Whether your LinkedIn ads haven’t delivered you a single conversion or it feels like you are not getting a right return on what you’re spending, here are some common LinkedIn advertising mistakes and how to avoid them.
Are you struggling to make your LinkedIn advertising work or you are likely to quit the platform as you can’t afford to throw money anymore on your “lifeless” campaigns? Stop scraping your head out of frustration and understand why your LinkedIn advertising is not working.
It may be because of the slip-ups or wrong practices that turn into a complete disaster. Sometimes you set a wrong budget, sometimes it is due to wrong selection of audiences or an ad type is not going well with your target audience or other parameters. Surprisingly, even experienced marketers commit these mistakes or have gone through the same. Don’t worry!
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Here we have helped you identify such loopholes in your campaign along with the ways to fix them.
Mismanaged Budget:
Most marketers are not able to determine the right budget for their advertising campaign due to tricky bidding. Eventually, they end up either with the unrealistic number for the budget or set it randomly. Before setting the budget, use the data to find out how much expenditure is done on advertising for your industry. Start with a small budget if you don’t have that data available. You can scale up or scale down your budget according to the results.
It is experienced that bidding above the suggested range will give a higher CTR while bidding within the suggested range ensures good ROI. Make sure to keep the track of each ad against budget and change your bids accordingly.
Wrongly selected Audiences:
Choosing a right audience for your product or services is extremely important in all aspects of digital marketing. And LinkedIn advertising is no exception. You have to be particular on the persona definition of your business.
For example, a sweet dish being served to diabetic patients will be a big no. Instead, it will be liked by kids or teenagers and non-diabetic people.
Similarly, if I have to send the tips related to cyber security measures for large-scale organizations, an appropriate target audience will be network security managers and business owners, rather than someone working as HR or software programmers. Furthermore, you can narrow your target audience by considering several factors like age, gender, language, income, organization size, location etc.
So, defining the persona and serving the right piece of information to them is a smarter move than taking all audiences in account.
It will go like this: Right Content to Right Audience= expected ROI
Running an Unplanned Campaign with Unclear Objectives:
“If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Do you want to generate leads or just to introduce your services? Is your objective to gain followers? Which Ad type is suitable? Who is your audience?
If you don’t plan, you won’t see result with your LinkedIn ad campaign.
In simple words an unplanned campaign with no objective is nothing but a weaker approach. So, firstly, you should work on these things while planning a LinkedIn’s advertising campaign:
- Give meaning to your campaign – find out the clear objective behind spending those precious bucks. Don’t do it for the sake of just ‘doing it’.
- Define and target the ads to your ideal buyer persona
- Create the visuals and other content according to the persona defined so that you don’t go off track.
- Your content should ensure a solution to your audience’s issues
- Analyze & Measure your results regularly to see what is working for you
Not Choosing Right Type of LinkedIn Advertisement:
Are you aware of the type of ads LinkedIn provides to you for better ROI? Which type of LinkedIn ads do you want for your campaign? Is it Text Ads or Sponsored Content? Some marketers think that Sponsored Content is better than Text Ads while others pick them randomly. All ad types are different and serve different objectives.
Here is a brief explanation about Text Ads, Sponsored Content and InMail ads:
Sponsored Inmail:
- Sponsored InMail is a customized message delivered to the customer’s LinkedIn inbox.
- Lets you create relevant message without restrictive character counts
- Only delivered when members are active on LinkedIn.
- Appear on the right hand side of your desktop only and are marked as ads
- Become visible on group pages, search result pages and in the main feed etc.
- Contain small amount of text
- Can’t be linked to a company page
- Instant ways to start advertising on LinkedIn
- Similar to display ads from AdWords
- Sponsored version appearing on the Company Page admin
- Can be seen on PC, mobile and tablets
- Similar to newsfeed updates on Facebook
- Cost is determined on the basis of CPM and CPC
Text Ads:
- Appear on the right-hand side of your desktop only and are marked as ads
- Become visible on group pages, search result pages and in the main feed etc.
- Contain small amount of text
- Can’t be linked to a company page
- Instant ways to start advertising on LinkedIn
- Similar to display ads from AdWords
Sponsored Content:
- Sponsored version appearing on the Company Page admin
- Can be seen on PC, mobile and tablets
- Similar to newsfeed updates on Facebook
- Cost is determined on the basis of CPM and CPC
Generally, you can run both Text Ads and Sponsored Content Ads together to improve your click through rate.
Using ‘abandoned’ LinkedIn accounts:
Have you just set up a LinkedIn company page and forgot about it? Or the page lacks engagement and responds over the months.
Remember, your LinkedIn company page represents your business and services.
It helps you establish as a reputable and trustworthy business if optimized properly. Otherwise, the things can be opposite. Therefore, make sure you have up to date profile, business description, and participated in groups of your business niche.
By avoiding such ‘blunders’, you can make your LinkedIn advertising campaign successful. It will certainly make a big difference to your ads in a long run. After all, you have spent a considerable amount on your advertising to see the results.
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So, this is the high time to create a new ad keeping these things in mind and bang on!
Good Luck!!