LinkedIn Ads (2021) - My Proven B2B Secret Strategies

if you are running or planning to run linkedin ads in 2021 then you're at the right video as i'm going to share with you my latest and greatest strategies and tactical approaches to generate high converting b2b leads with linkedin ads to help you both generate and capture demand that can ultimately translate into business growth so in the first part of this video i want to quickly glance over some tried and true tactics from 2020 to refresh and show you what is still working and then the second part we're going to cover 2021 specific items so we're going to talk about platform updates we're going to talk a little bit about some strategies and tactics that were working well last year that will continue to work well this year as well as some new ones and then i want to share with you guys three of my favorite b2b ads that i've seen on linkedin recently and break it down for you guys to show you some elements that you can try to replicate in some of your own advertising efforts and then the last thing of course is i want to share with you a b2b cheat sheet so that it can kind of go a little bit deeper into some of these creatives that we've seen and codify some of these performance elements you know just to help you know you or if you have a creative team that you're working with to produce some better creative for linkedin ads to accelerate your lead and your demand generation now before we dive into it i think it's important to go back again to this point of why linkedin ads for b2b well first of all over 760 monthly active users globally that's a pretty large network of professionals that go onto these platforms looking for you know career growth networking and they're in an intention mindset now then from a targeting capabilities perspective you know you're able to reach them from a demographics perspective so their region their age range the um ability to create custom audiences so you can scale just like facebook ads has but more specifically i think what's more important is the precision b2b targeting so you can go after specific job titles you can go after seniority levels so you can focus on decision makers or influencers of a buying decision you can go after job function specific skills so i think this is really where the bread and butter of linkedin is is these targeting capabilities and one of my favorites is account based marketing it's going after specific accounts that a business is trying to go after and just to put this into perspective just because i know a lot of people like to think that facebook ads for b2b is more effective and that might be because there's more more a bigger audience right on facebook there's over 2.7 billion monthly active users linkedin only has you know under a billion but here's an example if you went into linkedin ads and you were trying to target users in banking and finance you'd be able to reach 6.2 million people based on the fact that when people go onto the platform they self-report their titles and who they're working for it's their incentive to accurately share this information now if you went on facebook ads which covers facebook and of course instagram there would be only 1.7 million people in that pool so although there's more people on facebook and instagram because there isn't the same incentive to self-report your job your title all that information you're not going to match as many users as effectively now a pro tip here is that you could still use other social media platforms to get you one step closer to your lead generation and demand generation goals but just don't do it from a prospecting perspective you can use them from a retargeting perspective so that if they've already been to your website and you know they're interested in your product or service you could still stay top of mind cost effectively but from a prospecting perspective linkedin is still the bread winner now there's three things that really stuck out in 2020 that i believe can still are true number one content is king you know linkedin is very effective at getting content consumption so people that are not necessarily ready or in market to buy your service but maybe within the next couple of months or a year there might be this is a good opportunity to get in front of them with content such as white papers trend reports cheat sheets downloadables webinar get them into your funnel early so that when they are ready to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a piece of software or fifty thousand dollars or half a million dollars on you know whatever service you offer they already know who you are they're familiar so they're more likely to consider you now from a targeting perspective persona segmentation is an absolutely crucial part of this if you're just throwing a net into the water and just trying to catch all the fish you're not going to effectively use your dollars you need to separate for your decision makers and who are the enablers and influencers of the process and that helps you to then get the right messages and understand what is actually moving the needle for the different audiences then the last part of course is the type of targeting that you're using job title targeting is going to give you the most accuracy it's of course going to limit your scale but it'll give you the best accuracy especially if you know who is actually your audience now if you layer that on with accounts a list of companies that you're specifically trying to target that's where it gets extremely effective however that might narrow the audience but it'll increase the relevance so these are three things that still continue to be true as we move into 2021 now the first key 2021 platform update i want to share with you is the new ad unit product that linkedin has that's been working phenomenally well it's called a conversation ad unit and the premise is that this is an ad that's going to show up in your inmail so that when someone logs on to linkedin and they go to check their messages they'll be able to see a sponsored ad now you could previously do this the only difference is that now it's gonna have a chat bot style functionality so you can lead with a question um you know something to hook in your audience and then they have the ability now to engage with different pieces of content so they can literally go to your website directly you can have a call to action that says you know request a demo for example if you have a product demo that you offer to get people to submit you know and get into your funnel if you have a case study you can push them to a case study if you have a white paper a piece of content or a webinar and the cool thing about this is that not everybody is going to be ready the first time they see your ad to engage for a demo or consultation or whatever your conversion point is so this type of ad unit gives the user the option to basically customize an experience based on where they're at and because of that we're seeing you know really phenomenal results with that now another thing is the ability now to do engagement retargeting so now linkedin allows you to retarget anybody that's watched your video whether it's they watch you know 25 50 75 100 which is phenomenal because if you're doing any upper funnel branding uh brand building efforts on the platform now you can take advantage and retarget those users especially the ones that watched you know 100 or 75 percent of your video because they have a higher intent another thing you do obviously is retarget from a lead form so if someone opens a native leaf lead form within linkedin and they don't submit a lead you could still keep the conversation going with those users as well as retargeting people who engage with your event so if you're creating organic events it'd be great you know to capture those high intent users and bring them into your funnel and then the last thing that they've added and enhanced no pun intended is enhanced bidding so now you have the actual ability to let linkedin um take your money and maximize the impact of your campaign by using uh max delivery for example max delivery if you've ever run ads on facebook it's kind of like lowest cost it's basically telling the platform get me as many conversions or as many actions as you can for my budget which is great especially if you're starting on the platform and you're not too sure what is your target cost per lead on the platform now before we get too intricate in strategies for linkedin ads i want to just quickly show you my standard linkedin funnel strategy flow so usually when everyone campaigns for clients we're running ads sponsored content for example which is the most popular it's on the news feed and we're trying to push people to submit their information to one or two places so if you see a piece of sponsored content on your news feed and if we're trying to push you to a landing page the goal is to get your information to the landing page if not the goal is to get you to use um via the native lead form just submit your information directly through the platform so that's that's usually the strategy and then the idea is once you downloaded our piece of content whether it's a white paper or downloadable or a webinar now you're going into our crm system in our email automation platform which is going to send you a series of emails to further nurture you and depending on the activity that you do there the emails that you open if you go back to the website for example and you go to a very important page like a pricing page through lead scoring our sales team within our marketing automation platform whether it's like a hubspot or marketo is gonna see oh wow this person downloaded this piece of content then they went and opened three of our emails and now they've gone to the pricing page that is a high intent prospect we're going to reach out to them so this is a very standard strategy funnel approach that you know i've used and seen a lot of success and i would say it's it's probably one of the most standard sophisticated approaches for linkedin ads so in the following slide i just want to build upon that with some 2021 specific guidance now a lot of people try to get people to submit leads on their website but if you're just starting off on linkedin ads maybe you don't have the greatest landing page or maybe you've been doing linkedin ads for a while but your landing page isn't the best experience so one thing you could actually test out is using sponsored ads to drive people to a native lead form and reduce friction what do i mean when i say reduce friction well if somebody goes to your website landing page and now they have to fill out their name their email the company the job title they have to fill out all this information that's time and effort and energy and if you think about when you go to buy something on amazon it's a couple of clicks it's in your cart and now it's getting shipped to you so this add unit a native legion form within linkedin will pop up instantly so you don't even leave linkedin and it'll actually dynamically populate you know your information so the great thing is that the user gets instant access to that piece of content and you know this has scalability because you can funnel all these leads using a zapier for example into your existing crm and email automation and marketing automation platform so it doesn't necessarily require any extra energy also you can prompt the user at the top to put in their work email because a lot of people on linkedin create their profiles with their personal emails their gmail emails or side hustle email at their domain at another company so you can get all the key information with these lead forms dynamically name company you know market that they're in job title and then you could prompt them to put in their work email so this is actually something that's seen a ton of success there's a bunch of case studies that linkedin has put out and it's probably underutilized so definitely something to lean into for 2021 and test against driving people to your website landing page now three specific 2021 strategies for platform success that i would say you need to keep top of mind is number one content alignment if you're trying to capture people who are not necessarily in market so you're trying to scale your demand cheat sheets white papers are great because they're easy to digest and consume an ebook for example takes more time and energy a webinar takes more time and energy so somebody that has expressed you know maybe some greater level of intent with your business might be interested in those or someone that's closer to buying also case studies are great for someone who's in market and they're closer to making that buying decision so you want to make sure you're very thoughtful about where your audience is in their journey and you have content for these different phases now the next thing is it's absolutely crucial you're tracking your impact of linkedin ads with their insight tag this is their pixel it has to go on your website and your landing pages so you make sure that number one you're measuring the impact of linkedin ads on leads but also that you can continuously have the platform optimized for you makes sense right then the last thing is creative consistency meaning whatever the message is and the design and the creative and the look and feel of your ads on the platform that should match the experience when you get to the landing page if there's a large disconnect between the way your ads on linkedin looks and the landing page experience that's gonna negatively hurt you when it comes to conversion rates and it's not that difficult of a thing to to you know have um optimized for your content especially if you're working with a graphic designer and or a developer ux ui designer now to go a little bit deeper this is actually something i do for all the clients that i work with it's developing a persona and message matrix so if you remember in some of the earlier slides we talked about the importance of segmenting your audiences so that you can understand what creative and what messaging best resonates with each audience so this is an exercise i do with all my clients that i identify first of all who are these key personas right who is the decision maker in the process who is another influencer and maybe who are other stakeholders so in this example i put here like the head of accountant of accounting would be a decision maker if you're trying to sell some type of let's say accounting software they're going to make the ultimate decision because they oversee the department and they own the budgets now a senior accountant might be using the software so they're an influencer in this process and if they think your accounting software sucks or they never heard of you that is going to hurt you um in the process of going from a lead to a to closing a deal with the counting team if the boss is reluctant because he's never heard or if the boss is like talking to his team and it seems like i never heard of this company so it's important to market to those people as well now also there's other people in the process that also impact the final decision so when you're talking about budgets the head of finance a lot of times has to sign off on these things so it might be also important to market to them now the thing is you don't want to say the same thing to everybody because everyone has different incentives for example the final decision maker in the in the accounting role they might want to save money and save time and they might want something that's reliable but to someone that's using your product or service in this specific scenario an accounting service they might want the service to be reliable and easy to use they might not necessarily care if it saves the company money so it's so crucial to create one of these so that you can use to create a roadmap to a b test messages against these different audiences and then look at performance to see what is actually working and a lot of times i see that businesses use these learnings from paid media amplification on linkedin ads and they actually inform other stakeholders like their email programs copy on the website their search campaigns so definitely something super useful to have when you're starting off to make sure that you're properly aligning the audiences and the messages and that you can learn from this now three essential research tactics that i always use and i recommend for you to lean into is number one if you're running search ads for your clients or for yourself start there look at what are some of the top performing messages from your campaigns and use that to craft messaging and messaging pillars for your linkedin ads the next one is if you've already put the insight tag uh the tracking pixel from linkedin on your website there's a demographics tool you can use within linkedin ads to see what kind of people are going to your website what their titles are where they're from what companies they're at and that gives you a sense of who this audience is to further customize any kind of messaging and targeting and then the last one is of course using google analytics to review what are your top performing landing pages markets countries states demographics this can help inform any new campaigns or existing campaigns so that you maximize your dollars where you naturally see the most amount of conversions now this is probably the most important slide in this whole conversation it's going back to this concept that your content is super important but you have to make the right content for people depending on where they're at in their phase so starting on the left hand side um someone might not be aware that they have a need for your product then you have to move them to awareness then they're going to have some info seeking and evaluation criteria that they need to learn to see if you are a proper solution and then it could take some time before they actually make that purchase decision so in long longer buyer cycles that could be six to 18 months now the kind of content that you need in that process is early on you need to create thought leadership you need to show that hey we know what this problem is and we know how to solve it and you could do that through pieces of content like white papers trend reports and cheat sheets now for people who are a little further they already know they actually need your your service they need content that helps them make a better decision so an ebook for example that can deep dive into the topic further a webinar that can deep dive into the topic further in a different medium or comparison guides of sorts now once someone is deeper in the funnel what is useful is showing case studies to further social proof why you should be you know the solution that they go with or showing testimonials now along the process you should always have action driving tactics which is retargeting anybody that's been to your website or engaged with your content and try to push them to a product demo a trial or an offer of sorts but again very important for you to have the right kind of content that's going to effectively seed these people to actually give you their information and hopefully convert them into a piece of business now to kind of bring it all together i want to align tactics content and audience for you guys and the way i always start with all my clients for b2b is conversion the bottom of the funnel i'm going to try to capture as many people who are in market looking to for this product or service so where i start there is with sponsored content on linkedin conversation ads and the goal is to always push the demo bookings or the trials if you've been to the website if you've engaged you know with our lead leads sorry our lead form in the past um or some kind of high level action that i can retarget and the kpi of course is how many bookings and trials are we getting after we maximize that out i then go up the funnel and say hey let's go prospect let's go target for people who aren't familiar with us with sponsored content text ads and conversation units and let's get them to download a piece of content to get them into our funnel and again there might be some engagement retargeting but also prospecting is the lion's share of the investment here and usually we're looking at some kind of combination between landing page views and engagements now if you have content like blog articles that could also be considered a part of consideration building content that you can a b test driving someone to a very important top performing blog post versus you know a white paper or downloadable or some kind of cheat sheet content sort now once i max that out the next phase is going into brand building and awareness building efforts and that's where video is phenomenal to drive awareness and message association and usually that's also a prospecting play as well but the kpi there is different i'm looking just to capture share voice reach and video views so hopefully this gives you a holistic perspective of how those items come together all right so what makes a good piece of sponsored content on the news feed so there's a couple things number one it should be visually driven not text heavy it should be eye catchy and it should be contrasting to the feed your branding should be prominent if you notice in this ad it's on the top left hand corner you can see user testing the logo is right there usually people read left to right in the u.s market so it's always good to have the logo and the branding up front on the left hand side the key message here is is your brand still relevant that is a strong headline whenever possible you want to have your headline benefit driven so people see you know what is again the benefit of you know this communication of this brand and is it worth my time and also as a best practice you always want to have a call to action button within the visual part so you can see in this one it says get ebook it's very descriptive now a pro tip is whenever you have statistics and graphs use that because it's very visually thumb stopping on linkedin because people are in an information seeking mindset often on the platform also whenever possible test using brackets in the headline as that usually tends to see better click-through rate performance now one example that i like here is slack's ad because it has all the elements i basically just mentioned you see their logo prominently placed you see a benefit led headline it says respond to leads 21 faster with slack and the cta button's right there and it's descriptive it says watch now so i have i know that this is a video of sorts and then on the right hand side there's a visual that you know i'm i'm getting like targeting or precision i'm getting this visual that that helps to support the key message of being faster and and sort of precise now the next ad i want to share with you the second of three uh this one is from outreach.io which i really love their ads once again you see the logo top left corner you see the key message that stands out and a visual on the right hand side that helps to support the communications and then a cta button that's also descriptive it's telling you where you're getting an ebook so there's no confusion when you click on that and then their headline says grab your your copy of the ebook today so overall you know a pretty good ad within best practices now the last one i want to share with you is one that i'm actually running for one of my clients you know we have most of the best principles in here the first thing you see is get get more from your content and it's a learn more cta there's a visual on the right hand side and you know it's very bright colorful it pops from the feed very effective and this is a retargeting ad and we've seen a ton of great success from this ad so those are three you know ads that encompass you know these best practices that hopefully will help you craft some more effective advertising on linkedin now if you want some more information how to make your linkedin ads and facebook b2b ads more effective i've put together a b2b cheat sheet that has a deeper breakdown of creative best practices from both static and video and it has a few examples in there actually has a lot of examples in there for both so that you can make better creative that can increase the conversion rates of your campaigns and can help you be more effective click the link below i'm going to put in the description for you guys and grab your copy today according to the latest survey from emarketer which asks b2b marketing professionals what marketing tactics they use the most social media and social media advertising were listed at number two with over 75 of the respondents raising their hand now if you don't feel fully confident with your 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first hand i definitely recommend the course it's amazing it's easy it's quick and it's really simple to understand so social marketing that converts comes with a 100 30 day money back guarantee to the ensure that there is absolutely no risk on your part at all increase your confidence in your social marketing strategy or have every single penny back now if this interests you and you want to celebrate your business growth with a clear approach and step-by-step guidance then click the link on the screen or in the description below to find out more about social marketing that converts either way i've hoped you've enjoyed this video and if you do join social marketing that converts i look forward to seeing you inside until the next video peace [Music]

Channel: Market & Hustle

Views: 14,603

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: linkedin ads 2021, linkedin ads 2021 strategies, linkedin ads b2b, linkedin ads b2b lead generation, linkedin ads b2b lead gen, linkedin ads strategies 2021, linkedin ads lead generation 2021, linkedin ads lead gen 2021, best linkedin ads, best linkedin ads 2021, linkedin advertising, linkedin advertising strategies, b2b linkedin marketing, b2b linkedin lead generation, linkedin lead generation

Id: ImO6WxMFW5w

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021