5 Reasons Your Company Should Be Advertising on LinkedIn

Regarding digital advertising for your business, Facebook and Google ads are often considered the go-to tactics. And for good reason. With the right strategy, smart copy, and eye-catching creative, they are both very effective in reaching your target audience with your brand message.  

But there’s a sleeping giant in the world of digital advertising that shouldn’t be ignored any longer. That is unless your B2B company wants to miss out on potentially reaching the more than 65 million business decision-makers who are on LinkedIn? 

And that would be a colossal mistake because LinkedIn has the most affluent and educated users of all the social media sites, and the opportunity to influence LinkedIn users is excellent. Not to mention that their advertising is highly targeted, and LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world.  

Check out these powerhouse profiles on LinkedIn:  

If your business hasn’t yet tapped into the power of LinkedIn advertising, you’ve been missing out. But the good news is that your competition is likely in the same boat. So, if you start now, you can get a leg up on them by using LinkedIn ads to gain a competitive advantage.  

But, besides reaching a huge potential audience, why should your business advertise on LinkedIn? We’ll share some reasons below.  

Your business is B2B

With all these key decision-makers and influencers in one place, advertising on LinkedIn if you’re a B2B company is a no-brainer. You can target specific people by their LinkedIn profile content. That means knowing the job titles of your customers is helpful.  

If you’re a Business-to-Customer (B2C), you’ll also want to get on the LinkedIn advertising bandwagon because of the sheer numbers you can reach. Targeting people in particular fields or niches makes this a good idea. 

You’ve got a variable budget

Not all businesses have a steady amount of money to dedicate to advertising – digital or traditional. If that’s you, LinkedIn is a great option. You can choose your pricing from Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Mille (CPM), which is the amount an advertiser pays a website per 1,000 visitors who see its advertisements. Sponsored InMail is another option, where you pay once your message is delivered.  

With LinkedIn advertising, you control how much you bid, your budget, and your schedule, and you can stop your ads at any time.  

You’ve got content to share

LinkedIn has evolved into much more than people originally expected. Initially, it was thought that the platform would primarily be a site used by job seekers. But it has become one of the most effective professional networking tools and information hub.  

Sponsored Updates helped with this evolution. These are ads that appear in the site’s news feed. They are typically formatted ads featuring content you want to share. Users can comment, “like” posts, and share like on other social sites, which is a perfect mesh of social media and ads. 

When considering whether or not to advertise on LinkedIn, ask yourself why a person visits the site. It’s usually to network, gather information, advance careers, and/or find a new job. Make sure your ads cater to those in this state of mind. 

You can accurately target

Targeting is so powerful on LinkedIn because of its accuracy, which is based on first-party data, also known as self-reporting. Although it’s possible people could misrepresent themselves, it’s unlikely because of the connection to a network and their company. So it would be hard to get away with saying you’re a Vice President of Marketing when you’re actually the Marketing Coordinator. 

Because LinkedIn’s targeting is so precise, it allows marketers to target people through demographic data such as job function, seniority, company name, geography, and industry. You can also do interest-based targeting, such as group membership, skills, and field of study. 

You can provide thought leadership 

Visitors are going to LinkedIn for much more than job listings. Many regularly log on to keep up with professional networks, read relevant content, keep up with companies they care about, and connect with contacts.  

If that’s the case, wouldn’t just maintaining a profile be enough to attract attention? Why would you want to advertise? 

A best practice is that it can be better to advertise to people where they want and are expecting to be advertised to. For example, people getting fashion magazines read for advertising as much as for stories. Likewise, LinkedIn visitors are looking for industry thought leadership and product knowledge. 

You can give them that insight by sponsoring a post, extending the reach of your thought leadership within your industry. If you target it right, you can gain visibility with the people seeking your thought leadership. 

If your company is already advertising on Facebook and Google, congratulations – we hope your efforts are fruitful. But even so, we recommend you consider harnessing the power of LinkedIn advertising to reach a vast, influential, professional audience. Give us a call, and we’ll help get you started.