Advertising on LinkedIn has not been as prominent as other social networks with the majority of their revenue coming from recruitment offerings. With shareholders chasing growth in all areas of the business however, this has recently led to the launch of a new advertising option – in-feed sponsored updates which are now available to all advertisers.
With a captive audience of 225 million professionals on the social network this new advertising option, which is similar to Facebook’s Newsfeed ads, offers real potential for marketers to tap into a high quality audience and generate leads, sales and more importantly a positive ROI.
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
Sponsored updates can be posted in a wide range of formats including text, images, videos, presentations and documents. Similar to previous advertising options, the updates can be precisely targeted with the option to segment your audience by Location, Company, Title, Skills, Age and more. There are currently two bidding options available for the updates:
- Cost Per Click Bidding (CPC) – pay a set amount for every click on your advert which does not include social actions (such as liking the update). Recommended for new advertisers.
- Cost Per Thousand Impression Bidding (CPM) – pay a set amount for every thousand people who see the update, this is a good option if you have a ‘hot’ offer that will generate an extremely high click through rate.
If you are ready to start advertising on LinkedIn, the first step is to fully update your company page/profile as this will be accessible in your adverts. This page should sell the benefits of your company as if it were an advert itself.
As with all online advertising it is best practice to segment out your audiences as much as possible with a tailored sponsored update specifically for each segment which will improve the click through rate of the post and ensure that LinkedIn continues to serve the ad. It is best practice to start off with at least two variations of the update for each segment with the worst performing updates being paused after launch.
After your company page is updated and audiences are segmented out with appropriate updates you are ready to go. Just remember to track every advert.
