Prologue
The common questions about the LinkedIn ad budgets revolve around quantifying the Cost-per-click (CPC) and substantiating its value against the previous campaigns.
Marketers also question themselves on the ad units contributing maximum leads.
An introspection on all the above parameters helps marketers optimize their daily budget spent.
Making the essential tweaks with LinkedIn ad budgets is possible only when marketers can continuously monitor and optimize their advertising endeavors on LinkedIn.
Delivering optimal ROI from LinkedIn Ad spend is a consequence of managing and stretching the LinkedIn ad budget further.
LinkedIn has always been amongst the favorite platforms by B2B marketers to reach the decision-makers to optimize lead generation.
Why B2B Marketers must optimize their LinkedIn Ad Budgets
Data from LinkedIn shows that 79% of B2B marketers consider the platform to be an effective source for gaining leads and 92% of businesses leverage this social media platform more than any other form of social media advertising.
Furthermore, these marketers report that 80% of their total leads come exclusively from LinkedIn.
The following tips can help the B2B marketer’s measure and optimize the ROI from their LinkedIn ad spending:
1. Choose the Right KPIs:
Marketers need to choose the right KPIs to measure & optimize their marketing endeavors. To optimize the ad budget, marketers need to start with quantifiable goals first. KPIs such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPM), cost-per-spend (CPS) for sponsored content & tracking the number of InMail messages successfully delivered give the marketers a gist of how their content has been performing.
The KPIs for LinkedIn broadly fall under the following three categories:
- Awareness:Choose CPM to increase brand exposure.
- Consideration: Choose CPC to encourage user engagement.
- Conversion: Pick-out CPS to generate leads.
Each platform must be evaluated separately based on its unique features, algorithms, content & audience.
2. Take some Time Out to Split-test & Optimize the LinkedIn Campaign:
When launching a new campaign, marketers should always take some time out to split-test the alternate forms of advertising.
For those choosing the daily budget option, LinkedIn suggests starting with a minimum of $100 per day. For those choosing the total campaign budget option the spent budget can be $5,000 in a month.
During the period chosen, the marketers need to closely monitor the daily performance across the ad units & identify the opportunities to improve or fine-tune.
The strategies delivering the best results on the marketing investments should be chosen.
3. Bidding for the Audiences:
Audience bidding is one of the trickiest parts of managing the ad spent. It can make or mar the success of the ad campaigns.
LinkedIn audience biding starts with auctioning. The winning advertiser is selected based on the highest bid & the previous ad performances. LinkedIn campaign manager suggests a bid range to help brands create their audience. The bid ranges are highly competitive for the audiences.
Reaching the right audiences assures that marketers generate better impressions, engagements & conversions with their ad expense.
At the start of the ad campaign, LinkedIn recommends bidding one or two dollars more than the recommended bid range.
While setting the daily budget cap, marketers need to be a little liberal. For daily optimizations, ample impressions, clicks, or conversions are required for the marketers to be able to make data-driven decisions to optimize their campaigns & make the most out of their budget expense.
Regardless of the time of budgetary planning, most of the budget for ad expense needs to be allocated at the beginning of the campaign to generate an ample amount of data.
Identifying the ideal budgeting strategy for LinkedIn advertising will take trial & error.
Benchmarking the ad performance over a period & optimizing marketing ROI helps marketers achieve results that matter.
4. Personalize Separate Campaigns for decision-makers & Influencers:
B2B marketers need an influencer strategy when it comes to their campaign targeting & optimization. The marketers need to build separate campaigns to personalize their messaging & call out the specific part of the influencer audience that they are addressing in their creative.
5. Targeting & Alternative Targeting:
Targeting the right set of audiences based on the demographics, technographic, firmographic & previous buying behavior & psychographic analyses of the audiences helps in optimizing the ad campaigns.
Furthermore, A/B testing the different ways to target the same group of audiences helps in optimizing the LinkedIn ad budgets as sales conversions are optimized.
Bringing It All Together
LinkedIn is a prime platform for B2B companies looking to gain relevant web traffic, social media engagement & high-quality leads through paid social media advertising. To optimize their LinkedIn ad budgets, the marketers need to get their advertising target correct. Keeping the ad copy under 150 characters & personalizing it as per the areas of interest of the audiences helps in optimizing the LinkedIn ad budget.
Valasys Media helps their B2B clients with an array of services including
lead generation,
account-based marketing, lead nurturing, event promotion services, CRM services, list building srvices & content syndication services to help their B2B clients with their bottom-lines.
For deciphering the pathways to perennially healthy sales pipelines,
get in touch with us.