Ginger Digital

LinkedIn has come a long way since its inception in 2003 as a professional networking site. It’s evolved into a diverse, wide-reaching social network that’s rife with business communication. It is also a hotspot for boosting brand awareness, sourcing job prospects, advertising vacancies & developing business contacts & relationships. It’s also a great platform to advertise your business using sponsored and PPC (pay-per-click) ads. The return on investment can be huge. 

What are LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn paid ads and video ads are forms of Sponsored Content. This is where brands can interact and engage with their professional target audience, throughout various stages of their customer journey.  

LinkedIn ads aren’t as popular a choice of PPC advertising as Google Ads or Facebook ads. However, they do possess significant benefits. They can be highly effective for B2B companies. They also have the added advantage that LinkedIn users are professionals. Usually, when active on the network users are in a business mindset. 

Like other forms of PPC or social media advertising, it’s vital to have your goals defined and aligned when executing a LinkedIn ad campaign.  

Why Run Ads on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn advertising has many quirks and unique traits which sets it apart from other social media marketing. Below are just a few of them: 

• Targeted business opportunities – one of its major benefits is how you can reach and connect with professionals and leaders within your industry. 
• Promotion of products/services – LinkedIn ads make great platforms for showcasing your products and services to a sector that’s clearly defined as your target market. 
• Networking – LinkedIn is all about networking and also makes an excellent place to promote quality content. 
• Driving traffic – this quality content can then subsequently drive traffic to your website. 
• Seamless job advertising – LinkedIn is an excellent place to advertise job vacancies. 

There are several ways you can advertise on LinkedIn. One of the most effective is to use video. LinkedIn video ads offer a strategic, creative way of reaching a professional target audience efficiently. 

Video advertising on LinkedIn is done in much the same way as Sponsored ads, InMail or Text Ads, helping businesses achieve their marketing goals and targets at various stages of their digital marketing funnel. Whether this is by:

• Developing brand awareness 
• Collecting leads with lead generation forms or clever CTAs 
• Driving traffic to post-click landing pages or website pages 

Whatever your aim, it’s possible with LinkedIn Sponsored Content video. This content can, in itself, grab your audience’s attention and encourage them to take action more effectively than with static Sponsored Content. 

LinkedIn Video Ads Best Practices

Compared to static Sponsored Content ads, LinkedIn users are more likely to watch video ads, particularly if it can grab their attention swiftly and keep them interested. 

See below an example of a video that we produced and used in a LinkedIn campaign for a client. Take a look at more videos we’ve used in campaigns on our sister company’s website GingerVideo.

Below is a short list of ways in which you can maximise the effectiveness of LinkedIn Sponsored video content: 

1. Define your main objective 

What’s your end goal? What stage of the marketing funnel should your campaign focus on? Is it awareness, consideration or decision? This will drive your choice of what video content to curate and promote on LinkedIn. 

2. Create video content based on this objective 

Different digital marketing goals require unique video content for each. Therefore, once you’ve decided on your goal, you can commission a video production company (such as Ginger Video) to create that professional, high-quality video to align with your campaign. 

3. Tell a story 

Regardless of campaign objective, your content should resonate with, and speak to your viewers. Visual storytelling humanises your brand while keeping the content professional and to the point. 

4. Include captions 

It’s a good idea to have your video narration appear as captions, as LinkedIn video ads are muted by default. However, it’s wise to assume LinkedIn users won’t click the unmute button and hear your audio straight away. 

5. Assess and measure based on your objective 

It’s vital to look at your LinkedIn video ad results, and ask yourself truthfully whether your ad met the campaign objectives you set out. If running LinkedIn ads for the first time, it’s unlikely to garner any eye-opening results because much of it is trial-and-error. 

6. A/B test it to improve it 

You’ll also need to A/B test your video ads after you’ve assessed your campaign success. This will allow you to refine and fine-tune them to drive better results. Look at the audio, description copy, headline, content type, landing pages and the video content itself and see what can be tweaked to help them perform better.  

Video Marketing and Production Specialists

Creating video ads on LinkedIn isn’t a straightforward process and is best left to a professional digital marketing company like Ginger Digital. We specialise in producing videos and distributing them on social media. So, if you’d like some assistance, or a free no-obligation review of your campaigns, speak to us as we’d love to hear from you.