LinkedIn Ads for SMM

Hello Friends, welcome to LearnVern.

In the last topic we learnt about Youtube ads. We also learnt about Skippable ads, Non-Skippable ads. We also checked out a few case studies and we also took an understanding of the ad format’s overall range. That is how many youtube ads are available, and how many youtube ads can be used and run for your brand.

In this session we will understand about LinkedIn ads.

What are LinkedIn ads?

How many types of ads exist?

How many formats are available?

And

How do they work?

Friends, here I have tried to create a simple Ad structure for you.

LinkedIn ads are divided into 4 main categories.

The very first category is “Sponsored Content”

Under this category of “Sponsored Content” we have 4 types of LinkedIn Ads available.

First is “Single image ad”

We will understand about this in detail a little later.

As for now let us first thoroughly understand the structure of Linkedin Ads.

So you can see from my screen under “sponsored content” the very first one is “Single Image Ad”

Then the second is “Video Ads”

The third is “Carousel Ads”. The meaning of carousel remains the same across all social media platforms, that is, a group of images clubbed together.

Right?

And the last is “Event Ads”

So these 4 types of Ads are clubbed under “Sponsored Content”

Then the second category that we have is “Sponsored Messaging”

Under this category, Linkedin offers us with 2 types of ads.

The first is “conversation based ads” and the second one is “Message Ads”

The third category is “Text and Dynamic Ads”

Under this category we get to see 3 types of Ads

The first is “Text Ads”

The second is “Spotlight Ads”

And the third is “Follower Ads’

And the last option we have is “Lead Generation forms”.

These are pre-filled lead generation forms wherein all the data and information stored with LinkedIn can be shared with the advertiser in just a single click.

So let us understand all of these one by one.

The very first category is “Sponsored Content”

And under this the first one is “Single image ad”

Single image ads are very very simple to understand.

As you can see from this image on my screen, an image will run on your news feed. This you can display as a news feed, can show it to your audience, can target your audience. So this is how your ad will be displayed.

The second is “Video ads”

You can promote any video that follows the ad guidelines of LinkedIn. You can run that video as an ad too.

The third option is of “Carousel Ads”

You can view an interactive story through cards by swiping the images right.

And below each card you can put some content or information and on the top you can keep some captions. So in this way you can create a carousel ad on LinkedIn.

The last is the “Event Ads”

If you are hosting a webinar, or if you are hosting an offline event and if you wish that maximum people view that event or attend it then you can run the “Event Ads” on LinkedIn to boost the attendance of the event.

The second type that I had mentioned while discussing the structure was “Sponsored Messaging”

In “sponsored messaging”, LinkedIn offers 2 types of Ads.

The first one is the “conversation based ads”

So you would have seen on LinkedIn if you are active on it, you receive sponsored messages in your message Inbox.

As you can see on my screen, this is how a message inbox looks like. I know the screenshot is not clearly visible but you can make out from this that it is a messaging screenshot.

So what happens in this is that a few options are visible to you, which if you click a conversation starts off automatically.

So basically what kind of ad is this?

This can be called Programmatic Ad too where if you choose any response, the system will automatically throw similar related content and slowly and gradually the system will take you towards “call to action”.

This is called a Conversation based ad.

On the right side of my screen you can see “Message Ads”

This is a simple plain message ad specially to communicate about a particular content like some new feature launched, or a new app, or a new version of an existing app, or a new product about which I wish to share relevant information with you. In such cases personalised message ad can be sent or parked in your inbox thereby ensuring that the entire information about that particular product is shared with you.

The third type of category is “Text and Dynamic Ads”

Right?

So what are “Text and Dynamic Ads”?

As soon as you login to LinkedIn, you will be able to see some ads on the right hand side. All these ads are called “Text and Dynamic Ads”

There are basically 3 types in it.

“Text Ads” - As you can see on my screen, a group of ads, this is basically called “Text Ads”.

Under Text Ads, you will also be able to see a small icon. These icons are mostly the logo of the brands or it could be a custom icon too. This is how these ads look like.

Then the second type of ad is “Spotlight Ad”

If you are served with ads like this, then you would have seen that there are 2 images in such ads and below that a “call to action” button is also available.

The third type of ad is “Follower Ads”

So the major objective of “follower ads” is to increase the number of followers on your account.

Right?

So this is how this ad will look and visible to you. And below this ad you will also have a “Follow” button.

The last option we have is “Lead Generation Forms''. This isn't an ad though but I wanted to cover this topic because this is an enabler in the form of a powerful sponsored product. That means this will enable you to capture the maximum number of leads. Thus this is called “Lead generation form”.

Got it?

If you create this form then all the data that is shared with LinkedIn can get shared with you as an advertiser but with the user's consent. And all the fields like the name, city or your current organisation is already filled by the user on LinkedIn. So when an advertiser requests for this information and if the user approves it, then within a single click this information can get shared with the advertiser.

So the major advantage in “Lead Gen Form” is that if you run a lead generation campaign the user will have to be diverted to the landing page.

And what is a landing page?

 It is a high performance webpage where your business objective is to generate leads by filling the form. There will be a form, some USP’s and your focus will be to ensure maximum people fill in that form by which more leads will get generated. So this requires the user's efforts as they will have to fill the entire form with their name, email id, address, city, a business requirement also needs to be filled in by the user.

But in this case of a “Lead Gen Form” a lot of details already exist, a majority of these details are already populated and filled. Thus within a click and with the consent of the user, all these details will be made available to you. Thus the user’s effort will decrease, and will be less.

So if the user’s efforts are less then he or she will be motivated to share the information with you thereby your chance of generating a qualified lead increases.

I have brought a case study for you. This is of LTTS.

Also called “Larsen and Toubro Technology Services”. They have made the best use of LinkedIn Ads. We will study this for a better understanding.

Before moving onto the case study, let us check out the demo of “LinkedIn Ads”.

I want to give a small demo to explain how powerful a tool LinkedIn is to run ads.

So now we are on the Dashboard of LinkedIn.

From here, I will click on “Create”

I get this option called “Campaign” which is the campaign manager of LinkedIn.

As soon as I click on it, I will be on the “campaign page”.

It will now prompt me to create a “campaign group”

I will click on Next.

This page basically tries to understand my business objective, the purpose.

So I basically may want more “brand awareness”, that is more and more people should be made aware of my brand.

Or either I want “consideration” that is

more “website visits”

or more “engagement”

or I want more “video views”

Or lastly may be I want “conversions” like

“lead generation”

or may be I want “website conversions”

Or may be I want “job applicants”

Right?

In this case I want more and more people to visit my website so I hereby click on “website visits”

Now here it will ask me about the “Audience”

It will ask you about the set of audience to whom I wish to show my ad.

So for example here I am selecting “India”

Thus on the right side target audience size gets populated.

Now here it asks you “Who is your target audience”?

Under this I have 2 options available.

One is “Audiences” and the other is “Audience Attributes”

Audiences means “use your data to retarget website visitors”

If you recall, in the last unit we had looked at “facebook custom audience”.

This feature of “Audiences” is very similar to “facebook custom audience”

So here in “Audiences” it is trying to say that you can upload your own data like

“LookAlike” - we have already learnt about it

“Retargeting” - this also we have learnt

So you can upload your data that is “list upload”. I had given an example of “customer audience” if you recall.

Similarly here too you can upload your own list.

So let us rest this feature for a while.

Let us look at “Audience Attributes” as we haven't discussed anything related to this in any of our earlier sessions.

You can see from my screen that as soon as I click on this “Audience Attributes”, I get all these options.

Right?

I can target the “Companies”

I can target based on “Demographics”

I can target based on “Education”

Even on “job experience”

And I can also target based on the “Interests and Traits”

Let us click on “Company” and check out the options available in it.

So we have “Company category”, “connections” and many more such options available to us. But not all may be relevant to me.

Now as soon as I target “company category”, I get all these options.

I can also target “Forbes or Fortune's World’s Most Innovative Companies”

So as you can see I have so many options available.

Now, I'm going back to my previous screen. I wont select any of these as I don't find them very relevant to me.

“Industries” is an option that I think I should show to you.

Now, for example I want to target all those who hold the designation of General managers and above in the Pharma industry.

I have created a marketing automation product and I want to connect and talk to all the people from the Pharma segment, all the GM’s of Pharma in India.

So what should I type here?

I will type Pharma to target Pharmaceuticals

Now as soon as I select this domain, check out the “Target Audience” on the right side of the screen.

Now see this - when the “Pharmaceuticals” option is unchecked, the target audience size  was huge and now on selecting this “Pharmaceuticals” option the target audience size came down drastically.

Now this audience size is the size available for this specific industry domain.

After setting this filter of Pharmaceuticals, what do I want to do next?

I want to further narrow down the audience.

Right?

Now if you remember I mentioned that I want a combination of General Manager and Pharma both.

So for this what will i do now?

I will again go to the “Audience Attributes” and in that I will click on the option “Job experience”

Again under “Job Experience” I have these many options to select from like:

“Job Functions”

“Seniorities”

“Job Titles”

So I will click this “Job Title” option as i want to target “General Manager” only

Here, I select this “General Manager” option

As soon as I select this “General Manager” option, the audience size that is available to me is only 8700 people.

But remember friends, this is a very targeted and refined audience.

So whom will I be interacting with here?

They are the ones who are working with Pharmaceutical companies in India and whose title is General Manager.

So this is undoubtedly a very specific set of audience.

This is a very very powerful feature of LinkedIn which is not available in Facebook or Twitter nor on Youtube either.

This is available only and only with LinkedIn. LinkedIn only has the “powerful targeting capabilities” as LinkedIn is a professional social network.

Right?

People enter their profession, their job titles, their organisation details too, they share all these information on LinkedIn. Thus you can definitely target them using this tool or feature.

Getting back to our discussion. All these steps helped me to build my audience.

After this I need to select an “ad format”.

Under “ad format” I have “single image ad”, “carousel ad”, “video ad”  and so I can use either of them.

After this I need to select “Placement”.

This by default has “enable the LinkedIn Audience Network” option selected.

I can uncheck it too.

1. Got it?

Below this I have other options too.

Like If I want to exclude something, then i can select “Exclude categories” too

Then as I move on further, you can see step 2.

This step is setting up the campaign. As we complete these steps, the ad will also get completed.

Then lastly we have “Conversion Tracking” which is Optional.

Now I will set some budget. For example, I will set the budget to 10 dollars as I don't wish to spend more than that on a daily basis.

As you can see, the “Company page” is mandatory to fill. So if we don't have a “company page” we won't be able to proceed further.

But predominantly what I wanted to show you was this “targeting feature” of LinkedIn which makes LinkedIn more unique in terms of social media ads. And other social media platforms do not possess the targeting capabilities at least of this kind.

Got it Friends?

Now let me show you one more example.

Let me close this section.

And let me remove this filter as well.

Right?

Let me show you one more thing that we can do here.

You all must have heard of “HUL - Hindustan Unilever Limited”

Unilever is one of the World’s biggest FMCG companies.

So for example I only and only want to target HUL.

Oh, HUL might not get displayed as in India it is widely called as Unilever.

So if I type “Unilever”, I will select this option as I want to target Unilever only.

As you see there are 21000 people in Unilever in India.

So while targeting Unilever I can further drill it down by selecting the “Audience Attributes” option.

I can search from here as well.

For example I want to see people working in the marketing domain only.

Again I have 2 options here.

Either I select marketing as a job title or I can select marketing in the member skills too.

So “Marketing member skills” means the people who have kept marketing as their skill and are working with Unilever.

So there are around 5000 people who are in different functions at Unilever. I can decide to target only these people as well.

Thus this means that if you wish to target a particular company, that is very much possible through LinkedIn.

Friends, isn't it amazing?

I think that this targeting capabilities will take LinkedIn miles ahead as compared to other social media platforms.

That is all for today.

If you have any queries or comments then, click the discussion button below the video and post there. This way, you will be able to connect to fellow learners and discuss the course, also our team will try to solve your queries.

In the next topic we will learn how businesses are getting successful because of LinkedIn.

We will also see the LinkedIn ads they have made use of to accomplish their business goals and objectives.

We will look at these case studies in our next session.

Till then, Good Bye.