It's an incredible time to be using LinkedIn Ads right now. Both usage of LinkedIn as well as the advertising platform have been growing significantly.

LinkedIn now officially has a total of 660 million members, and it's growing fast.

According to  Microsoft's quarterly filings, LinkedIn made ~$2.1B last quarter, putting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions at an estimated$420 Million (up 24% from the previous quarter).

This growth is exciting because advertising costs per click stayed relatively flat from 2014 to 2018. For those four years, we advised our clients  that depending on who their audience is, they should  expect to pay anywhere between$6 to$9 per click. That's a long time to have prices stay flat.

One of the main reasons for this growth is due to  the  organic use of the platform increase.. LinkedIn has become a fantastic place to spend time. It's also the easiest network in the world to "go viral" on so influencers, business owners, and sales folks are spending more time there because of the fantastic free reach.

Basically,  as new advertisers began campaigns on the platform and increased competition, meanwhile, more and more professionals were using LinkedIn, opening up more ad inventory, keeping  ad costs at bay.

But like most things, costs on LinkedIn Ads increased significantly in 2019 as more advertisers are starting to understand the power of the platform, and competition increased sharply.

Many in the field believe that this increase-competition  is related to  Facebook's ad costs continuing to rise very quickly. Marketers, like you, are starting to get a lot more sophisticated about how they track down-funnel performance. Likely this trend will continue as business-to-business (B2B) clicks are$2-3 on Facebook and$9 to$10 on LinkedIn. While cost per click is significantly more, the quality of click and down-funnel lead is equally true on LinkedIn with the right A.M.O in place.

Get the Most Out of your LinkedIn Ads

Think of the acronym A.M.O., which stands for Audience, Message, and Offer. Use this as your core strategy for creating your next campaign and see increased success.

Audience

At the cost per click on LinkedIn you MUST be hyper specific around your ideal target audience. Remember, you're paying a premium, so why not be ultra specific? Don't be afraid to target your most ideal prospects, realizing that it might not spend very much money since you can always broaden your targeting later if you aren't getting the volume you want.

Here are four ways to target your key personas to get started:

• Job Title
• Job Function with Seniority -This is someone's department they work in with their level of seniority.
• Skills with Seniority -These are the skills that each individual self-selects whenthey build their profile with their level of seniority.
• Group names with Seniority -This allows you to target the members of very specific groups on LinkedIn.

Try to run as many targeting types as possible, because over time, you will learn which type of targeting brings the most qualified leads at the lowest costs.

Message

The Message is how your prospect sees your ad. This includes the ad type you use, as well as the ad copy and imagery.

Keep your LinkedIn ads short and to the point. Remember that LinkedIn users are on a mission-they're not there to be entertained like they might be on Instagram. Be concise. Be succinct. Communicate value.

Also, make sure to include imagery that is contrasting to LinkedIn color palette, which is heavy in blues, grays and whites. If you look at a color wheel, look at colors on the opposite of blue (oranges, reds, and greens).

Stock photos are often times overused on LinkedIn, so whenever possible use  original photography or illustrations. Remember, the job of the image in a LinkedIn ad is to get someone's attention so that they stop scrolling. It's not to get them to click/convert, so don't overwhelm the image with a lot of text overlay (although there's no 20% text rule like on Facebook, so you technically can).

Offer

Your offer is by far the most important part of advertising on LinkedIn.

If your offer is too light, ie: "come and read this blog post", you'll end up paying LinkedIn premium prices for traffic to go to a page with an inherently-low conversion rate. You're certainly providing value, but at some point, you'll have to explain why you're paying so much for someone to simply read a blog post.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if your offer is too heavy, ie: asking for a phone call  with a sales rep, get a demo, trial a software, or even buying something right now- that's the equivalent of proposing marriage on your very first date-it's just too much, too soon. This will result in high costs per click and even higher costs per conversion.

Work on your offer fitting into the middle zone.  Gated content works very well here where the subject of the content is something so valuable that people are willing to give their email address and contact information in exchange for it.

Think of assets like

• Checklists
• Cheatsheets
• Guides
• Webinars
• In-person events
• Whitepapers

So take your best A.M.O. to LinkedIn Ads to get the best performance!

Come and join the webinar to learn much more!