By Chris Linnehan
When your bank expanded your marketing efforts into the digital advertising space, you likely started your campaigns on Google, expanded to Facebook and have maybe even moved on to test campaigns on Bing. These are all fantastic platforms to start on. But where should you turn when you want to continue expanding your digital advertising to a new audience?
LinkedIn is often the overlooked social media platform when it comes to advertising. But if it is used properly, it can be a huge lead generator for your bank. According to LinkedIn’s statistics, four of five LinkedIn members drive business decisions and LinkedIn is the #1 rated platform for B2B lead generation by marketers.
The reason LinkedIn is so successful among B2B marketers is due to the targeting capabilities that they can offer. Users can be targeted by: Job title; job function; seniority; company name; company size; industry; and skill.
This is valuable for anybody who wants to target specific decision makers within organizations or target small businesses in their area.
In this article we will dive into LinkedIn ads and how your bank can generate more commercial lending leads by utilizing the platform effectively.
If your bank offers business lending and business banking services, here are some tips to help you attract more qualified leads using LinkedIn advertising.
Like most advertising platforms, LinkedIn offers a few different types of ads to choose from, ranging from display ads and text ads to conversation ads.
Sponsored content ads. Sponsored content ads are the most common types of ads that you will see on LinkedIn. A brand can place an ad directly into a user’s feed as a sponsored post (the most active area for all users).
Among sponsored content posts, brands can choose single image ads, video ads, dynamic ads, carousel ads and event ads.
LinkedIn recommends using sponsored content if your brand is looking to accomplish any of the following: Increase awareness of any new events or initiatives, generate leads, increase qualified traffic to posts or pages, boost followers, and generate more engagement with prospects.
You have likely seen sponsored content on your own feed, such as this example from LinkedIn:
As you can see, the post is naturally embedded into a user’s feed and looks like native content. If you look a little closer you can see that it is a sponsored post.
Best practices. Per LinkedIn, there are ways to make your ads stick out more to users and small things that you can do to increase the chances of a successful campaign, including:
- Write ad headlines that are under 150 characters. Short headlines lead to more engagement
- Try to keep post copy under 70 characters. Anything over 70 can be shortened on desktop.
- Setting image size at 1200 x 627 pixels is recommended. Content with larger visuals tends to get up to 38 percent higher CTR (click-through rates).
When writing a call to action make sure you are being as clear as possible. You want your audience to know exactly what you are promoting.
Sponsored messaging. Message ads allow brands to send messages directly into a user’s inbox to help increase leads and traffic and provide users with a more personalized experience. Similar to sponsored content, there are two options when deciding on a sponsored messaging campaign.
Message Ads. Similar to an email campaign, you can communicate directly with your prospects without any character limits. Messages are sent directly to a user’s inbox so they are more likely to stand out. LinkedIn reports that one in two prospects open a message ad on average.
Example from LinkedIn:
Conversation ads. Similar to message ads, conversation ads are sent directly into a user’s inbox. Conversation ads allow you to set up multiple call to actions so users can access the information they are interested in by selecting it within the chat.
Conversation ads allow you to create a more personalized experience for your prospects and allow you to automate multiple responses and options for your prospects to engage with.
For both message and conversation ads, LinkedIn allows you to create lead generation forms that live right in the message / chat and auto-populate with the user’s LinkedIn profile information.
Example from LinkedIn:
Best -practices for message ads include:
- Ensure the profile that is sending the message is complete and looks legitimate.
- Use a friendly face!
- Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to launch new ads.
- Start message off with an introduction and a clear reason for reaching.
- Keep copy short and concise (under 500 words).
LinkedIn has slowly become more and more popular in the digital advertising world and is not only limited to business banking products. The platform can offer your bank successful brand awareness campaigns, campaigns to get more LinkedIn followers and much more.
Chris Linnehan is an affiliate marketing manager at Oak Digital Agency.
