Digest...
Targeting
Hands down LinkedIn has the most accurate targeting of any ad platform. Sure, Google has wider reach and Facebook has more categories, but for pure targeting, nothing beats LinkedIn. This is because LinkedIn users input the targeting data themselves; if they work in a bank, they put in their profile that they work in a bank.
Audience sizing
Now this is cool. When you're building your ad - before you have even paid anything - you can see exactly how big the ad audience is going to be (if it has over 1,000 people).
Self-service tool
LinkedIn does not have the most sophisticated ad engine (both Google and Facebook have more functionality), but it does the job. You can put multiple people on one account, collaborate on ads, and easily do multiple versions of an ad in one campaign. They also offer a dashboard to keep an eye on ad performance and a button to turn both ads and campaigns on and off.
The ads
The first complaint for those who start using the platform is the ad size. You are strictly limited to a 25 character headline, 75 characters in the body, and a 50x50 image. With a bit of work, though, it is certainly possible to deliver an effective ad within those constraints.
Managing a large number of campaigns
The self-service tool was clearly designed for the small-scale advertiser in mind. It handles your every need until you reach about 50 campaigns, and then the problems start. For one, every time you go to the ad tool you see every campaign - even those you have hidden. Also, spreading your campaign info across multiple pages makes getting a quick overview hard - and sometimes the ‘next page’ links don’t work. Finally, the absolute worst aspect of the self-service tool is ‘Duplicate Campaign.’ For some reason, LinkedIn forces you to pick the campaign to duplicate in a pop-up with a randomized list of all previous campaigns - with four campaigns per page. It's awful.
Cost
And finally, the biggest issue marketers have with LinkedIn is its high minimum CPC (US$2.00) and daily minimum per campaign (US$10). But this can be overcome as well. Although, you cannot change the minimums you can run your ads with a $2 CPM. Then, a click through greater than .1% will start bringing down the cost below $2 per click.
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