LinkedIn is popular among marketers and sales because the platform is ideal for connecting with professionals, sourcing jobs, and delivering content. Furthermore, LinkedIn ABM is a more focused approach for targeting ideal prospects and sending them messages that resonate with them.
Getting the best out of your account-based marketing using LinkedIn advertising requires a strategy that is flexible across ad types, delivers seamless activation, and improves customer experiences.
While these are achievable, they are not intuitive. And this is why this article discusses the best five practices for achieving maximum results.
1. Leverage LinkedIn’s Special Functions
The first thing to do if you want to maximize your ABM using LinkedIn advertising is to leverage the unique functions LinkedIn has to offer. Some of these functions include the location targeting field, which is mandatory and specific – you can target an audience based on country, state, or city. In your ABM strategy, LinkedIn is essential to segment your audiences. First, build your ideal persona using targeting criteria like demographics, company, and job experience. Afterward, you can target these personas using LinkedIn.
Targeting audiences is especially straightforward on LinkedIn when using action-inspiring keywords like “leader” and “success.” But, what is most important is understanding what resonates with your LinkedIn audience, helping you influence such audience to take action.
2. Perfect Ad Frequency
Although LinkedIn caps ad frequency, it is essential to understand how to navigate it. Ad frequency is the interval you serve ads to your target audience, which can make all the difference in your marketing strategy. If an audience sees your ad often, your brand will be the first one to come to mind when necessary.
Although you can control ad frequency with advertising forms like LinkedIn advertising, LinkedIn limits this frequency to one serving per 48 hours for an individual. Nevertheless, you can work around this limit by creating multiple ad sets. For instance, if you create five ad sets, you can increase ad frequency and show one ad to an individual persona five times. Likewise, increasing the ad sets is more effective if you have a niche audience and a higher targeted spend.
Spreading out content types across LinkedIn is an excellent way of increasing ad frequency. This way, you can put a user in multiple campaigns containing different creatives, helping you target them with ads at a higher frequency.
3. Ensure Your Content Is Applicable and Consistent
You can only tie the ad frequency of a LinkedIn campaign to your ABM strategy through messaging. To do this, you should only share content relevant to the stage of the account. For example, if the account is at the awareness stage, top of the funnel, or middle or bottom of the funnel, you should use only applicable content.
Your messaging should be consistent at the funnel’s top and include insights and industry trends. eBooks are also top-of-funnel content. Mid-funnel requires more tact. It would be best if you only shared tools or templates that target your personas’ day-to-day use. You can use granular content at the bottom of the funnel, including customer case studies and use cases. It is important to note that the stage of your buyer’s journey determines the type of content you share.
With consistent messages across your marketing channels, you can create cross-channel alignment. Eventually, when you bring in your native channels, it is easier to see how your brand resonates clearly.
4. Use CTAs Matching Your Buyer’s Journey
After deploying relevant content that suits your buyer personas position in the sales funnel, using a clear and purposeful CTA is essential in maximizing such efforts. The first step in creating an appropriate CTA is to think of the action you want the target to take. Top of the funnel CTAS should be informative, while mid-funnel CTAs may include asking for demo participation or webinar signups. A suitable CTA for the funnel’s bottom includes sending the audience to your sales team.
An audience that is not aware of your brand will not download your eBook. Therefore, you must separate accounts you consider at the top of the funnel and determine if they know your brand. From there, you can make decisions.
5. Test and Always Test
Through consistent testing, you can only understand what works and what doesn’t in your advertising campaign. Therefore, you should always have your A/B testing strategy handy. Through testing, you can monitor the ads shown to your audience and understand where adjustments are necessary.
For instance, you can evaluate messaging and creative performance through click-through rates. However, this metric does not indicate the overall efficacy of your channel. Using revenue and pipeline, you can test your ABM platform’s efficacy and overall success.
Wrapping Up
Although LinkedIn ABM effectively generates high-quality leads, you can only maximize the strategy by following the best practices. The tips discussed in this article will help you develop a formidable advertising strategy.