When LinkedIn first appeared, it was primarily seen as a kind of ‘working professional’s Facebook’. But over the years, it’s quickly exploded in popularity and has become a key element in the social media world.
The reason is that ‘professional’ edge. While things like Facebook and Twitter are for more personal use but with plenty of business pages there, LinkedIn is designed specifically for business oriented audiences. That, in turn, means that for businesses looking for new ways to market themselves, LinkedIn deserves some attention.
Your marketing team will still need to focus on all other areas of marketing including other social networks. But, LinkedIn is something that deserves some additional attention. It could have a major role in how you appeal to your customers and clients, and is well worth taking a closer look at for any marketing team.
With that in mind, here is a look at four of the big advantages that LinkedIn advertising has over the other social media platforms out there today.
One – The Only Platform That Targets Professionals
While Facebook is filled with cat memes and political arguments, LinkedIn users are more focused on their careers and professional growth. Out of the more than 600 million people who use LinkedIn, almost all of them are there to accomplish various professional goals including:
- Connecting with industry news
- Promoting their skills and capabilities
- Connect with peers
- Advance careers
- Learn more about their field and their capabilities
In short, advertising on LinkedIn connects you to top-level audiences. You’ll also be interacting with them in a setting that is more professional, which in turn means that they are more receptive to your message and to the fact that you’re working to connect them to tools and resources that can help them. By marketing on LinkedIn, you’re going straight to a core base that offers your business more – and that you can provide more to.
Two – Laser Targeting
Let’s face it – when you create a social media ad, the odds are that plenty of people are going to see that marketing campaign that aren’t the least bit interested in what you have to offer. You’ll end up spending money to reach people that will have no impact on your business at all.
But with LinkedIn, there are built-in paid advertising tools that let you connect to exactly those that you want to connect with. For example, you can target your marketing based on the following criteria:
- Education level
- Industry
- Skillsets
- Experience level
- Job Title
- Company size
- Company name
- Job functions
- And more
This lets you create a marketing campaign that has a laser focus – you can exclude audiences or include them, making sure that you get the absolute best results every time. And you can pay to have your marketing assets placed where you want as well, whether it’s in the news feed, the side panel, or delivered right to the user’s inbox.
And unlike other social networks, there are no restrictions on direct messages. Other sites only let you send marketing to individuals after they agree to receive them. But LinkedIn InMail lets you send your messages without having to jump any of those hurdles.
All of this power means that you can not only tailor your marketing efforts specifically for what you want, but also that you can test different tools and campaigns to see which ones are giving you the absolute best ROI.
Three – Better ROI
One thing that turns some marketers or businesses off of LinkedIn is the fact that it usually has a higher overall advertising cost than other platforms. But that extra money doesn’t mean anything when you consider the fact that you generally receive much greater ROI. In short, you’ll spend a little more, but you really will get what you pay for.
Other social networks may let you spend as little as $1 per day, while LinkedIn usually averages around $10. But, that extra cash is well spent when you start to review the ROI analytics and see that you’re getting better conversions from the platform.
Four – Matched Audience Targeting
While it isn’t that old, LinkedIn’s new Matched Audiences program has already gotten tremendous attention – and with good reason. The feature lets users match their existing data with the database on the social media platform to get great marketing results.
While you can still maintain total control over your marketing, turning over some of the management to this new system is well worth doing. LinkedIn connects to your account and looks at things like:
- Contact lists
- Target accounts
- Website visitors
- Followers
- And more
Then, it identifies different target audiences that are similar, letting you market directly to new customers who have similar characteristics to those that are in your database. This can go far beyond just the basics of ‘knowing your audience’, as LinkedIn may be able to identify new audiences that you didn’t even realize you should be targeting.
The platform will actually retarget those who have already visited your page, and will build custom audiences using your data. It then runs account based marketing campaigns based on the information it gathers.
And since your targeted marketing is being focused on the business professionals who are active on LinkedIn, this means that you are able to directly connect with those who are actually interested in your business and who are still very active online and in their industry.
The Bottom Line
While you can’t give up on any of the various marketing opportunities that exist today, it’s also vital that you don’t overlook any of them. LinkedIn has often been forgotten when it comes to marketing campaigns, but it really shouldn’t. If you use it properly and apply your marketing skills, it could be one of the best performing marketing platforms that you have in your arsenal.
As such, it’s well worth taking the time to start running some initial ads and start getting familiar with the LinkedIn marketing options that are currently available. Doing so could be the first step towards a much better future for your company and your marketing efforts.
