How to Use LinkedIn Ads to Grow Your Business

Advertising is an industry seeing a lot of change recently. Yet, ROI from advertising is one of the easiest ways to get traction. Especially, when you advertise on LinkedIn.

This week’s guest on the B2B Revenue Executive Experience podcast is AJ Wilcox, a digital marketer who started B2Linked in order to help clients scale high-performing LinkedIn ads. What many people don’t realize is that when LinkedIn ads are done correctly the results are absolutely staggering.

AJ got his start in marketing during college when he heard a guest lecturer speaking about SEO and marketing. After learning Google ads and building websites for about seven years, he got hired at a new position where he was assigned to work on LinkedIn ads.

Little did he know, he was really good at it, and grew their account to be the largest sales account on LinkedIn in the world. A few years later he started B2Linked. Today, you can hear tips on how to make the most of LinkedIn ad campaigns with an industry leading expert.

Why LinkedIn versus Google ads?

One of the first questions that would-be skeptics ask is, why not just use Google ads?

AJ sat down with us and explained how he answers this question.

Google is a search channel where leads specifically look to find you. These are hot deals, who are ready to buy tomorrow, but they aren’t always qualified to buy.

However, when you shift gears over to LinkedIn, you can tailor your ads to the people who are decision-makers.

Think about all of the LinkedIn filters. You can get your offer in front of the right pair of eyeballs, making it a much more valuable means for finding potential fits for your company’s leads.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that LinkedIn ads are expensive, so it’s important to use your advertising dollars wisely.

“One thing you should know about LinkedIn ads is that they are pretty expensive, you are going to
pay between $6 and $9 per person that clicks on your ad.”

AJ Wilcox, Founder of B2Linked

How can you know if your customer is a good fit for LinkedIn ads?

If you know that you are going to make thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the customer, LinkedIn ads are worth it.

Admittedly, nurturing takes a little longer with LinkedIn and that can make it difficult to get right in the beginning.

However, you can always optimize your ads by watching how many people click on your ad, before optimizing it.

Depending on how long it takes your sales team to qualify the leads, you can get highly specific feedback on how well your ads are performing, in order to continue optimizing.

“I ended up growing that account to become LinkedIn’s largest sales account worldwide.”

AJ Wilcox, Founder of B2Linked

AJ explained how one of his clients working in HR was diversifying their content and nothing was working for them. After four months their cost per click was $120. Then, they launched a new lead magnet which identified their pain points and that number dropped to less than a fraction of what it was costing them.

Pitfalls to avoid during campaigns:

1. There is an option LinkedIn enables by default called “Audience Expansion”

1. No one should be ticking that box, so you have to uncheck it.

1. On social media, you have to focus on your audience, not keywords.
2. Instead of naming a campaign after a piece of content, name it after an audience such as “CIO’s Company Size 500 and above” which will help you break down campaigns by the persona you are targeting.

Finally, find the problem you are solving by creating the right type of content for positioning your brand.

AJ reminds listeners that if you ask someone to join a webinar it’s asking for a lot.

AJ shared that it is absolutely vital to the success of your campaigns to identify the correct problem you are trying to solve. Otherwise, your clients and customers won’t be drawn to your ad, which could prove to be a costly mistake. It also will use up a lot of valuable time, as LinkedIn is a slower process than other types of ads.

However, the investment of time and money can well be worth it.

This post is based on a podcast interview with AJ Wilcox from B2Llinked. To learn more about how you can use AJ’s expert tips to enhance your LinkedIn ads, listen to today’s podcast, and many more like it, subscribe to the B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.