CXL Growth Marketing Course — Week 11
My CXL Institue course this week started with LinkedIn Ads. Linkedin marketing is the process of using LinkedIn to make connections, generate leads, improve brand awareness, foster business relationships and partnerships, share content, and drive traffic to your website. LinkedIn ads are intent-based and are suitable for business-to-business adverts. It works best when aligned with the BANT strategy. BANT is an acronym for budget, authority, need, and timing. All ads start with a budget; your budget determines the reach of your campaign.
Offline conversion events and delayed sales cycles are the two main challenges of business-to-business adverts on LinkedIn. Translating online leads to offline conversion is a common challenge facing several businesses; there has to be a strategy to increase online conversions. There is a fundamental difference between B2B advertising on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. On Twitter, there is a weak b2b targeting option, personal focus, and low advert cost. There is a decent b2b targeting, personal focus, and low advertising cost on Facebook, while on Linkedin, there is a precise b2b targeting, business focus, and high advertising cost.
LinkedIn ads are attractive for many reasons, but there are five reasons to advertise on the platform. The reasons are as follows;
1. UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION: LinkedIn users update their profiles regularly with their latest achievements to access opportunities. Therefore, it’s a great place to access factual information about your target audience.
2. ROBUST TARGETTING: Linkedin is one of the few platforms after Facebook with a robust targeting option. You can target people on specific career and industry information and reach a broader audience based on interest.
3. BUSINESS MENTALITY: Unlike other platforms that are meant for connecting with friends and loved ones, LinkedIn was explicitly built for career professionals. Hence, Most LinkedIn users are business and career-minded.
4. NO GATEKEEPERS: One of the reasons for frustrations among sales professionals is too many gatekeepers and bureaucracy. However, with LinkedIn, gatekeepers are almost dealt with because you can easily target and reach the decision-makers of any organization.
5. LARGER DEAL SIZES: Deals on LinkedIn are usually large because they are coming from the decision-makers. When advertising on LinkedIn, there’s a possibility of reaching the right set of audience that can bring you the most revenue.
LinkedIn has some shortcomings when it comes to advertising, some of which are a few clicks expectancy, no dayparting, no device-level bidding, and no exposed relevancy score. Although the benefits of LinkedIn advertising far outweighs the shortcomings of the platform. Linkedin is not great for all types of organizations and industries. The types of businesses that can get better results with LinkedIn advertising are B2B services/products, recruiting, and education.
There are three elements of a successful social campaign; these elements play a vital role in determining the ROI on any LinkedIn ads. The elements are the audience, the message, and the offer. A delicate mix of these elements can yield higher returns on a LinkedIn advert. Linkedin Ads come in units and formats, and the formats are determined by the type of audience you’re targeting. Here’s a brief description of the various ad units on Linkedin.
1. TEXT ADS: It’s a type of ad composed of both text and image. With a 50x50pixel image, 25 character headline, and 75 character adline, it usually records a 0.3% click-through rate. It can run solely on desktop screens.
2. SPONSORED CONTENT: It’s similar to text ads, but this time with a 1200x627 pixel image. Sponsored content ads have a 128 character introduction, 38 character titles, and a 4% click-through rate. It works well with mobile users.
3. SPONSORED INMAIL: it’s the most expensive form of LinkedIn ads. The advertiser spends an average of $0.35 to $0.85 on a pay per send bid, using a 45-day frequency cap. Sponsored Inmails records a whopping 50% open rate and works well for in-person events, special access events, and educational programs.
4. LEAD GENERATION FORM ADS: This ad is available on sponsored contents and sponsored Inmails. They also record high conversion rates because they are integrated with landing pages and other email marketing platforms.
5. LINKEDIN VIDEO ADS: Here, the advertiser pays from $0.60 to $14 for a per 3-second view. It is usually played muted and has no advanced option for retargeting.
YouTube Advertising
YouTube has over 1.3 billion daily active users, with 5 billion daily video views and an average of 40 minutes watching. People visit YouTube for three sole purposes; to know, to do, and to buy. Aligning your videos to the intents of the users is an easy hack to more video views. YouTube Advertising is similar to Google Advertising because both are targeted towards people’s intent.
There is a variety of targeting options available to advertisers on YouTube. Users can be segmented and targeted based on affinity audience, similar audience, in-market audience, custom intent, topics, keyword targeting, video, channel placements, and website and video remarketing.
A successful YouTube is always a product of diligent research. The advertiser should research friendly-keywords that reflect the intents of the audience or user. You need to have at least twenty-five friendly-keywords before proceeding with creating a YouTube Ads. With the right keywords, you can scale aggressively and high greater returns on your advertising budget.
This week is all about YouTube and LinkedIn Advertising, and it has been super revealing to me. I’m now aware of the possibilities of YouTube ads and why I should incorporate them into my growth marketing plan. Video marketing has been gaining a lot of grounds recently, and it has been predicted by many marketers to be the future of digital marketing. I’m very optimistic about implementing on both Linkedin and Youtube advertising.