Episode 102 – LinkedIn Ads with AJ Wilcox
In this episode of Business Growth Time, we talked about LinkedIn Ads with AJ Wilcox
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About AJ Wilcox:
J Wilcox is a long-time digital marketer who fell in love with the LinkedIn Ads platform back in 2011. Since then, he’s scaled and managed among the world’s most sophisticated accounts worldwide. In 2014, he founded B2Linked.com which specializes in LinkedIn Ads training, consulting, and account management, and recently became a Certified LinkedIn Ads Partner. He’s a ginger, triathlete, and his company car is a gokart. He lives in Utah with his wife and 4 kids.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
05:18 -AJ’s story about stand up desk connected to a treadmill
- He always looking for ways to burn some extra calories because he eats way too much and so he did get a treadmill desk.
- Everyday between 13 – 20 and miles walking
- He doesn’t have a regular desk at all
07:56 – Why AJ’s decide to focus on LinkedIn Ads?
- The reason why he started focusing on them is he actually kind of stumbled onto them at his previous employer
- He was an SEO guy and an AdWords guy before that as he walked in and laid out all of his marketing plans and all these different channels and what he wanted to do. Then, on his first day at his new job, they told him we’re focusing in on LinkedIn ads.
- He just kept investing, kept investing, knocked it out of the park and then a few years later he said well “why should I just not let anyone else enjoy these talents why would I stay for one employer.
*He said the easiest way to get his great knowledge about LinkedIn ads out to as many people as possible is an ad agency, so that’s what started it.
10:15 – AJ’s shared what makes LinkedIn ads great and what are the challenges
What makes them great?
*Targetting
You have things like their job title, company size and company industry and office type. You have the filters but it’s probably something like 5 percent or fewer people are actually putting that information in their profile so when you go on to Facebook ads and you’re having a lot of success, it’s really inexpensive and you go, “This is great, let’s turn it up and you go to turn the knob up to and realize that it doesn’t go any higher than the matches, because your audience is limited. But, LinkedIn has had that audience from day one the second you create a profile, they know everything about you know, what your skills are, what groups you’re a member of, what your job title is, what your seniority is what company what company size what company industry education it just goes on.
What’s the big downside?
*The cost
- It’s the cost most clicks on LinkedIn cost between $6 – $9 which is five to eight times more than Facebook.
*So, AJ’s tells to people is LinkedIn ads are worthwhile if you’re gonna make fifteen thousand dollars or more from a deal because cost-per-acquisition is usually 25, 100 – 6000 range and so you want to make sure you make a healthy profit in there.
- He chose to build the agency off of the one thing in the world that he does better than anyone else which is LinkedIn Ads.
- They don’t offer any sort of other advertising to their clients
13:11 – What size of company is his ideal client?
- They manage budgets all the way up into the hundreds of thousands, they manage several of LinkedIn’s largest accounts worldwide and so it’s everything in between.
So, as long as you can spend as long, you’re gonna make a lot of money from a deal over the lifetime and you have 3,000 – 5,000 budget then, LinkedIn is a great target for you.
14:08 – Types of companies that this would really work best
- SAS software, medical device companies work really well because generally, those companies aren’t going to balk at the price tag too much
14:53 – Facebook Ads vs. LinkedIn Ads
- AJ says… “Facebook ads to LinkedIn ads, you’re gonna feel like LinkedIn ads is back in the Stone Age.”
- With LinkedIn, there are three or four options and it’s pretty explanatory what they do, it’s like Adwords back in 2005
- Simple makes it great to manage too
- Janet’s says that..”Facebook ads, it changes every single day, they add something different and new and, yeah, and then you have to do this and that.
16:34 – Video Ads for LinkedIn
- LinkedIn has been doing a video ads pilot for the last several month. Some of our customers have been part of it, so they have gotten to use it.
- The video ads- they should be public and generally available to everyone
- Facebook Ads video is just incredible, it’s incredibly cheap and AJ feels like LinkedIn is probably going to be much more expensive.
- The really big advantage here is that there’s no 20 percent rule, so you can put as much text in that image as you want.
21:07 – Terry trying at LinkedIn Ads
- Terry, would teach these insurance agents how to grow their business using social media and this agency would sponsor it in there was zero commitment.
AJ’s Advice:
Essentially, the platform right out of the gate is showing that ad to a bunch of people, so you get those initial impressions and it’s trying to understand- is it going to get clicked on very often or isn’t it. Then, it leaves a relevancy score against it, it’s the same concept is Facebook’s relevant score or AdWords quality score.
- Relaunch a new Ad, so try some new creative, if there was something about the image or something about the text that was turning people off, see if you can launch something else that LinkedIn will actually like and will get clicks.
- Janet says, that it does happen in all probably in everything where they just go you know, you’re not (A) maybe your bids too low something like that and they give inference to somebody.
Clearly, if you go to any of the social platforms and into a single audience, if you launch three or more ads, what you’ll naturally see is one ad will become the favorite and will get most of the impressions, one will do okay and the others will just be a ghost town like two, three, four impressions.
27:44 – AJ’s Ads results (Case Study)
They were running a campaign a couple years ago for HR software, so what they were doing is targeting basically anyone manager and above in HR, who might be involved in the purchase decision of using applicant tracking software and so they were given six different offers.
- What that really shows is the importance of your offer because you can work all day long on the ad copy in the image and it may only make to 5- 15 percent of it of a difference there but if you concentrate on the offer, it can literally triple your conversion rates.
30:56 – The different Ads unit
The ways that your ads will actually show up on the site and there are some intricacies here that you may want to keep in mind as you’re deciding to publish on LinkedIn.
- The one that appears right in your newsfeed
So, if you just open up LinkedIn.com on your browser or on your mobile device, just open the app, the very first thing you see is the mobile feed and/or the news feed the second item in that list is going to say promote it and it will be from a company that you don’t currently follow.
- The interesting things about this, it has the highest engagement rate of any ads on LinkedIn.
- You get a lot more a lot more engagement, a lot more space in the user feed, a lot more attention, but the vast majority of the traffic is going to come from mobile devices, so if your landing page is not mobile friendly, then it’s probably not going to perform very well.
2.If you’re on Desktop machines or on your laptop
- If you look over in the right rail as you’re navigating around, like then every, so often you’ll see a little pack of text ads and they’re called LinkedIn text ads
- You know that all of these ads are only seen by people who are on a desktop machine, so they have access to a full keyboard.
3. Sponsored Inmail
- Finally, you have one that’s an ad type that Facebook doesn’t have anything like and these are called sponsored Inmail and you don’t pay per click on these, you pay per send and you can send it directly into someone’s LinkedIn, in a mail box and it lives in there.
- It lives in there in a mailbox for a 60 full days so none of your competitors can bump your ad.
- If you have a premium LinkedIn profile, they generally give you somewhere between five and ten messages you can send to someone’s inbox custom without having to be connected to them.
37:23 – LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn Ads with AJ Wilcox -His final words of advice
When you’re choosing your audience think about them in two sections, #1 – You have the user themselves and #2- You have what kind of organization they’re at, because, obviously if you’re trying to sell a product to CFOs, you can have a company with two people, one is who the CEO and have a CFO and they may not be able to afford you. Break down user, by job title, job function, skills, seniority, groups that they are attached. Also, he suggests target company name, upload a spreadsheet of companies to include or exclude. Also, sort company industry, company size.
Ex I want CFOs in the tech industry in companies with at least 500 employees. Find the right target information.
If you really want to do this right, here’s how to connect with AJ Wilcox! AJ’s offer!
- You can download AJ Wilcox’s free 8 point checklist which is exactly how they http://www.b2linked.com/checklist
39:12 – Where to find AJ Wilcox
*B2Linked.com: LinkedIn Ads Agency
*Let the LinkedIn Ads experts analyze your account, train your team, or manage your marketing.
Twitter: @B2Linked
Email: ✉ AJ@B2Linked.com
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Sign-up and learn more here: Janet E Johnson Social Strategies 101 Community
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