LinkedIn Ads Terms
First, we will run through some basic LinkedIn Ads terms.
When we talk about leads and we talk about the cost per lead or a CPL that really is the amount of money, we’re spending to acquire one lead.
MQL is what is considered a marketing qualified lead and this is a lead that meets marketing benchmark for being considered a strong lead and this is usually done through a lead scoring system or analytics provider.
SQL is a sales qualified lead. This means that it’s moved beyond marketing and the sales team has qualified and verified that this is a strong prospect to initiate a sales cycle.
Let’s talk about why content marketing is important for lead generation and it really is a very valuable mechanism to drive demand and to drive lead generation. When you about content marketing, you really want to think of it with the marketing funnel in mind.
Of course a marketing funnel needs your team to educate, validate and convert.
When you think about lead generation, you want to make sure you’re taking the full marketing funnel into account. You don’t necessarily want to start at the bottom. If you think about in dating terms, it would be like asking somebody to marry you on the first date. You want to make sure that that the LinkedIn Ads lead is treated as a new friend. You need to make sure the person starts to feel comfortable and starts to understand the purpose and value of your company.
The same methodology should apply when it comes to content around your company in general. At the top of the marketing funnel, you have content that really speaks to the consideration phase of the buying process. The prospects in this phase are really looking to be educated on the industry potentially your company but mostly about they are looking for help for their own challenges. Good content to use in this phase includes things like blog posts, infographics, and anything that’s going to enrich that prospects day-to-day around a potential problem that they might be facing.
LinkedIn Ads Leads Nurturing
Let’s talk about LinkedIn Ads Lead Nurture.
Lead nurturing is where you get to be a little bit more solution-oriented. In this phase, prospects know they potentially need some kind of solution but they are asking you to differentiate your company and solution with content. Client testimonials are a great way to validate what you do. Share case studies, eBooks, product webinars really talking about how your solution is the right solution for them.
Once you’ve built brand equity, you have to let the prospect know about your solution and then the LinkedIn Ads lead will be primed to convert. At the bottom of the marketing funnel, you have things like demo requests, a discovery meeting with the sales team, or potentially a free trial offer.
At that point, you need very conversion-driven messaging. This is when the lead that is being converted is ready to enter into a sales cycle.
In terms of types of LinkedIn Ads content, we would suggest that you focus really heavily on the top of the funnel building brand awareness, building brand recognition and brand recall, and making sure that prospects who you are targeting really know what your company the problem you solve.
For mid-funnel solution-oriented content, we recommend allocating 30% of your media plan. And then similarly for the bottom-funnel, we would actually recommend 10% of your media plan. Ultimately it will depend on your specific business goals KPIs and internal measurements.
So, why do people come to LinkedIn? A lot of people come to LinkedIn to research and make business decisions. Almost 70% of decision-makers are researching in the day and over 30% researching in the evening. So you want to get in front of these decision-makers at a good enough frequency so that they’re able to really engage with the content and hopefully your company and sales reps.
Additionally, over half of decision-makers spend time researching on the weekends. So, you want to really consider if it makes sense to pause campaigns over the weekends where the engagement is still strong. You should consider an always-on campaign where you’re reaching people at any stage of the funnel and at any stage of the workday.
So what are those decision-makers looking to read? When we talk about the top of funnel content what you will often see works is what we call thought leadership content which is high-level content that is adding value around your industry, industry trends, and things like that.
LinkedIn Ads And Thought Leadership
Studies have shown that exposure to early thought leadership positively impacts deal cycles and decision-makers say thought leadership is a really important way for them to vet organizations that they’re considering working with in the future.
This is ties back to why that top of the funnel and creating a name for yourself in your space is really important. Almost 70% of decision-makers agree that it’s one of the best ways to get a sense of the caliber of thinking of an organization.
Creating a space for yourself in your segment as a leader as a company who takes timely stances on industry trends and who commands trust. Building your brand is essential SMBs, start-ups, and the enterprise. LinkedIn Ads can help with any business serious about B2B marketing.
According to a b2b thought leadership impact study by Edelman , only 20% of content creators said that they felt that thought leadership helped them win deals which means they are hugely undervaluing the value of their full leadership content. However, when decision-makers were asked you can see that they definitively responded that thought leadership did impact their decision to give business to a certain company. Almost 60% of business decision-makers and over 60% of the C-suite. So the C-suite is indicating to us that this is the type of content that they want to read and they want to engage with and you can kind of see why.
Targeting solution-oriented content to a C-suite executive may not be kind of what they’re looking to read in their day-to-day, they’re more interested in the bigger picture things like themes, trends and industry content.
More LinkedIn Ads Basics coming soon…
Territory.IO is a LinkedIn Ads Management Agency