LinkedIn is making news. Even thought they are not as large as some of the other SM platforms, LinkedIn is surely more effective. Their conversion rate is three times higher than the industry average - 2.74% versus .98%. This means, of all the traffic that came to the company website through Social Media Channels, the ones who came through LinkedIn had a better chance of getting converted into leads. Read the HubSpot article on this.
To add to this, LinkedIn is enhancing their Ad targeting capabilities. It has introduced new tools which will help the marketer choose who should the ad be served to. FB has had the ability for a while but with LinkedIn the marketer will get across to a different set of people altogether.
Target audience can be selected based on title of the job, job functions, industry, geography and many more such parameters. Another functionality, Follower Statistics, gives updates analytics on engagement, likes, shares, comments and more interestingly a demographic summary. Read more here.
To add to this, LinkedIn is enhancing their Ad targeting capabilities. It has introduced new tools which will help the marketer choose who should the ad be served to. FB has had the ability for a while but with LinkedIn the marketer will get across to a different set of people altogether.
Target audience can be selected based on title of the job, job functions, industry, geography and many more such parameters. Another functionality, Follower Statistics, gives updates analytics on engagement, likes, shares, comments and more interestingly a demographic summary. Read more here.
It sounds pretty alright. However, I am skeptical with regards to the LinkedIn ads. True, a potential customer's profile is full with work-related data which, in theory, should help marketers to target users over there. I've been a user of LinkedIn for at least 3 years and, honestly, I have not seen a single advert that would interest me and, thereby, "make me click" on it. This is despite the fact that my profile is full of data (both work-related and hobbies) and I log in frequently to check on my network. Today, for instance, NBA playoffs are advertised to me. This is despite the fact that I am European (we are not that big on NBA playoffs), live in London and do not have any basketball-related interests saved in my profile. To be honest with you, I don't even like basketball which I'm sure Google have learnt by now as I haven't clicked through any sites on the subject as such. What I like about LinkedIn and what I think works out well is the suggestion section which relates to anything from group recommendations to potential connections suggestions. These two seem to work out perfectly as they do fit my interests and my profile overall. Hope that marketers that use LinkedIn adverts will work out their targeting better in future. This is a chance for me to get rid of the NBA playoffs advert at the end.
ReplyDeleteBest regards,
Natalia
Actually Natalia I would love to know the number of people clicking the ad as a percentage of total impressions. I wonder how many people actually really care for these ads. I, for one, have never been enticed enough to click through into these FB or Google ads.
ReplyDeleteAnybody else reading this - Would love to know your experience on this. Are you convinced enough to check these ads out...ever?
I agree that it would be interesting to got to know how many people clicked through these adverts and for what reasons. To be honest with you, I haven't clicked on the NBA finals one but at least it drew my attention as it was relatively big (took space of three smaller adverts) and colorful (it was a banner-based advert). I do not necessary pay attention to the other ads that pop up there as they are usually much smaller and most of the time they neither match my interests nor they are aligned with my long-term career objectives. Personally, I think that LinkedIn could re-consider the positioning of the adverts on the site or at least make a research on where the ads should be located. Hence, they are placed on the right sidebar. This is just above the "Who's Viewed Your Profile?" section. To me and many other young professionals, this is the second most important area on the site as we want to keep track on how often our profiles are looked up by potential employers. Due to the fact that we usually only visit the site to check this particular section and to see how our connections grow in terms of career development. I, for instance, do not pay attention to the areas that are in close proximity to these two most important sections to me. Furthermore, I do spend some time doing researches on the Internet and, thereby, I tend to not look at the right side of the screen as this is the place where all search engine ads are displayed and I'm just used to ignore them. I think my behavior stems from the fact that when you make a research (non-internet marketing one) you just focus on relevant info and learn how to ignore data which does not contribute to the quality of your work. Search engine ads on the right hand side of the Google search engine used to be this data:). Funny thing is that I noticed that I do pay attention to ads that are on the top regardless if they are purely text based or they include pictures. Thereby, if the LinkedIn adverts were located on the top of the site I would most likely at least look at them. Besides that, it would be nice of LinkedIn to skim through my specialties section. Some of the LinkedIn members use this section to mention their career objectives etc. Skimming through this data would help marketers to profile the users better and display relevant ads on the site. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Natalia