With LinkedIN quickly becoming a social media powerhouse to rival the giants of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it is ever more important to use LinkedIN as a B2B digital marketing platform. LinkedIN sponsored content allows you to raise awareness, build relationships and drive leads across all devices. Sponsored content campaigns can provide PPC Agencies with the tools to drive a high ROI, but only if they are set up and optimised correctly. This blog post will provide you with a step by step guide to setting up successful LinkedIn campaigns, and how to optimise them for the best results.
Step 1: Account Creation
To start building your LinkedIN campaign, you will first need to sign into campaign manager. As a marketing agency, you will need to ensure that you have access to the company page, and that you have been granted administrative access by the client. This will ensure that you have full access, and can edit the campaign over time.
Step 2: Campaign Set Up
To create a new Sponsored content campaign, you first click on Create Campaign, then click Select next to the Sponsored Content option. You will then have to name your campaign. Ensure that it is relevant to the content you are creating, and that it is easily distinguishable. If your client is working with a number of other agencies, try putting your agency name in brackets after the title eg. LinkedIN Campaign 1 (PPC agency London). This will ensure you will be able to easily identify your campaign.
You will then have the option to either select Send people to your website or Collect Leads using Linkedin Lead Gen Forms. Your selection will depend on the business you are working with. If they are service based industry, then lead collection would be more suitable. If they are a retailer or product based business, then sending people to their website would be the better option. You can even try a combination of both, and test to see which option provides the highest conversion rate.
Step 3: Create and Sponsor Content
This stage of the campaign is where you will be creating and sponsoring the advertisement that you would like to be posted on LinkedIN. You will need to upload an ad in an Image format, with a size of 1200 x 627 for the best quality. Successful ads should include:
1: A clear Call to Action
2: The key benefit of the product or service
3: An eye catching design
4: The Business’ name or logo
You can also create multiple versions of one ad, and sponsor each of them. This will result in your ads rotating, with the best performing ad reaching the most impressions. This keeps content from getting stale, and ensures that your audience do not keep seeing the same ad and become disinterested.
Step 4: Audience Creation
Audience Creation is where you can define your target market: The groups of people you would like to see your ad, based on their demographics. You can adjust up to 16 different targeting criteria, as well as location. This allows you to target either a very specific or very broad audience. While you can choose to adjust all criteria’s, the following will have the largest impact on you campaign:
- Company Industry
- Company Size
- Job Title
- Job Function
- Groups
The beauty about targeting by job title or function is that you could choose to have your ads seen only by managers and senior stakeholders. For a service based company, this will ensure that only the key decision makers are targeted, resulting in greater number of conversions.
As you adjust each criterion, you will see an estimated audience size in the right hand corner. This gives you a good indication as to how your settings are changing the scale of your audience. However, remember that this is only a rough estimate, so ensure you conduct target market research before setting up your LinkedIn campaign.
If you know that you will be setting up multiple campaigns, you can save the audience settings as a template. To do this, simply scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on Save as new next to Save Audience as Template.
Step 5: Budget and schedule
This is the final step before your ad will go live. Setting the correct budget and schedule is extremely important in creating cost effective and successful ads. You can set both a daily budget, and bid price. You can choose between Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Impressions (CPI). If you are looking for interactions and higher CTR’s, then CPC is your best option. CPI will result in higher brand awareness, but may not bring in the clicks that you are looking for.
When it comes to bid prices, it is better to start on the lower end, and then work your way up. This will ensure that you are not burning through your budget too quickly. You can also set a total budget, schedule a campaign and set a campaign end date. All these are optional, but can be useful if you are looking for greater control over your campaign. It is also possible to set up Conversion tracking, which is extremely useful when looking at the Analytics for your campaign. To do this, click Select Conversions then Create new conversion. You can assign the action, value of the conversion and the Website URL.
Step 6: Launch Campaign
Once you have all the audience settings completed and you are happy with your campaign, all you have to do is click Launch Campaign to make it live. It’s that simple! You are also able to save your campaign as a draft, if you would like to go back to it at a later date.
LinkedIN is a very easy to use platform when creating B2B Sponsored Content Campaigns. Follow this guide and your PPC agency will be able to start creating strong LinkedIN campaigns with high ROI for your clients!
We hope that this guide helped you develop your own LinkedIN campaign! If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below!
About POLAIRS: POLARIS is a leading PPC agency based in London, providing PPC, SEO and Web Delivery solutions to drive Customers, Engagement and Revenue.
