Mastering LinkedIn Sponsored Message Ads & Conversation Ads

You're listening to LinkedIn Ads Radio, the podcast dedicated to exploring and mastering LinkedIn advertising with your host, Anthony Blatner from Speedwork.

Hey, everyone. Anthony here. And we're back with another episode of LinkedIn Ads Radio. Today we're going to be talking about sponsored messaging ads on LinkedIn. This is a very, very targeted ad format. It's the most direct you can be in a LinkedIn ad is by sending a one to one message with somebody. So today we're gonna be diving into this ad format, how you can use it most effectively. Some tips and tricks for making sure that you're using it the best way possible and you're actually driving conversions out of it because these can also be the most expensive ad format. It's also very easy to waste a lot of money on this ad format when used incorrectly. A couple updates from the news before we dive into this episode. The first One is that LinkedIn has released a new metric that's now available in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Uh, this metric is called Dwell Time. It's very exciting to have this new stat because this new stat will now show us and report on how much time somebody sits there reading your ads. This is useful because we want to know which of our ads are the most engaging. And right now or before this metric came out, you would have to rely on engagement rate and click through rate to understand how much your ads were getting engaged with. But we know in B2B marketing and especially on LinkedIn, LinkedIn's average CTR is 0.4. So 99.6% of your impressions were not being clicked on. So what, what's happening with all those impressions? Well, lots of ads on LinkedIn are being read, but people might not be clicking on that exact ad. And especially with the release of Thought Leader ads about a year ago, people are now sitting there and reading ads a lot more and maybe not clicking on every ad. And this has always been the case, but is even more so with thought leader ads. So the new dual time metric is out. It's a great way to be able to see how much time people are sitting there and reading your different ads. It also gives us a metric where we can compare video ads to image ads. And this, this dwell time metric will tell us how much time people are spending on your ads. So we're going to have an episode about deep dive in a dwell time very soon and we'll be talking about some insights and what we've learned so far and what we've also learned about creative. So I'm excited to dive into that episode soon. Also exciting is I had posted about this on LinkedIn about the dwell time metric, and one of the LinkedIn representatives commented and said there's even more coming soon. So I can't wait to find out what that's going to be and, and what those new stats are. And I'm very excited and very glad LinkedIn's continued to develop new options and give us new tools and visibility that helps us optimize our campaigns. So that's. Number one is the new dwell time metric that's out. I think it's out in most accounts now. So if you don't see your account, I know they might still be rolling it out, but for the most part I've seen it across most of the accounts that we're working with. So go check your account there. It's a new column inside LinkedIn Campaign Manager, which you can then see. Number two is that LinkedIn campaigns are soon going to be able to optimize for qualified leads rather than all leads. So this is another very interesting thing to think about. You know, on LinkedIn, especially when we're running lead gen or any types of campaigns right now, you set the campaign targeting and your campaign is going to go after those people. And for the most part, the algorithm often optimizes for engagement. So who's engaging in your ad is going to optimize towards reaching more of those people, but not necessarily who's qualified or the best fit inside that audience. So lead quality is very important in B2B marketing. It's something we spend a lot of time thinking about. How can we focus on the best people and get the best opportunities in the deal pipeline? That can often be the difference of thousands or millions of dollars in your deal value in your pipeline. So there's now going to be a way to have your campaigns optimized for qualified leads, and this is going to come through the data that you're giving to LinkedIn. There's a new conversion option and new options in the API where you can now trigger a qualified lead conversion and, and you can also push that qualified lead data from the API to LinkedIn. So this can be a conversion event or it could be something pushed through the API. The ways you might set this up is maybe if somebody makes it to a certain stage in your deal pipeline or a certain part of your website, you will then trigger that conversion to say, hey, this is a qualified lead. Maybe if they make it through a couple layers of a form, maybe they click the Right. Options in the form and you're redirecting to a certain page saying that this is a qualified lead based on what they input in that form. That's one way to do it. The other way is through syncing your CRM. So maybe Salesforce or HubSpot, you can say, when I move this lead, when my salesperson or my team moves this lead from the regular lead column to the qualified lead column, boom, trigger a Signal back to LinkedIn to say, hey, that was a qualified lead because our sales teams moved them into this column. Or maybe they checked the box in the CRM and then that triggered sent the Data back to LinkedIn. So two interesting updates here. LinkedIn campaigns will soon be able to optimize for qualified leads rather than all leads. And and then also the new dual time metric. That's out. All right, so now let's dive into today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about LinkedIn sponsored messaging ads, which are. There's actually two different ad types under this umbrella in LinkedIn ads. The first one is called sponsored messaging ads. This is a slightly simpler ad format. When you compare the two, this is the slightly simpler version. This is the original version of the message ads that has been around for years and years. So that one's called the sponsored message ad format. We'll dive in further about about both of these ad types, but the newer version is called Com Conversation ads. And conversation ads allow you to build out a chat tree almost like a choose your own adventure style of interaction. Somebody can click on a chat bubble and you can offer them a few different options and then depending on what they click in that conversation, you can go down to a different tree in terms of how the script will run. So these are the newer ad format. And newer doesn't always mean better. There are some definitely advantages of using the conversation ad format, but there's also some advantages to the original message ad format. When LinkedIn released the conversation ad format, the plan was to sunset the old message ad format. And that did happen for a very short period of time, but they ended up bringing it back. And my guess is so many advertisers asked for this original message ad format to come back that they then brought it back. So there are some benefits to the original message ad format which we'll dive into as well in this episode. All right, so let's first start by talking about how these sponsored messaging ads are different from other ad formats on LinkedIn. And the first and most obvious is that these sponsored message ads are sent as a Message ad on LinkedIn, taking advantage of the Inbox feature on LinkedIn and the messaging functionality on LinkedIn, as opposed to all the other ad formats we have, just show up as display ads. Most of the ads that you think about are the newsfeed ads that show up right in your newsfeed when you've been on LinkedIn, if you've spent any time on LinkedIn, you've seen tons of these, but those are the. The standard ad format is the NewsFeed ad on LinkedIn. There's also the text and dynamic ads that show up in the sidebar on LinkedIn on desktop. So then these sponsored message ads are the only ones that show up in the inbox. And then that's the big differentiator is that these appear as if a message has been sent to the user. So they're kind of more of a message, more of like an email style of type of marketing. And that's how they show up on LinkedIn. They're also different because for most ads on LinkedIn, you're either going to pay on a CPM or CPC basis and CPM is cost per thousand impressions, so you're paying every time that ad shows up. And then a CPC basis is a cost per click basis, which means you pay every time somebody clicks on your ad on LinkedIn. The difference is with the message ads here. These are a pay per send basis. So every ad that's sent out as a message ad, you pay per send of those. That cost range can range a lot depending on who your target audience is, what geography you're targeting, how competitive that audience is. In the US we often see that these are going to range between about $0.50 to maybe a dollar percent, sometimes more if you're going after a very competitive audience. But that's just kind of like a range in the US as far as objectives. This ad format can be used in almost every objective on LinkedIn. We do tend to use it the most in lead gen objectives so that we can have one of the buttons choose to open a lead form if we want to. Otherwise these ads can direct people to a website to go learn more. So next is how they work. So like I mentioned, they show up in the inbox on LinkedIn, they live in the inbox. Somebody can, you know, receive this message ad and then they can come back an hour later, a day later, to then go back to that message and read it again, click on the link there. Which is very nice because most ads that you see show up one Time they show up in the newsfeed, someone clicks on it or they don't. At that point, you've either, you know, paid for that impression or not, or pay for that click or not, and then it's gone. If somebody sees a newsfeed ad and then remembers it later that day or the next day or next month, that's very hard to go back and find that. You either remember the name of the company or you don't. And then you're just like, oh, what was that ad? You might search a little bit, but you might not find it. So the very nice thing about these message ads is they're sent. They're sent and they live in the prospect's inbox, which that that prospect can go back to later. The other thing to mention is that this is not a live conversation. Somebody, the prospect cannot reply back to you. They can't chat back to you. The only options that you can present to them are these, the buttons in the message which can be used to click to a website or click to open a Legion form. Those are the only options. People always ask me, you know, when we're creating these ads and launching them, especially when we're, you know, using profiles from other people at the company, they're like, oh, are they going to get a lot of messages back? And the answer is no. When you're sending these message ads, prospects cannot reply back to you. They're not going to reply back to the person that you're listing as the sender. That recipient can only click on the link, click on the button which can link to your website or submit the form. It is possible for them to go look up this person on LinkedIn and maybe send them a connection request or send them a message. So that can definitely happen. But in the ad itself, prospects cannot reply to that directly. All right, so next, let's talk about the components of message ads. So when you're setting a message ad up, these are all the inputs you're going to have to fill out, and these are all the options you're going to have available. So as you go to set this up, number one is the sender. So what is the profile? The LinkedIn profile. You want to attach this message, this is who it'll look like the message ad is coming from. Like we mentioned, this is an ad that's being sent, not somebody sitting there typing it. But this is a message ad format. So when somebody receives this message, this is the profile that it's going to look like it comes from the recipient. Will be able to see this person's name, their profile image and then their headline and then that's about it. They can go look this person up on LinkedIn, but they can't click through right to their profile. They can't respond to this person. It's just who are you going to list the sender number two in the message contents here? The first part is your subject line. So if you've ever sent an InMail message on LinkedIn, you can use a subject line there. But otherwise normal message ads messages don't have a subject line on LinkedIn. So message ads do have the advantage of being able to define a subject line if you want to use one. So that's about 60 characters you can give there. And you can't use variables in the in the subject line. That's important to note. We'll talk more about variables in a little bit here. So after your subject line next you have your message text. This is the message contents that's being sent. This is the body of your message ad. The nice thing is here you can have formatted text, including lists, both bulleted lists and numbered list links. You can bold text, you can italicize text and then you can do use variables in there. So you can have like first name variable, company name variable, job title variable. We'll talk more about those shortly after that. It is possible to give this message ad a custom footer if you wanted to put any terms and conditions in there. Some sensitive industries like financial services often need to have disclaimers and stuff when they do different types of marketing. After the custom footer you have your call to action section. In message ads you can set one call to action and then with conversation ads you can have multiple call to action buttons that you can list there. And then after that is landing page URL or lead gen form that you're going to be using with these message ads. And then also with a message ad, you can give it a piece of banner Creative, which is like an image that will show up on the desktop experience. Only if someone's on a mobile phone they won't see this image. But if they are on desktop, when you're open you're looking at your inbox. There's some space on the right hand side which is where that image will show up. All right, so let's go over those components one more time. So as you're setting up your message ad number one, you have the sender that you can list there. It'll pull in their profile info that the Recipient will see they can't respond and they can't click through to that person's profile. And then in your message contents, you'll have your subject line that you'll set, you'll have your message body that you'll give it. There can be a custom footer that you can list there. Optionally you don't have to do that. And then you'll have your call to action button or buttons. Depending on which ad format you're using, you'll have a landing page URL or a legion form that you'll attach to it. And then with message ads, you can also optionally give it a banner creative as well. So those are your message components. And now when would you use a message ad versus any other ad format on LinkedIn? So what we find them to be the most useful are special types of offers that come across as personalized invite style of offers. Sure, there's lots of ways that you could use this ad format and lots of things you can put into that message ad. But, but where we find them the most valuable is using a personalized style type of offer. Because you're using a profile to reach out to your prospect on LinkedIn, it comes across as a message. We find it's very effective. When it's a personalized invite style of offer, it makes it really gives the prospect the feel like, hey, somebody's reaching out to me to give me this offer. There was something about me or my profile that makes this fit for me. So if you can tailor your message that fits to them and make that really feel like an invite sellable offer, that's where you're going to see it perform the best. Otherwise, yeah, there's lots of stuff you can put into this message. You can put lots of information. You can use it informationally as you would any other type of message marketing or email marketing. But because you are paying on a cost percent basis, you really want to make sure you're maximizing that value. So we very often use use these most often as invite style of offers. And these invite style of offers can be like a free trial or a free demo, things like that, to invite somebody in to, you know, try out your product. Yeah, you can say something like, hey, I saw you were checking out our content. Did you get a demo yet? If not, here you go to, you can click this link and I'll walk you through the software myself. Hey, I saw you were with this company which is already using our product. Would you yourself like a free trial? Click on this link here. To start your free trial. So positioning like that is where we see them be the most effective because it is like a one to one outreach and it kind of feels like you're inviting somebody into this offer. That's where we see them perform best. All right, so now let's talk about some of the key features of using message ads and what are some of the benefits and things that they offer. So number one here is personalization. The nice thing about message ads is that you can use variables. When you're setting your script of the message, there's a few different variables you can use. Those variables are first name, last name, company name, job title, and industry. So having variables in your message is great because you can personalize this message. It's going to feel more personal when somebody receives it. They're going to think it's for them and just a way to kind of stand out from other messages and other marking that might be happening. I'd say we mostly use the first name variable that we use that in almost every one of them and then we use the other ones a lot less common. You know, in general, I think about mirroring how people usually use messaging on LinkedIn and I want my ads to be very similar to those so that it kind of reads organically. It's how people are used to receiving messages on LinkedIn that'll make it most effective. If it sticks out too much as an ad or like reads weirdly, then it's not going to come across the right way to the person. So last name often just seems a little too formal. So we often use first name, but last name sometimes seems too formal. And then for job title and company name on LinkedIn, often people write really long job titles and might have a really long company name. For example, if they're owned by another company, it could say, you know, dash a subsidiary of parent company. And you know, you would never type that into a message if you were sending it to somebody. So if they read that, it's kind of just, it's just a red flag like, oh, this is an ad. This is not somebody, something someone's actually sending to me. Or they might think it's spam or something like that. So most often we'll use first name. These are the ones here are available if you wanted to use them, but very rarely do we use them. Another one to mention is industry. The industry is going to pull in LinkedIn's label for that industry. But again, that might not be how they refer to their industry name. Or you would want to do that, number two is the sender. So like I mentioned, we can list a sender to be shown as the sender of that message. The recipient is going to see that person. To add the sender you need to first be a first degree connection with that person. Whomever setting up this ad will need to be a first degree connection of that with that person. And then once you're a connection with them, then you'll send them a sponsored messaging request to be listed as a sender. They need to click accept on that and then there'll be then an option to choose. So you can't just list anybody, but you have to send them a special request and they need to accept that. Next here is having customizable CTA buttons. So for Most ads on LinkedIn, you're going to choose from one of the built in options like Learn more, request, demo, download CTAs that are pre configured. But with message ads here you can, you can enter, you can customize what you want that button label to be, which is nice because maybe you want to save free trial or complimentary something. So you can customize those CTA buttons with message ads. And lastly are the frequency caps with messaging ads. So LinkedIn doesn't want a lot of people to receive a whole ton of ads. They don't want to blow up your inbox with with a lot of ads. So message ads have their own frequency caps built in. And this actually did Change recently on LinkedIn. So now it's been updated to be a dynamic range depending on how active and engaged that user is. So the more active and the more engaged they are in their inbox, the more messages they can receive, the less engaged, the less active they are, the less that they're going to receive. And that just creates a better experience for the user. So I do like that they've implemented this because if somebody feels like they're getting too many message ads every time they open up their inbox as a message ad, they're going to use it less. So here's what LinkedIn had to say about the update the new frequency. So they said that all members now have a dynamic 7 to 18 day frequency cap. The more engaged a user is in their inbox, the lower the frequency cap will be. A member can receive up to one marketing ad within a per member frequency cap window. The minimum is seven days in the frequency cap window. It dynamically updated from an AI model with member engagement data. So that's just a fancy way of saying the more active somebody is on LinkedIn, the more they're checking their inbox, the more messages they can receive, which the Max would be one every seven days. And then the less active somebody is on LinkedIn, the less they visit their inbox. The Max window is 18 days for them to receive a second message ad. And then that's across all advertisers. So there are some. So in, in general, this is a lower frequency cap as well. So in the beginning, when you run these campaigns might send a lot of message ads and then you find out that your frequent that your impressions start to drop off and it's because you've sent a lot of messages to your audience and now they have a frequency cap window before you can send another message ad. So this is another feature and key part of messaging that's different than the other ads on LinkedIn. All right, so next let's talk about probably the most important part is writing an effective message ad. So there's lots of stuff you can put in your message ad. They have a high character limits, so you could put a lot of info there. And now let's talk about how to write an effective ad. The first thing I always think about is how does this work when it's not an ad? How does it work organically on LinkedIn we always want to mirror the medium that things are going to be sent in, whether it's an ad, whether it's a sponsored content ad, or whether it's a message ad. This is a best practice that's gone all the way back to newspapers is you want your ad to mirror and be similar to the format that it's being printed in. So here when I think about message ads, I think about how do people usually Send messages on LinkedIn? I want to write my copy to be very similar to that. So here are a few best practices. Number one is to personalize your message. So use that first name variable at least. Maybe you add some more in, but at least use like hey, first name so that person knows it's for them. Number two is to shorter messages do tend to do better. Of course you need to have, you know, the meat of your message there. But be careful not to go too long because I'd say more often. Often I see that I see messages that are too long and somebody gets lost in reading the details. If a message is too long, people just see that long message and they don't even read the whole thing. They're just going to X out because they know it's a marketing message from there. Next tip is to use lists. So lists are great let make it very scannable for somebody and you can use the built in bullet point option to because message ads can have formatting in them. So you can use bullet points to list out your message details there. Or what I also like doing is using emojis to draw your eye through that message. So using using emojis allow you to have a little more color in your message. It can really draw your eye to the most important points. So those are some things that I think about there. I think about a lot of cold email best practices. So there's lots of different tips and tricks for cold email out there. There's lots of stuff you can learn from that that you can then apply to your message ads. But other things that I like to do for these types of ads here are when we think about the invite style of offers that I mentioned making, we're very often using these as retargeting style of ads. So we know someone has maybe been to our website or engaged with our other ads or been to our company page and the way that you set those up can inform the message copy you're going to use. So if you're doing an ad engagement retargeting audience versus a website business retargeting audience, you might have different snippets that you might write differently. So you might say hey John, I saw you were on our website checking out our product. I noticed you didn't book a demo yet. I was wondering if you had any questions or if you'd like to schedule a demo. I'd be happy to walk you through one on one of that demo. So just like any kind of email marketing, I like to state my reason for reaching out. Hey, I saw you were on our website. Hey, I saw you were you were reading up on our product. Hey, I saw you were engaging on our ads. I'm reaching out because XYZ so this is where you would then insert your invite. Hey, I saw you were on our website checking out our product, but I noticed you didn't schedule a demo yet. I'd be happy to walk you through it one on one. Other things you can do on personalization is if you are running this as a cold ad, building your target audience very as a very targeted audience so that you could say in the message copy, hey John, I saw you work in tech marketing and I had to reach out or hey John, I saw you work with this type of technology and I had to reach out or hey John, I saw you're at this type of company and I had to reach out. So really stating why you're reaching out and connecting that to the targeting that you're using allows your message ad to be even more effective that way. All right, so that's a lot of info on how to, how to write the best message ad. Next, let's talk about some best practices and some tips to keep in mind as you're running message ads. So some of these we've already mentioned, but I'm going to break this down into a list that you can use. So number one is to write your message ad as if it was a message that you were sending to somebody one on one on LinkedIn. That's number one. Number two is that personalization is key. It is important because someone's reading this as a message they're receiving. If it sounds like a broad mass message, they're going to be more likely to X out and not come back to your message. All right, number three is having clear and compelling CTAs. Again because you're paying for these on a pay per cent basis. If you look at CPMs, these are the most expensive ads you can run on LinkedIn. So you're really want to make sure that you have really effective ads and you're really maximizing this traffic. So make sure that your CTA is very clear and very compelling. If it's, if it's vague and people don't know what you're really asking, what the offer is, they're just going to X out and leave. So that, that's also important. Number four is keeping it short and sweet. So I do recommend split test different lengths of copy, but I would say I do tend to see that the shorter to medium length does tend to perform the best. You know, and keeping in mind most a lot of these people can be on their mobile phones. So they might just be browsing LinkedIn on a mobile device. So you really have a small window to work with when they are on their mobile phone. Number five is AB testing. So just like any other ad format on LinkedIn, it is important to split test your message ads. Maybe you lead with the offer, maybe you lead with the benefits, maybe you lead with a pain point or problem statement. So split test those different formats for your message ads and also split test different offers that you would use in the message adjust. So free trial versus free demo versus schedule a call with an expert. Then number six is monitoring and optimizations. So as these message ads run, you do want to keep a close eye on them. Again because they can be the most expensive ad format on LinkedIn. You want to be very careful. You're not sending a lot of message ads and spending a lot of money and not seeing anything in return. I will mention that these are, these message ads are sent in like a sending style basis. So someone's going to receive that message and they might not act on it immediately, but they might come back later. So we do see that performance metrics are going to lag a little bit. You might turn these on and then it might be a day later that people, that leads might start coming in or that people will really start clicking on the links. And sometimes people need to come back a couple times to read that message. So it is kind of lagging indicators. Whereas sponsored content, when somebody clicks like right away, you'll kind of see that performance data come through versus like message ads, they get sent and then people will action them later. All right, so those are a lot of best practices to kind of keep in mind as you're running these message ads. Next are some real life examples that we've used these in most commonly. I think it's always useful to have some examples to think about as you go to think about the ways you might use these message ads. So I'll break it down into three different examples that I'll share. The first one is for driving demo requests. So most often we'll use these by retargeting website visitors. People that came to our website that does show a relatively high level of intent. You know, if they just click the click on an ad or just watch the video, that's a lower level of intent. But if they made it all the way to our website, then that's a higher level of intent. And then if you have a big enough website audience, maybe you would just focus this on just the high, high value pages. So if somebody made it to our pricing page but didn't request a demo, or if somebody made it to the demo page but again didn't request a demo, those would be the best people to start with. So people who visit your website but didn't request a demo, you, you know, you don't have their email address. Sure, you can run other types of retargeting ads to them, but if you think this is a high value warm prospect, then a message ad is a great way to reach out to this person. It's kind of a very high touch interaction. They're going to see the name and the face of somebody at your company and you're inviting them into a demo. So it's kind of a nice, nice way to invite somebody to a demo. Number two is reactivating cold opportunities. So you know, very often you have deals in your pipeline and maybe that deal goes cold or that contact goes cold and you haven't heard from them in a few months. Maybe that was a good last quarter deal that just went cold. You can send so many emails to somebody and then, you know, maybe at that point then they just stop responding. Maybe things start going to spam and you can't get through. This is another point where a messenger ad can be a nice way to get through to somebody because LinkedIn doesn't have, you know, this is that message ad. You're, you're going to ensure it's going to get to them. It's going to pop up when they're active on LinkedIn. So things you might put in this one are updates about your product. Maybe there's new features that are released that they were waiting for last quarter. Maybe there's some new interesting case studies so you can share some other results that other companies have gotten. And that's always a nice little spark for somebody to see, hey, this other person got this result, maybe your company and you can get this result as well. And then number three is for a recruiting aspect. So these can be nice ways to invite somebody to apply for a job. So you might use these on the more high value jobs you're recruiting for. Then you can send a message out to invite somebody to this. And of course when you're setting up your target audience, you can can layer on the criteria that would make somebody most qualified for the job. So maybe it's maybe if you're recruiting for an upper level position you can filter by senior, upper level seniority. So you're only sending message ads to people who are qualified for the role that you're recruiting for. So those are three examples right there. Visited website but didn't request demo. Number two is, was an open opportunity but went cold. And then number three is for recruiting applicants. All right, so we covered a lot today going over conversation ads and message ads on LinkedIn. As a quick recap, some of the most important points that I think are to keep in mind for these ads. Number one, these are great for invite style of offers, inviting somebody into a trial, inviting them into a demo. Number two is that the message ads are better for a quick, simpler, quick shot type of offer because it's a simpler ad format. Conversation ads allow you to build a tree with lots of options. Sometimes that can be too many options and people get lost in the weeds. So conversation ads are better for more complex, more in depth conversation flows and message ads are better for quick shot offers. Number three is to write these like like you would send a LinkedIn message to somebody on LinkedIn. Think about cold email best practices. And then number four is to personalize them to the person that you're sending. All right, so again, we covered a lot today. Stay tuned for Future episodes of LinkedIn ads radio. We've had some great interviews recently, both with LinkedIn and with other subject matter experts in B2B marketing. So I've been very excited to share these and we have a lot more coming down the pipeline. Also, I'll mention podcasts get published about twice a month or so, but I post tips and tricks on LinkedIn daily where you can learn more. One of the things that we're going to be putting together soon are some conversation ad templates. So go on LinkedIn and follow me and you'll be able to get those templates when I publish them. All right, well, that's what we got for you today. I hope everyone's having a fun and safe summer and we'll see you in the next episode.

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