LinkedIn Ads are a seldom discussed but VERY powerful ad platform. Below I will outline a case study of a campaign I ran on LinkedIn with incredible results.
Lets start with the major drawback right off the bat – LinkedIn Ads are quite expensive! I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “Well, what does very expensive mean?”. Here are some numbers from one of the most successful campaigns I’ve run on LinkedIn:
As you can see, the CPC was just under $5. That means selling something for $20 is not likely to work. However, if you have a product or service with a very high price-point or a high customer lifetime value, LinkedIn can be a great way to reach your ideal audience.
What Differentiates LinkedIn Ads from other traffic sources (Like Facebook)?
There are a couple things that make LinkedIn Ads different from a lot of the more popular traffic sources like Facebook and Google.
- People are using LinkedIn specifically for Business – this one is HUGE. Intent is so important when it comes to generating leads and sales. I’ve found that leads generated from LinkedIn are much higher quality and higher intent than those coming from Facebook. This makes a lot of sense though because LinkedIn is a business platform. People are using LinkedIn to network professionally, generate more business or look for a job.
- Targeting options that can’t be found anywhere else – Facebook has some really powerful targeting but some of the things you can target on LinkedIn can’t be found on any other ad platform. Here are a couple I’ve used:
- Company size – This one is really important for service providers looking for new clients of a certain size or for SaaS offerings where a company too big might have someone internally to do the work the SaaS completes.
- Job title – You’re selling to the C-suite and need to speak directly to the CFO or Controller? No problem, you can do it with LinkedIn Ads and completely bypass the gatekeeper.
- Member Groups – This is my “secret sauce” on LinkedIn and what I was using in the campaign I shared above to generate amazing ROI. There are groups on LinkedIn which allow you to target people that you could never find any other way. The example campaign above was for acquiring new partners for a browser extension software. These partners have all sorts of titles, education, etc BUT almost all of them were members of 3-4 different LinkedIn groups specifically for people in the browser extension industry.
Case Study Results
As discussed, this campaign was created with the intent of acquiring new partners for a browser extension. These partners would bring existed users to our technology and a single partner could be worth $10k/mo pretty easily. The campaign above ran for about 6 months and was responsible for 4 new partnerships which added over 1,000,000 DAUs (daily active users) to the browser extension user base.
Each user was worth $0.006/day. That makes 1,000,000 users worth $6,000 PER DAY. As you can see, the total spend was under $8,000 and 2 of the partners stayed on for over a year. While I can’t give you a precise ROI percentage, it was obviously very substansial.
Who Should Use LinkedIn Ads?
To recap, LinkedIn Ads are great for products or services that have a high price or customer LTV. They are also a great fit for campaigns whose targeting is so specific that other ad platforms have a hard time providing appropriate targeting. Here are a few examples of things I could see working very well on the platform:
- High-value SaaS software ($99/mo or higher)
- Enterprise hardware or software
- Advanced education (certifications, classes, etc) targeted to specific professions
- Luxury goods and services (you can easily target CEOs of 100+ person companies, doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc)
- Any business related partnerships where a single partnership could be worth $10k+
If you think LinkedIn Ads make sense for your product or service but need some help getting started, Contact Us for help!