How to Use LinkedIn Ads to Market Your Small Business

If you’ve been using paid ads as part of your small business marketing efforts, chances are you’ve used Google Ads or perhaps Facebook ads. An often-overlooked paid ads option is LinkedIn ads. Here’s a quick overview of how to use LinkedIn ads to market your small business and get more customers.

What are LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn Ads can help any business of any size reach more potential customers through paid advertising. There are over 630M active professionals on LinkedIn which you can target by job title, function, industry, and more. You can control your budget which allows you to keep tabs on your overall paid advertising budget. You also have control over the schedule of when ads start and stop. LinkedIn ads are sold by auction. You bid against other advertisers trying to reach the same audience. LinkedIn allows several types of paid ad options so as a small business owner, you can choose the type of advertising that’s right for you.

Types of advertising options on LinkedIn

With some recent changes to LinkedIn advertising, advertisers can now run campaigns around clearly defined goals, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or engagement. All different advertising options can be run from a self-serve platform, making it easy to edit as needed based on results, budget, etc. Here are the different types of advertising options available:

Text ads

Many people start with text ads because they’re so similar to Google Ads in how they work. Text ads are measured by pay-per-click or cost-per-impressions. They’re featured in the sidebar. This might be the most comfortable place to start advertising on LinkedIn if you’re ever done Google Ads or Bing ads previously.

Dynamic ads

These ads can help you engage prospects with ads that are personalized to them. As with the other advertising options, you can tailor your ads to build brand awareness, drive traffic, and convert prospects, and measure and optimize your results directly in Campaign Manager. Each ad can uniquely target its viewer with their profile photo and address them by name. Dynamic ad formats include follower, job, content, and company spotlight ads.

How to use the LinkedIn Campaign Manager

All ads are created in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager. To access your campaign manager, go to the top navigation, menu, click “Work” and then click “advertise”. Once you’re in:

Click “create a campaign”
Choose your objective
Define your audience
Choose an ad format
Determine ad placement
Select a budget and schedule for the campaign
Ensure conversion tracking is in place
Create your ad
Review and launch

The advertising platform is fairly straightforward and will step you through the whole process, or reach out to your small business marketing manager to help get the campaign set up correctly.

A few tips for creating a LinkedIn ad

Here are a few suggestions to ensure your ad is a success:

Be direct and to the point
Use a visual whenever possible
Offer a call to action
Personalize as much as possible to your audience

LinkedIn ads are a great way to market your small business to a targeted audience. As with any advertising, always measure and make adjustments as needed to ensure you’re getting the best ROI possible for your efforts.

Patty Hughes

Patty Hughes is President of Strategic Marketing Services and has over 20 years of experience in marketing and sales strategy. Having been fortunate enough to develop exceptional business relationships with both customers and colleagues throughout the years, she has been honored to help small businesses grow and has enjoyed being a part of their successes by partnering with them to establish a well-developed marketing strategy and assist in managing their ongoing marketing needs.