LinkedIn is one of the most effective digital advertising platforms available to B2B marketers today. Its ability to reach decision makers, influencers, and important members of buying teams is unique — and in some key respects, unmatched.
Despite its longtime leadership role, at least 20% of B2B marketers don’t invest in advertising on the network. If you’re with one of those companies and want to dip your toe into LinkedIn B2B advertising, keep reading. This guide will walk you through:
- The business benefits of LinkedIn advertising for ABM
- The types of LinkedIn advertising options available
- How account engagement platforms increase campaign effectiveness
The Business Benefits of LinkedIn Advertising for ABM
Being the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn provides you with opportunities for precision targeting, making it more effective than other paid advertising channels. This can generate big reach and returns for revenue teams:- LinkedIn is the most widely used social media platform among the Fortune 500
- An ad on LinkedIn can reach 13% of the world’s population over the age of 13
- LinkedIn ads offer 200+ targeting characteristics
- Ad exposure on LinkedIn can increase purchase intent by 33%
A Large and Established User Base
LinkedIn has over 690 million users from around the world. Out of this, 61 million are high-level influencers and 40 million are decision makers. The high level of engagement on the platform makes LinkedIn a relevant place to engage your target B2B accounts.Targeted and Relevant Ads
LinkedIn provides multiple options for targeting your ads, including job title, function, industry, seniority level, geographic, company size, member interests, and more. It also provides in-depth reporting, enabling you to measure and optimize the effectiveness of your campaigns, and manage your budget more effectively. When combined with the data and insights provided by world-class account engagement platforms — such as intelligence regarding an account’s current stage in the buyer’s journey, its buying team’s unique business concerns, and more — you can target accounts with even more precision, dramatically increasing effectiveness while reducing spend.Sales and Marketing Alignment
ABM strategies help organizations increase revenue by focusing on individual accounts, or clusters or highly similar accounts. This results in more satisfying, relevant engagement for prospects and customers, and greater ROI from marketing efforts. LinkedIn ads help you establish the right kind of alignment between sales and marketing teams through better conversion rates, more revenue, and higher account-based customer satisfaction.Performance Data
LinkedIn offers advanced analytics tools that track ad performance, engagement rates, and more. This empowers your team to iteratively hone your advertising campaigns to improve performance. Again, combining robust — and often deeper — insights from a great account engagement platform can bring even more visibility into the impact of your campaigns.Types of LinkedIn Advertising Options and How They Supplement Your ABM Strategies
LinkedIn provides you with a wide variety of advertising options to complement your ABM strategies. Here’s a quick rundown of those options. (For a closer look at each, check out this recent blog post.)Sponsored Content
These ads appear on your target audience’s LinkedIn feed regardless of which device they are using, which increases your reach on mobile devices. Sponsored content options include images, image carousels, and videos.Sponsored Messaging
This enables you to advertise with LinkedIn users directly in their inboxes. With the right message, this approach can generate terrific engagement. Note that LinkedIn places a monthly cap on the number of times a member can receive your sponsored message.Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads provide real-time advertisements to your audience based on the LinkedIn data you choose. This enables you to deliver relevant, personalized ads inspired by users’ personas, industries, interests, and more.Text Ads
These are text-based ad units, similar to banner ads. They show up along the top and right side of LinkedIn’s feed, boosting visibility among your target accounts. Text ads supplement your LinkedIn ABM strategies by giving you another vehicle to promote your brand.How Account Engagement Platforms Improve LinkedIn Ad Performance
Marketers have been buying digital ads for decades, and yet we still struggle to properly prioritize audiences and budgets. A powerful — and differentiating — combination of account engagement platform 6sense and LinkedIn is a revenue teams’ ability to target companies that are ready to buy now. This allows prioritizing companies at the best time while continuing to use all the other targeting data LinkedIn offers. This ability to target based on timing isn’t otherwise available in LinkedIn. Through AI and machine learning, 6sense automatically determines who is in-market now and most likely to buy from you, giving you new tools for prioritizing ad spending and improving ad performance. This data is accessible in real-time through 6sense and actionable through our LinkedIn integration. This fine-grained control minimizes ad spend and maximizes ad impact. With the power of predictive analytics, 6sense customers:- Perform nearly 2x better than the standard LinkedIn clickthrough rate benchmark
- And at costs 13% lower for cost per click than LinkedIn’s CPC benchmark
Turn Strategy into Action
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
