THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO ADVERTISING YOUR BUSINESS ON LINKEDIN

Simply put, LinkedIn is an ad space provider just like Facebook, Google and more. But, what sets Linkedin apart from the rest of the social media networks is that it offers more of a concentrated area of 'professionals', meaning it's perfect for business to business marketing.

For that very reason, LinkedIn offers business to business targeting options which allows you to hone in and tailor your marketing campaigns to target specific professionals.

So, what is LinkedIn's Advertising Options? Firstly you need to know what your advertising objective is, to successfully advertise on LinkedIn, your objective needs to fall under one of the following:

• Brand Awareness
• Website Visits
• Engagement
• Video Views
• Lead Generation
• Website Conversions
• Job Applicants

Based on the objective you chose, you'll be given six different ad types to attempt:

1. Sponsored Content – Basically this is a sponsored post from your company page. This yields a major CPC (cost per click) average, so make sure your post is super effective.
2. Sponsored InMail – If you are on LinkedIn, you would have seen your inbox getting messages from people selling their product or service, and this is because brands/business pages can't spam people with a sales pitch, these ads need to come from a personal profile, which isn't a bad thing.
3. Text Ads – These are the tiny little ads you may or may not notice on the right side rail of a LinkedIn feed. Aside from the right column, these ads may appear underneath the “People You May Know” section. This is where text content can really make or break your ad conversions.
4. Video Ads – Very self-explanatory here, and if you have the time and resources to be creating video ads, test various types of video to see which works, play with the topic, length, format etc.
5. Dynamic Ads – Dynamic ads use LinkedIn member information to personalise the ads to each individual. They appear in the right side of a user’s feed and are available in two versions – follow company ads (to increase the number of followers on your company page) or spotlight ads (for custom CTAs and the possibility of linking to the advertiser’s landing page).
6. Display Ads – These are the ads that appear on the right side of a Linkedin’s user feed on desktops. They are especially good for raising brand awareness, establishing a LinkedIn presence, and driving leads.

Once you have decided on the ad type you need to focus on working out who your target audience is, you should know the professional side of your demographic:

• Everything there is to know about your demographics.
• Your audience industry and whether they are in lower or upper management.
• What is the average they spend at a single job; 2-4 year for each position?
• Who do they follow on LinkedIn.

Once you have completed creating your ad, you will need to know how well it's going to perform. There are quite a few ways of tracking your ad conversions and you will have to play around with what will actually benefit you by getting as much data as possible. However, here are the ones you really need to make sure you have set up:

1. Event-Specific Pixel – this type of tracking pixel is created more for the lead-gen type of objective, so when someone has completed a form from your linkedIn an ad, you can install this code and have a 'conversion event' tracked each time this form is completed.
2. Site-Wide Insight Tag – This tag is the most important as it provides you with all the data on what actions are happening on your website thanks to your LinkedIn ad.

So, in conclusion, create easy and effective ads no matter what your objective is. Target your unique audience, there are over 610 million active professionals for you to get in front of. Lastly, control your own budgets and costs, there are flexible pricing options to fit your specific advertising budget.

While concentrating on your paid reach, don't forget to give your organic reach attention. LinkedIn does offer content suggestions for your business pages so you can stay up to date with relevant trending topics. If you really are struggling with juggling all the aspects to successfully manage your LinkedIn profile, save time posting organic content daily, and rather use Loopascoop to help manage your posts by scheduling them all ahead of time. This will ensure you have more time focusing on your paid campaigns and creating good organic content.