INBOUND is always full of keynotes that provide information for marketers to make sure they can operate on the highest level. Keynote speaker AJ Wilcox did just that during INBOUND24: his presentation provided pro tips to improve your LinkedIn B2B Marketing strategy and make it not only more successful, but also less expensive. Sounds like information you need to have, right? But if you weren’t able to visit INBOUND24, I got you. In this blog I’ll share some of the tips he covered in his presentation.
Why using LinkedIn Advertisement is so important for B2B marketers
In the complex world of B2B marketing, success requires a delicate balance between budget, bidding strategy, and advanced targeting techniques. While many marketers are familiar with traditional approaches, savvy B2B marketers know how to play the system to get better results. With these pro tips you’re able to elevate your B2B marketing game, ensuring maximum ROI while strategically targeting the right audiences.
Pro tip #1: Get the most out of your budget
One of the key challenges B2B marketers face is balancing cost and effectiveness. LinkedIn charges like you're targeting bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) leads, but in reality, you're trying to reach a broader top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) audience. The result? Campaigns can get really expensive. However, with the right approach, you can get ahead of the game and make sure you’re getting the most out of your marketing budget. And just a heads up: it isn’t by listening to a LinkedIn Account Manager. They will most likely tell you that a lower bid will cause a lower quality of leads. But, did you know that the amount you bid has no correlation with the quality of your leads? Even more so: by lowering your bid, you can reduce costs by up to 57% on average. Here's how to achieve this:
- Avoid the default “Maximum Delivery” option: This is the most expensive delivery method and typically the platform’s default. Instead, use “Manual CPC” bidding, which is less expensive 90% of the time. Is your landing page CTR more than 1%? In that case you can use maximum delivery.
- Bid low, even below the suggested range: set your daily budget higher than what you actually plan to spend. This allows you to experiment and discover the ideal spend per day to meet your budget. Evaluate performance in 2-4 days and find out what your ideal bid should be within your budget. Bid up when you’re underspending, and bid down if you’re underspending
- Make sure you set the right advertising objectives, because the definition of a click depends on your objective. And that’s also why some objectives have much higher costs per lead. With the brand awareness goal, any click is marked as a click. Use engagement as a measurement instead and then select clicks to the landing page.
- Use the Website Conversions objective to measure real clicks.
Pro Tip #2: Use Advanced targeting tactics
Precision targeting is essential for getting the most out of your B2B campaigns. Here’s how you can refine your audience for better results:
- Target by group or skills and exclude sales, business developer and marketing job functions. This way you narrow down your audience by professional skills or the groups they belong to, ensuring you're reaching the right people. The exclusion makes sure that you’re not wasting ad spend by targeting competitors.
- Wanting age or years of experience? Use seniority instead.
- Avoid “audience expansion” each and every time. Or like AJ said: avoid audience expansion like COVID.
Pro tip #3: Up your game with advanced retargeting
Retargeting is a very useful way of targeting, because it usually has a higher conversion rate. This is due to the fact that the targeted audience isn’t completely cold.
When using retargeting you can opt for website targeting.You can use it, but it’s weak due to cookies and therefore also unreliable. Use new engagement retargeting instead. You can even create the audience for retargeting after the engagement took place. This is not the case when using website retargeting.
Pro tip #4: Use the right account structure for more effective campaigns
To have an effective account structure you should use clear titles, micro segmentation and the right audience size. How do you do this? Let me explain:
- Name campaigns after parameters that never change to keep a clear structure. For instance ad type and objective (because LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to change these after you created the campaign).
- Use micro segmentation to gain intelligence. Because this helps you to test your ads and see what ad works best for each target group. You can achieve this by using the same ads for the separate campaigns.
- Aim for the right audience size. With less than 20.000 people, it’s hard to spend anything and reach your audience. Do you have a target audience larger than 100k? Then go for focus groups.
Pro tip #5: When doing Account-Based Marketing (ABM) go for advanced tactics
There are a couple of advanced tactics you can implement when doing ABM with LinkedIn. Here are a few you can do immediately:
- Talk to your Sales team and let them create a list with dream accounts. Upload this list to LinkedIn and use it for your ABM campaign. (This is a great opportunity to boost your marketing-sales alignment).
- Exclude competitors from your target audience.
- Exclude customers when using ABM for awareness content, but target your customers when you’re promoting product updates and upsell opportunities.
- Use ABM to accelerate deals in your sales pipeline by running targeted campaigns that speak directly to prospects in the consideration or decision phase.
Become a LinkedIn Marketing Superhero!
By taking control of your bidding strategy, optimizing your targeting, and structuring your campaigns for clarity and efficiency, you can significantly reduce costs while improving lead quality. Success in B2B marketing is all about smart, data-driven decisions. Implement these pro tips to become a real LinkedIn Marketing Superhero and stay ahead of your competition.
