LinkedIn makes its ad offerings pretty clear and straightforward, but there are a few ways you can max out your opportunities and make yourself stand out from the competition. Here are more than 30 tips to help you nail down your LinkedIn KPIs, develop the strongest creative, produce talked about content, keep your campaign strategies fresh, make sure your message is cohesive, and always stay on top of trends.

Know Where You’re Going

Even the most seasoned marketers with years of experience and millions of dollars budgets can get off track with this one. Before you allocate one dollar to anything, here’s your friendly reminder to make sure you know what you want to accomplish. You don’t have to have the exact answer on how you’re going to get there — that’s why marketers enjoy such solid job security — but you definitely want to know what that final destination is so you can map yourself there. Get your KPIs written down, then share them with everyone who’s responsible for them in any way. That way you can ensure you all have a shared vision.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager has loads of metrics, but only some of them will matter to you. Your job is to match the desired KPIs with the metrics that will tell you if you’re headed in the right direction and at a good speed. Used These Pointers to Create Sponsored Content

LinkedIn provides some great best practices tips for how Sponsored Content should look, feel, and sound that go beyond generic image specs. LinkedIn wants marketers to succeed in their campaigns, so it’s worth memorizing these tips and incorporating them in your ads. Here they are in summary:

Sponsored Content

• Use genuine-looking images. Stock photos are a turn-off for consumers.
• Keep copy short — under 150 characters (although it never hurts to test longer form, just to have comparative results).
• Stay focused on your top fans and what they’ve shown a liking for.
• Always use the LinkedIn Insight Tag to measure site visits or conversions.

Text Ads

• Make your CTA strong and clear
• Go all-in on a super strong headline
• Always keep your customer, and his or her desires top of mind
• Keep descriptive copy under 70 characters. Anything over 100 characters could be truncated on desktop.

Sponsored InMail

• Personalize the note as much as possible by using the recipient’s name multiple times.
• Don’t write a novel — Keep the text to under 800 characters.
• Include the same clear CTA several times throughout the note.
• Introduce the solution you’re solving early — preferably in the subject line to increase opens.

Provide Followers With Valuable Content

If you feel like you’re churning it out, chances are that’s exactly how it’s coming off to your readers. Customers want to see that you’re able to provide something unique that they can’t get elsewhere — that should be represented in your products and your advertising. Here are a few tips to help you stand out from the competitors.

• Demonstrate your expertise. Instead of simply sharing links to industry news, give it context with your own views. What insights can you offer based on what you or your company does?
• Become a go-to hub. Every word that you publish doesn’t have to be original. Decide what your niche topic is, and then share information your audience will find interesting and useful.
• Repurpose your own content. Again, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time a post is scheduled. There’s likely lots of content already available, you just need to find a way to shape it for the LinkedIn audience. Take a look at your blog, website, past and upcoming events, customer testimonials, staff interviews, etc.
• Mix up your media. Most everyone stares at reams of text all day. Give potential customers a break with other media types like videos, audio, infographics, etc.

Infographic from Visual.ly

Stay Out of Ruts With New Marketing Tools

Just when you start getting comfortable with a strategy is when you should start looking to shake it up. Take what you’ve learned so far, refresh yourself on the latest trends and product updates, and then optimize. LinkedIn provides a few different easy tools to help you extend campaigns and use new ways to reach new audiences.

Try Lead Gen Forms to collect even more qualified leads. This feature pulls LinkedIn profile data (like job title, company name, and contact details) into a form that members can submit with just a couple of clicks. Lead Gen Forms are currently available for Sponsored InMail and Sponsored Content. In addition to making it easy for an interested party to share their info, Lead Gen Forms also help you:

• Prove the ROI of your lead gen campaigns — Track your campaigns’ cost per lead, lead form fill rate, and the number of leads you’re getting from specific professional audience segments.
• Access and manage your leads with ease — Download your leads from Campaign Manager or integrate with your preferred marketing automation or CRM tool.

Gif from LinkedIn

Reach people similar to your target audience with Audience Expansion. You can increase brand awareness, engagement, and discover new LinkedIn audiences more easily. LinkedIn provides this example to explain how the feature works: “For example, if your campaign targets members with the skill “Online Advertising,” Audience Expansion may expand your audience to members who list the skill “Interactive Marketing” on their profile. This means you can discover new quality prospects and automatically drive them into your marketing funnel.”

Use the LinkedIn Audience Network to expand your reach beyond LinkedIn and engage your audience wherever they’re active online. If you want to go in-depth on the Audience Network, check out our blog post here. In summary, the LinkedIn Audience Network is an advertising feature that helps you improve the reach of your campaign and get more impressions by serving up your ads beyond the LinkedIn feed on third-party apps and sites. It lets marketers reach their audience in places outside of just LinkedIn’s feed.

Match Your Landing Pages to Your Ads

And by George, make sure the pages are optimised for mobile. Often, brands get so focused on the campaigns and the associated creative that they forget to take a look at the whole story to make sure every chapter makes sense. If you’re sending someone to a landing page, you better make sure it feels like a continuation of the campaign and not a wrong URL. We have a few great blogs on this topic: How To Extend Your Ad Copy Into Converting Landing Pages and How to Personalize Landing Pages for Increased Conversions.

Be A First Mover

Customers are attracted to the companies that are always on top of everything and in turn, are making a name for themselves. Subscribe to industry news and keep a pulse on platform trends, product announcements, and new ad capabilities.