If you have run paid ads before, you are most likely familiar with carousel ads. They have become super popular and with good reason — they work. Paid advertising serves as a great way to showcase a brand’s products/services or to tell a story. When executed perfectly, carousel ads can significantly boost engagement, improve brand storytelling and drive higher conversion rates.
This post will look at LinkedIn carousel ads. We will examine how they work, their required specs, how to set up a carousel ad campaign and some best practices to maximise your ROI.
What Are LinkedIn Carousel Ads?
A LinkedIn carousel ad is a LinkedIn ad type that features a series of swipeable cards. Each of these cards contains an image with a heading and introductory text that can highlight a brand’s products. This allows for numerous ways to engage your target audience such as showcasing a product’s features, telling a story through visual narrative or even sharing customer testimonials.
What’s great about LinkedIn carousel ads is that you are allowed to use a maximum of 10 images and every photo can have its own link attached. This enables marketers to advertise various services/products and send users to different landing pages.
For instance, a company could use the first few cards to introduce a flagship product. They then follow up the remaining cards with complementary products or services, each linking to their respective product pages. This approach directs potential customers exactly where they need to go for more information, while also boosting engagement and increasing the chances of conversion.
Several types of content could work well for LinkedIn carousel ads including:
Showcasing different products and services
How-to guides
Educational content such as tips and tricks
Customer testimonials
Case studies
Company announcements
Even promotions
What Are The Benefits of LinkedIn Carousel Ads?
Carousel ads are an effective way to increase user engagement and highlight multiple offerings in a single advertisement. Here are some of the main benefits of using this ad type:
Higher engagement and click-through rate (CTR): As carousel ads have multiple pieces of content within them, they usually have higher engagement and click-through rates. This is easy to understand as there are various cards within the ad that can quickly garner user attention.
Versatile content capabilities in a single ad: Arguably the biggest advantage that LinkedIn carousel ads offer is that they can promote various content in a single ad format. Marketers can use multiple images to market a product and its features.
Unique storytelling opportunities: The storytelling component is the aspect that makes carousel ads different from any other ad format type. With marketers leveraging multiple cards, they can craft a compelling brand story that unfolds as the user swipes. This encourages the user to stay engaged longer as they follow along with the story, ultimately contributing to higher engagement rates.
LinkedIn Carousel Ads Specs
To create a LinkedIn carousel ad, there are a few requirements you will need to consider. Here are all the ad specifications you will need to keep in mind:
Specs for the carousel ad:
Number of cards: A minimum of 2 cards are allowed with a maximum of 10
Ad name: Maximum of 255 characters
Introductory text: Maximum characters is 255, but it is recommended to use 150 characters otherwise your text can be truncated on some devices.
Destination URL character limit: Up to 45 characters
Lead gen form CTA character limit: Up to 45 characters
Specs for each card:
Headline text: Each card is allowed a maximum of two lines before being truncated
Media formats supported: GIF (Non animated), JPEG and PNG
File size: Up to 10MB
Recommended image resolution: 1080 x 1080px with a 1:1 aspect ratio
Step By Step Process on How To Set Up LinkedIn Carousel Ads
Step 1: Sign into your LinkedIn Campaign Manager Account and select “create campaign”. Take note that in order to run carousel ads, your account will need to be linked to your company page.
Step 2: Next, you will need to choose your campaign goal. Your options will include:
Website visits
Engagement
Website conversions
Brand awareness
Step 3: After selecting your campaign objective you will need to choose your targeting options. First, you will need to select the location you want to target and then you need to choose the audience.
Step 4: The next section is pretty straightforward, all you need to do is select carousel image ad as your ad campaign format type.
Step 5: After you have chosen your ad format type, you will need to select your budget, schedule, bid type and bidding strategy.
Step 6: At this step, all you need to do is enable conversion tracking. This is an optional step, but it is still highly recommended. After this is complete, you can click save and next.
Step 7: From here, it is finally time to start creating the carousel ad. You can name your ad, fill in the introductory text, choose the destination URL and then start creating each card. It’s crucial to note that after you have saved your carousel ads, you can’t edit them again. Ensure that you double-check all your design choices as you won’t be allowed to change them later on.
Step 8: After you have double-checked everything, you can click “Create” and your carousel ad will launch.
Tips for Maximizing ROI with LinkedIn Carousel Ads
Here are some useful best practices to get the most out of your LinkedIn carousel ads:
Use dedicated landing pages: One excellent best practice to employ is to always connect your cards to dedicated landing pages instead of a home or service page. You want your landing page to directly reflect what your ad was about. Every extra click visitors need to take can cause them to drop off, which can massively impact your conversion potential.
Utilise clear and strong CTAs: Employ strong call to actions on every card that encourages the user to act. A well-crafted CTA can drastically improve click-through and conversion rates.
Add customer testimonial cards: Adding customer experiences and reviews can help build trust and credibility, helping users reach a purchasing decision.
Employ strong copy: With your headlines and descriptions use strong copy that emphasises the value clients will get from the product.
Target the right audience: Get specific with your audience targeting but don’t narrow it down so much that the group is too small. You can create the best ad, but if you show it to the wrong people it will still perform poorly. Pay close attention to your ad targeting and ensure you go after the right audiences.
Analyse metrics and adjust: Keep an eye on metrics such as click-through rates, engagement and conversions to assess the ad’s performance. If you feel it is needed to make adjustments, you can duplicate the campaign, make the changes and launch it again.
Elevate Your Marketing Efforts With LinkedIn Carousel ads
LinkedIn Carousel serves as an effective tool for brand storytelling, increasing user engagement and marketing multiple offers in a single ad. Whether the goal is to build awareness, capture leads or generate conversions, the flexibility this versatile ad format offers can help you reach your marketing objectives.
With a few best practices such as targeting the right audience, using captivating copy, dedicated landing pages and powerful CTAs, you can ensure you maximise the impact of your carousel ads. If you want to elevate your B2B marketing and are unsure how to proceed, fill in the contact form below and we’ll help you unlock the full potential of LinkedIn advertising.