Introduction to LinkedIn

For the first time in the history of the media, it is possible to reach professionals from all over the world in one place. As the world’s largest community of business professionals, LinkedIn is the premier destination for finding and sharing professional content. Users on LinkedIn have a clear goal and a very different mindset and intention than those on other social media platforms.

Why LinkedIn?

The Right Audience

While LinkedIn has historically been leveraged as a talent solutions site, it has transitioned into a content-based site. There are 2 million publishers posting fresh content on LinkedIn, along with peer posts in the Feed, long-form content, LinkedIn Groups, and 7 million brand-managed company pages. LinkedIn is the definitive professional publishing platform, where members log on to learn, share, and get inspired.

Mission

Connect the world’s professionals to make them productive and successful

LinkedIn’s professional environment is the only place where all of these audiences can be successfully reached:

Employees: who will become advocates for your reputation within their networks.
Customers: who will be vouching for your reputation with their wallets.
Stakeholders: who will be reacting to your reputation by way of stock prices and policy changes.

A Purpose-Oriented Mindset = greater ad receptiveness

1.7x audiences seeking to learn and looking or advice. More likely to be receptive to advertising.

Our Audience Sets Us Apart With Marketers

Data is up-to-date, accurate, and substantial, resulting in higher-quality leads.

LinkedIn Member Data:

Industry
Function
Company
Company Size
Occupation
Seniority
Title
Location
Connections
Group Membership

Marketers come to LinkedIn for our substantial first-party user data that is more accurate and highly differentiated in the market noise of audience data.

When you set up an ad campaign on LinkedIn, you have powerful choices when it comes to targeting your audience. You can target your content and messaging to over 706 million professionals based on characteristics like seniority, job function or title, company name, location, skills, industry, and more.

Additionally, you can take your own first-party data and match it against the LinkedIn global member base to engage people even more likely to become quality leads. Combining LinkedIn and first-party data helps you target people who’ve already displayed an affinity for your brand.

Compared to other platforms, our data is more up-to-date, accurate, and substantial the benefit of this is higher quality leads.

Advertising Product Solutions

Select Your Objective

Whatever your marketing objective, LinkedIn provides a full suite of products and features to allow you to reach your goals.

Let us help you find the right path for your campaign on LinkedIn:

The chart below outlines appropriate ad products to fit different campaign objectives:

LinkedIn Audience

How LinkedIn Targeting Works

Targeting is a foundational element for running a successful advertising campaign — getting your targeting right leads to higher engagement, and, ultimately, higher conversion rates.

What sets LinkedIn targeting apart from that of other platforms is that members are incentivized to keep their profiles accurate and up-to-date for networking, personal branding, and job opportunities. With LinkedIn, you can reach a quality audience consisting of influencers, decision-makers, and executives.

When members complete their LinkedIn profiles, they provide information on their job experiences, company, skills, and more.

This means you can target members using profile-based demographic information, re-target visitors from your website, or upload lists of contacts or companies for your account-based marketing efforts.

On LinkedIn, you can reach members using the following demographic targeting options:

Tips for Optimizing Your Targeting Strategy

Now that you’ve learned about the different ways you can target your ads in Campaign Manager, you’ll want to know how you can optimize your targeting strategy to ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns.

Here are four important LinkedIn targeting dos and don’ts to get you started:

DO

Make sure your buyer personas are clear and well-defined.

Segment out key personas into separate campaigns, and group together the options that make sense, including related industries, locations, and job functions. This will help you deliver the right messaging to a specific subset of LinkedIn members.

Add no more than two additional targeting options in addition to the Location option.

We recommend the following audience sizes for LinkedIn’s advertising products. Keep in mind, there’s no one-size-fits-all recommendation, which is why testing is crucial.

Sponsored Content: 300,000+ members
Text Ads: between 60,000 and 400,000 members
Sponsored InMail: 100,000 or fewer member

DON’T

Hyper-target your campaigns.

It’s tempting to use every targeting feature possible. However, a limited scale will hurt your campaigns.

Lump all of your buyer personas into one campaign.

You’ll likely see poor campaign performance if you use just one campaign to target professionals in different countries, from different continents, and in unrelated industries and functions. If your target audiences are all lumped together, you’ll have trouble personalizing your content for each stakeholder group.

More Customized Options with Matched Audiences

In addition to detailed Demographic Targeting, Matched Audiences also helps you engage those key accounts, prospects, and customers that matter most to your business, with:

Website Retargeting

Re-engage your website visitors

Use one tag for website retargetting and conversationa tracking.

Email Contract Targetting

Import or integrate your contract email list.

Connect to your contact management platforms upload a lsit of email address

Account Targetting

Reach decision maker at your target accounts.

Combile the power of demographic targeting on LinkedIn with your target account list

Using Audience Expansion and Lookalike Audiences to Reach Similar Audiences

Audience Expansion and Lookalike audiences deliver your content to members who are similar to your target audience in terms of Demographics and Interests. This increases the scale and reach of your campaign by delivering your ad to additional members who may be interested in your content.

When to use Audience Expansion vs Lookalike audiences:

When you already have a high-performing audience – either from people visiting your website, people who provided you their email, or a tailored account list, Lookalike audiences can help you find more people who look like these individuals or companies.
When you are using profile-based demographic targeting, Audience Expansion can help reach new audiences that fit your selected options.

Right Engagement

Companies with Completed and Active Pages are More Successful at Achieving Growth Objectives:

LinkedIn Members Engage With An Investment Mindset

Professional network users connect with brands that align with their drive for success.

There are a variety of different needs and interests at the heart of personal and professional networks, and a variety of emotional drivers that fuel them. Marketing to the mindset is about understanding that mindset divide, and aligning your marketing strategy to achieve the desired outcome. LinkedIn and TNS partnered to carry out a global study that surveyed 6,000+ social media users across 12 countries to uncover how marketers can connect to these different mindsets on personal and professional networks.

Personal networks are where people spend time being entertained, while professional networks are where people invest their time. Professional network users want to connect with brands that align with their drive for achievement and success. The type of content users expect from networks will align with their differences in personal mindset. In a ranking of the types of content users look for, “Brand updates” was ranked #2 for those using professional networks, and #9 on personal networks. Professional network users crave insight above all else, and expect to hear from brands 26% more than on personal networks.

Members are here to invest their time. To achieve more meaningful engagement as a marketer, put yourself in their shoes and consider how to reach them with content that can help them develop their careers and better themselves.

How to Engage with Customers on LinkedIn

Right Environment

Our Environment Is More Trusted Than Other Social Platforms

LinkedIn is the most trusted social media platform, and provides an environment that is conducive to building and owning your brand. When your audience trusts the platform (like they trust LinkedIn), they also are more receptive to brands they “meet” on LinkedIn (through organic or paid content).

We’ve got the right environment to drive trust, increasing brand recall and keeping your business top-of-mind for users making business decisions.

2x more trusted than other social platforms

3x more trusted for content

Marketers navigating an environment in which consumer distrust is growing face the added complexities of fake news, ad fraud, brand safety, and declining media trust. Building the most trusted connections with customers requires re-thinking media channels, communications, messages, and tactics.

Business Insider Intelligence surveyed 1,700 consumers to understand their perceptions of major digital platforms when it comes to ‘legitimacy,’ ‘security’ and ‘community’ in their digital media decisions. LinkedIn was found to be “undisputedly the most trusted platform.” In their research, Business Insider Intelligence attributes this to the mindsets from which consumers approach different social platforms. LinkedIn’s members approach the platform with a professional mindset, to inform and advance their careers. “This dynamic causes people to treat content and interactions on LinkedIn as more authentic,” says Business Insider Intelligence, and in turn, “this engenders a higher degree of digital trust.” LinkedIn is a highly trusted platform – comparable to other highly trusted platforms like The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

People are more careful about what they say on LinkedIn, because it’s essentially their public resume

LinkedIn Business Lines

Although this course focuses on our Marketing Solutions business, it’s important to understand the various business lines of LinkedIn and how they can help you or your customers:

Product: Hire
Description: Attract talent and recruit candidates from the world’s largest talent pool
User Cases: Recruiters, Human Resources, and Recruiting Agencies looking to build talent brand, post jobs, and source candidates

Product: Market
Description: Market to the world’s largest professional audience (includes Elevate)
User Cases: Marketers, Ad Agencies, PR/Communication teams looking to build their brand and promote their product or service through paid media efforts

Product: Sell
Description: Power your social-selling efforts with real-time sales intelligence
User Cases: Sales Team, Business Development, and Executives looking for a sales tool to target the right buyers, understand key insights, and engage with personalized outreach

Product: Learn
Description: Develop talent and keep skills current with personalized eLearning
User Cases: For individuals, Learning & Development, and Talent Development Teams looking for an online learning platform that enables individuals and organizations to achieve their objectives and aspirations through thousands of expert-taught online courses

Unlocks a Unique Opportunity for Your Brand(s)

The Right Audience – Reach and impact the right customers and prospects.

The Right Engagement – Deliver the right content to the right member at right time.

The Right Environment – Be authentic in a brand-safe environment.

Advertising Product Solutions – Ad Formats on LinkedIn

There Are Three Different Formats for Sponsored Content:

Carousel
Single Image
Video

TEXT ADS

Generate quality leads with an easy, self-service solution. Text ads appear just below the navigation bar on the home screen, as well as on profiles, pages, in inboxes, and on network pages.

Easily create, manage, and optimize well-targeted, customized campaigns in just minutes – on a budget that works for you.

DYNAMIC ADS

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads are a personalized advertising solution that allows advertisers to accurately target decision-makers and influencers with highly relevant and customizable creative content on the platform.

Drive engagement with premium audiences using dynamically generated ads — powered by profile data, and customizable to meet your campaign objectives.

Build brand awareness by increasing Company Page followers and engagement
Drive conversions with more clicks to your landing page, website, or app
Generate leads by promoting your LinkedIn content

From Brand Awareness to Lead Generation, marketers can reach their audiences on LinkedIn

Discover: Programatic Display, Dynamic Ads
Learn: Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail
Try: Text Ads, Matched Audiences
Buy: Lead Gen Forms, Whitepaper Dynamic Ads

Set up your LinkedIn Page

Start with a LinkedIn Page

LinkedIn Pages are a free and easy way to establish your brand on LinkedIn. All you need to get started is a LinkedIn account and a verified email address (we’ll can check to see if you’re eligible to create a page on your company’s behalf). Having a LinkedIn Page is required to run ads on LinkedIn.

There are over 30 million Pages on LinkedIn. If yours isn’t one of them, you’re missing opportunities to get your content in front of the audience that matters most to your business.

Set Up Your LinkedIn Page With These 3 Quick Tips: