Although often reduced more or less to a “networking platform,” LinkedIn has the potential to help you drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, and increase your revenue. How? Through LinkedIn sponsored updates or ads.
In this comprehensive guide to LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, we’ll tackle the big questions – what are LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, how do they work, and how much do they cost?
We’ll also provide a list of sponsored update best practices to help your brand get the most out of this social content solution.
What are LinkedIn Sponsored Updates?
Also called sponsored content Official LinkedIn Help Page Says a sponsored update is “a LinkedIn page update that is sponsored in the form of an advertisement and delivered to the LinkedIn feeds of members who follow your company.”
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates are advertisements created by your company or marketing team. These are then served to LinkedIn users who either follow your Page or follow pages in the same content space.
Users can find these ads on their native LinkedIn feed. Sponsored updates usually include a combination of relevant text and relevant images or videos. This helps them blend in with similar user content rather than stand out as paid-for ads.
When designed and deployed well, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates can help drive organic interest in your brand from a wider audience of current followers and LinkedIn members.
Noteworthy? While these posts are designed to follow the format of familiar user updates, they are always labeled as “sponsored content” to ensure that there is no misleading or confusing users.
What types of sponsored updates are available?
Brands can create four types of Direct Sponsored Updates.
single image ad
Single image ads consist of an image containing text displayed directly in the LinkedIn feed of targeted members.
carousel image ad
Carousel ads contain a series of images that users can scroll through to better understand your products or services.
video ads
Video ads provide a way to incorporate multimedia marketing with in-feed videos that users can watch on demand.
single job advertisement
If you want to expand your team, you can create single action ads for your target audience. They must promote the same job opportunity and link to an active LinkedIn post.
document advertisement
Use document ads to share relevant content with users in the form of eBooks, whitepapers, testimonials, or case studies.
You can collect lead information before your document is opened or downloaded, and you can track user engagement through the number of downloads and how much your document has been read.
event advertising
Event ads allow you to promote the events you are organizing through an ad campaign. You must first create the event through LinkedIn, then convert it into sponsored content to target your desired audience.
You can also create what is known as “direct sponsored content”. These ads will not appear on your LinkedIn page or Showcase page before they are served as ads.
As a result, companies often use them to test multiple marketing approaches, see which produces the best results, and use them as the basis for more robust sponsored content updates.
How much do LinkedIn sponsored updates cost?
The short answer is that more resource-intensive ads – such as videos or carousels – will cost more than their single-image counterparts.
The long answer is a bit more complicated.
First, it is essential to understand that LinkedIn uses a bidding model for sponsored ads.
You choose and create your ad type and then specify how much you want to pay – a minimum price is in place to ensure advertisers are paid fairly. However, you will never be charged more than your maximum cap.
Individual ad providers then bid on the service, and the lowest price wins.
Your target audience and relevance score also determine ad value. For example, if your target audience is high in demand, you will be charged more as there is more competition to capture the user’s interest.
You can also reduce your advertising costs by creating contextual ads. The more relevant and content-rich your ad is, the less you’ll pay — because the better chance it has of engaging LinkedIn users.
It’s also worth considering the best cost model for your advertising: cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM). CPC means you pay only when users click on your ad and visit your site, while CPM means you pay for every 1,000 views, or “impressions,” of your ad.
If your goal is to generate brand awareness, choose CPM. Choose CPC if you have an established audience and want to increase click-throughs and conversions.
LinkedIn Sponsored Update Best Practices
Want to get the most out of your LinkedIn sponsored updates? Keep these best practices in mind.
1. Follow the LinkedIn Sponsored Updates Specifications.
Each type of sponsored content has its own specifications.
single image ad The following are required:
- Maximum 255 characters for Ad name.
- 150 characters of introduction text to avoid truncation.
- URLs containing “http://” or “https://”.
- jpg, gif, or png files that are 5MB or smaller.
- Maximum 255 characters for Ad name.
- 150 characters of introduction text to avoid truncation.
- URLs containing “http://” or “https://”.
- jpg, gif, or png files that are 5MB or smaller.
carousel ads The following are required:
- Minimum of two cards and maximum of ten.
- Each card has a maximum file size of 10MB and dimensions of 6012 x 6012px.
- jpg, png and non-animated gif files.
video ads Must be:
- Between 3 seconds to 30 minutes.
- Between 75kb and 200mb.
- in MP4 format.
- Less than 30 frames per second (FPS).
single job advertisement Must be short, relevant and clear. they should have:
document advertisement The following formatting is required:
- A PDF format under 100MB.
- Accessible fonts and colors are accessible.
When it comes to event advertisingBe sure to consider the following:
- The ad image will be scaled to a 4:1 ratio from the LinkedIn event page.
- Event names can use up to 255 characters with up to 600 characters of intro text.
- Use a URL containing “http://” or “https://” from the LinkedIn event page.
Failure to follow these guidelines may result in ad disapproval. In addition, if the Ads contain misleading or inappropriate content, LinkedIn may choose to remove the Ads or terminate your LinkedIn account.
The service also makes it clear that “spam” posts are not allowed. According to him Best practices for sponsored content Page, “Businesses that post excessive updates are subject to review by LinkedIn and may be at risk of having their LinkedIn page removed.”
2. Don’t overshare.
While targeted, relevant content can help drive user interest, too many ads can result in over-saturation.
LinkedIn recommends regularly changing its content strategy to deliver analysis rather than just news, including curated content (with credits) from other sources and reusing older content where applicable.
3. Test, Test, Test.
As mentioned above, direct sponsored content is a great way to try out new advertising efforts and see what sticks.
With the social media market constantly evolving, it’s worth evaluating ad performance to see what’s working, what’s not, and where specific changes can help.
4. Spend wisely.
Sponsored updates can be expensive because you include new ads and use multiple types of advertising.
Here, it’s worth switching from the CPC to CPM model after tracking your ad spend and increasing click-through rates. If ads slow down, consider going back to CPM to increase awareness.
5. Find new markets.
While it’s important to engage your target market, it’s also important to diversify your advertising objectives to maximize your overall impact. Recommends using tools like LinkedIn lead gen form To find better leads, measure ROI and manage your ads at scale.
Get Started Creating LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
LinkedIn’s sponsored updates model provides a streamlined solution to help brands reach their target market, increase brand awareness, and increase ROI.
best bet? Start with direct sponsored content to see what sticks, then choose the cost model that makes the most sense – CPC or CPM – and adjust as needed to reach the largest LinkedIn audience.
