A LinkedIn marketing agency’s insight on content
Looking to use LinkedIn as part of your paid social activity in vertical or account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns?
Well, here are some tips from a top LinkedIn marketing agency on what content will work, and how. In this blog we will reveal paid social agency secrets including:
- How paid content creation services on LinkedIn can boost your ABM efforts.
- What types of content a paid social media agency would use on LinkedIn.
- The tips that a content creation agency would use to capture leads.
- The keys for success in paid social ABM campaigns on LinkedIn.
Paid content creation services on LinkedIn as part of your ABM efforts
ABM is all about targeting named prospects or companies through marketing, rather than using a broadcast approach as is the case in most campaigns. Tightly targeting opportunities through ABM helps improve the return on investment of your marketing efforts and can ultimately lead to deeper, more solid customer relationships.
Since companies and executives tend to be visible on platforms such as LinkedIn, it makes sense for ABM campaigns to include an element of paid social: ad content that specifically targets your prospects. Of the paid social options you can choose from for ABM in the IT and telecommunications space, none beats LinkedIn. This is the number one social media platform for lead generation, with a community of 630 million professionals, four out of five of whom drive business decisions.
Running ABM campaigns on LinkedIn is straightforward because you can target individuals by their professional demographics, something you cannot do as effectively with any other social media platform. Tech leaders such as Adobe and Genesys use LinkedIn for ABM. And any paid social agency worth its salt should be able to provide content creation services specifically for the platform.
What content would a paid social media agency use on LinkedIn?
Unlike other social media platforms, which tend to have content tailored towards personal interests and leisure activities, LinkedIn users mean business. They use the platform to build connections and gather industry intelligence.
Because of this, ABM campaigns using LinkedIn should treat the platform like any other business communications channel, delivering messages that are concise and offer specific commercial benefits. Paid social campaigns on LinkedIn should rarely involve advertising without a call to action, although this may be the case if you are looking for brand awareness rather than lead generation.
In lead generation campaigns, you should use ads to raise awareness of assets that might be of interest to your ABM prospects, such as an industry white paper or webinar. These assets can be used for data collection, with signup forms helping you to acquire contact details and profile information regarding your prospects.
Assets need careful design to deliver maximum value for the prospect, so they can start to build trust in your brand and come closer to initiating a commercial relationship. Because of this, you may need to allocate a meaningful budget to lead generation content on top of your spend on paid social, unless you feel you already have a significant hoard of valuable assets in house.
What secrets would a content creation agency use to get leads?
A good LinkedIn marketing agency or content creation services provider should be able to advise what types of asset might be most effective for your IT or telecommunications ABM campaigns. This will naturally vary according to the customers you are targeting, and particularly so in ABM campaigns where the aim is to appeal to a single individual or group of decision makers.
However, there are some basic lessons that emerge from the vast amounts of content already published on LinkedIn. For example:
- You are more likely to attract attention if your ad or content headline includes the phrases ‘how to,’ ‘you need to,’ ‘why you should,’ ‘can learn from’ or ‘the future of.’
- After ‘how to’ phrases the best-performing headlines on LinkedIn are those that relate to lists, such as ‘The 10 keys to success…’ or ’12 things you should know….’
- Other words that have been shown to grab attention in headlines include ‘habits,’ ‘mistakes,’ ‘career,’ ‘successful,’ ‘leader,’ ‘leaders’ or ‘employees.’
- If you are not sure how many items to have in a list, the most popular number for business audiences is five, then 10, three, seven, four and six.
The keys for success in paid social ABM campaigns on LinkedIn
Any paid social agency will tell you that your LinkedIn ads need to be concise and to the point. Headlines should have less than 150 characters and descriptions should not exceed 70, according to LinkedIn. You can go big on pictures, though, with larger visuals (LinkedIn advises 1,200 by 627 pixels) tending to attract up to 38% higher click-through rates than smaller images.
Your ad should also have a clear call to action, for example inviting prospects to read a blog, watch a video, download a paper or sign up for a webinar. Another paid social media agency pro tip is to run A/B tests, comparing one variation of an ad with another to see which one works better with your audience.
Say, for example, that you are promoting a webinar with an ad that says, ‘How to keep your IT systems secure’. Would you get more interest if the headline said ’10 ways to keep your IT systems secure’? To find out, run an A/B test with both. This example highlights another key for success in paid social ABM campaigns on LinkedIn: track results and use the information to improve the outcome of subsequent campaigns.
Speak to a paid social media agency that knows all about telcos and IT
Based in Warwickshire, UK, VirtualROI is a paid social agency that has been helping clients deliver ABM campaigns on LinkedIn since 2009, working with companies from right across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We can help you with paid social, LinkedIn campaigns and targeting, banner designs, social messaging and much more. For more information, speak to us now.