LinkedIn has established itself as a leading social media platform for businesses and professionals. It's no secret that LinkedIn is a powerful tool for business-to-business (B2B) marketers, but what may be less well known is that LinkedIn can also be an effective advertising channel for small businesses.
According to Kinsta, 121 million users visit LinkedIn daily. There is vast potential for small businesses willing to invest in LinkedIn ads. The great news is that LinkedIn ads are relatively affordable, and there are several ways to keep your costs down.
Below, we discuss how to keep your LinkedIn ads costs down and choose the right ad type for your business.
Why Choose LinkedIn for Advertising?
Although there are several different platforms where you can run ads, LinkedIn stands apart due to the following reasons:
- Large professional audience: LinkedIn has a large and engaged professional audience. This makes LinkedIn an ideal platform for B2B marketers and businesses targeting people in a certain niche or industry.
- Targeting options: LinkedIn offers robust targeting options, which allows you to target your ads to specific demographics and interests. Since users share plenty of information with the platform, including past work experience, skills, position, and location, you can target your ads with utmost specificity.
- High-quality traffic: LinkedIn users are usually professionally-inclined, which means they may be more likely to be interested in what you have to offer. In addition, LinkedIn ads are non-intrusive, resulting in higher click-through rates (CTRs) and conversion rates.
- Campaign quality score: LinkedIn ads are also scored on a relevance scale, based on how likely a member is to act on the sponsored content in your ad campaign. The higher the score, the more relevant the ad is to the audience. This means that you're less likely to waste money on ads that no one will see.
How Much Do LinkedIn Ads Cost?
The amount you pay for LinkedIn ads depends on the ad auction and the type of activity you intend to pay for. The model is called objective-based pricing. For instance, if you select Website Visit Objective, you will only have to pay when someone clicks on the link to your website.
All campaign objectives have certain billable events. You're only charged in case the event takes place.
Here's how it works:
- You place a bid after launching your campaign.
- Your bid will compete with those of other advertisers in the ad auction who want to reach the same audience as you.
- You will win the auction based on your target audience's desirability and your bid.
The target audience refers to the LinkedIn members who you want the ad to reach.
Some campaign objectives include:
- Brand awareness
- Engagement
- Job applicants
- Lead generation
- Video views
- Website conversions
- Website visits
How To Choose the Right Ad Type
Before you determine the LinkedIn ads costs, you must identify the kind of ad that will be best for your needs. Here are some factors to consider:
- Purpose: Why do you want to run the ad? For instance, if you want to develop engagement with the target audience, you should opt for Conversation ads. But if you want to deliver a highly targeted brand message with a call to action, choose Sponsored InMail ads or Message ads.
- Audience: Who is your target audience? LinkedIn offers a range of targeting options that allow you to laser focus your ad campaign. You must consider your audience persona to decide the kind of ad that will attract them the most.
- Budget: How much are you willing to spend on the ad campaign? Some ads cost more than others since they have more impactful billing events.
- Desired outcome: What is the desired outcome for this campaign? Do you want to generate leads or increase website visits? If you're not sure what the result of running an ad will be, it's best to start with a simple objective like getting website visitors.
Best Practices for Controlling Ad Spend and Reducing LinkedIn Ads Costs
How expensive is LinkedIn advertising? That depends on how you choose to run the ads. Fortunately, there are some ways to lower your ad spend.
Adjust Recommended Bid
LinkedIn recommends a bid that is based on the estimated outcome of the campaign, your competition, and the country. You don't have to accept this bid, and you can adjust it to fit your budget. Most experts recommend bidding below this number and monitoring your ad's performance over time. If it's underperforming, increase the bid accordingly.
Break up Your Audience
Don't make the mistake of putting all your ad spend towards a single group since LinkedIn does not give you performance indicators among individual companies, job titles, or professional interests. Instead, create separate campaigns for each group.
For instance, if your target is job functions, create individual campaigns for operations, finance, marketing, sales, and more. Don't just lump them all together.
Separating your audience gives you granular data and shows you which of the campaigns is performing better. You can then pause the poorly performing campaigns and reallocate your budget to ones performing better.
Give the Right Offer
One way to keep your LinkedIn ads costs down is to make sure that you're targeting the right people. LinkedIn provides powerful targeting options, so be sure to take advantage of them. Moreover, give the right offer to your audience.
The offer you present to the audience in your ad depends on where they are in the sales funnel.
- Top: Blog posts and infographics
- Middle: Webinars, eBooks, and whitepapers
- Bottom: Demo offer and trial
The more attractive the offer, the better your ad will perform, requiring you to put in less money eventually.
Be Creative
Some products are hard to visualize, which makes it difficult to create a compelling ad around them. But you can try the following tips to get better results:
- Use charts and graphs as the ad image to visualize reports.
- Add a button to the image to make it engaging for the users.
- Invest in visuals. Stock images are surely easy to access, but hiring a designer to create something personalizing your brand will prove to be more effective.
Final Words
To sum up, LinkedIn ads are a powerful way to reach your target audience, but they can be expensive if you're not careful. By following the best practices listed above, you can keep your costs down and get the most out of your ad campaign.
Alternatively, you can contact Cleverly to run a cost-effective ad campaign for your company. Click here to schedule your free consultation today.
