cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

LinkedIn Advertising 101

Christy_Loerzel
Level 3
Partner Employee Accredited

LinkedIn is the place to find business professionals online. It has more than  225 million registered users around the globe, and about one third of those are in the US. If you are looking to find sales leads in social media, LinkedIn is one of the best places to do it ,because many members are decision makers.

I talked before about how you should establish a presence for your company on LinkedIn and the opportunities LinkedIn Groups can offer for building relationships and finding sales leads. But LinkedIn is also an excellent place to put some of your marketing budget to work. How? With advertising.

What are LinkedIn ads?

LinkedIn ads are small boxes that appear on various pages on LinkedIn. They can include text, images, video and a link. They are typically tied to a business profile and will also show how many users follow that profile.

Here is a fictional example of a LinkedIn ad:

LIpaidstrat.JPG

Where do LinkedIn ads show up?

LinkedIn ads can appear in any number of locations, including the homepage, user profile pages, search result pages and group pages.

Who can you target with LinkedIn ads?

Targeting is one of the most powerful things that LinkedIn’s advertising offers. As a professional social network, LinkedIn has a valuable amount of information about where its members work, what title they have, where they went to school and who they are connected to.

By advertising on LinkedIn, you can use this information to specifically  target your audience—using targeting filters. This can be great for Symantec partners that want to get their services and solutions in front of the IT decision makers who choose how to allocate budgets.

LinkedIn’s targeting filters include geography, company, industry, job title and seniority. This means that you can target your advertisements to employees of a specific company based in your region, or vice presidents and above in a particular industry. You can imagine, this is a powerful way to reach the right people with your product or service offering.

How do you buy LinkedIn ads?

Like Facebook ads and Twitter ads, LinkedIn’s self-service ads are sold in a second-price auction. You enter a maximum bid for your campaign and your bid is compared to others bidding for the same target demographic. If your bid wins, you pay just one penny more than the second-place bidder. You can buy LinkedIn ads based on cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-1,000 impressions (CPM).

How can you use LinkedIn ads?

LinkedIn ads are great for generating interest in your products or services from qualified professionals. If you have a new product coming out, consider targeting potential customers with a CPM LinkedIn ad campaign to drive awareness of the product and its features.

If you are trying to generate sales leads, try a LinkedIn ad that links through to a white paper or webinar where potential customers can learn more about your capabilities. This allows you to collect email addresses or phone numbers and follow up with that prospect in the future.

LinkedIn offers some useful materials to help you get started with its ad products, including a series of case studies and a playbook that outlines a number of policies and recommendations about LinkedIn ads.

Don’t forget to join the Symantec Partners LinkedIn Group and follow our Symantec Partners LinkedIn Page when you’re on LinkedIn.

 


 

Find our complete Symantec Partner social media series.