This review is only for 1 course in CXL's growth marketing minidegree. For all the others please head over to the index here
Background
I had never run Linkedin ads before. Heavy user of Linkedin but never used the ad platform.
My Review
AJ Wilcox is OG. He is the founder of B2Linked, an agency specializing in advertising with LinkedIn ads. Globally recognized as one of the top LinkedIn ads experts, AJ manages Linkedin campaigns for some of the largest and most sophisticated accounts worldwide. That guy is the best. He's fun, humble and knowledgeable. But again, I haven't run Linkedin ads before. So my review might be a little biased. Overall, I enjoyed the courses about channels that I have never been exposed over the courses about channels that I had been exposed to.
He takes you through each step of building the campaign similar to Tom Breeze's course YouTube ads. AJ would show you different ad combinations. You are informed where the platform tries to trick you and how avoid those pitfalls..
What I didn't like: Could be a little faster but I watched it at 1.75X and I do believe that some information could be edited out. But compared to other courses in the mini degree this one was amazing.
Info about Linkedin as a platform
4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn “drive business decisions” Source
Up-to date list: Everyone keeps their profile up to date.
Robust targeting: You can target based on seniority, levels of experience, job title, groups etc. We'll get to this soon.
Business Mentality: Most people are thinking about work when they scroll through their linkedin feed. The mindset that target users are in makes it easier for us to pitch.
No Gatekeeper: People don't hand over their linkedin profile to others on their team easily. If you send a message to the CEO, it's very likely that the CEO is receiving that message.
Larger Deal Sizes: In AJ Wilcox's experience, Linkedin closes the largest deal sizes
Caution against Linkedin
You pay $6-9 dollars per click.
You can't schedule ads to run only on certain time periods.
There's no device level bidding and there's no exposed relevancy score. You don't know how your ads perform to the others in the industry.
Who is it for?
You use Linkedin Ads in cases where the LTV (Lifetime Value) is more than $15k. Such as:
—> B2B Services/Products.
—> Recruiting
—> Education: finding students for PhD programs.
Types of Linkedin ads
Sponsored Content
These show up in your news feed, just like posts, and can be delivered as static images, videos, or carousels.
Size = 1200x627px image
0.4% CTR is good
128 char intro
38 char title
70%+ mobile user
Text Ads
Copy that appears either above or on the right-hand side of the news feed. These ads are only visible on desktop.
Size = 50x50px image
0.03% CTR is good
25 char headline
75 char headline
Desktop ONLY
Sponsored Messaging
Come in two forms —
message ads that look like an email or LinkedIn message.
conversation ads that look like a chatbot and give people action choices)
Pay Per Send (~$0.35-$0.85)
45 Day Frequency Cap (Own it!)
Send from Employee Personal Profile
~50% open rates
Dynamic Ads
Appear on the right-hand side of the news feed like text ads, but feature creative elements (like images and GIFs). These are also only visible on desktop
Lead gen form ads
Available on sponsored content and Sponsored inmail
Bypass landing page for higher conversion rates
Integrations with eloqua, marketo, liveramp other platforms through zapier
Pros: Higher conversion rate
Cons:
Difficult to work with
Poor tracking
No retargeting
Questionable lead quality
Linkedin video ads
$.06- .14 per 3-second view
Play muted (hardcode subtitles)
No retargeting
How to target your audience in Linkedin Ads?
New matched audiences
90-day cookies re-targeting
300 minimum audience
iOS devices ignored
Limited time on platform
Upload list of up to 300k email addresses to target (or exclude) Create campaigns to target only owners of these email addresses.
Create campaigns to target (or exclude) certain companies.
Advanced targeting tactics
When targeting skills or groups… Exclude Sales/BizDev/Marketing Job Functions to keep out folks who are trying to sell into these audiences.
When targeting smbs Exclude larger company sizes rather than including the smaller.
Use seniority instead of age or years of experience Age and yrs exp are both guesses. Seniority is based on title/industry
Avoid “audience expansion” like the plague Complete and utter garbage which is enabled by default
How to structure your account?
Name campaigns after audience & ad type microsegmentation:
• Bad: “2018 webinar” or “whitepaper”
• Good: “sc | marketing manager titles | us”
When in doubt, break it out
• Bad: “marketing mgr-and-above”
• Good: “marketing mgr,” “marketing dir,” “marketing vp,” “cmo” all separate campaigns
Audience sizes
• Bad: linkedin’s recommendation of 300k+
• Good: 20-80k
What content should I use?
Blog post/Infographic - least friction
Guide/Whitepaper
Ebook
Webinar
Trial/Demo - most friction
Try to test throughout the funnel - ad messaging, title of content, landing pages, improve nurture process.
Advanced retargeting?
Target net-new
> Exclude ‘converters’ and ‘landing page visitors’ from campaigns
2-step funnel
> create retargeting campaign of ‘landing page visitors’
> exclude this audience from campaign
Advanced Account-based Marketing
Sales Dream Accounts
Exclude Competitors
Exclude Customers
Product Updates To Current Customers
Funnel Acceleration
Recommended UTM Tagging for Linkedin
utm_source - linkedin
utm_medium - sponsored content - sc
utm_campaign - IT directors - Describe the audience
utm_content - lisc04171801 - Identifies the specific ad
Additional things:
> Add linkedin insights tag.
> Set CPC to the lowest amount, bid by CPC and set budget to the max number.
> Integrate data with rest of the tools in your stack.
Ad Benchmarks:
Sponsored Content
• $6-9 CPC
• .35% CTR
• 8-12% CvR (content) or 1.5-4% (friction-prone offer)
Text Ads
• $3-5 CPC
• .025% CTR
• 4-6% CvR
Sponsored InMail
• $.45 Cost per Send
• 50% Open Rate
• 8% CTR
Gather $3-5k worth of data and you’ll likely have statistical significance
to the initial conversion rate
• Gather enough MQLs to predict MQL-SQL conversion rate
• Gather enough SQLs to predict SQL-Proposal conversion rate
• The further down the funnel, the more accurate your predictions
become