LinkedIn advertising is similar to Facebook advertising in that you can serve some very targeted ads across the LinkedIn network. Currently the LinkedIn network is 131 million people that have formed 1 million groups. Advertising on LinkedIn allows you to target people based on a number of criteria. However, there are some idiosyncrasies in LinkedIn that make it different than Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, which need some amount of illumination.

• LinkedIn uses a click through rate (CTR) floor of 0.025%. This means if you have a CTR for less than 0.025% your campaign will stop running. This is a little different that Facebook or Google that will push traffic from ads that are doing poorly to other ads that are performing well. What you need to do is actually go into your campaign and turn OFF poorly performing ads.
• It’s recommended that you only set up two ad variations. If you set up more than two, your ads will compete against each other and your campaign CTR will go down and your ads will stop running.
• Targeting can be extremely effective for business. You can target groups such as an association and employees at a certain company. You can also target a particular position at a particular company. In order to enhance your CTR, it’s extremely effective to call out the target in the ad. For example if you are targeting a company like Nike, you should use the word Nike in your ad.
• Give people a reason to click. People are show ads all day long on the Internet. What’s going to make them click? Things like saving money, or a how to are extremely effective. For example, if you are a travel company, you might consider something like $999 vacation special or Our ten ways to relax. Both can be effective depending on who is in your target audience. Someone who is more cost conscious and young in their career maybe more interested in a quick vacation while a target audience of higher level employees might want a relaxation tip.

LinkedIn ads are a very cost effective means for advertising. In our mind they are similar to a Bing ad v. Google ad. when compared to Facebook. They should be used in conjunction with Facebook, Google and Bing for a holistic ad campaign to ensure you get your message to across multiple audiences. Once you start running the ads, make sure you measure the leads and what kind of ROI you are getting from them.