We all have a love-hate relationship with ads 😓.
LinkedIn is the prime spot for every business professional, so it's practically a goldmine for B2B prospecting (I’m pretty sure you can’t go 5 minutes on the platform without seeing an ad).
So, naturally, advertising on this platform is an amazing strategy… or so they say.
Initially, LinkedIn ads may seem like a really good idea, but they have a quite hefty price tag.
But the real question is, “Is LinkedIn advertising worth the investment?”
That’s exactly why I’m writing this article!
I’ll be going over topics like:
👉 What is LinkedIn advertising?
👉 Are there any good alternatives to it?
Let’s take a deeper dive, shall we?
What is LinkedIn Advertising?
LinkedIn Advertising is basically a paid marketing tool that lets businesses promote their products, services, or content to their audience.
You can reach the right audience by targeting professionals based on aspects like job titles, industry, company size, and more.
This way, you could drive more conversions, but it’s easier said than done.
Types of LinkedIn Ads
There are 4 main LinkedIn ad formats, each serving its own purpose:
1. Sponsored Content:
Sponsored Content ads focus on delivering native ads that blend into your target audience’s LinkedIn feed. You can identify these ads easily, as they will always be labeled as “Promoted.”
Sponsored ads on LinkedIn can appear in four formats:
💣 Single image ads
💣 Carousel ads
💣 Document ads
💣 Video ads
These LinkedIn ads are a great way to promote blog posts, videos, or company updates to a wider audience.
2. Message Ads:
Message ads offer a more direct approach to engaging with your prospects. The best part is that they work really well for a more personalized outreach. These messages are usually labeled as “Sponsored.”
These ads land directly in the user’s inbox and are best used to promote events by creating personalized invites or making special offers in general.
3. Dynamic Ads:
Dynamic ads offer a lot more personalization than message ads. You can automatically launch ad campaigns and individually personalize each of those ads with the help of LinkedIn’s rich user data.
These ads are always labeled as “Ad” and are perfect for a highly targeted approach because they easily grab attention.
4. Text Ads:
Text ads are the most budget-friendly option among the four. These ads are usually displayed on the homepage of your LinkedIn account.
These ads are labeled as “Promoted” and are quite similar to Google ads. The only difference is that they cater to LinkedIn’s professional crowd.
What is the Cost of LinkedIn Advertising?
LinkedIn ads are known to blow a hole in your wallet.
The platform mainly uses a bidding system. When you launch a campaign, you place a bid and compete with other advertisers who want to target the same audience.
Generally speaking, it usually ranges from $5-$10 per click (CPC) and $5-$8 per 1000 impressions (CPM).
If you compare it to other social media platforms, LinkedIn advertising is definitely more expensive.
Is LinkedIn Advertising Worth It?
Let’s weigh the pros and cons so that you can decide for yourself if they are worth your money.
The Good Stuff:
- Laser-Focused Targeting: Easily reach decision-makers by filtering for job titles, industries, or company sizes.
- Brand Credibility: Advertising on LinkedIn lends an air of professionalism and trustworthiness to your brand. However, this completely depends on what you’re advertising (but please don’t put too many ads up; people will end up hating you 😭).
- Diversity: As I mentioned earlier, there are different types of LinkedIn ads, each having their own areas of shining, from brand awareness to lead generation to recruitment.
The Downsides:
- High Costs: With CPCs starting at $5, you can see your wallet running dry pretty quickly.
- Niche Audience and High Barriers to Entry: LinkedIn’s professional focus and premium pricing create significant challenges for many businesses. Its audience is mainly there to network, job hunt, or learn. Unless your ads are centered around that, don't expect much in return.
- Steep Learning Curve: You can’t just slap and ad on LinkedIn and think that your job’s done. You’re gonna need a clear and detailed strategy, otherwise you’d just be shilling a lot of cash for no reason.
What Are the Other Cost-Effective Ways to Advertise on LinkedIn?
Don’t worry, if LinkedIn advertising is too expensive for you there are other ways to promote your business or services.
LinkedIn Content:
Creating organic content is completely free on LinkedIn and can be just as effective as a LinkedIn ad, if not more.
You have multiple options like LinkedIn articles, posts, and newsletters, just to name a few.
This type of content allows you to build strong and genuine connections on LinkedIn, share insights, and also foster a healthy environment for discussions.
This will not only boost your engagement but also help you build credibility along with your brand. All you need to do is:
- Post Good Content Regularly: Share various industry insights, company updates, how-to guides. Just make sure it’s unique and relevant to your audience. Stay away from posting AI slop please 🙏.
- Engage with Other Posts and Comments: Reply to comments left on your posts, engage and comment on other posts that you like. This will boost your visibility and also help foster good relationships with your connections.
- Make the most of Lead Magnets: A lead magnet functions just as the name suggests. It’s basically a trade offer where you offer a valuable piece of content or make an offer and get contact information in return (leads commenting on your lead magnet).
Take a look at this lead magnet for example.
Click here for full post
From the beginning of this year, my team and I have been able to generate over 1 million impressions using lead magnets.
How much did all of it cost?
Absolutely nothing!
2. Cold Outreach:
Cold outreach helps you connect directly with potential clients.
You’ve got multiple options such as sending connection requests, InMails, and emails.
Now, here’s the catch when it comes to cold outreach: it’s quite the manual process.
You can’t just copy-paste the same messages to everyone and expect it to work (you’ll get flagged for spamming or people are gonna think you’re a bot so don’t do this 💀).
Don’t worry! There’s a solution for this; let me introduce you to SalesRobot!
It’s basically an automation tool that can make cold outreach a breeze for you. This tool mainly focuses on LinkedIn outreach but it can do emails too.
Let me just walk you through this process, don’t worry I won’t be eating too much of your time and trust me it’s all gonna be worth it.
Step 1: Connect your LinkedIn and email to SalesRobot.
Step 2: Start a campaign and import from your CSV.
You can also search for people on LinkedIn or Sales Nav and copy the URL to import those leads.
Step 3: Now, you can choose the enrich email option to get the latest email addresses of your leads.
Step 4: Now here’s the fun part. If you wanna keep it simple, you can choose to send a connection request first and then follow up with a message, email and voice note.
If you want to get a little more advanced, you can warm up your account by first viewing your lead’s profile first and then following them, liking and commenting on posts before you send them a connection request (all of this is automated btw).
Step 5: Once you create the campaign, add more steps like follow up messages or send an email. You can also set the intervals between each follow-up.
That’s it. Your campaign is ready to go, and your cold outreach is fully automated.
Oh, before I forget, SalesRobot can also hyper-personalize every message you send.
If you don’t believe me, then try it out for yourself. You can use SalesRobot for free for 14 days (you don’t have to add any credit card details, don’t worry)
The Takeaway
So, in the end, is LinkedIn advertising worth it? Well, that depends.
If you’re a B2B company with a well-made strategy and deep pockets then yup, LinkedIn ads can deliver high quality leads.
But there are other options available that can help you market your business or services which are much cheaper than using LinkedIn ads.
Creating organic content on LinkedIn, such as posts, articles, or newsletters, can help you build a good relationship with your audience.
Cold outreach, on the other hand, will help you significantly boost your networking. It allows you to reach out to a lot more people, which in turn boosts the engagement of the organic content you post.
A good way to find out if LinkedIn ads are for you is to ask yourself these questions:
- Can I afford the premium price tag?
- Is my audience active on LinkedIn?
- Do I have the time to test and optimize my ads?
If the answer is no, I suggest you use more cost-effective strategies. They give you good results and are definitely worth the effort.
That’s it from me for today; I’ll see you in the next one 🫡.
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