall sales pipelinegenerated by their broader digital marketing efforts.
Polycom
Polycom set up multiple LinkedIn ads targeted to specific accounts they wanted to reach. They promoted content like ebooks and whitepapers that would appeal to decision-makers at each company. Their LinkedIn ads directly influenced over $18 million in closed deals.
Salesforce
Salesforce targeted ads promoting their SaaS platform and educational content to C-level execs and VP/Directors in customer service, IT, and ops roles. They generated over 55,000 leads for an average CPL of just $81, extremely low for their product offering.
Moz
Moz ran LinkedIn ads to promote their analytics and SEO software to specific senior marketing roles at mid-market and enterprise B2B brands. The campaign generated a 14% conversion rate from click to lead form completion, well above LinkedIn’s benchmark rates.
LeanData
LeanData used LinkedIn to generate leads for their ABM offering. They targeted ads with a simple “Learn More” CTA to accounts on their target list. LinkedIn ads drove 1,700+ SQLs over 6 months, over 35% of all SQLs generated by their demand generation campaigns.
Does advertising on LinkedIn work? The data says yes
Based on LinkedIn’s audience makeup and these successful use cases, the data clearly shows LinkedIn advertising can work extremely well when applied to the right objectives, targeted correctly, and optimized diligently.
Here are some key LinkedIn advertising stats that indicate the platform’s effectiveness:
High conversion rates
While CTRs are modest, conversion rates based on landing page views are quite strong on LinkedIn compared to other platforms. Pages promoting content generate a 10.8% conversion rate on average.
High purchase intent
49% of LinkedIn users say they are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn. The platform’s professional audience leads to higher intent.
B2B sweet spot
80% of B2B leads generated from social media come from LinkedIn, making it the undisputed leader for B2B conversion on social.
Valuable audience
LinkedIn members are 3x more likely to have household incomes over $200k compared to the average web user, indicating a valuable target demographic.
Metric | Stat |
---|---|
LinkedIn Users | 722 million |
Avg. CTR | 0.90% |
Avg. CPC | $8-$12 |
Content Conversion Rate | 10.8% |
More Likely to Buy | 49% |
B2B Leads from Social | 80% |
High Income Users | 3x more likely |
Tips for running effective LinkedIn ad campaigns
Based on all the data and information we’ve covered, here are some top tips for running successful LinkedIn ad campaigns:
Target accurately
Take advantage of LinkedIn’s robust targeting options to reach your ideal customers and avoid wasted spend on peripheral demographics. Target by job title, company, interests, and other filters accordingly.
Test different objectives
Experiment with different campaign objectives like lead gen forms, content downloads, event registrations, and more to see what resonates best with your audience and provides a positive ROI.
Promote gated content
Because the audience has high intent, gated content like guides, templates, ebooks, and whitepapers convert well. Gate your best stuff behind forms to capture high-quality leads.
Retarget engaged visitors
Setup retargeting pools based on site engagement to serve customized ads to prospects after they’ve interacted with your brand and content.
Keep testing and optimizing
Continuously test new targeting options, ad variations, landing pages, and offers to collect data and further optimize performance. Measure ROI diligently.
Conclusion
In summary, advertising on LinkedIn can be very effective when used strategically for serving targeted, relevant ads to highly engaged professional audiences ready to engage. To maximize results, take advantage of precise targeting options, promote gated content via lead gen forms, retarget visitors, and continually optimize based on data. When implemented correctly for ideal objectives, LinkedIn ads can deliver outstanding ROI and become a powerful channel in your digital marketing mix. Just make sure you have the budget to compete in the platform’s auction environment and the resources to constantly refine your targeting and creatives.