Three recent changes to LinkedIn advertising

LinkedIn’s self-serve ad platform has been going through a few recent changes in the last six months. Earlier this year, company page managers and advertisers should have noticed design changes and even new tools such as conversion tracking and the ability to save target audiences. Just recently, three additional changes should have advertisers (that aren’t spending $25,000 a month) jumping for joy!

Retargeting website traffic

If you have a decent amount of quality traffic to your website, retargeting can be an expensive way to remind those who have visited your website that you exist. It is a foolproof way to reach a warm audience — an audience that already knows you — which typically converts at a higher rate than cold audiences. Facebook has had retargeting capabilities for a few years, and LinkedIn is finally jumping on the bandwagon. All you have to do is add a snippet of code to your global footer, and your audience will start building. The tracking pixel will collect visitors to your website for the past 90 days, enabling you to serve ads to this audience once you cross the 300-match threshold.

Upload lists (company and customers)

Another audience option that is now available to all advertisers is the ability to upload lists with customer data (or potential customer data). Here you have two options: (1) Upload email addresses that you’ve collected (for best results we don’t recommend uploading a purchased list), and (2) Upload a list of company names that you want to target. The ability to upload company names using an Excel file might have caused me to hear the sounds of angels singing because if you’ve ever had to manually input 100 company names into LinkedIn’s advertising platform, you probably don’t want to have to do it ever again. The ability to upload an Excel file of company names also allows you to max out at 300 companies, whereas before the update, the maximum number you could target was 100.

Lead forms

Last but certainly not least is a major update to the look and feel of LinkedIn’s sponsored content. If you are promoting any gated content on LinkedIn, listen up. LinkedIn’s lead forms are almost an exact replica of Facebook’s version, and they both provide a streamlined user experience to those interacting with your ads on their mobile device. Instead of sending someone to a landing page where they have to futz with a form to provide information in return for a white paper, LinkedIn’s lead forms will allow you to complete the “transaction” within LinkedIn’s app. Bonus points: if a user has filled out his/her LinkedIn profile, most if not all of the information you are requesting will be prefilled. The hope is that by making a user’s experience easier/less of a hassle, you’ll see a higher conversion rate.

Have questions about any of these changes? Shoot me a note at kleavey@hodgespart.com or tweet us at @hodgestweets.

Kelsey Leavey

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