If you're a B2B manufacturer and not utilising the power of paid advertisement - you’re missing out and need to act now. If you strategically create LinkedIn ads, analyse your performance, and follow these four crucial steps, you'll see the growth results you want.
LinkedIn is the largest professional social platform on the internet (containing 800 MILLION users and 57 MILLION companies). If you don't get your LinkedIn ads correct, you'll be wasting vital resources and shouting into a void.
So, if you're ready to create success on your LinkedIn page, and skyrocket your LinkedIn ad results, note these tips down. Now, let's get to it!
We’ll cover:
- Refine goals and purpose
- Segment target audience
- Create purposeful content
- Experiment with ad format
Refine goals and purpose
If you don't know why you're doing paid ads on LinkedIn, how will you track the success and make improvements? Rushing into paid marketing without a strategy, will hinder your social media success and affect your paid media budget.
Before investing any money into paid marketing, you need to be clear on your advertisement goals. Gaining perspective on your LinkedIn ad ambitions will help you outline and track your advertising efforts.
A good way to optimise your social media efforts, and get the most out of your available budget, is by partnering with an industry-leading digital agency, hint, hint😉. They’ll help you define your targets and aspirations. They'll also be able to apply your budget correctly and strategically depending on your goals.
We'll help you lay the foundations
At Red-Fern, we have a team of paid marketing experts that can help you develop and create a strategy based on your budget and business goals. We do the hard work for you, so you can be a leading business in your sector and thrive off the success we aim to drive your way.
Solidifying your advertisement goals and purpose will set the firm foundation for paid marketing success. As part of our four-step digital growth process, we will get to know your business, your audience and yourself. We will ensure that the goals we lay the foundations for align with your business, technology, and marketing aspirations - with realistic expectations, budgets and project timelines.
We offer a specialist digital transformation approach for manufacturers, and we have a passion for ensuring you grow, thrive, and build in your sector. Once your goals and objectives are outlined, you need to think more specifically about who you want to reach and target.
Segment target audience
Who are you trying to reach? Understanding your target audience will inform the content you create and the demographics you choose to engage with. This tip cannot be overlooked as your target audience will impact your whole approach to LinkedIn ad marketing.
The great thing about LinkedIn is that you can choose from a selection of targeting facets and refine your targeting methods for each advertisement you choose to do. In turn, this will help you execute powerful campaigns in alignment with your business objectives.
Here's a list of the criteria you can choose from:
- Company: company connections, company followers, company industry, company name, company size.
- Demographics: age and gender.
- Education: degrees, fields of study, and member schools.
- Job Experience: job function, job seniority, job title, member skills, and years of experience.
- Interests: groups and member Interests.
Segmenting your audience in this way will ensure that the paid ads you're posting are reaching the right people, at the right time. You need to be providing content that solves problems, answers questions and educates your audience. If you do this, you'll not only entice new customers, but you'll continue to delight existing customers too.
A/B testing
Another handy tip to keep in mind is A/B ad testing. This involves testing two very similar campaigns with different targeting options. You could try segmenting campaigns via location, job titles or demographics.
Keep refining these over time and track the success of each test. This is a great way to gain valuable insights into who impacts your company the most. You may also choose to change the creative content copy that you use - tweaking the caption slightly or using a new creative approach.
Perform an A/B test by creating a campaign, duplicating it, and then slightly altering your targeting parameters.
We'll help you reach your ideal target audience
Although LinkedIn helps you with this process of audience segmentation, utilising the help of a digital agency, will ensure your LinkedIn ads reach the right people, at the right time.
At Red-Fern, the first stage of our growth strategy is the discovery phase, this relates back to successful LinkedIn ads and audience segmentation. Throughout the discovery stage, we organise a series of calls to understand your goals, your audience, potential challenges and more.
We then create a vital buyer persona and tone of voice document. These are crucial for deploying successful marketing campaigns. According to HubSpot, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
The document we produce, after several discovery meetings, will cover customer demographics, behaviours, motivations, pain points, and more. The more detail we have, the better informed we are to propel your business forward.
This document is then used to strengthen all marketing material and ensures your work and content serves a purpose every single time. It'll aid your LinkedIn paid ads and serve as a reliable tool for our expert marketing team and for your business too. So, don't skip that audience segmentation and if in doubt, partner with an award-winning agency!
Create purposeful content
Once you've got your goals in place and you know more about your audience, you can begin to tailor your content and ensure it’s relevant to your audience and segmentation.
Your content has to serve a purpose - FACT. The content you create should either inform, educate or support your leads. Whether you choose to utilise video, images, GIFs, and more, the content needs to be purposeful and meaningful. After all, you’re looking at driving leads to your business, not away from it.
As a B2B manufacturer, it's hard to cut through the noise of the industry, especially on LinkedIn, but with the right content and robust advertising strategy, it's definitely achievable.
Here's some content creation tips for LinkedIn ads:
- Keep your ad headlines concise. No more than 150 characters at most.
- If you're using descriptive copy, keep it under 70 characters. Anything over will be cancelled and missed off.
- Add a CTA (Call To Action). Where do you want to guide your audience? Get them to act on their interest and help convert those leads.
- Use high-quality imagery. This is representing your brand, so, avoid pixelated images.
- Grammar and written content MUST be accurate. You can't make mistakes. First impressions are everything.
- Create content specific to the ad format you’ve chosen.
We'll strategise, create and deliver the targeted content
With our expertise, we’ll get your content in front of the audiences you want to reach and drive those all-important leads to your business. We’ll also build on your thought leadership presence, and build a lasting impression with your audience.
At Red-Fern, we’re technology-driven creatives with a clear process in place to help your business thrive in the manufacturing sector. Once we’ve gathered all of the information we need, our content specialists will get to work on strategising the paid content, creating the copy and creative, and then delivering on the goals and objectives. We have a streamlined process that's tried, tested, and adapted for each digital partner.
We have over 30 years of experience developing and implementing digital transformation and growth strategies for manufacturing companies. It’s safe to say we know what we’re doing 😎.
Experiment with ad format
Depending on your goals and objectives, will also determine the ad format you choose. Each format serves a different purpose. LinkedIn has created 10 different ad formats for you to choose from - how convenient! However, for the purpose of this post, we’ll just run through a few of our favourites.
As we’ve mentioned previously, our content creation tips are vital for this stage too. Don’t let them slide AND certainly, don’t have pixelated imagery - it’s a no-go. So, keep the previous content tips in mind for the following ad formats.
Carousel
Builds brand awareness, website visits, website conversions, and lead generation.
Carousel ads are an engaging and informative way to utilise the power of paid ads. They're a swipeable piece of content that contains multiple photos or videos and are viewed by swiping or clicking left. Interactive videos, eye-catching imagery and punchy one-liners are the key to carousel ad success.
Conversation
Brand awareness, conversion, engagement, and lead generation.
Conversation ads are… You guessed it, great conversation starters! They offer you the option to start conversations with professionals and stakeholders via LinkedIn messaging. No awkward messaging, but purposeful content straight to your ideal customer’s inbox.
Once the conversation has started, your recipient can select a response that works for them. This is great for showcasing products, services or even your own webinar series.
Follower
Brand awareness, website and social media visits/followers, and increased engagement.
These ads are personalised to your audience and can encourage your audience to hit the follow button. These are effective and can be great for instant responses and reactions.
Lead gen forms
These advertisement types are great for message ads or feed advertisements. They can help you gain leads (we love to see it) and, you can connect a lead gen form to your existing CTA that’s within the copy of your paid ad.
As an example, if you’re hosting a webinar or an event, you can add your sign-up form to the CTA. Allowing your audience to input their data straight away. You could download this data and input it into your CRM if needed.
There are many other variations of LinkedIn ad formats, but before diving straight in, it might be best to keep it simple before you get to grips with everything. At Red-Fern, we can advise which option will work best for you, based on your budget, goals, and timelines for turnaround.
Our social ads expert, Aaliah, offers her TOP tip for LinkedIn Ad success:
“Advertising on LinkedIn can typically be more expensive than other social platforms. However, if you define your audience correctly and align your creatives to your overall campaign goal it can drive better quality leads”.
Thanks, Aaliah!
Rest assured, every piece of content we create serves a purpose and has the aim and potential. to help you reach your objectives. Also, we’ll use our creative expertise to excite your customers and bring your brand alive. After all, no one likes boring content, we all know that.
Skyrocket your LinkedIn advertisements as a manufacturer... With our help!
What are you waiting for? Now we’ve outlined some of the top tips to enhance your LinkedIn advertisements, if you’re still left wanting more, it’s time you spoke to the experts.
Rather than waiting around and watching your competitors leverage their success, prioritise your own success. Give us a call and we’d be delighted to talk to you about our digital transformation process and more. We look forward to hearing from you!
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