Why most companies fail at LinkedIn advertising
Every B2B marketer will tell you that LinkedIn is where your prospects are, but why is it that so few are able to get LinkedIn advertising right?
I have been managing LinkedIn advertising campaigns for more than two years now with a great degree of success. This prompted me to reach out to marketers at multiple B2B companies to understand how they are performing with LinkedIn advertising.
Overwhelmingly the answers were among one of the three-
“we don’t advertise on LinkedIn”,
“we are spending money on LinkedIn because management thinks it is good, but we can’t see results”,
“ we tried for a couple of months, but saw no results and then stopped.”
Why is it that LinkedIn is the only platform where you can make targeted advertisements based on professional attributes, and still very few companies are able to do it effectively?
- LinkedIn advertising is expensive
LinkedIn is one of the most expensive advertising platforms out there. Compared to Facebook or Google where you can get clicks for less than 1€, LinkedIn campaigns often cost you 5€ or upwards. This also means that your room for experimenting is lesser, as mistakes are costlier. However if you get out of cost thinking and start thinking about results, you will soon see that while being more expensive, LinkedIn can get you much more relevant traffic and leads.
My first €2000 spent on LinkedIn got me some traffic, and 0 leads. What we wanted to do was to generate leads. It was a failure. The most common answer you hear from companies,
- Marketers give up on LinkedIn advertising too soon
My first €2000 spent on LinkedIn got me some traffic, and 0 leads. What we wanted to do was to generate leads. It was a failure. The most common answer you hear from companies,
“ we spent a few thousand euros, there were hardly any results to be seen.”
Considering how difficult it is to get good or get results from absolutely anything at all, this excuse is what it is, just an excuse.
When was the last time you tried something for the first time and nailed it?
Fortunately for me, my boss was on board with the idea that LinkedIn is where our customers are and that we needed to crack how to get leads from the platform. The political support and the budget approved got us through the learning curve and to the results. Not every marketer would be lucky to have such a supportive boss.
What are your options then? Hire in your team someone who is good or hire an agency.
We can help you avoid those costly mistakes that end the LinkedIn advertising journey for most companies, Talk to us ; )
- Few marketers have LinkedIn advertising experience or expertise
Owing to reasons 1 and 2, very few companies go ahead with advertising on LinkedIn. What this means is that very few marketers actually get enough hands-on experience with the LinkedIn advertising platform. So even when you want to hire a marketer with LinkedIn advertising experience, it’s hard to find one. - User behaviour in LinkedIn is different
When on LinkedIn, people are looking for valuable information related to their jobs, developments in the industry, etc. While LinkedIn is a good place to show a prospect a product/service that would make their job easier, marketers have to keep in mind that the prospect might not be looking right now for a solution. They are not making a high intent search like on Google while they are on LinkedIn. More importantly, making B2B purchasing decisions are much different than buying a cool product you saw on instagram.
What this means is that you cannot expect instant results or immediate purchases. In order to get leads that convert, that you have to design your campaigns in such a way that you keep educating your prospect about a problem them have, and how your product can be a solution; keep showing them your brand and its USPs until they are looking for a solution- if you do that consistently, by the time they are looking for a solution, they would remember you 😉
These are the reasons why most companies fail at LinkedIn advertising. But it does not have to be you.
We can help you figure out if LinkedIn advertising is a good idea for your company. Not convinced yet, book a consultation, it’s free.
