How to Create Effective LinkedIn Ads by Yourself (Guide)

You Hi everyone, I'm Crystal King, Social media professor for HubSpot Academy. Today I'm going to give you some tips on how to create an effective LinkedIn ad and how to optimize and test your ads. Before we get started, make sure you like and subscribe so you can be one of the first to get the latest HubSpot Academy courses here on YouTube. There are a few things to consider before you get started with your LinkedIn ads, like having an optimized page and content, understanding your buyer Persona, choosing a campaign objective and building a targeting strategy for your audience. Check the link in the description for a video that can walk you through those steps. So let's talk about creating an effective LinkedIn ad. After you've chosen your campaign objective and audience, it's time to choose which type of LinkedIn ad will be the most effective. LinkedIn offers several different types of ad formats. Sponsored Content, which includes single image ads, video ads and carousel ads Message ads, which was formerly sponsored in mail and dynamic ads. I have one big tip for you. Remember, no matter what format you choose, always be testing. First is Sponsored Content. Sponsored content appears natively in the LinkedIn feed of your target audience. This includes single image ads, carousel ads, and video ads. There are a few best practices for sponsored content. Provide a new angle or analysis on industry news rather than just sharing popular headlines. Share helpful, relevant content. Use rich media in your posts and incorporate a variety of formats like YouTube videos, Slideshares or Vimeo videos which engage your followers. Include two to four ads in each campaign campaigns with more ads reach more folks in your target audience. Try Lead Gen Forms to help generate more qualified leads for your sales team. These forms automatically populate a member's data from their profile, making it easy for them to fill out while giving you helpful data. Next is the Sponsored Content Carousel Ad. Carousel ads hold up to 10 images to show a story, showcase a product or drive registration for events. Here are some best practices for carousel ads. Share stories of customer success. Post about thought leadership or share your executives opinions. Show several products or services. Do a deep dive into a particular product or service. Share a series of job opportunities, upcoming events or speakers. For a single event, create captivating images and visual stories. Highlight people, illustrations, graphics and typography. Use an overarching theme or style or share a large piece of content broken down into individual cards. Optimize the order of the cards based on performance. Try A B testing the order. Use clear messaging and Calls to Action or cta. Save your main CTA for the end to optimize for engagement through the end. Then there are sponsored content Video Ads Video ads can drive leads, build brand awareness, or promote a new product. They also offer video metrics and data on the types of professionals interacting with your ad. Let's look at the best practices for video ads. Showcase executives as thought leaders Preview events or webinars. Give a better, more detailed view of products or software. Show the most important message within the first 10 seconds. Use visual storytelling, graphics and text to increase engagement. For lead generation. Try longer videos I have two more video ad tips for you. 85% of social media videos are played without sound, so consider adding subtitles for brand awareness goals. Keep videos under 30 seconds. A LinkedIn study found that shorter videos have 200% better view completion rates. Message ads are another one which you may remember as sponsored in mail. They're a direct line to your network and with more than a 50% open rate, they're more effective than email. Try message ads for recruiting, event registration and lead generation. There are some best practices for message ads to keep in mind. First include a clear CTA using one to three words. The best performing CTAs are try free today, click and apply and feature low pressure terminology. Run message ads for an entire week. The highest open rates are on Tuesdays, but you might be surprised to learn that the most clicks happen on weekends. Use the LinkedIn insight tag to track conversions from these campaigns. Try combining sponsored content with message ads and running both campaigns at once. That's because marketers see 37% better click through rates when targeting via both sponsored content and message ads. Then there are text ads. These are a self service, pay per click or per impression option from LinkedIn. They're similar to Google AdWords. You can advertise for Lead Gen offers job opportunities or or groups to the audience of your choosing. When it comes to text ads, you'll want to include an image to drive more engagement. Choose a compelling CTA. Use attention grabbing headlines directed at the LinkedIn member. Link to a mobile optimized landing page that aligns with the messaging from your ad. Create three to four variations of each ad to reach more people in your target audience. Make sure that you have the LinkedIn insight tag on your website so you can track conversions and learn more about website visitors you can target on a personalized level with dynamic ads. These ads are effective for brand awareness like the example ads shown Job seekers and retargeting. There are some best practices for dynamic ads. Use the LinkedIn members profile photo in the ad. It improves engagement. Write clear CTAs and one primary action for the member to take. Exclude existing followers from follower ads so you get net new prospects. Test out custom background images in Spotlight ads. I'm guessing that you might be interested in what the specs are for each of these ad formats. Check the description below for a quick guide to LinkedIn ad specs. Next, let's go over LinkedIn ad visuals and Messaging There are limitless ways to create amazing visual ads that stand out to your audience. It just takes a little creativity, a lot of testing, and the right tools to make it successful. Whether you're using a graphic or a video, make sure you're designing and finding images that set context for your content, that capture people's attention and align with your brand. Here's a great example. This ad from Adobe is both visually pleasing and has a strong message for Women's History Month. Let's start with some visual design tips to keep in mind. First, make sure you're using rich media. Next, use a tool like Canva to create unique branded social media images. Then vary your image types. Try using icons, GIFs, stock photos, graphics, etc. You'll also want to use colors that stand out from the page. Stay away from lighter backgrounds like white or gray. Use video and infographics that are designed to help convert your audience into buyers. Additionally, include CTAs to encourage clicks. What about messaging? Here are some tips. Write catchy, actionable headlines focused on setting context and making the user interested in the content. Include compelling statistics or quotes lifted out of a larger piece of content. Keep it short and sweet. Include shortened URLs to clean up the copy. Include a call to action. And finally, let's think about video. Make sure the video thumbnail is compelling enough to make the user click play. Use your video platform of choice to test different types of video like animated, human centered, word focused, etc. To see what your audience best responds. To add text to your video so people can watch the video silently and still tell what the audience is saying. Don't just select one asset or messaging technique for each campaign. Run a B tests so you can tailor your strategy to what works over time. I asked ty Heath from LinkedIn's B2B Institute about her advice on how to choose the best starting point for an ad agency.

So, as a B2B marketer investing in Lead generation, there are a couple things you want to be thoughtful about. So LinkedIn is a great network for you to invest in in lead generation because of the capacity for you to both micro target and reach customers that are in the market for your services right now as well as macro target and reach customers that may not know who you are but are in the category and they could be future buyers of your product. If you think about it, it makes sense in the short term, maybe 20 accounts in the market for your service but but over the course of a year there could be 80 accounts. So with LinkedIn's targeting features you can both micro target using website retargeting with LinkedIn's insight tag you can use email uploading. So with the integration with HubSpot for example, you can upload your contacts and use that first party data on LinkedIn to do targeting. You can do account based marketing and you can you can also upload lookalike audiences. You know what leads are most important to you. You can find folks that look like your top leads on the LinkedIn platform and then at the same time with demographic targeting you can then macro target all of the folks in a particular category to make sure that you're branding with them and starting to nurture the leads that will make sense in the future. You want to have a balanced approach to to lead generation on LinkedIn, both by reaching current customers and by reaching future customers. To get started, I recommend starting with sponsored content. It's our bread and butter ad format. And then also consider using lead generation forms. Lead Generation Forms removes the friction from someone filling out a form by pulling in information from their LinkedIn profile. So if you're just getting started with lead generation on LinkedIn sponsored content plus lead generation forms and then think about your strategy to reach both current and future buyers.

Okay, you're ready to start a LinkedIn ad campaign. If this is your first LinkedIn campaign, I recommend thinking of it as a first draft. Over time you'll edit and revise as you learn from each test and report and by the end you'll have an optimized lead generation recruitment or brand awareness machine. Number one Sign into campaign manager. Number two select an objective for your campaign. Remember, these are under the general umbrellas of awareness, consideration and conversion and range from brand awareness to job applicants. Think of your goal for this campaign and choose the objective that aligns most closely. Number three choose your target audience and use whichever of LinkedIn's audience targeting tools is right for you. You can use matched audiences, lookalike audiences or audience expansion or or create a completely custom audience using LinkedIn's data. 4. Pick an ad format like we outlined earlier, LinkedIn offers sponsored content ads in the LinkedIn feed message ads, text ads in the sidebar, and dynamic ads featuring the members themselves. There's a pro tip for you. Experiment with a few different ad formats like message ads and sponsored content for the same audience. Number five Decide on a bid and a budget. This is where you'll decide on the campaign schedule and budget. LinkedIn recommends starting out by investing in a campaign with at least $150 a day to set a foundation for your long term marketing goals. 6. Create and preview ad Creative Review our best practices and visual design video tips mentioned earlier. Make at least two to four ads in each campaign to maximize your audience. Number seven Set up payment information and launch for those of you who are HubSpot customers, we have a free HubSpot LinkedIn ads integration which can show you your LinkedIn ads and how they impact your bottom line and which leads are your most valuable prospects. Check the description for a link to learn more. Let's talk about how you can implement conversion tracking using LinkedIn ads is a great way to generate leads and drive brand awareness. But in order to see the full value of your sponsored content, text ads or message ads, it's important to actually see the data about who's converting on what content. LinkedIn's insight tag allows you to track conversions and see which audiences are converting best for any content in your ads. This helps you see how many leads you're getting from each of your campaigns, ads and even target audiences. You can also understand the return on investment from campaigns and optimize future campaigns for better results. If you're a HubSpot customer, you can also use tracking URLs to see where your leads are coming from in the reporting tool. Want to learn how to download and install the LinkedIn's insight tag? To start tracking conversions, check out the link in the description for instructions. Let's walk through how you can implement conversion tracking. Log into Campaign Manager using your email address associated with your LinkedIn page. Make sure you use the business email associated with your LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn page. It's easy to add a business email address to your LinkedIn page number. 2. Choose where you want to track conversions. 3. Add the LinkedIn insight tag to your website. If you use the HubSpot CMS, this process can be done automatically through the setup process. 4. Create a conversion action. 5. Add your conversion action to a campaign number 6. Measure your performance with analytics and lastly, you'll want to consider developing some conversion and optimization strategies when it comes to advertising on LinkedIn. The whole point of setting up your campaigns for success. And the whole reason you're even watching this video is to get as much return on your investment or ROI as possible. Think about it. What's the point of optimizing your LinkedIn ads if you're not sure what results you're getting? That's why monitoring your campaign understanding what's working and what's not and optimizing your future campaigns based on the data you've uncovered is essential. When it comes to monitoring the success of your campaigns, remember that not all companies use the same metrics in the same way, so use what makes the most sense for your brand. Make sure that you're tracking the same information for all of your campaigns so you have data to compare. But to get a sense, here are some types of metrics that you can track for LinkedIn website Traffic conversions Cost per Conversion Conversion Rate Form Submissions Net New leads and Contacts Engagements Cost per Click New followers for brand awareness Impressions A B Test Results Whether you're reporting your campaign performance to the owner of your company or team manager, it's important to be able to analyze and report the success of your campaigns based on those metrics. You can use these types of metrics to determine the lead quality how good of a fit are the leads generated for your product or service? The ROI for your campaigns how is the money spent on these campaigns benefiting the company? The CPC over time? How much did the leads or any metric that you're tracking cost over time? A B Test Results and Experiments what are you learning from the A B test that you're running? Monitoring Reporting on the success of your campaigns is useful for proving the value of the work you're doing for your company, but it's also valuable for continuing to improve your campaigns. Was the campaign a success or a failure? There's no silver bullet to running perfect ads. Keep testing multiple topics and formats for your audience and optimizing your bidding strategy. Use this information to tailor your posting strategy both organically and through LinkedIn ads in the future. LinkedIn ads are constantly updating and changing to better suit marketers needs. By changing to an objective based ad strategy, it forces marketers to think about their goals at the start of every campaign. Using the tips in this video, you can reach new audiences at over 30 million companies on LinkedIn. If you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up and make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on new HubSpot Academy videos.