3 common reasons why marketers often fail with LinkedIn Advertising

Techniques to improve your results from your LinkedIn Ads

Marketers using LinkedIn’s Advertising Campaign manager often achieve poor results when testing the Ad platform for engagement and impact. Below are 3 reasons and possible solutions why marketers often fail with LinkedIn advertising:

1) Understanding LinkedIn’s context and the intent of users

The purpose behind LinkedIn is to provide an environment which “connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful’ Where marketers very often fail on LinkedIn Ads is pushing out solutions and products expecting similar clicks and conversions to that of Google Adwords where users are actively searching for product information with a high intent to purchase.

Fundamentally, this is because on LinkedIn you are often reaching customers at a difference stage in the buying cycle where users are making professional connections, having conversations with their networking on groups rather than purchasing services directly. Targeting on LinkedIn is very effective but often the best performing campaigns use several layers and are extensively tested and refined.

2) Managing Minimum bids when advertisers test it

Secondly, when a new advertiser is testing the advertising options, marketers tend to go in with the very minimum bids possible. On Campaign Manager Ad tool that floor is just above $2. Unfortunately, if you launch an ad, and the bids are lower than other advertisers are bidding against your ad is unlikely to be entered into very many auctions. Thus it won’t be seen by your target audience and you are minimizing the chance of it performing. There is also a time component to your bidding strategy. If you aren’t getting entered into auctions fast enough, the algorithm may sideline your ad because it’s not getting impressions fast enough. This leaves many new marketing managers disappointed with its performance

3) Using the Campaign manager

The Advertising Tool Campaign manager has historically been notoriously time-consuming and clunky for agencies to use compared to the intuitive design and detailed tracking offered by Google Adwords and Facebook’s Ad platform. LinkedIn responded to this feedback, upgraded and relaunched the New Campaign Manager in Aug 2016. This has resulted in huge improvements to the design, ease of use and technical efficiency when managing campaigns. A new account overview page is a particularly useful upgrade making it is now easier to locate and access multiple advertising accounts through a single interface. This upgrade is vital as testing LinkedIn ads requires multiple testing to get the right performance metrics and will make it far more efficient for marketers in the future

How to build a successful LinkedIn advertising campaign

We will provide you with a step-by-step approach to using LinkedIn ads to raise your profile among the key decision makers, and attract high quality leads in your niche or industry. It has been designed to help you get your advertising up, running, and optimized within a number of days, and without burning through your advertising budget.

Access the How to build a successful LinkedIn advertising campaign quick win

Thanks to David Reilly for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. David Reilly manages the digital skills training company Let's learn Digital and runs advanced workshops on linkedIn for marketers and adverting professionals.