LinkedIn Ads for B2B: Campaign Manager Evaluation

LinkedIn has become an indispensable platform for B2B marketing and advertising. With over 740 million members worldwide, LinkedIn provides unparalleled access to professional audiences across nearly every industry and role. As the world's largest professional networking site, LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity for B2B marketers to target their ads and campaigns to highly specific demographics of their ideal customers.

However, as with any advertising platform, there are both advantages and limitations to consider when assessing LinkedIn Campaign Manager for your B2B marketing efforts. Evaluating elements such as targeting capabilities, ad formats, analytics, costs, and performance benchmarks is crucial to determining if LinkedIn should play a key role in your overall B2B strategy.

Targeting Options and Audience Insights

One of LinkedIn’s major advantages is its depth of targeting options and audience data. Advertisers can target by job title, company, industry, seniority level, age, gender, location, interests/skills, groups, and more. Furthermore, LinkedIn provides additional audience details like average household income, education levels, company growth, and employee counts. This level of granularity enables precise targeting of decision makers and influencers across every major B2B vertical. Best practices are to layer 4-5 targeting criteria to reach your total addressable market.

Ad Format Options and Best Practices

LinkedIn offers a range of ad formats suitable for different objectives. Popular options include Sponsored Content for thought leadership and engagement, Message Ads for driving prospecting conversations, Dynamic Ads for personalizing at scale, and Text Ads for lower-funnel offers. Each format has pros and cons and aligns better with top, middle or bottom funnel goals. For example, Sponsored Content works well for brand building while Text Ads convert better for e-commerce transactions. Optimizing each creative on an ongoing basis is vital for improving results.

Analytics and Performance Benchmarking

LinkedIn’s analytics provide campaign performance data on elements like clicks, conversions, impressions, CTR, engagement rate, costs, and more. But to interpret the data, it’s essential to benchmark against industry standards for your target audience. Some benchmarks to consider are: average CTR 0.025%+, <$50 cost per conversion, 1.5-5% engagement rates for Sponsored Content, and 100 conversions for every 10,000 Message Ad impressions. Tracking ROI sources like form fills or CRM imports also helps quantify beyond vanity metrics.

Costs and Budget Management

One downside of LinkedIn advertising is its relatively high cost due to the premium professional audience. Cost per thousand impressions often range from $8 to $15 for mid-funnel native ads. Cost per click averages around $8 depending on targeting. And cost per conversion varies widely based on offer value but averages around $100 - considerably higher than other social platforms. Budgets also spend faster due to rapid daily auction dynamics. Best practice is modeling CPA targets then monitoring daily spend levels to control pacing and optimize bids as needed.

Take Your B2B Marketing to the Next Level with Socially Savvy Solutions

After reading this article, you probably recognize both the potential and complexity of optimizing a LinkedIn advertising strategy for your B2B brand. Executing an effective LinkedIn campaign requires in-depth expertise across targeting, creative best practices, performance analytics, and budget management.

Luckily, Socially Savvy Solutions is here to be your trusted LinkedIn marketing partner. Since 2009, we have helped B2B brands maximizing their reach, engagement, and conversions on LinkedIn and other social channels.

With Socially Savvy Solutions, you get:

• Strategic Audience Targeting: Our team leverages LinkedIn’s depth of targeting options to precisely reach your total addressable market across job levels, functions, company sizes and more. We analyze audience insights to optimize targeting on an ongoing basis.
• Dynamic Video Creative: We produce compelling, dynamic video creative that engages viewers and conveys your brand’s thought leadership. Video dramatically lifts all LinkedIn campaign performance metrics.
• Performance Benchmarking & Optimization: We constantly benchmark campaign metrics against industry benchmarks, optimizing bids and creativity to improve ROI. You get insights reports with clear optimization recommendations.

If you are ready to unlock the full potential of LinkedIn advertising for your B2B marketing, contact the experts at Socially Savvy Solutions for a free consultation today!