With recent studies showing that 80% of B2B leads generated via social media come from LinkedIn, it makes sense for B2B marketers to create a strategy to maximise their efforts on this platform.
While traffic from LinkedIn may be more expensive than other social platforms, LinkedIn’s sophisticated targeting options are geared towards the needs of B2B marketers and mean that you can rest assured that the traffic you do get is high-quality traffic.
So, how can you reach your target audience on LinkedIn while keeping your costs as low as possible? The answer lies in one simple strategy - split testing!
Split testing (also known as A/B testing), involves testing and comparing different variations of each component of your campaigns in order to find out what works best.
In our experience, it’s best to create a split-testing plan before launching your campaigns, so that you have a clear outline for what you want to test, why and when. We also suggest that you should only test one variable at a time so that you can pinpoint exactly which element your target audience is most responsive to and optimise your campaign based on those results.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the key split tests you can run on LinkedIn.
Audience
LinkedIn’s audience targeting options are a dream for B2B marketers as they allow you to focus on specific elements that other platforms aren’t able to offer as accurately, such as company size, career seniority and even employees who work at specific companies.
Here are some examples of the targeting options you can layer and test against each other:
Company:
Company connections
Company industries
Company names
Company size
Demographics:
Member age
Member gender
Education:
Degrees
Fields of study
Member schools
Job Experience:
Job functions
Job seniorities
Job titles
Member skills
Years of experience
Interests:
Member groups
Member interests
We always recommend taking a layered approach to targeting so that you can hone in on exactly the right target market. Some targeted combinations aren’t allowed (e.g. job seniority and job title), so be sure to create and save your target audiences as templates in a draft campaign ahead of time so you’re aware of the limitations.
Format
LinkedIn boasts many different ad products which allow you to get in front of your target market. At present, these include:
Sponsored Content - native ads that appear in the LinkedIn feed
Sponsored InMail - personalised messages that are sent when people are online and most likely to open and read them
Video Ads - native ads that feature video content
Text Ads - simple text ads that appear in the LinkedIn right column
Dynamic Ads - ads featuring automatically personalised content
Carousel Ads - ads that allow you to tell a story across multiple image cards
Elevate - a paid employee advocacy platform (by application only)
It can be worthwhile testing how these various formats compare against each other until you find the format that works best for your objectives. With that being said, Sponsored Content is the most common type of ad and the format that we’d recommend you start out your split-testing strategy with.
Creative
Your creative is the element of your campaign that is more often than not the first thing that captures attention and will determine whether or not your target audience reads the supporting copy.
The ad format you select will dictate what you can and cannot test, but we’ve put together a general list that can help to shape your testing plan:
CTA button vs no CTA button in image
Visual of downloadable asset vs abstract imagery
Imagery including people vs abstract imagery
Charts/statistics vs plain text/imagery
Static image banner vs carousel vs video
Industry-specific imagery
Copy
On LinkedIn, your ad copy serves the purpose of enticing your audience to take action.
Depending on the format of the ad you are running, your ad may consist of multiple text elements, such as a headline, body copy and link descriptions. Again, it’s best to test one of these at a time so that you can get a true and accurate determination of what works best.
Here are some examples of copy variations you can test in your next LinkedIn Ads campaign:
Copy length
Emoji use
Using statistics
Using questions
Using benefits
Using a story
Using industry-specific messaging
Landing Page
With all forms of digital advertising, your landing page is the final piece of the puzzle ultimately the piece that will determine your success.
To have the best chance of success, we recommend testing different variations of your landing page to determine which of them drives the highest number of conversions.
Here are some landing page elements you may want to test:
CTA button (size, colour and text)
Headline copy
Number of form fields
Video vs static images and text
It’s important to note that these elements are just the tip of the iceberg. We’re firm believers that almost every element of a landing page is worth testing in the long-run to ensure your campaign budget is being used as efficiently as possible.
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Could your business benefit from a more strategic approach to LinkedIn advertising? Get in touch with Philip Martin to discover how DMA Partners can help: philip.martin@dma-partners.com.
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