Do you need a channel that can effectively drive high-quality leads to your manufacturing company?
According to HootSuite, a LinkedIn Ad has the potential to reach 14.6% of the total world population.
LinkedIn Ads have come a long way since they were launched, offering manufacturing companies like yours the opportunity to reach potential customers via LinkedIn’s network of 830 million users from over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
With LinkedIn B2B Ads, you’ll be able to target your existing audience with relevant ads that include your products and services, in addition to communicating with customers, both current and potential, as well as broadening your reach by reaching out to business professionals who aren’t yet familiar with your company.
We have created this guide specifically for manufacturing professionals who want to learn about the LinkedIn ads platform. In this article, you’ll learn how LinkedIn Ads work, how they can help manufacturers build strong brands and product awareness, and what you need to start using them effectively in your LinkedIn b2b marketing strategy.
Here’s an outline to get you started:
- LinkedIn Ads: What Are They?
- Benefits Of Linkedin Ads For The Manufacturing Industry
- Strategies To Drive More Sales With Linkedin Ads
- The Best Ad Formats for Manufacturers on LinkedIn
- Case Studies
Let’s dive in!
LinkedIn Ads: What Are They?
The world of digital advertising has evolved tremendously in recent years. And now, because Facebook and Google make up a majority of digital advertising spend, many small businesses are looking at other platforms to support their LinkedIn b2b marketing strategies.
One platform that’s getting a lot of attention is LinkedIn, which offers something called LinkedIn b2b ads.
The best b2b linkedin ads work like any other online advertising: You pay to promote your content on someone else’s website. But instead of going through Facebook or Google, you go through LinkedIn’s servers.
It is great news if you’re a B2B manufacturer looking to connect with potential customers in your industry.
Manufacturers are at the forefront of the digital revolution. As a result, they are often at the forefront of creating new ways to connect with their customers and attracting new talent to their organizations. With that in mind, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Ads to help manufacturers advertise online and generate leads at scale.
Manufacturers have always focused on the bottom line when developing new products. Still, with LinkedIn advertising, you can now get granular data to assess your products’ viability in the marketplace and whether it’s worth investing in more product creation.
LinkedIn is already one of the most visited websites in the United States of America, with 190 million registered users worldwide. So if you’re looking for an effective way to reach professionals in industries relevant to yours, LinkedIn might be worth considering as part of your LinkedIn b2b marketing strategy.
Benefits of Linkedin Ads for the Manufacturing Industry
Are LinkedIn ads worth it?
LinkedIn, the popular social media site for professionals and business networking, has an advertising platform that makes it easier to connect with your target audience and build your brand’s reach.
Are you currently using LinkedIn to advertise your products or services? You might be surprised to learn that LinkedIn offers features that can be useful to any manufacturing business, whether you’re operating in the U.S., Canada, or Europe.
Check out these surprising benefits that explain why LinkedIn is important for businesses like yours.
(Source: Engaio Digital)
Targeted
LinkedIn b2b ads are by far one of the most effective ways to target prospects within an industry. Since many companies use LinkedIn, you can be assured that many more people will see your ad than if you were to post it on a general-interest platform like Facebook or Google Ads.
It saves money, allowing you to get more leads and customers. Also, because LinkedIn profiles are so detailed, your ads don’t need much copy—they speak for themselves.
Established Platform
While advertising on other social media platforms can be effective, one benefit that LinkedIn ads have over others is their higher conversion rate. For example, Facebook ads convert at 4.7%, Instagram just 3.1%, and Twitter a mere 0.9%.
Meanwhile, Linkedin boasts a 6.1% conversion rate, making it easier to ensure that users reach your site and take action.
Customizable
Another factor that explains why LinkedIn is important for businesses is that these ads can customize your target audience based on company size, industry, and job function. You can also add advanced targeting options such as employee count and location radius to hone in on a specific kind of potential customer.
LinkedIn is an ideal platform for connecting with people from a wide range of backgrounds — whether they’re potential clients or competitors.
Unlimited Reach
Unlike other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn isn’t limited to a finite number of users. It grew by 22 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 and had more than 210.1 million members in North America alone.
There’s no doubt that you can reach potential customers and prospects through LinkedIn b2b ads.
(Source: Data Portal)
Easy to Manage
For many small and medium-sized manufacturers, local competition can be stiff. To win customers’ attention, you’ll have to spend a lot of time and energy on marketing efforts, and if those efforts aren’t targeted well, they can result in a big financial loss.
That’s why online advertising through LinkedIn is so appealing; it lets you focus your ad spend on only those companies that are likely to turn into customers. No more ads being shown to people who are never going to buy.
Strategies To Drive More Sales With Linkedin Ads
Several manufacturers are using LinkedIn Ads to help them find and engage with potential leads, so it’s worth looking at how this platform can help you meet your business goals.
These LinkedIn B2B marketing strategies are very effective for manufacturers:
Set a Goal
It’s easy to lose sight of why you’re advertising in LinkedIn’s incredibly expensive ads platform with its average cost-per-click (CPC) of $5.26.
(Source: WordStream)
Make sure your goal is clear and well-defined before spending a dime. For example, are you trying to capture leads and drive traffic through awareness campaigns? Or are you looking for exposure to get your audience familiar with your product or brand?
Whatever your KPIs are, keep them as clearly defined as possible and keep track of how far off you are at regular intervals so that you know if your investment is paying off or not.
Know Who Your Target Audience Is
You must know who your target audience is before creating your ad campaign. Knowing your target audience will help you craft your LinkedIn Ad campaign and learn what types of offers you can make to them.
Some of the audience attribute categories to choose from include:
- Company size
- Job title and seniority level
- Industries they work in
- Company revenue, growth rate, and industry rank
- Location (country, state/province, city)
- Number of employees at their company (and if they have a LinkedIn profile)
- Gender and age range
While these categories may seem simplistic, you can craft an effective LinkedIn b2b Ad campaign that will reach out and attract qualified sales leads when you’ve answered them all. The more information you have about your ideal client, the better.
Develop a Strategy
No matter how you’re planning on advertising on LinkedIn, it’s imperative that you first develop a strategy. Identify your target market, set clear goals, and establish metrics to measure success. Without these things in place, you will likely waste your advertising dollars.
Create an Ad
To kick things off, you need to know how to create linkedin ads. You can create a new ad by clicking on Create an Ad at the top right of our homepage. A screen will appear where you can begin crafting your campaign.
(Source: Laire Digital)
Run the Campaign
When running a LinkedIn campaign, success looks like driving relevant traffic back to your site, generating new leads in an automated fashion, and increasing brand awareness.
Think about what you want your campaign’s outcome to be. Are you trying to drive traffic? Are you trying to generate leads? Are you trying to increase awareness of a new product or service line? What does success look like for my company at the end of this campaign?
Once you’ve answered that question, it will be easier for you to figure out how many and what kind of ads are needed and how much money should be spent on them. The choice is yours—you can either select these outcomes during your initial planning phase or through trial and error.
Monitor Your Results
That being said, it’s important to check your LinkedIn b2b ads from time to time and make sure they’re working as intended. A sudden drop in clicks or leads could mean a problem with your ads, or it could just be a matter of changing up your messaging and tweaking some settings.
If you see a steep drop-off in one month, consider reworking your ad and testing new targeting or bidding options before pulling any levers. Also, be sure you’re not running out of budget before reaching out to call an ad campaign done.
So, what are the most effective linkedin ad types?
The Best Ad Formats for Manufacturers on LinkedIn
Forty percent of B2B marketers in a survey said that LinkedIn is the most effective LinkedIn b2b marketing channel for driving high-quality leads.
But what are the most effective LinkedIn ad types?
For any manufacturer wanting to increase their company’s sales, it’s important to utilize various ad formats on Linkedin. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck into thinking that you can only use promoted posts or that you must be a big company with a large budget to reach your audience and get seen.
There are many options available to manufacturers for advertising their products on Linkedin, but some of these choices have proven to be more effective than others.
(Source: MK Toolbox Suite)
We will go over the various ad formats available and how you can utilize them to make your ads more appealing and effective.
Carousel Image Ad
There are a few different ad formats available on LinkedIn, but we’ll start with one of the best b2b linkedin ads that works great for manufacturers. A Carousel ad is an image-heavy ad format that can present up to nine images, a headline, and a link to additional information.
So if a consumer is interested in one of your products based on a carousel ad, they can click through to get more details. Not only will they be able to view more information on your product, but you’ll also be able to include links and CTAs.
These ads are highly effective because they allow you to showcase multiple items in one ad while still providing consumers with enough information to decide.
This type of ad works best for manufacturers who sell multiple different types of products or have seasonal items that change throughout the year. When creating these ads, it’s important to ensure each item included is relevant and attractive so that consumers are enticed by what they see.
Single Image Ad
The single image ad is perfect for product shots and adding more context to your copy. However, it’s important to remember that you can’t have additional elements in your image—no logos, no people, etc. Having such will simply confuse users who are looking at it.
Video Ad
A video ad lets viewers see your product in action, capturing their attention and pushing them to act with a CTA button for more information. It is ideal for unique and innovative products, as you’ll be able to explain what makes your product so special quickly.
Again, keep it brief—5 to 10 seconds tops—and use bright colors and animation to keep things interesting.
Text Ad
Text ads are recommended for businesses that want to drive immediate response or those looking to use LinkedIn as an additional website traffic source. It is best suited for simple lead generation campaigns that send users directly to your company website.
Spotlight Ad
The spotlight ad format is similar to Google Ads’ standard text ads. It has a headline, an optional display URL, your main body copy, and a call-to-action button. Unfortunately, this ad unit only appears in the top right corner of LinkedIn’s Spotlight homepage section.
Message Ad
A message ad on LinkedIn is one in which your messaging and branding can pop out from a stream. It gives you a higher chance for engagement as you may draw potential customers to your brand’s stand-out characteristics.
Conversation Ad
The conversation ad format is similar to a regular display ad but uses your brand’s logo instead of a picture. Some may consider them more conversational and, therefore, more likely to be clicked on. However, others may feel they come across as spammy if not used correctly.
Event Ad
The Event ad allows you to highlight multiple benefits simultaneously without splitting them up into two different ads. It is a huge benefit for both manufacturers as well as advertisers because it makes crafting your messaging so much easier.
Case Studies
If you’re in the manufacturing industry, you already know how important it is to find qualified leads that can help grow your B2B company. One of the best places to find leads is on LinkedIn.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a great way to capture new leads, but how do you target them? It all comes down to LinkedIn ad targeting.
With LinkedIn b2b ads, you can target specific companies and industries to find customers who are actively looking for a product or service like yours. And even better, they’re already on LinkedIn!
It means they are more likely to be interested in your product or service than someone who just happens upon your website via a Google search.
If you are still in doubt about the effectiveness of LinkedIn ads in scaling your business, these are two case studies that may convince you otherwise:
1. 4D Systems
This Flint-based company offers manufacturing solutions using process innovation that delivers unique products and production integration. Their new technology improves decision-making, production, quality of products, and production integration.
After tasking Flying V Group to boost lead generation, SEO, and message outreach, 4dsysco.com now has increased website traffic by 62% YoY, created technical SEO optimizations and additional content buildout for lacking text to HTML pages, and increased LI leads by 34%, Itlted in a 5.6x ROAS.
2. Foam Molders & Specialty
Foam Molders is a California-based company specializing in manufacturing flexible, rigid, and quality foam using engineering, molding, and fabrication skills.
Flying V Group was tasked with the responsibility of handling the digital marketing campaigns of this client, we were able to increase their LinkedIn lead generation and message outreach using LinkedIn Ads and SEO.
The result?
foammolders.com experienced increased website traffic by 78% in the first month due to technical SEO reconfiguration, increased average monthly phone calls by 22%, and increased average keyword rankings by 8 positions.
Drive More Leads With B2B LinkedIn Ads
Are linkedin ads worth it?
Whether you’re looking to leverage social media and online marketing to grow your sales, manage your brand’s reputation, or ensure that your product is seen at a retail show, setting up an advertising campaign on LinkedIn is an excellent place to start.
In fact, it can be one of your most valuable campaigns in terms of ROI when used correctly.
To learn more about how you can leverage these LinkedIn b2b ads in your business plan, give our full-service digital marketing agency a call today! At Flying V Group, we’d love to help set up your free initial consultation so we can get started on creating an advertising campaign tailored specifically for you.
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