Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business
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News and updates from your network as well as people and accounts you are following will appear in your Sales Navigator newsfeed. This is similar to your LinkedIn newsfeed, but you will only see information about specific people and accounts you saved as leads.
You can filter the newsfeed data by most important or most recent. You can also sort by sales alerts, job changes, suggested leads, lead news, lead shares, account news, and account shares. You can also display only news and updates by one specific company or person you are following.
Again, engaging quickly with people who appear in these updates is a great way to start a new conversation and get back on their radar.
DISCOVER NEW LEADS AND ACCOUNTS AUTOMATICALLY
The Discover tab on the menu uses LinkedIn’s algorithm to view recommended leads and accounts. There’s no need for you to waste your time digging for new leads because LinkedIn will do it for you. The site finds people and accounts with similar characteristics to the leads and accounts you are currently following.
TEAM TOOLS
Sales Navigator also has a tool set designed for large sales organizations. The Team version of Sales Navigator lets you connect popular CRM applications like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, so all your Sales Navigator activity is captured in your CRM records. The most powerful tool is called Teamlink, which lets you coordinate your sales activity when selling to large organizations. Let’s say you have 20 sales reps who are responsible for managing a large account, like IBM. It would be embarrassing if two of your sales reps from different divisions called the same contact at IBM to sell them services. With Teamlink, your sales reps would know who has been calling that person and what they’ve been discussing.
SOCIAL SELLING INDEX
LinkedIn also has a tool called the Social Selling Index that assigns you a “score” for your LinkedIn activity (see Figure 19–4 below). Your score is based on how well you:
FIGURE 19–4. Social Selling Index
■ Establish your professional brand.
■ Find the right people.
■ Engage with insights.
■ Build relationships.
The Social Selling Index gives you an idea of how well LinkedIn thinks you are using the site. The score isn’t perfect, but it gives you an idea of what LinkedIn thinks of your daily activity. To learn more about the Social Selling Index and how you can improve your score visit https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/blog/g/get-your-score-linkedin-makes-the-social-selling-index-available-for-everyone.
CONCLUSION
Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for sales professionals who want to generate new business from LinkedIn. Sales Navigator is a must have, mini CRM and prospecting tool that can automate many of your lead-generation tasks. It is by far one of the most powerful and affordable ways to grow your business.
In this chapter, we looked at how to use LinkedIn to find prospective customers to boost your sales. In the next chapter, we will explore a related topic: the world of LinkedIn advertising.
For additional updates and how-to videos, visit https://tedprodromou.com/UltimateGuideUpdates/.
Chapter 20
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn advertising is evolving quickly so some of this chapter may become outdated as new advertising options are released. To see the latest advertising options from LinkedIn, visit https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/ads or search Google for “LinkedIn advertising.”
Internet advertising is bigger than ever. Everyone complains about seeing too many ads online, but obviously they are very effective. In the second quarter of 2014, Facebook’s advertising revenue was $2.68 billion. That had ballooned to $13.04 billion by the second quarter of 2018—a 387 percent increase in just four years, with no end in sight. Google’s ad revenue was approximately $60 billion in 2014 and as of this writing is expected to exceed $120 billion in 2018.
Advertising on LinkedIn offers a variety of affordable ways to get your message out to a very targeted audience. While some online advertisers consider LinkedIn’s average cost per click of around $10 to be high, the cost per acquisition (CPA) of a new client is significantly lower than that of Google and Facebook. Your CPA depends on the market you are targeting, but I personally run LinkedIn ads for a client who acquires a new client for around $350, which turns into an average sale of $50,000. That’s a pretty good ROI on your advertising dollar. Nowhere else on the internet can you create such laser-focused advertising at such an affordable price.
The beauty of LinkedIn advertising is its incredible targeting ability. You can display one set of ads to keyword-specific content, display another set to specific Groups, and create targeted InMail ads to designated categories, by job title, by company, and by a host of other options we’ll cover in detail in this chapter. Since LinkedIn is already a targeted, business-oriented community, the ability to use precisely targeted advertising stretches your dollar and can produce extraordinary results.
LinkedIn members include highly educated, affluent, executive-level, and influential decision-makers. According to Nielsen’s @Plan, almost 27 percent of LinkedIn members are business decision makers and more than 34 percent earn more than $100,000 per year. In case you aren’t familiar with @Plan, it is the leading target-marketing platform for internet media planning, buying and selling of online advertising, according to Nielsen. @Plan uses more than 5,000 personal profile data points and 19 profile categories to provide wide-ranging details about the U.S. adult online population. In a nutshell, they know a lot about our online and offline habits, including what we like, what we dislike, where we shop, what brands we like, what entertainment we like, and more.
@Plan also says three out of four LinkedIn members use LinkedIn to keep up with business news and industry trends because they trust the information they read. More than 64 percent of these LinkedIn members believe LinkedIn helps develop business relationships and grow their businesses.
LinkedIn members are the perfect group to market to because they are receptive to relevant advertising and have the authority to take action when they see products and services that will solve their problems.
CONTENT MARKETING
With algorithm changes that help distribute your articles throughout LinkedIn and to external websites, plus advertising options like Sponsored Content, now called Feed Ads, LinkedIn is making it easier than ever to get your content in front of your target audience. You can publish articles, blog posts, presentations, and even video on LinkedIn and then promote it so it appears in the newsfeeds of your ideal clients. Feed Ads and Message Ads are very affordable ways to get your brand in front of millions of potential customers.
ADVERTISING OPTIONS
Your LinkedIn advertising options include:
■ Text Ads
■ Dynamic Ads
■ Feed Ads
■ Message Ads
■ Display Ads
■ Elevate
Each advertising option allows you the flexibility and affordability to reach your target audience, whether you are generating leads, growing your network, recruiting new employees, or attracting followers to your LinkedIn Page.
Let’s learn about the different advertising options available to you on LinkedIn, as well as its powerful data-gathering tools, and then in Chapter 21 I’ll show you how to create powerful, laser-targeted ads that will convert like crazy.
TEXT ADS
Text Ads are a self-service advertising solution allowing you to create and place ads on prominent pages and locations on the website.
You specify which LinkedIn members view your ads by selecting your target audience: by job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or LinkedIn group.
Here are the components of a self-service ad:
■ Headline (up to 25 characters)
■ Description (up to 75 characters)
■ From (your name or company)
■ Image (50 x 50 pixels)
As for location, your Text Ads, as seen in Figure 20–1 on page 222, will be displayed at the top of members’ homepages in text-only format and in the right sidebar on certain other pages, such as Groups.
DYNAMIC ADS
Dynamic ads are the ads you see on LinkedIn that are personalized for you. They will display your profile photo and first name in the ad encouraging you to follow a company or to envision yourself working for a company. Dynamic ads can include your name, a company name, job title, or other profile data to grab your attention.
The purpose of Dynamic Ads is to entice people to follow your LinkedIn Page or to increase brand awareness. You can also use Dynamic Ads to generate leads through content downloads, fill your webinars with targeted registrants, or just drive traffic to your website.
FIGURE 20–1. Text Ads
There are three types of Dynamic Ads:
1. Follower Ads—to increase your LinkedIn Page followers
2. Spotlight Ads—to showcase your products or services, promote a webinar, offer a whitepaper download for lead generation, or drive people to your website
3. Job Ads—to display targeted job opportunities
All three ad types use LinkedIn profile data to personalize the ad to increase engagement.
See Figure 20–2 on page 223 to see an example of a Dynamic Ad from Marketo asking me to Follow their LinkedIn Page to learn more about their career opportunities.
FEED ADS
If you are familiar with Facebook’s Sponsored Posts, you’ll understand LinkedIn’s Feed Ads. If you haven’t heard of this concept, you can pay to promote content you have created and posted on your company page. You can also create Direct Sponsored Content, which does not appear on your company page but will be displayed in your ad campaign.
FIGURE 20–2. Dynamic Ad Growing LinkedIn Page Followers
Figure 20–3 on page 224 shows a sample Feed Ads posting appearing in a newsfeed. The first post, from CatchFire Funding, is a normal unsponsored post. The second post is a Feed Ad from Vimeo. Except for the “Promoted” label identifying it as an ad, it looks just like any other post. If you click on the Vimeo logo or the word “Vimeo,” you will be redirected to its company page, where you will learn more about the business and can choose to follow the company. If you click on the link, you will be redirected to the blog post being promoted in the ad content.
There are three components to a Feed Ad post. The introductory text at the top, the image, and the headline and URL, as you saw in Figure 20–3.
There are many great online resources for creating successful ads including Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn ad campaigns. Start with a Google search similar to “how to create successful Google ads” or “how to create successful online ads.” You will see lots of great examples and tutorials that will help you get started.
As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn advertising is in constant flux, so as LinkedIn rolls out new Feed Ad features and tools, visit https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/best-practices/ad-tips/sponsored-content-tips to see their latest recommendations. Here are LinkedIn’s most recent tips for high-performing Feed Ad campaigns:
■ Write ad headlines that are under 150 characters. Concise headlines lead to more engagement.
■ Keep descriptive copy under 70 characters. Note that anything longer than 100 characters could be truncated on desktop.
■ Embed larger images instead of standard thumbnails. An image size of 1200 x 627 pixels is recommended. Content with larger visuals tends to get up to 38 percent higher clickthrough rates.
FIGURE 20–3. Feed Ad
■ Feature a clear call to action so your audience knows what you want them to do.
■ Your image should be a minimum of 400 pixels wide.
■ Be specific with ad targeting but not so specific that you narrow your audience. Choose location and two other targeting criteria to start. See Figure 20–4 for targeting options.
FIGURE 20–4. Targeting Options
■ Analyze industry news instead of just sharing it. Offering insights and key take-aways will keep your content from feeling generic and help establish thought leadership in your field.
■ Add content curation to your plan, and share information that is useful and relevant to your audience, without creating it all yourself. Use the 80/20 content marketing plan: Twenty percent of the content you share is original, and 80 percent is relevant content created by reputable sources. Always credit your source.
■ Repurpose your own content. Remember to check your blog, website, and social media channels instead of creating new content every time. Write one blog post for your blog, read your post like a newscaster, and post it on YouTube. Create a PowerPoint presentation from the blog and post it on SlideShare. Take excerpts from the post and tweet them on Twitter. You can also post the same content as an article on LinkedIn and share it via LinkedIn status updates.
■ Use rich media (like video, audio, or other elements) by incorporating YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare videos. They play right in the LinkedIn feed, so your audience can engage organically.
■ Include human interest stories that connect to your brand to help your audience establish an emotional connection. According to LinkedIn research:
– B2B buyers are 50 percent more likely to make a purchase if they see emotional value in a product or service (as opposed to functional value).
– B2B customers are 20 percent more likely to buy after engaging with video content and social media channels.
– Studies have seen emotive ads generate twice as much profit as rational, logic-based ads.
– Internal research suggests LinkedIn’s top-performing B2B video ads feature at least one of three emotional drivers: compelling music, brand-reinforcing colors, or emotive storytelling.
You will also learn how to create high-performing LinkedIn ads in Chapter 21, “Creating LinkedIn Ads That Convert Like Crazy.”
MESSAGE ADS
Message Ads, previously called Sponsored InMail, let you use InMail to deliver highly relevant messages to targeted audience segments. These messages are different from standard InMail because they’re designed to deliver a personalized marketing message to the recipient. Ordinarily when you send an InMail to someone, you don’t want to include a marketing message. The sole purpose of an InMail is to establish contact.
Message Ad messages are hand-delivered, personalized messages with space for extensive marketing copy on a co-branded landing page, one ad unit, and a call to action. Message Ads are always delivered to the top of the member’s LinkedIn inbox, increasing visibility and improving the open rate. LinkedIn members can only receive one partner message every 60 days, so they aren’t overwhelmed with unsolicited emails.
When you send a Message Ad, you can create personalized messages to very specific audiences because you can target any facet of the member profile. For this reason, Message Ads have an average open rate of 20 percent and a 20 percent clickthrough rate on the call to action. These are phenomenal rates, well above the industry standard. Figure 20–5 on page 227 shows a sample Sponsored InMail message from LinkedIn offering a guide to help you write more effective recruiting InMails.
DISPLAY ADS
Display Ads or Programmatic Display Ads is considered an enhanced marketing solution, and you need to contact the LinkedIn sales team for more information. The starting price for these campaigns is $25,000, but it may be possible to negotiate and start campaigns at lower price points.
According to LinkedIn, there are two ways to purchase display advertising:
1. Purchase LinkedIn Display Ads programmatically. Choose your preferred demand-side platform (DSP) or agency trading desk (ATD) with flexible purchasing and targeting options.
FIGURE 20–5. Message Ads Promoting LinkedIn Talent Solutions
2. Buy your inventory through open or private LinkedIn auctions.
LinkedIn only a
ccepts 300 x 250 ad banners for these ads and the ads will be displayed in the right column of the LinkedIn home page. The placement will be identical to the placement of the Dynamic Ad Growing LinkedIn Page Followers previously shown in Figure 20–2. To be honest, I rarely see these ads as LinkedIn constantly rolls out new advertising options.
LINKEDIN ELEVATE
Elevate is not a traditional advertising product, but it is a paid LinkedIn service that helps drive social media engagement and traffic, so I guess you could call it a paid traffic source. LinkedIn offers Elevate under the Marketing Solutions and Advertising sections of their website.
Elevate empowers all of your employees to be social media advocates for your company. The benefits of social sharing include increased LinkedIn Page followers, filling open positions by attracting top talent through social media, building brand awareness, sharing customer testimonials, and building your other social media followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other top social media platforms.
LinkedIn Elevate is a social media monitoring and management tool that creates a list of your company’s top social sharers and the content they are sharing. Elevate places this popular social content on the LinkedIn newsfeeds of your employees so they can share the content with their social networks. This expands your social media reach exponentially when you have hundreds—if not thousands—of your employees sharing the same content through their personal social media accounts.