LinkedIn’s role in business networking remains strong
LinkedIn started life as an online address book and a way for professionals to dynamically keep their networks up to date. Today, Australia is one of the heaviest users of LinkedIn worldwide, and the platform has become a powerful marketing tool, particularly for business-to-business (B2B) companies.¹
Most people will often spend some time looking at people’s and companies’ profiles on LinkedIn before meeting them. LinkedIn users are typically looking for common contacts, to understand an individual’s role and experience, and to read recent posts or news about the company. A business’s LinkedIn profile forms part of its credentials, and organic posts that are boosted to become paid ads have proven to be a successful way for businesses to share thought leadership articles, values, and sector-related advice.
LinkedIn thought leader ads are here
By using LinkedIn Campaign Manager, businesses can select the audiences who will see a boosted organic company post, based on a daily budget. This content appears as a sponsored post in a company’s target audience feed. A person will see this content based on a combination of spend, audience selection, and the individual’s own interests.
The primary aim of these campaigns is to drive traffic to a business’s website. There is an added benefit in that the spend is lower, the reach is higher, and the message endures in the target audience’s feed. At Outsource, our experience with this platform has shown that more people click through to a website from a sponsored post than they do from a sponsored InMail.
However, until now, organisations could only boost their company page’s organic posts. This has changed with LinkedIn’s much-anticipated thought leader ads. Now, employees can share and boost organic posts on their personal LinkedIn page, letting executives and employees promote content, potentially increasing a business’s reach. The idea behind thought leader ads is that the personal nature of the content, coming from an employee or executive, enhances its engagement and relevance by leveraging authentic experiences.
This will potentially also let businesses connect with a broader audience, as the more people employees connect with, the more LinkedIn shows them in terms of feeds, second- and third-degree connections, and other insights. Essentially, LinkedIn rewards users who are active and well connected.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at how LinkedIn’s thought leader ads work.
The limitations of LinkedIn thought leader ads
While the new LinkedIn thought leader ads add a new tool to a marketing team’s arsenal, there are some limitations to consider.
1. Thought leader ad formats are limited.
It’s important to understand that thought leader ads are currently limited to a single image ad format or single video. This means that LinkedIn thought leadership articles, newsletters, documents, polls, and carousels do not currently qualify for a boost.
2. LinkedIn campaign managers can only select between engagement or brand awareness objectives.
Unfortunately, selecting the brand awareness objective can quickly become very expensive with limited return, because the business is charged each time its ad is served, regardless of whether someone clicks. In terms of getting maximum return for budget, brand awareness is not our preferred option.
However, choosing engagement can be both successful and cost effective. When you select engagement as a campaign objective, your brand is charged each time someone engages with the content, including likes, comments, and shares. If the goal is to create an extended thought leadership profile and drive network growth for employees, LinkedIn’s thought leader ads are an affordable approach, especially as LinkedIn also shares content with the networks of those who engage with it.
Maximising your LinkedIn ads strategy
Ultimately, LinkedIn is just one tool in a broader integrated digital marketing strategy, and the marketing solutions you select when adding the platform to a wider campaign will be based on your specific objectives. It’s paramount to develop and implement a LinkedIn ad strategy before allocating any budget.
A strategy is particularly important for businesses interested in using thought leader ads, as employees must be aligned to the campaign and its objectives. LinkedIn has set up a request limit, which means a company page can only send five requests to each thought leader. If thought leaders don’t respond to those requests, they can’t receive another. Similarly, when a request has been sent, the post author will receive an email that will redirect to a page in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, where they can approve or reject the boost.
Work with industry professionals
Outsource designs, implements, and manages highly successful LinkedIn campaigns for clients across the B2B and technology sectors. Our team of digital marketing experts, content writers, designers, and marketing consultants do all the heavy lifting, ensuring that thought leaders can rely on curated content that speaks to the right target audience without dedicating time to creating it themselves.
Bibliography:
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272783/linkedins-membership-worldwide-by-country/
