I am sure that when you think of advertising on Social Networks the first choice is Facebook or Twitter and why not these two channels do give brands a great chance to showcase their product to potential customers in different ways. However let's not forget the underdog over here LinkedIn, LinkedIn may not be as popular as Facebook and Twitter but with more than 100 million users LinkedIn does provide you an opportunity to present your product to the best brands on the network at much cheaper rate than say Facebook ads.
LinkedIn PPC uses demographic targeting similar to what Facebook advertising uses and is known as LinkedIn Direct Ads. LinkedIn is the perfect platform for B2B advertising. You have the whole business market, you can target specific industries with specific offers, and you can decide which level of executive will see your ad. I would call this at least on paper the most perfect scenario for marketing. LinkedIn as earlier said is a B2B network so the way ad targeting works with LinkedIn is also more professional. When advertising with LinkedIn you will have to decide on various criteria's so that you can reach your target network. So let's look at what are the things that you need to get started on LinkedIn.
Select the geographical market that you want to target with your ad such as UK, India, and Canada. You can select a continent, country and select even a city when deciding the market for your product.
Select the companies that you want to target along with the job titles that should see your ad. For example if you want CEO's of specific companies to see your ad then you can decide on that.
Define the age and gender group that you want to target for your product.
If you want specific members of a LinkedIn group to know about your product even that is possible.
While these are the defining points while placing an ad on LinkedIn its important to understand that advertising on LinkedIn is not an easy task, you are trying to get someone who is searching for a job to buy something. This basically means your content has to be at the top level and you need to be innovative with LinkedIn ads. The thing with LinkedIn advertising is that with LinkedIn impressions are not content specific, they are user specific. LinkedIn tracks your click through rate once your ad reaches a certain threshold. So if you want to track how your ad is faring on LinkedIn you need to make sure that you know the exact math of how it works (we are not sure of the threshold so we would not like to comment on it). So when you are considering where to place your social media ad, think about the value of the LinkedIn network where you can target specific people, companies, and decision makers.
