4 Ways to Use LinkedIn for ABM B2B Advertising

So your B2B organization has a solution that’s a perfect fit for hundreds, or thousands — or ideally, tens of thousands — of companies out there, and you want to tell the world all about it. Sounds like a plan. There’s just one problem: The world doesn’t want to listen. It’s nothing personal. Your customers don’t know what they don’t know — and more often than not, this includes information about your solution. Your product or service may be exactly what they need, but generating awareness and interest is always a challenge … which makes the value proposition of B2B ABM advertising a compelling one. Of all the digital advertising networks for B2B revenue teams, LinkedIn is one of the most relevant and effective. It has tools that make targeted ABM advertising easy, and enable you to precisely target accounts and personas with the actual buying power — a key component to turning interest into action. Let’s look more closely at four ways LinkedIn advertising can level up your ABM B2B marketing strategy.

1. Sponsored Content: Provide Help When They Need It

By the very nature of the network and how it’s most often used, LinkedIn members operate with a business mindset as they navigate the site. People’s brains aren’t tuned to this frequency when they’re bebopping on Twitter or Facebook. That means if you’ve configured your account to target the businesses that need your services the most, you have a unique opportunity to showcase your expertise when they’re most likely to seek it. This is a perfect use case for leveraging your existing inbound marketing content for sponsored content. Your blogs and ebooks can:

• Grab your prospects’ attention
• Offer helpful advice, and
• Demonstrate why your product is worth a closer look

If your team hasn’t been creating content to provide this kind of information, it’s time to get cracking. Ask yourself what questions your target audience likely has. How can you showcase what you bring to the table while keeping the sales pitch subtle and the content useful? Put that information into well-written articles and engaging videos, and your target audience will discover that your brand is a voice they can understand and trust.

2. Carousel Images: Make Them Stop and Look

Getting the attention of an audience is one of the biggest challenges in online advertising. This is especially true in the B2B market because prospective customers are often coming to LinkedIn with business-related goals in mind. They may scroll past ads as they focus on the task at hand. When well-designed and engaging, carousel images provide a way to put a stop to this — literally! When a prospect sees a carousel ad, they’re invited not just to look but to click through and interact. This kind of engaged attention makes your ad much more memorable and attention-grabbing than content that can be easily zoomed past.

3. LinkedIn Text Ad: Don’t Overlook Simplicity 

Sure, text ads aren’t as flashy as videos or as compelling as image carousels, but they’ve got something other advertising strategies don’t: simplicity. In an online world filled with visual clutter, many prospects want to stay focused on their work at just the moment you need to reach them. Text ads provide a simple, effective way to connect to the right audience at the right moment. Here are a few tips for doing them right:

• When you design them, consider calling on your audience directly
• If you’re trying to get the attention of IT directors, put that in your copy
• If you’re hoping to get a click from a company that’s switching to a strategy that’s compatible with your solution, make it clear

B2B customers are much more likely to click if the relevance to their particular position and goals is made obvious.

4. LinkedIn InMail: Reach Them Where it Counts

Sending your information directly to the prospect in their own inbox provides many benefits over more passive marketing efforts. When your information shows up in their email, they’re more likely to engage with it in some way. They need to determine whether or not it is relevant to them, and that requires attention. As long as you’ve done a good job of using the tools to effectively target your LinkedIn ads, you already know you’re relevant. Now it’s just time to get them to see it, too. This is a great opportunity to highlight your value at a higher level. One effective LinkedIn InMail lead-generation method is offering a white paper, ebook, or guide that demonstrates your expertise while providing high-quality information with immediate applicability for the target customer. If you’ve demonstrated your expertise at the moment that the prospect was seeking it, you’ve created a link between their problems and your solutions that will build trust and familiarity.

Make LinkedIn Advertising Work for Your Marketing Plan

You need qualified accounts and contacts who recognize your solution’s value and have the buying power to take action. LinkedIn advertising strategies put your information in front of the people who need to see it. By building these strategies into your overall marketing plan, you will build a better pipeline that brings eager, interested, and engaged buyers into the funnel ready to learn. Don’t be afraid to mix and match strategies to figure out which ones will get the most attention, and be sure to utilize LinkedIn’s tools for promoting the most engaging content in order to get the most from your efforts. Check out our new ebook, Ways to Create Effective, Perfectly-Timed Linkedin Ad Campaigns, to get step-by-step guides for:

• Lead generation campaigns
• Retargeting
• Pipeline acceleration
• Event registration
• Outbound sales enablement