LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Review 2023

What Marketing Services Does LinkedIn Offer?

Many businesses take advantage of several marketing services offered by LinkedIn, including:

• Sponsored Content (Single Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads)
• Sponsored Messaging (Message Ads, Conversation Ads)
• Dynamic Ads

As a part of the above marketing services, there are specific marketing tools which companies can choose from to best promote their business:

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
• Lead-Generation Service
• Sponsored InMail Service
• Display Advertising
• Recruitment Ads*

*Excluded from this review because it’s not part of LinkedIn’s business-to-business (B2B) PPC or display advertising.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is another kind of promotional media. It's created by an influencer or publisher, but it's paid for by an advertiser. The best way to utilize this type of marketing is to find a company or influencer who has the same target audience as your business.

PPC Advertising

Businesses use PPC advertising to drive online traffic to their websites. With this marketing method, an advertiser pays a certain amount of money to the publisher whenever someone clicks on an ad.

With a conversion rate of 6.1% in the U.S., LinkedIn is staying ahead of the competition. In comparison, Facebook only has 4.7% and Instagram has 3.1%. While LinkedIn’s PPC advertising cost varies by advertiser, the platform requires businesses to bid a minimum amount of $2 for campaigns focused on the cost per click and cost per impression. Businesses typically pay around $5.26 per click or a rate of $6.59 per 1000 impressions.

Lead-Generation Service

LinkedIn also offers marketers the option of using lead-generation forms on its platform. So how does this service work? Whenever a LinkedIn user clicks on an ad within the platform, LinkedIn automatically populates a form with the user’s profile information that they can then opt to send to the advertiser with just one click.

This saves the user's time as they don’t have to manually complete a full form for more information. It also provides an efficient way for businesses to receive detailed, accurate, and full information about potential leads.

Sponsored Messaging

Sponsored InMail Service

Sponsored InMail is another great B2B marketing service available from LinkedIn. This service allows a company to create and deliver a message to the LinkedIn inboxes of its potential customers, which LinkedIn targets based on their interests.

Sponsored InMail is one of LinkedIn’s top marketing services because it allows a business to distribute brand messages to its target audience without needing each recipient’s email address.

Dynamic Ads

Display Advertising

Businesses use display advertising — a form of online ad that combines images, videos, and text — to boost their brand awareness.

LinkedIn’s display ad service allows businesses to find and engage with the right customers by purchasing guaranteed impressions from the platform. This service also enables businesses to reserve their preferred customer audience at a fixed price — an impressive feature.

What Are the Pros and Cons of These Services?

Based on our research, here are the major pros and cons of using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

Pros:

• It Has a Large, Diverse Audience. With more than 660 million users, LinkedIn is among the world’s largest professional, online platforms. With such a diverse and impressively large audience, LinkedIn enables businesses to connect with potential customers, partners, and investors via its marketing services.
• It Enables You To Target the Right Audience. LinkedIn’s marketing services also allow marketers to tailor their efforts to specialized target audiences. For example, the Sponsored InMail service enables marketers to send customized messages with call-to-action (CTA) buttons to LinkedIn users that meet their target audience criteria. Yet, despite its highly focused targeting capabilities, LinkedIn often doesn’t deliver the return on investment most marketers expect.
• It Helps You Build a Strong Online Presence. By using LinkedIn’s display ads and other marketing services, businesses can build a strong presence within this online professional marketplace. A strong presence on LinkedIn can, ultimately, help companies attract more investors, customers, and business partners.

Cons:

• It Can Be Expensive. As previously noted, LinkedIn’s marketing services aren’t cheap. As such, they may only suit businesses with big marketing budgets.
• Its Users Mostly Seek Jobs. Because LinkedIn is primarily a platform for job-seekers and recruiters, most of its users may have little interest in your marketing messages. This is a major drawback that can significantly reduce the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Do These Services Provide Good Value?

Managed campaigns, which are sold through a LinkedIn account team, are priced using either a cost-per-click (CPC) or a cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions. Advertisers decide on the pricing methodology that works best with what they’re hoping to achieve with their campaign goals.

What’s the Minimum Cost To Advertise on LinkedIn?

For self-service ads available through LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, the minimum costs are:

• $10 per day per campaign
• $10 total per campaign (This is an optional feature for Sponsored Content.)
• $2 per bid for CPC or CPM campaigns

Note: The minimum CPC or CPM bid for Sponsored Content varies, depending on the target audience.

What Are Some Best Practices for Managing LinkedIn Advertising Costs?

In general, your business website will receive more clicks and impressions as you spend more on LinkedIn's advertising services. But, to ensure you manage your budget carefully, follow these best practices:

• Set a Total Budget. You can set a cap for your advertising budget before you start a campaign. This prevents you from spending any more than the specified amount because LinkedIn will stop the campaign automatically when it reaches that limit.
• Set a Daily Budget. Alternatively, you can choose to set a daily budget limit for your advertising campaign. This approach works better for slow and steady advertising.
• Place Realistic Bids. LinkedIn, like other ad platforms, lets you choose your target audiences and decide on how much you’re willing to pay. It works as a second-price auction where LinkedIn chooses the winner according to not only the highest bid, but also past ad performance. Only bid the maximum amount you’re willing to pay. Then, depending on other bids, LinkedIn will spend your budget as effectively as possible.

Does a Better PPC Advertising Option Exist?

Both LinkedIn and Amazon perform below average in the area of PPC advertising. Despite marketing claims from both companies, businesses generally see better results with Google PPC and display ads (from Google Ads) as well as Facebook Ads.

Overall Rating – 4/5

Value – 3/5

Based on our research, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions make a good fit for established businesses that can afford high-priced marketing services. While the platform offers many good marketing opportunities, those opportunities cost a lot when compared with most other digital platforms.

If you want affordable marketing tools, LinkedIn might not be the right choice for your business.

Ease of Use – 5/5

It’s very easy for marketers to find information on LinkedIn about other companies — whether they want to research competitors or prospective customers and partners.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions also provides an intuitive analytics page that delivers useful insights. With just one click, for example, you can track and compare visitors to your business website.

Customer Service – 5/5

LinkedIn customer service has an excellent reputation. In our experience, LinkedIn’s customer service representatives are eager to help and can answer any concerns you might have. For example, they quickly addressed our questions regarding strategy, best practices, technical issues, and more.

Strong customer service is essential because it’ll help your business get the most benefit from its marketing service providers.