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<p>Text Ads Playbook Table of contents Why Should I Advertise on LinkedIn? What Is LinkedIn? Conversion Tracking & Business Account Cheat Sheet Frequently Asked Questions Campaign Name STEP 02 Campaign Goals STEP 01 03 04 05 07 Targeting STEP 03 09 Budget & Time Period 20 STEP 04 Creative Assets STEP 05 Tracking Results STEP 07 Ad Approval STEP 06 24 29 linkedin.com/ads | 2 31 33 38 39 What is LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, with members from hundreds of countries and territories. LinkedIn members are active, influential professionals in a business frame of mind. They use LinkedIn to learn about new products and services, keep up with industry trends, research companies, network with peers, and conduct business. So whether your objective is to reach influential decision makers at companies or affluent consumers, advertising on LinkedIn is a great way to drive new leads to your company. LinkedIn members drive business decisions 4 5 OUT OF of members are senior-level executives (and above) 39% of members are responsible for managing budgets 28% linkedin.com/ads | 3 Why should I advertise on LinkedIn? What account should I use for ads? A business account allows you to separate ads and billing information from your personal LinkedIn account and share business account access with other team members. Multiple languages Ads can be written in any of the languages supported by LinkedIn, and can be shown to members in most countries. High traf c pages Our agile platform lets you create and place ads on high- traf c pages of LinkedIn.com within minutes. Target with precision We make it easy to reach your ideal audience without wasting impressions or clicks. linkedin.com/ads | 4 Performance based LinkedIn Text Ads is an easy-to-use self-service, performance-based advertising solution. First, let’s come up with some goals for your campaign. Define your campaign goals For any ad campaign to be successful, you need to understand your business goals. Are you trying to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or get new leads? The clearer and more specific your goals are, the more compelling your ad campaigns will be. Your campaign goals will directly affect how much you want to spend, who you want to target, and what creative assets and messaging you need to develop. STEP 01 Imagine you’re ProStock*, a small accounting software company, that wants to sell software subscriptions. What would your campaign goals be? The software is pretty expensive, so your best bet is to gather and nurture leads – then turn them into customers over time. ProStock’s campaign goals are focused on driving leads in two ways: 1. Offering free trials of their software 2. Providing educational material on the benefits of using accounting software.** ProStock Example *Fictional customer **A lead would need to fill out a form in order to download the material linkedin.com/ads | 6 Now that you’ve thought about your campaign goals, let’s create a campaign name. STEP 02 Create a campaign name Your customers won’t see the name – it’s just for you. Choose a descriptive name that reflects the goals you’re hoping to achieve. If you’re just starting out, we suggest creating a name that reflects your target audience. Make it super easy to understand and remember! When you have a lot of campaigns to keep track of, having a clear naming system will keep you organized. For example, one of ProStock’s campaigns is called “Software Trial North America Accountants.” ProStock Example linkedin.com/ads | 8 Next up, targeting your ads, where we’ll cover personas, filters, and testing. Develop your targeting persona Who should you target? When choosing target options, start by narrowing down your target audience to LinkedIn members who are likely to be interested in what you offer. Here are some things to consider when thinking about your target audience: STEP 03 Do they have specific job functions? Do they have certain skills? Where are they located? Do they work in a certain industry? Do they belong to certain LinkedIn Groups? ProStock Using personas to picture your audience Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience by creating a persona. ProStock, as an accounting software company, would have a sample customer like this: Mark Smith Age 45 Title Accounting Director Company ABC Investing Corp. Location San Francisco Bay Area Professional interests Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Finance/Accounting, Investing linkedin.com/ads | 10 STEP 03 Choose your targeting filters Who should you target? You can filter your target audience by criteria such as: job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, school, skills, company name, company size, or membership within specific LinkedIn Groups. As you select your target options, we’ll show you an estimate of the audience size you’ll be able to reach. To start out, we recommend having at least 100,000 members per target group so you don’t miss out on unexpected opportunities. linkedin.com/ads | 11 You’ll want to avoid gender and age targeting until you get the hang of the system and learn a little more about what works for your business. t Geography t Company name t Industry t Company size t Job Title t Job function t Seniority t School t Skills t Age t Gender t Groups Targeting Filters STEP 03 Targeting by geography Choose who sees your ad based on where they live or work. Start by choosing at least one geographic location for your campaign. Select geographies based on where your leads or customers are located. You can target up to 10 regions, sub-regions, or countries. Use information you know about your prospects to develop thoughtful targeting – but don’t go so narrow that you miss other opportunities by casting too small of a net. If your products or services are applicable to members all over the world, you can select all regions. However, for higher engagement we recommend you focus only on those audiences who are most likely to be interested. Note linkedin.com/ads | 12 STEP 03 Company by name Company by category or Targeting by company When you target by company, you can select: If the product or service that you’re offering could appeal to employees at a particular company, you may want to target by company name. When you enter the name of a company you’d like to target, we’ll automatically suggest similar companies that you could target as well. Keep in mind that this is a very specific targeting method, and that we only recommend it to those who feel comfortable going very narrow. Even in cases where you want to target a specific company, we recommend you also include some “similar” companies to your campaign. Including similar companies will give you a better chance at getting impressions and clicks. Company by name linkedin.com/ads | 13 STEP 03 linkedin.com/ads | 14 Targeting by company Company by category If you’re new to online advertising, still refining your target audience, or want to scale campaigns, this broader targeting option is recommended for you. You can choose from company size and/or industry. Target LinkedIn members based on the size of the company they work for. You can target companies with as few as one employee or as many 10,000+ employees. Some companies choose not to identify their size, so we recommend testing out targeting to both “all sizes” and your “target size.” Your results will show which works best for your campaigns. Company Size Target based on your audience’s industry. Choose broad industry categories or get more specific with industry subsets. There are over 17 categories to choose from. Industry Different industries may use different terminology so consider creating separate campaigns and ad copy for each industry you’re targeting. STEP 03 Job by Title When you enter a specific job title, we’ll suggest similar titles for you to target. Because different companies have different titles for the same jobs, try using additional words in the job title. LinkedIn will help you by suggesting additional titles. If you know the job titles for the audience you’d like to target, this is a good option for you. If you’re looking for an Account Manager, also try targeting a Senior Account Manager, Junior Account Manager, Director of Accounts, Account Strategist, and so on. Example linkedin.com/ads | 15 You can target up to 100 similar job titles in a single campaign, so the more you choose, the broader your ad’s reach. Job Title Job Function and/or seniority Targeting by job When you target by job title, you can select: or STEP 03 Targeting by job Job by Function and/or Seniority Job function and seniority are two job title categories you can use to hone your targeting. Seniority If you’re trying to target professionals with a certain level of professional experience, you may want to try targeting by seniority. Since LinkedIn is a professional network, members don’t list age on their profile. We recommend targeting by seniority instead of age. Job Function Target by job function if you want to show your ad to members in a specific job discipline. You can choose up to ten job functions. If your offering could appeal to multiple job functions, consider creating separate campaigns with ads tailored to each function. linkedin.com/ads | 16 Job function, seniority, and industry can be combined for more accurate targeting. STEP 03 Targeting by Groups Since over 80% of our members belong to at least one group, targeting by Groups is an effective way to reach an already highly engaged audience. Get started searching for groups using the LinkedIn Groups Directory: www.linkedin.com/search-fe/group_search Next, try testing a campaign just for Groups. Target as many groups as possible with a common theme and highlight that theme in your ad copy. Since the autocomplete doesn’t pick up ALL relevant groups when you enter a certain word, it helps to experiment with multiple word combinations. The bigger and more aligned your overall target audience, the better the chance your ad will get multiple clicks. linkedin.com/ads | 17 You don’t have to be a part of the same LinkedIn Groups as the members you want to target in your campaigns. STEP 03 Because LinkedIn is a professional site, many members choose not to list personal information such as age and gender on their profiles. We recommend focusing on other targeting options instead. Gender and Age Target by a single school or many. If you’re offering a GMAT prep course in the New York Area, for example, you may choose to target members at schools like Columbia University and New York University. Schools Reach LinkedIn members on other websites. Go to help.linkedin.com and search “LinkedIn Audience Network” to learn more. LinkedIn Audience Network Imagine you’re organizing a developer conference in your area. You may want to target professionals who have skills like HTML, CSS, Javascript, or Flash listed on their profile. Call out the skills you’re targeting in your ad copy. Skills Select from one of our many supported languages for your ad campaign so you can target say, French speakers, no matter where they’re located. You’ll need to write your ad copy in the language you’ve selected. Otherwise, we won’t be able to run your ad campaign. Ad Languages Targeting: More options linkedin.com/ads | 18 Once you’ve submitted your campaign for review, it’s no longer possible to change the language of the ad. Test and iterate When you’re feeling comfortable running campaigns, and are generating enough click volume to measure performance, try testing different targeting criteria. This way you can see which combination of targeting filters is the most effective in generating clicks and conversion. Here are some suggestions along with examples based on ProStock’s typical customer persona, Mark Smith. STEP 03 ProStock Example ProStock Example Try each targeting option as its own campaign. Once you know which target works best, you can start optimizing for that target. Campaign 1. Geography (North America) Campaign 2. Industry (Accounting) Campaign 3. Groups (Finance) Go a step further and create different targeting combinations to see if a particular pairing performs better than others. Campaign 1. Geography + Industry Campaign 2. Geography + Groups Campaign 3. Industry + Groups linkedin.com/ads | 19 Using 2+ targeting criteria can increase your performance by up to 10% according to our internal LinkedIn analysis. Keep in mind your own campaign performance could vary. We’ve covered a lot of ground related to targeting. Let’s move on to budgeting. Setting a budget & time period You can control your advertising costs by setting a daily maximum and total budget. Plus, you only pay for performance, which means you only pay when you receive clicks or impressions. For additional exibility, you can log in to the LinkedIn Text Ads Dashboard at any time and switch your campaigns on or off. STEP 04 What’s a click, impression, CPC, or CPM campaign? You can learn about these terms on page 23. Some things you’ll want to decide: The total budget you want to invest in your LinkedIn Text Ads campaign. The total number of campaigns you want to create based on your total budget. Your daily maximum, which is the amount you want to spend per day. Whether you want to run a CPC or CPM campaign, and how much you’re willing to bid. Whether you want your campaign to run continuously or for a speci c period of time. linkedin.com/ads | 21 STEP 04 Bid & budget details The minimum CPC bid (cost per click) is $2.00 per click. The minimum CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) bid is $2.00 per thousand impressions. There is a $5 deposit the rst time you use LinkedIn Text Ads, which covers the initial clicks/ impressions that result after the ad has been approved and posted. Once the $5 credit is depleted, you will be billed periodically for the clicks or impressions that your ad incurs. Note Although we turn off your advertisement for the day once your daily budget is reached, the change isn’t instantaneous. You will be charged for clicks or impressions that are delivered during that time; sometimes this number is up to 20% over your daily budget. linkedin.com/ads | 22 STEP 04 Here are some terms you might nd helpful Clicks are exactly what you think – when a visitor actively clicks on your ad. Impression refers to when your ad is shown to a LinkedIn member. Bid Price is the amount you’re willing to pay LinkedIn every time someone clicks on your ad or every time your ad shows 1,000 times. We’ll provide a Suggested Bid Range to help you choose the best possible bid price. The range represents an estimate of the competing bids by other advertisers for your target audience. If you’re just getting started with LinkedIn Text Ads, we suggest you enter a bid that’s within or above the Suggested Bid Range. In general, the higher you bid, the more likely you are to get impressions and clicks. Daily Budget is the amount you’re willing to spend per day. To set your daily budget, multiply your CPC or CPM bid by the number of clicks or impressions that you’d like to receive each day. For example: If you want 1,000 clicks each day and want to spend no more than $3 per click, you’ll want to set your daily budget at $3,000/day. Payment Methods CPC is cost per click. You’ll only get charged when someone clicks on your ad. For CPC, if your maximum bid is $3.00 per click, you’ll be charged less than or equal to $3.00 every time your ad receives a click. If your ad doesn’t receive any clicks, you won’t be charged. Bid your maximum CPC because your actual CPC will be lower. CPM is cost per thousand impressions, so you’ll be charged. Every time we show your ad 1,000 times. CPM is a good option if you care more about the number of times your ad is shown, versus clicks received. This is a good choice for campaigns with brand awareness goals. We generally only recommend this type of bidding option for people with experience advertising on a CPM basis. linkedin.com/ads | 23 Most people visit LinkedIn on weekdays, so focus your budget on those days. Got the basics of budgeting? Now, let’s start designing your ad creative. STEP 05 Deciding on creative assets Ads that perform best are relevant to the target audience and are written with clear, and compelling language. Try writing different variations of ad copy to determine which version speaks more to your audience. To create a new version of your ad, with the same target audience, click “Add a variation” and you’ll see a new creative box to ll out. Note: Your ad may be shown as a text only version in locations such as the top of the LinkedIn homepage. linkedin.com/ads | 25 Close Your Books Faster Accounting software for small & midsize companies. Get a free 30 day trial. www.prostock-company.com ProStock has 1,680 followers on LinkedIn Image 50x50 pixel image Headline Up to 25 characters From Your name or company URL You can choose to send members to your website, a speci c landing page, or a LinkedIn Company Page. Description Up to 75 characters Choose words that grab the attention of your target audience. Give LinkedIn members a reason to click through by highlighting special offers, unique benefits, downloadable white papers, free trials, or product demos. STEP 05 Here are some tips for creating great ads Rotate in new creatives at least once a month. Make sure text is concise and easy to read. Clearly list the bene ts of your products and services. Include an image to grab your audience’s attention. Ads with images perform signi cantly better than those without. Images with bright colors are more likely to catch the attention of your audience. We’ve seen a 20% lift in CTR when ads include an image. Include a strong call to action, such as “Try,” “Download,” “Sign up,” or “Request a Quote.” Words and phrases that encourage action and urgency tend to perform well. Double check your landing page Make sure your landing page (the place where someone goes when they click) matches your ad. Create 3-4 variations of your ad per campaign. Test images, text, and call-to-action phrases to see what works best with your audience. Speak directly to your target audience through your headline and text. For example, if you’re targeting nance professionals, include relevant job titles or the word “ nance” within the ad. Use industry-speci c language that customers can relate to. linkedin.com/ads | 26 STEP 05 Creative assets: Common mistakes Not including an image Use an eye-catching image that describes your product or service. Only using one creative Be sure to use at least two creatives so you can test out variations of your ad. For example, try re-framing your headline as a question or referencing the audience in the headline. Not showing the “best” creative more often Once you have multiple creatives in your campaign, select the “optimized” strategy in your Text Ads dashboard, which automatically selects the best performing versions and shows those over under- performing versions. Using only one targeting criterion Consider using 2-3 targeting criteria, such as “Geography” and “Job Function.” Not including a call to action or offer in the body or headline of the ad One way to improve your ad is to grab your audience’s attention with key phrases in your ad’s headline such as “Try Now,” “Download,” or “Free for 30 days.” linkedin.com/ads | 27 Fully capitalizing your ad or repeating punctuation No one wants to be yelled at – unfortunately, that’s what all caps and lots of exclamation points feel like to your readers. Instead, try using normal punctuation and use exclamation points in moderation. STEP 05 Creative assets: Designing your ad Here are two ads that ProStock (our accounting software company example) could write for their target audience. Review the advertising guidelines for details on what’s acceptable to include in your ad. Effective Headline draws attention of the target customer Description identi es the product Ends with a strong offer Less Effective Headline too generic Image not relevant to the products offered linkedin.com/ads | 28 Close Your Books Faster Accounting software for small & midsize companies. Get a free 30 day trial. www.prostock-company.com ProStock has 1,680 followers on LinkedIn Improve Your Productivity Innovative accounting software. Easy, secure, robust – Switch to us today. ProStock has 1,680 followers on LinkedIn Once you’ve designed your creative, it’s time to get it approved. STEP 06 Getting your creative approved After you create and submit your ad, our team will automatically review your creative to make sure it meets our Text Ads Guidelines. You don’t have to do anything. During this review period, your ads won’t be shown on LinkedIn. You don’t need to take any further action while your ad is under review. It will be turned on once it’s been approved (usually within 24 hours). linkedin.com/ads | 30 When your campaign goes live, you’ll want to start tracking results. Tracking results Track how your campaigns are performing using the LinkedIn Text Ads Dashboard. From here you can: STEP 07 Track the number of clicks and impressions you’ve received at any given time. Track click through rates (CTR) The more relevant and interesting your ad is to your target audience, the higher your CTR will be. The higher your CTR, the more times your ad will be shown. In general, a good CTR is 0.030% or greater. Monitor CPC and total spend. You may bid higher to get more impressions. Let all ads run to see which perform the best for each campaign, then pause the ones that are not performing as well. This will help the system show your best ads as often as possible. Turn ads or campaigns On and Off based on how they are performing. linkedin.com/ads | 32 Great! You’re on your way to getting great results with LinkedIn Text Ads. Before you go, here are some bonus topics you might want to review... Business account overview We recommend you create campaigns with a business account instead of your personal LinkedIn account. A business account allows you to separate ads and billing information from your personal LinkedIn account and share business account access with other team members. Here’s why it’s a good idea to have a dedicated business account: To learn more about our business accounts, please read the “Business Accounts (PDF)” found on linkedin.com/ads. linkedin.com/ads | 34 Managing campaigns for multiple clients on your personal account is not recommended The ads can’t be shown at the same time, in the same placement. The ads will compete for ad unit vs. ad impression. Performance and optimization triggers of your ads will blend across all of your campaigns. Client Account Client Having a business account to manage multiple campaigns and clients is highly recommended Ads will compete for each ad impression in an optimal manner. Client campaign performance will remain independent between your various clients. Performance will be optimized for each of your clients. Account Client Account Client Here are a few more reasons why it makes sense to create dedicated business accounts Multiple users can access a single business account. You can create multiple business accounts (you can only create one personal LinkedIn Account). Business accounts are conveniently associated with a speci c Company Page on LinkedIn. Business accounts don’t have pro les or network connections, and cannot be found in search. To start a business account 1. Go to your LinkedIn Text Ads dashboard. 2. Click on the dropdown menu under your name in the top right of the page. 3. Select “Create Business Account.” linkedin.com/ads | 35 Monitoring conversion rates Why is conversion important and how can you track it? Let’s start with a de nition. What’s a conversion? A conversion is simply the event that you’re tracking, like sales or the number of leads your campaign generates. Your conversion rate is the percent of new leads or customers you were able to get out of the number of visitors that your ad drove to your website. linkedin.com/ads | 36 ProStock Example This week ProStock had 100,000 impressions (which means that their ad was seen 100,000 times). Their CTR was 0.025%, which means that 25 people clicked on their ad and landed on their landing page. Now, this is the point in the process where LinkedIn tracking stops and your conversion tracking begins. By using tools such as Google Analytics, ProStock can now see that of the 25 people who came to their site from LinkedIn, 5 subscribed for a free trial of their software. That means that this week’s conversion rate was 20% (5 divided by 25). Monitoring conversion rates It’s critical that you know how many actual customers you managed to get from your ad campaigns. And since you’re probably running a variety of marketing programs, you want to know which marketing channels are working best for you. So if you don’t have one, go out and get a website analytics solution that can help you track conversion. Regardless of which tools you choose – conversion tracking tools are a great investment so that you have visibility into which marketing channels are working for your business. If you want more information on conversion tracking, check out our LinkedIn Text Ads Optimization Guide. linkedin.com/ads | 37 Cheat sheet for creating ads on LinkedIn Go to linkedIn.com/ads and click “Start Now” Strategic elements For each ad you plan to create (see page 25) Decide on your campaign name (see page 7) Choose your landing page and destination URL Determine your campaign goals (see page 5) Choose a 50x50 pixel square image Decide on your target audience & targeting criteria (see page 9) Add a 25-character headline for your ad Think through your budget and campaign dates (see page 20) Add a 75-character description Analysis and tracking Set up your conversion tracking tools (see page 34) Monitor your performance and optimize your campaign linkedin.com/ads | 38 Frequently asked questions Where will my ads appear? Your ads will be eligible to appear in various positions on a variety of prominent pages on me Linkedln.com website, such as the following: linkedin.com/ads | 39 How does the auction work? You set a bid for each of your campaigns. A real-time auction is run each time a Linkedln user visits a page that contains an ad unit. If the user falls into your targeting options, your ad will be entered into this auction along with the bids of other advertisers. If you do not enter a bid within the suggested range, your ad will be less likely to beat other advertisers’ bids in the auction, resulting in fewer or no impressions or clicks. Remember that the bid you choose is the maximum you’re willing to pay, and we will discount your click or impression so that you’re only paying the minimum necessary to beat the advertiser below you. For example, if you bid $3 and someone bids $2.50, we will only charge you $2.51 (1 cent more than the next highest advertiser). Where does Linkedln get the information used to target members? All of the information used for targeting is based on the information members add to their pro les. Keep in mind that this information isn’t personally identi able. And you won’t be provided with any identifying data about the speci c members who view or click on your ad. Homepage - The page members see when they sign in to LinkedIn. Pro le Page - The page members see when they view the pro le of another LinkedIn member. Search Results Page - The page that displays when you search for a member by name. Groups - The page members see when they visit their group. Using this feature will increase the volume of impressions that your ad gets. There’s no additional cost to run ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network. You can include or exclude the LinkedIn Audience Network at any time, even after your ads have started running. You pay the same way you do on LinkedIn.com, either via CPC or CPM. Additional Information about the LinkedIn Audience Network: Frequently asked questions Where else can I show my ad? In addition to showing your ad on Linkedln, you can also show your ads through the Linkedln Audience Network. The LinkedIn Audience Network is a collection of partner websites that display LinkedIn Text Ads on their pages. This allows you to reach the LinkedIn members you’re targeting, even when they’re visiting other websites. This is a good option if you want to maximize the number of clicks and impressions you receive. Conveniently, you’ll pay exactly the same amount per click or impression as you do on LinkedIn.com. (Note: CTR may vary when ads are shown on LinkedIn and off of the network). Here’s how it works: Suppose that you’re targeting Linkedln members who are CEOs. If you choose to run your ads on the Linkedln Audience Network, your ads will be displayed to those CEOs when they visit Linkedln and when they visit other websites in the Linkedln Audience Network. linkedin.com/ads | 40 More advertising options on LinkedIn LinkedIn also offers display and social advertising solutions as part of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. You can learn more at marketing.linkedin.com. linkedin.com/ads | 41 What’s the difference between LinkedIn Text Ads and LinkedIn Marketing solutions? LinkedIn Text Ads are self-service, performance based text ads that can include a small image. Advertisers are able to pay on a CPC or CPM basis. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions are display ads (IAB-compliant) with guaranteed inventory and delivery. The minimum campaign budget for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is $25K. So, that’s it! Ready to get started? Great! Go to linkedin.com/ads and click “Start Now.” And remember – we’re always here to help! Just visit us at our Help Center for some quick Q&A (help.linkedin.com). </p>
