I spent US$1,000 on LinkedIn Ads, and this is what I learnt

Facebook brought a wave of global acceptance to Social Media, while LinkedIn has segmented their behaviour. Think of it like Clark Kent vs Superman, LinkedIn is where he would put on his glasses. That’s over 675 million users who expect to consumer something different, and 1.4 million of them are from the English-speaking Caribbean. If you use the search button above your newsfeed, you will learn about the most popular groups within a sector, and this will help you create a corporate communication plan to your intended audience.

LinkedIn began in 2002 from the living room of one of its founders, Reid Hoffman. He was destined for success, with his previous role at PayPal and the under-served audience, it took only a year from launch to receive investment from Sequoia Capital. Over the last 18 years, the most popular social network for professionals has been the go-to for Job Seekers, Human Resource Managers and more recently, B2B outreach.

For my clients, I suggest a minimum of a year to assign a budget, which will give us enough time to explore and learn how their audience responds. I’ve worked with global clients with Caribbean based customers, and we’ve tried multiple social networks. However, LinkedIn has proven to be the most successful lead generation platform for B2B businesses. Although their Click-Through Rates (CTR) and Cost per Impression (CPM) are more expensive compared to Facebook, the quality is unmatched.

Here is a breakdown of what I’ve noticed on an A/B test Campaign we ran with one thousand-dollar budget for four weeks;

TARGET BY LOCATION IS NOT AN OPTION

With conversions cost of $40, tailor your copywriting and media to speak directly to your audience. That means using the segmentation tools by location, industry, Job Seniority and learning about what they engage with online. To ignore this means giving your money to Reid Hoffman, and let’s be honest, with a multi-billion dollar investment by Microsoft, he doesn’t need it.

LEADS ARE THE MOST EXPENSIVE OBJECTIVE

Lead Generation creates a sales funnel for your business outside of Social Media, but it also takes the attention off the platform. Assigning this objective to your campaign will see an increase of over 100%, when compared to other goals, such as CPM. It’s best to use the native form within LinkedIn for a better ROI on your advertising budget.

LINKEDIN USERS ENGAGE BETTER

Splitting the budget allowed me to test users’ behaviour after they landed on the website. We’ve found that traffic from Facebook spends less time than from LinkedIn. Which means a lower Bounce Rate and twice as much time consuming the information on the site, such as blogs, videos and sign up forms.

Ultimately you have to understand your audience before assigning a budget to your Digital Marketing approach and having experience with the platform eliminates the learning curve. The best part of our job is exploring new platforms and identifying patterns based on the Data because we cannot predict how your clients will respond to content. No one can.

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