Are you ready to unlock the full potential of LinkedIn Video Advertising for your B2B marketing efforts? In today’s competitive landscape, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the curve and leverage the power of LinkedIn Video Ads to engage your target audience effectively. In this blog post, you’ll discover the secrets to maximizing video advertising on LinkedIn, from setting up your campaign and crafting compelling stories to optimizing for performance and leveraging retargeting. Let’s dive in and explore the transformative possibilities of LinkedIn Video Ads for your B2B marketing strategy!
Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn Video Ads offer superior targeting capabilities and the potential to drive engagement, conversions, and lead generation.
- Setting up a successful LinkedIn Video Ad campaign requires choosing objectives, refining targeting strategies, budgeting & bidding wisely.
- Crafting compelling stories with clear calls to action can help optimize performance and achieve desired results for your campaigns.
The Power of LinkedIn Video Advertising
LinkedIn video advertising has proven to be a game-changer for B2B marketers, providing heightened engagement and unparalleled targeting capabilities. Video ad campaigns on LinkedIn have the potential to boost brand recognition, consideration, and lead generation. With industry giants like Amazon and Anatomage Inc. utilizing LinkedIn Video Ads to achieve specific objectives such as attracting highly talented professionals and increasing website visits, it’s clear that LinkedIn Video Ads are an indispensable tool for B2B marketers.
Although the world of LinkedIn Video Ads can appear complex, the benefits of integrating video ads into your marketing strategy are unquestionable. Native videos, for example, are five times more likely to generate a conversation among LinkedIn members in the feed. Let’s delve into the significance of LinkedIn Video Ads and the various ad formats that can enhance your video ad campaigns.
Why LinkedIn Video Ads Matter
Given their superior engagement and targeting capabilities, LinkedIn Video Ads have become an integral part of B2B marketing, particularly on mobile devices. With the recommended video length of 15 seconds, your message can be quickly and effectively delivered to your target audience. Furthermore, LinkedIn native videos outperform external video hosting links in terms of views and interactions, resulting in a higher likelihood of engagement and conversions.
Managing LinkedIn Video Ad comments is a breeze with tools like Hootsuite, which allows users to view and interact with LinkedIn videos and comments from the same platform they use to manage other social networks. By harnessing the power of LinkedIn Video Ads, you can elevate your B2B marketing efforts, drive engagement, and generate leads like never before.
LinkedIn Video Ad Formats
LinkedIn offers a variety of video ad formats, including Native Video and Sponsored Content. Video content uploaded directly to LinkedIn platform, or created within the platform, can be called ‘Native Video’. It is basically video content which only exists on LinkedIn. These videos automatically play within the feed, capturing user attention and increasing the likelihood of interaction.
Sharing native LinkedIn video on mobile is as simple as:
- Tapping the video icon in the share box (iOS) or post button (Android) at the top of the LinkedIn feed
- Recording a video in the app or uploading a pre-recorded one
- Adding filters or text if desired.
When creating video ads in Campaign Manager, Sponsored Content can be used to promote video content that has already been posted on a LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page, while videos can also be uploaded directly in Campaign Manager for ads that have not been posted on a LinkedIn Page. By understanding and utilizing the various LinkedIn Video Ad formats, you can create compelling and engaging video ads that resonate with your target audience and achieve your marketing objectives.
Setting Up Your LinkedIn Video Ad Campaign
Setting up a LinkedIn Video Ad campaign may seem like a daunting task, but it’s a straightforward process once you understand the basics. From choosing the right objective and targeting your ideal audience to budgeting and bidding strategies, this section will guide you through the process of launching a successful LinkedIn Video Ad campaign.
Leveraging powerful LinkedIn tools, such as Campaign Manager or sponsoring an existing post, is crucial in effective initiation of your video campaign. With clear objectives, well-defined audience targeting, and thoughtful budget allocation, you can create and launch a LinkedIn Video Ad campaign that drives results and exceeds your marketing goals.
Choosing the Right Objective
Choosing the appropriate objective for your LinkedIn Video Ads aligns your ad content, targeting, and optimization strategies with your expected results. By setting specific objectives, such as increasing brand awareness, directing traffic to your website, or generating leads, you can measure the success of your video ad campaign and make data-driven decisions to enhance performance.
The campaign objectives for LinkedIn Video Ads include increasing brand awareness, encouraging consideration, and achieving conversions. However, it’s essential to avoid immediately opting for conversion objectives for a cold audience group, as this can lead to suboptimal results. Instead, consider utilizing LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms in tandem with your ad to maximize the chances of success. Choosing the appropriate objective guarantees that your LinkedIn Video Ads are customized to deliver the expected outcomes and achieve your marketing goals.
Targeting Your Ideal Audience
Leveraging demographic, firmographic, and behavioral data can help you create a well-defined targeting strategy to reach your ideal audience on LinkedIn. For newly launched LinkedIn Video Ad campaigns, a recommended audience size of 80-120k ensures that your ads reach a broad and relevant audience.
Firmographic data, such as industry, company size, job title, and location, can help refine the targeting of your LinkedIn Video Ads, allowing for more specific messaging and advertising to be directed towards particular audience segments. Additionally, behavioral data enables advertisers to monitor and assess individual user activities across multiple websites to create comprehensive profiles that can be used to anticipate user preferences and tailor ads accordingly.
By leveraging these data sources, you can target your ideal audience on LinkedIn and optimize the effectiveness of your video ad campaign.
Budgeting and Bidding Strategies
Developing a budget and bidding strategy for your LinkedIn Video Ad campaign requires consideration of various factors. These include:
- Minimum budget requirements
- Clear campaign goals
- Website traffic health
- Bid suggestions for the bidding strategy
- Budget allocation based on a 70/30 split between conversion marketing and lead generation.
LinkedIn offers various bidding strategies, including maximum delivery (automated), cost cap, and manual bidding. Understanding how the bidding process operates on the platform, as well as setting a bid amount based on your advertising objectives, testing, and optimizing ad performance, and considering the bid range suggested by Campaign Manager, can help you maximize the performance of your LinkedIn Video Ad campaign and achieve your desired goals.
Constant monitoring and adjustment of the bid amount is imperative for optimal ad performance and ROI.
Creating Engaging LinkedIn Video Ad
Creating engaging LinkedIn Video Ads is instrumental in capturing your audience’s attention and driving desired outcomes. A successful video ad comprises a compelling story, a design that works even with sound off, and clear, compelling calls to action.
To ensure your video ad is visually engaging, consider utilizing a second camera to capture footage from different perspectives or incorporating b-roll footage to accompany voiceover. Additionally, providing critical information upfront in your LinkedIn videos is of paramount importance since attention tends to decline after the initial few seconds, and viewers are more likely to watch for an extended period of time if they are captivated from the start.
Crafting a Compelling Story
Storytelling in LinkedIn Video Ads is the process of crafting a narrative that resonates with the target audience and encourages engagement. By crafting a captivating story, you can create a strong connection with your audience, establish an emotional bond, and demonstrate the people behind the brand, resulting in enhanced campaign performance, reach, relevance, and brand health.
To assess the performance of your LinkedIn Video Ads, tracking metrics such as:
- Reach
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Conversions
is recommended. Additionally, A/B testing your ads and analyzing metrics and benchmarks can help optimize your strategy for improved results.
Designing for Sound Off
Most LinkedIn members watch videos with no sound, making it essential to include descriptive images, infographics, and body language when creating LinkedIn Video Ads. Designing your video ad to be effective even without sound guarantees that your message is clearly and compellingly conveyed to your target audience.
LinkedIn suggests that sound-off videos should be kept under 30 seconds for optimal brand awareness and consideration. By adhering to these guidelines and incorporating visually engaging elements into your video ads, you can create captivating and effective content that resonates with your audience.
Including Calls to Action
Clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) are crucial in driving desired outcomes from your LinkedIn Video Ads. By utilizing contrasting colors, optimizing your CTAs through A/B testing, and engaging viewers with questions, free trials, or forms, you can ensure your CTAs are prominent and effective in driving user action.
Remember that calls to action are not only about driving immediate conversions but also about nurturing relationships with potential customers. Incorporating compelling CTAs in your LinkedIn Video Ads can help guide users through the buyer journey, encouraging them to take actions that align with your marketing objectives.
Optimizing LinkedIn Video Ads for Performance
Optimizing your LinkedIn Video Ads for performance is essential to ensure that your campaigns are as effective as possible. Through A/B testing, analyzing metrics, and adjusting your strategy based on data-driven insights, you can continually improve the performance of your LinkedIn Video Ads and achieve your marketing goals.
Monitoring key metrics and benchmarks, such as click-through rates, engagement, and conversions, provides valuable insights into the performance of your LinkedIn Video Ads and highlights areas for improvement. We’ll delve deeper into these optimization techniques.
A/B Testing Your Ads
A/B testing is a powerful tool for optimizing your LinkedIn Video Ads. By comparing the performance of two distinct ad campaigns differentiated by one variable, such as ad creative content or format, you can identify which version of the ad is more successful in reaching your desired metrics.
Setting up and analyzing A/B tests for your LinkedIn Video Ads can help you optimize your campaigns, enhance their effectiveness, and drive better results. By conducting A/B tests, you can gain valuable insights into the most effective creative elements and messaging for your target audience.
Analyzing Metrics and Benchmarks
Analyzing key metrics and benchmarks is crucial to measuring the success of your LinkedIn Video Ad campaign and identifying areas for improvement. The most critical metrics to assess for LinkedIn Video Ads performance include:
- Conversions
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Video view completion rate
- Engagement
- Ad clicks
By comparing your campaign performance to industry benchmarks, such as an average CTR of 0.42% and a video engagement rate of 1.6%, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Video Ads and make data-driven decisions to enhance performance.
Adjusting Your Strategy
Adjusting your LinkedIn Video Ad strategy based on data-driven insights is essential to continually improve performance and achieve your marketing objectives. By considering factors such as:
- Performance metrics
- Audience insights
- Split testing results
- Industry research
You can make informed decisions about how to adjust your campaigns for optimal results.
Regular monitoring and adjustment of your LinkedIn Video Ad strategy are crucial to ensure that your campaigns remain effective, engaging, and aligned with your marketing goals. By staying adaptive and responsive to the data at hand, you can continually refine your LinkedIn Video Ad campaigns and drive better results for your business.
Leveraging Retargeting with LinkedIn Video Ads
Retargeting with LinkedIn Video Ads keeps you at the forefront of your prospects’ minds and nurtures leads throughout the buying journey. Utilizing retargeting options, like video view retargeting at different view marks, enables you to re-engage prospects who have shown interest in your brand, propelling them further down the sales funnel. With video marketing, LinkedIn Video Ads become an essential tool for maintaining brand visibility and driving conversions.
Let’s explore the retargeting options available on LinkedIn and how you can implement retargeting campaigns to enhance your video advertising efforts.
Understanding Retargeting Options
LinkedIn offers a variety of retargeting options, including video view retargeting, which enables you to target members who have viewed your video ads at certain view marks and select a time frame for retargeting. By leveraging these retargeting options, you can re-engage prospects who have already interacted with your video content and guide them further down the buyer journey.
Understanding the different retargeting options available on LinkedIn and how they can be used to enhance your video ad campaigns is essential to maximizing the effectiveness of your retargeting efforts.
Implementing Retargeting Campaigns
Implementing retargeting campaigns on LinkedIn allows you to re-engage prospects and drive them further down the sales funnel. By setting up retargeting campaigns based on video views, website visits, or Lead Gen Form submissions, you can effectively re-engage prospects who have shown interest in your brand and nurture leads throughout the buyer journey.
By following best practices for retargeting campaigns, you can ensure that your efforts are impactful and drive better results for your business. Here are some tips:
- Refine your ad content over time to optimize performance.
- Create audience lists based on excluding those who didn’t complete the desired action.
- Avoid hyper-targeting by not adding too many attributes to your audience.
By implementing these strategies, you can maximize the effectiveness of your retargeting campaigns.
Inspiring Examples of Successful LinkedIn Video Ads
Examining successful LinkedIn Video Ads from various industries can provide valuable insights into the elements that contribute to a successful video ad campaign on LinkedIn. Some examples include:
- Chorus.ai
- Slack
- Content Cucumber
- Whirlpool Corporation
- SAP
- PayPal
- Eclipse Holsters
- Facebook for Business
These successful LinkedIn video ads were selected based on:
- Strong engagement and CTR results
- Improved headlines
- Clear offers with effective CTAs
- Descriptions of the business proposition
- Front-loaded key messages
- Additional CTR links within the introductory text
By learning from these examples and applying these strategies to your own video advertising efforts, you can create compelling and engaging LinkedIn Video Ads that drive results and exceed your marketing goals.
Summary
In conclusion, LinkedIn Video Advertising is a powerful and effective tool for B2B marketing, offering increased engagement and targeting options. By following best practices for setting up, creating, optimizing, and retargeting LinkedIn Video Ads, you can elevate your marketing efforts, drive engagement, and generate leads like never before. Armed with the insights and strategies shared in this blog post, you are now ready to unleash the full potential of LinkedIn Video Advertising and transform your B2B marketing strategy for success.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do video ads work on LinkedIn?
Video ads on LinkedIn are an effective way to reach a professional audience and increase visibility. They let you include more information than text or image ads, demonstrate your product in an engaging way, and help you achieve your campaign objectives.
Why are video ads good on LinkedIn?
Video ads are great for LinkedIn as they allow brands to engage viewers with visuals and stories, while also driving qualified traffic to websites or landing pages. Thus, they offer a comprehensive approach to achieving marketing objectives throughout the entire funnel.
How long should video ads be on LinkedIn?
For successful video ad campaigns on LinkedIn, videos should be kept under 30 seconds for brand awareness and brand consideration goals. Videos aiming to reach upper-funnel marketing goals should stick to a length between 30-90 seconds.
What counts as a video view on LinkedIn ads?
Video views on LinkedIn ads are measured as the number of views with two or more seconds of continuous playback, while the video is displayed at least 50% on-screen. The video should also comply with the provided optimization goals, bidding strategies and charged by information for a successful campaign.
How many ads should be included in a Sponsored Content campaign on LinkedIn?
For a Sponsored Content campaign on LinkedIn, 4-5 ads should be included.
