The above result may sound sexist, but most of the time people will click on an ad with an image of a woman. However, I recently ran the same three ads again but changed the targeting from executives and managers to just a few LinkedIn Groups. The ad with the picture of the male analyst outperformed the other ads two to one. I’m assuming the people in the Groups were familiar with the analyst, making him a bigger draw.
FOLLOW ADVERTISING GUIDELINES
LinkedIn has a very strict approval process for new ad campaigns and any changes to your existing ad campaigns. Your campaign will not run until a human manually reviews your ad content. It can take 24 to 72 hours for your ads to be approved or re-approved, so you need to plan ahead. Other ad platforms like Google and Facebook will begin running your ads immediately then flag them if they detect inappropriate ad content.
Be sure to adhere to LinkedIn’s advertising guidelines so your ads are approved quickly. Use common sense when creating your ad campaigns. To see the guidelines visit https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/727/advertising-guidelines.
Here’s a quick list of high-level guidelines for ads:
■ Don’t deceive or lie.
■ Don’t use nonstandard spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, or repetition.
■ Don’t discriminate.
■ Don’t use inappropriate or unacceptable language.
■ Don’t deceive, confuse, or otherwise degrade the experience of members who click.
■ Don’t advertise prohibited products. See the complete list of prohibited products in the advertising guidelines link above.
■ Don’t use trademarks that you aren’t permitted to use or the LinkedIn logo.
■ Don’t promote sensitive content including illegal products, dating sites, hate or violence.
The guidelines are pretty self-explanatory and easy to adhere to. Of course you never want to deceive or lie in your ads because your reputation could be permanently damaged. LinkedIn will disallow any ads that break these rules, and it can permanently ban you and your company from running ads on the site if you are a repeat offender.
A/B SPLIT TESTING
Above I showed you why it’s important to always test your ads and measure the results according to the group you are targeting. You can never be 100 percent certain which headline, ad copy, or image will perform best. There are many factors that determine this, so you have to constantly test your ads and adjust accordingly.
Testing your ad combinations is commonly called A/B split testing. You are testing ad A against ad B to determine which one performs best. You always want to split test different combinations of headlines, ad copy, and images until you find the highest-converting combination. Once you do, use that ad as your control ad and run it while you test new combinations. Once you beat your control ad, that combination becomes your new control ad.
You never know what subtle changes will make one ad perform better than another. Sometimes capitalizing every word works; other times changing one word in the headline does the trick. Here are some tips:
1. Create multiple ads for each campaign.
■ Use at least three variations.
■ Try capitalizing every word in the headline and ad copy.
■ Try different calls to action.
2. You can create up to 15 ads per campaign and set different budgets and settings for each ad.
3. You can start to show the ads that do best more often, or you can display all the ads equally.
Make sure you track your ads accurately so you know which ones are performing best. Your goal is to achieve the highest clickthrough rate (CTR) and conversion rate possible. The other important statistic to monitor is the number of impressions, which is the number of times your ads are displayed. You want your ads to be displayed as many times as possible, but they should be displayed to the appropriate audience to raise your CTR, which reduces your cost per click (CPC).
TARGETING YOUR ADS
One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn advertising is your ability to target the audience to whom your ads will be displayed. You can create very specific ads for very specific demographics, so your response rate increases dramatically.
You can target your LinkedIn ads based on any or all of the following criteria:
■ Job function
■ Job title
■ Company
■ Company industry
■ Job seniority
■ Company size
■ Location
■ Country
It will take some testing to determine the perfect targeting for your ads, but once you nail the demographic of your ideal customer, your ads will generate consistent leads and sales for your business. Be patient, split test your ad campaigns, and measure your results so you know which campaigns are fully optimized.
BIDDING
For each campaign, you set a payment method of cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM). In both cases, you also set a bid for the maximum you’re willing to pay.
For CPC ads, you can enter a bid that’s within the suggested bid range, which is an estimate of the current competing bids by other advertisers. The higher you bid within the range, the more likely it is that your ad will be shown and receive clicks. Once you become more familiar with how the bidding works, you can adjust your bids accordingly.
For CPM bidding, you enter the maximum you are willing to pay for 1,000 impressions of your ad. In CPM bidding, you are paying for ad impressions, not clicks, and with CPC bidding you are paying for each time a person actually clicks on your ad.
You should test CPC against CPM bidding in your campaigns because sometimes you pay less for CPM bidding and get better results. If you are running a branding campaign to give your brand more exposure via maximum impressions and you don’t care about the number of clicks, you should use CPM.
HOW TO MEASURE SUCCESS AND IMPROVE YOUR PERFORMANCE
It’s important to measure success for every ad campaign so you can tweak how you plan for future campaigns. Knowing your goals and revisiting them during or after a campaign will help you know when you’ve created the right ads, targeted the right audience, optimized the best landing pages, and maximized your revenue. Keep these things in mind:
FIGURE 21–3. Ad Performance Tracking
■ If your goal is to generate traffic to your website landing page, you can use the Campaign Performance section in the Campaign Manager to track your performance. You can track the number of clicks you’ve received (the number of visitors to your website) and your total budget spent.
■ If your goal is to generate leads, you need to track users’ actions on your website with a web analytics tool like Google Analytics or with LinkedIn’s Conversion Tracking, which is located under Account Assets in the Campaign Manager. Using web analytics and conversion tracking, you can track the number of web visits from LinkedIn, the number of conversions, and the conversion rate.
You can use a chart like the one in Figure 21–3 to manually track your ads and see which perform best. The chart shows you everything you need to know about your campaigns, including the number of conversions and your return on investment.
CONCLUSION
Online ads that convert best are relevant to the target audience and are written with clear, compelling words. Keep the following tips in mind as you create your own LinkedIn ad campaigns:
■ Remember to use emotion-triggering words that grab the reader’s attention in the headline.
■ Make sure the description in your ad clearly outlines the benefits of your offer.
■ Use an image that readers will notice and is relevant to your offer.
■ Always include a clear call to action in your ad, like “download now” or “try it for 30 days.”
■ Use special offers, trials, or free reports to entice them to click on your ad.
In the next chapter, we’ll meet some people who have had great experiences on LinkedIn and have used it
to make long-lasting connections, find employment, and build or enhance their businesses.
For additional updates and how-to videos, visit https://tedprodromou.com/UltimateGuideUpdates/.
Chapter 22
LinkedIn Success Stories
Now that we’ve talked about all the ways you can use LinkedIn to build your business and brand, it’s time to meet some of my clients who have used the site to grow or start their business. All of them created their LinkedIn account years ago but rarely logged in. They didn’t realize LinkedIn was the perfect marketing tool to grow their business. I worked with each of them for a few months, and together we applied all the principles I have showed you in this book. Today, LinkedIn has become an essential part of their marketing toolkit. In this chapter, they talk about their successes (and failures) on LinkedIn in their own words. Let’s meet them.
GROWING YOUR COACHING PRACTICE
Gary Barnes, The Breakthrough Business Mastery Coach
I have built three successful businesses over the past 40-plus years, personally selling more than $280 million in products and services. I spent the first nine years in real estate before establishing one of the very first financial-planning firms in the United States. I built that firm into the top 3 percent in production as a solo producer and sold it after 30 years.
After that, I founded Gary Barnes International and became known as “The Breakthrough Business Mastery Coach.” I am a high-performance business and sales strategist, popular national and international speaker, and award-winning international Amazon bestselling author of nine books. My clients have spanned seven countries, and I have been published in many media outlets, including The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Daily News, Miami Herald, CBS MoneyWatch, Morningstar, and Worth magazine. I have also been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, and TEDx.
The common element in building all my businesses has been my ability to cultivate personal relationships with my clients. What I lacked when I owned my first two businesses was the power of social media to connect to my perfect client base. The challenge now is creating those personal, high-touch relationships in a high-tech world.
LinkedIn is one of the primary social media platforms that I actively use to build those connections and relationships. I believe one of the major misconceptions in using social media for marketing is that all you need to do is open an account, create your profile, and have a presence. People will then flock to you like magic. In my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Building effective relationships using high-tech platforms like LinkedIn is no different from building relationships in person. The more you know about the person and their needs, the more opportunities you have to provide possible solutions. It isn’t about the number of connections you have but rather how relevant you are to those connections.
Since I met Ted, he has helped me use LinkedIn more effectively by creating a unique user profile and strong presence on the site. I invest approximately 15 to 20 minutes every day on my LinkedIn connections. The areas I focus on are:
■ New invitations to connect. I accept almost all invitations. I take it one step further and send them a welcome message, sharing a little about me and asking them to do the same. I use this to determine whether they really want to build a relationship or whether they’re just adding me to their list of connections. If they don’t respond, I don’t make a judgment about their intention. But if they do, it tells me I need to invest more time in the conversation. When I connect with someone, I have no agenda other than getting to know who they are. This allows us to have open and productive conversations.
■ Birthdays and work anniversaries. It takes very little time to reach out and say happy birthday or happy anniversary. Many times I will get a response about how meaningful it was to get my greeting and thanking me for taking time out of my busy schedule to reach out. I never use the standard auto-fill but rather their name and a short greeting. If I get a thank-you, I make sure to respond to that as well. I want them to know it is really me that is getting back to them.
■ Responding to messages. When someone sends me a message, it tells me I have risen to a certain level of significance for that person. Even if it’s just about something that they are promoting, I will give them a short reply.
■ Liking and commenting on other people’s posts. When I spend a few minutes looking at the newsfeed, I usually find comments or articles that I can at least like. But what I’m really looking for are posts I can comment on. My comments are not necessarily just opinions but also suggested resources that could be useful.
■ Messaging current connections. It’s important to me to not only build new connections but also to maintain existing relationships. It can be as simple as saying, “I just thought of you and wanted to reach out and say hi. Have a fantastic day!” Again, it is amazing how people will respond when they know you really do want to connect with them.
■ Posting comments and articles. This is one of the best ways to showcase the benefits of connecting with you. It is not an opportunity to promote and sell your “stuff.” If you do that, it will come across as a commercial and people will not see you as a valued resource. This is another area where I have no agenda about converting the reader into buying something.
LinkedIn has meant a lot to my business. I have chosen to use it as a vehicle to showcase who I am and what I do and not as a direct-selling platform. That way, I have shown that I’m a safe person to connect with, someone who really wants a relationship, not just a sale.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I have not received revenue from my LinkedIn endeavors. I have had people reach out to engage me as their business coach. I have secured speaking engagements, both locally and nationally. Almost weekly I am asked to be interviewed on radio shows and podcasts, some of them nationally and internationally syndicated.
LinkedIn can be one of the most effective and influential elements of building a successful business. The key to that success is being seen as a unique, relevant resource.
■ ■ ■
Gary Barnes is The Business Breakthrough Coach. You can connect with Gary at https://www.linkedin.com/in/speakersalescoachgarybarnes/.
SELLING THE DREAM ON LINKEDIN
Paige Collin, Franchise Owner
I’m a franchise owner of Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative. Our franchise also includes land vacations and cruises anywhere in the world. Before my husband and I bought our Cruise Planners franchise, I was the personal assistant to one of the wealthiest men in the world. I traveled to many destinations with him and planned events around the world, which fueled my passion to help others travel.
We purchased our franchise six years ago, and it’s the best investment I ever made. My husband and I have traveled extensively, and I thought it was appropriate to share our love of travel and use the skills I learned from my previous job.
LinkedIn has provided me with an entirely new audience that I didn’t know existed. The majority of my LinkedIn contacts are between the ages of 25 and 55, and many are very interested in traveling. Most people on LinkedIn are successful business professionals who have enough disposable income to explore the world, which makes them my ideal prospects.
It’s very easy for me to engage potential clients on LinkedIn. People at work are running from meeting to meeting, working 50 to 60 hours a week, and their stress level is through the roof. When I post pictures of exotic vacations on my newsfeed, they receive a “mini-mental vacation” between meetings. When they like or comment on my pictures, I engage them in conversation through LinkedIn messages. They ask questions about the picture I posted, and I describe the vacation they can enjoy there. The newsfeed pictures do most of the selling; I simply take the orders.
We design itineraries for our clients based on their needs and wants. We also suggest other options and excursions for our clients to take on their vacations. For example, customers might choose to go horseback riding in countries with gorge
ous views, such as Italy, Australia, and Canada. Other interesting ideas are flying to Europe and taking a river cruise in France or Germany. There are so many wonderful options for those who want a different type of vacation. In the past, river cruises were more appealing to older travelers, but things have changed. River cruising is my favorite type of cruise, nice and slow, winding down the many rivers of European countries. These are all perfect getaway options, and I showcase them daily to my LinkedIn connections.
Most important, I met Ted, who has taught me the LinkedIn secrets many people don’t know about: the use of hashtags to make my posts go viral, the use of native video, growing my network with my ideal prospects, and engaging new contacts with LinkedIn messages. The site is very important to me and my business. I enjoy making my posts and telling a story about different options for vacations and travel.
■ ■ ■
Paige Collin began her love of travel when she was a little girl. She has become one of the premier travel agents using LinkedIn. You can connect with Paige at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paige-collin-16078165/.
PAVING THE WAY TO A SUCCESSFUL MILITARY TRANSITION
Cedric Crumbley, Author and Marketing Consultant
If it wasn’t for LinkedIn, I don’t know where I would be. I certainly wouldn’t have published a book. I first learned about the power of LinkedIn during a Perry Marshall webinar that featured Ted Prodromou sharing his LinkedIn strategies.
Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Page 23