LinkedIn isn’t like other social media platforms where you simply spend hours engaging with cat videos and commenting on your friends’ posts. Sure, it is a social network, and it is great for forming connections with fellow LinkedIn members, but it’s also so much more than that.
Because of LinkedIn’s unique nature of focusing on all things business and career-related, it’s a goldmine for businesses in more ways than one.
I could go on and on about the multitude of ways in which your business can utilise LinkedIn, but today I want to focus on one specific thing: LinkedIn paid ads. LinkedIn Ads are ideal for businesses offering B2B (or business-to-business) services, such as those in the tech and SaaS industries.
But I’m not just stopping there. After all, there are thousands of LinkedIn ad agencies that have information on LinkedIn Ads. I want to take it a step further, by honing on one specific part of LinkedIn Ads that I feel is underestimated and underutilised: LinkedIn retargeting, or remarketing. I plan on giving you a step-by-step tutorial on how you can really make the most of your LinkedIn retargeting campaigns.
So, if you’re on board with that, follow along! Or alternatively, watch this video.
Step one: building your audience
If you’re doing any type of advertising, you have a specific target audience in mind, and it’s no different when it comes to remarketing.
Therefore, it makes sense to start your LinkedIn retargeting campaign with your audience. This will, after all, affect all other areas of your campaign. There’s a lot that goes into this, so if you’re eager to learn more, I recommend giving this post a read.
But I won’t leave you hanging. To sum it up: you need to include the following people in your retargeting audience:
- Website visitors
- People who’ve watched previous video ad
- People who’ve engaged with your LinkedIn page
Taking the time to build a proper audience is always important, but especially so when it comes to remarketing campaigns. This is because retargeting ads tend to have smaller budgets, so you really need to make sure that you’re only targeting the right people.
You need to include only people who have already engaged with your company in your retargeting audiences; after all, that’s the entire point of remarketing. This stage is where you will select all the people previously mentioned.
However, exclusions are just as important here. Because retargeting ads have such a small budget and specific audience, you need to be picky. Push down the people-pleasing side of yourself and be ruthless in who you choose to exclude.
If someone doesn’t have enough work experience? They’re out. Not a high enough seniority? Sorry, but they can’t sit with you. Or maybe they’ve already filled a form in, in which case you don’t want to appear like a needy first date by constantly showing them ads again.
Step two: craft your campaign
Now that you have your audience set up, it’s time to get started on building your campaign. I feel like this is a good place to mention that, in case you haven’t guessed, remarketing means that you are marketing to a warmer audience – people who already know about you.
In other words, you should already have some solid ad campaigns behind your name so that you have enough data to work with when doing your retargeting ads. Luckily, this makes setting up your actual campaign a warm summer breeze.
As with most ads, you will want to make sure that you are focusing on either website conversions or lead generation, depending on your business goals.
Since this is a tutorial on LinkedIn Ads, I feel like it’s pretty safe to say that you’re going to want your campaign to get leads for your business. Whether you do this with website conversions or with a lead gen form is up to you – although I highly recommend opting for the latter if your website needs a bit of work.
P.S. This can all be done in your LinkedIn campaign manager, which you should be quite familiar with from previous ads.
Step three: make your ads sparkle
Of course, setting up your ad campaigns in the correct manner is very important . . . but it won’t help much if your actual ad creatives and copy suck.
LinkedIn has multiple ad formats, with single-image, carousel, and video ads being the most common. They also have other unique formats like text ads, which are great for cost-efficient LinkedIn retargeting ads.
Step four: make sure your ads rotate evenly
Once you’ve set up the ads you want to work with with the correct audience, you need to make sure that they are evenly rotated. This is something that is often overlooked but plays a key role, since it allows you to actually gauge your ads’ performance without LinkedIn’s bias.
In conclusion
If you’re pretty comfortable with running LinkedIn ad campaigns and you’ve gathered a lot of data from them but you’re not doing remarketing, you’re missing out.
While it may seem as daunting as trying to battle a dragon, it’s really quite simple, especially if you follow the tips set up in this post.
And a bonus tip, which I feel is applicable to nearly all marketing strategies ever: play around! Try different things, test them against each other, and use whatever data you get to guide you in the right direction for your next ad campaign.
Of course, if you still feel overwhelmed, fill in the form below to get in touch with my LinkedIn ads agency, and we’ll take care of all of this for you.
Our creative studio, Snowball Studios, can even do the actual ad creatives for you, so we really have you covered in every way!