With over 1 billion users worldwide, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional social network. Over the years, LinkedIn has evolved from a simple networking platform where users would upload their CVs, to a professional content sharing platform. LinkedIn nowadays is a key platform where businesses can promote multiple types of content and build their reputation as a thought leader in their industry. In this guide, you will learn how to harness the power of LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns to get your content in front of your target audience in a way that is designed to maximise conversions.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- The ad that does not look like one
- When to consider a LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaign
- Promote content that connects with your customers
- Promote your content to the right audience
- How to design an international Sponsored Content campaign
- Identify the business language of your target audience
- Localise your ad copy and landing pages into the appropriate language
- Do not translate your calls-to-action; adapt them to the target culture
- Conclusion
Introduction
In this guide, I will explain why LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns are ideal for companies wanting to reach a new and highly relevant audience and how international businesses can benefit from them. But first, it is important to understand why LinkedIn is such a vital platform to be on. Here are some insightful stats about the professional social network:
- LinkedIn has over 1 billion users worldwide.
- Over 69 million companies have a LinkedIn presence.
- 85% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn.
- 93% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic marketing.
- 82% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for advertising.
- 80% of LinkedIn users drive business decisions within their organisations, highlighting the platform's capacity to connect with key decision-makers.
The ad that does not look like one
LinkedIn Sponsored Content ads are ads that appear in a user's LinkedIn feed, enabling businesses to promote their content to a wide and highly relevant audience. Whilst organic posts are a great way to stay engaged with your existing audience, Sponsored Content ads are great for brand awareness and growing your audience further.
Sponsored Content ads do not look like advertisements. Only the word "Promoted" underneath the publisher's name tells the user that they are in fact looking at an ad. If you exclude this, you can see that the space allowance, the overall look, and the sharing function are the same as on an organic post. You can also include an image, video or infographic in your Sponsored Content ad.
Since LinkedIn Sponsored Content ads do not look like ads, targeted users who see them in their feeds tend to pay more attention to them than they do to traditional LinkedIn ads displayed on the right-hand side of the page. When a user scrolls through their feed, they can easily mistake Sponsored Content ads for organic posts. This native-like design favours user engagement.
So, knowing that LinkedIn offers the possibility to softly promote paid content on its platform, in which cases should marketers use this option? What are the benefits of promoting your content on LinkedIn?
When to consider a LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaign
LinkedIn users log in to the platform to read and share content related to their industry or profession without being bombarded with intrusive ads. If you want to successfully promote content on LinkedIn, you need to create assets that benefit users and spark their interest. Your content should be informative and helpful, rather than aimed at pushing the user to buy your service or product.
When considering a LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaign, ask yourself: "What would I like to achieve with it?"
If the answer is short-term, quick leads from existing customers or customers who are already aware of your brand, then it might be a better idea to increase your budget for search engine pay-per-click (PPC) or remarketing campaigns instead.
Alternatively, if your goal is to target potential new customers who are highly relevant to your industry, and thus increase quality traffic to your website, then a LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaign could be just what you need.
Promote content that connects with your customers
The basic idea is to boost the awareness and reputation of your brand by sharing great and useful content to professionals on LinkedIn who are interested in what your company has to offer. Since 80% of LinkedIn members drive business decisions within their organisations, this consolidates the importance of including LinkedIn in your online marketing strategy.
The chances are that your LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaign will bring new leads in the long term, if the content you share with your audience brings added value to them and demonstrates the expertise of your company. People go on LinkedIn to learn and get the latest news from their industry, so you need to bear this in mind when creating content for them.
Your job is to spark a conversation and increase engagement with your brand. This will get potential customers to eventually associate your brand with having expertise in your area of business.
As implied by its name, LinkedIn is a platform where you "link" with your potential customers to ultimately gain their trust. It is definitely not a platform where you want to actively sell. By doing so, you would neglect the awareness and interest phases of the marketing conversion funnel, and consequently miss out on potential new buyers. It is better to keep your hard sell calls-to-action for your PPC brand and remarketing campaigns; users who have typed your brand name into a search engine have already shown an interest in your brand by doing so.
LinkedIn recommends that you identify your "big rock" content, i.e. your campaign theme. You can then create different types of content associated with your "big rock", such as infographics, case studies and webinars, and share them via Sponsored Content ads.
Promote your content to the right audience
LinkedIn is one of the best advertising platforms when it comes to targeting accuracy. You can target your audience using LinkedIn profile data such as job functions, company names, seniority and skill sets, making it easy to reach your ideal marketing persona and thus show your content to the right audience. It is therefore advisable to conduct persona research before you start your campaign, so you can be sure you are reaching your ideal audience.
If, for instance, your company produces chemical protective coveralls in Germany and France, you could promote a demo video showing how to use your product, and set up the following targeting criteria to reach the most relevant audience:
- Country: Germany, France
- Industry: Medical, Biotechnology, Chemical, Public Service
- Job function: Administrative, Community and Social Services, Engineering, Healthcare Services, Human Resources, Operations
- Seniority: Manager, Senior, Partner, Director
If you already know the names of the companies who would potentially be interested in your business, you can also target your campaign by specific company names. Similarly, you can exclude companies that do not match your criteria.
As a rule of thumb, it is better not to go for hypertargeting at the start of your campaign, as you could limit your reach and lose potential customers. LinkedIn recommends to try and target a minimum of 300,000 users at the beginning of a Sponsored Content campaign.
After one month of running the campaign, once you have a better picture of which type of audience is engaging with your content the most, you can refine your targeting settings.
Going back to the example of a campaign for protective coveralls, if the medical and chemical industries represented 90% of your social actions (i.e. people liking, commenting on and sharing your Sponsored Content ad), then it would make sense to allocate most of your budget to those two industries.
In order to optimise your budget, you should identify in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager tool the times when your ads generate the most clicks and engagement. You can then select the best days and times to have your campaign live. In the case of B2B businesses, for instance, it might be worth pausing your campaign during the weekends when offices are closed.
You will be able to set your own budget and choose either cost-per-click or cost-per-impression, depending on your objectives.
Finally, be aware that you can track the number of leads coming from your LinkedIn campaigns with the platform's conversion tracking.
How to design an international Sponsored Content campaign
Once you know which professional audience you want to reach and which content you want to promote, you might want to think of going international.
If you want to extend your Sponsored Content campaign beyond your country's borders and reach a worldwide audience, LinkedIn allows advertisers to create campaigns in 35 different languages. You just need to select your target language and your localised ads will appear to users who match your selection.
However, before making your campaign international, you might want to take a few things into consideration.
1. Identify the business language of your target audience
This may sound obvious, but you should remember that LinkedIn is a platform aimed at professionals. Members use LinkedIn, above all, in and for their professional lives. Therefore, you should aim to use the business language of your target audience, even if that is not necessarily their native language.
For example, if you are targeting CEOs of international B2B companies in Switzerland, the best language to select is English, even though the official languages of Switzerland are French, German, Italian and Romansh.
By targeting the language which your audience works in and creating ads in that language, you are more likely to increase the click-through rate, as you will be matching the professional mindset of your audience. In other words, you make your target audience understand that your Sponsored Content ad has something to do with their profession, just by matching their language.
According to Harvard Business Review: "More and more multinational companies are mandating English as the common corporate language – Airbus, Daimler-Chrysler, Fast Retailing, Nokia, Renault, Samsung, SAP, Technicolor, and Microsoft in Beijing, to name a few – in an attempt to facilitate communication and performance across geographically diverse functions and business endeavours."
If, however, you are targeting local school directors in Austria, their working language and native language are more likely to be the same: German. This is an example of a case where choosing English would penalise your campaign.
2. Localise your ad copy and landing pages into the appropriate language
The language of your Sponsored Content ad copy, creative content (e.g. video, images, infographics) and landing page must match the language of the users you target, but most importantly they must be the same across the user's journey to achieve consistency in the conversion funnel.
Let's say you are targeting a French-speaking audience. You have your ad copy written in French, with an illustration including a call-to-action in French. So far, so good. Now, let's say that the associated landing pages are in English because your website has not been localised yet.
In this case, I would not recommend that you launch a Sponsored Content campaign, as it will probably not be successful; the click-through rate might be good, but the bounce rate once the user arrives at the English landing page is likely to be high, without even mentioning the low conversion rate.
3. Do not translate your calls-to-action; adapt them to the target culture
As I mentioned earlier, hard sell calls-to-action such as "get a quote now" or "buy now" are not suitable for Sponsored Content campaigns. You should focus instead on soft offers which bring additional information to the user, such as "watch our video" or "learn more in our guide".
However, these formulae can differ from one country to another, and it is too risky to translate them literally. For example, when targeting Asian markets, it is usually best to mention what you offer (e.g. free delivery or payment options), rather than what you want the user to do next (e.g. "download the brochure" or "watch our video").
It is important to always use a native copywriter with good cultural knowledge of the target country, who can properly localise the Sponsored Content ad copy, and, if needed, the soft calls-to-action.
Conclusion
Offering a soft method of content promotion and accurate targeting features, LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns are a great digital marketing tool to reach a highly relevant audience and potential new customers who are not yet aware of your solutions or expertise. By sharing valuable content with a new audience who may be unfamiliar with your brand, you can showcase your expertise in your industry, which is essential in generating new leads. If you are looking to go international, ask for the support of a native speaker to localise your campaign. Not only will you need to use the business language of your target audience, but you will also have to keep in mind specific cultural aspects such as the tone of voice and the calls-to-action to be used in your ads.
To learn more about marketing on LinkedIn, click here.
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