If you’re planning your 2025 LinkedIn Ad strategy, this is where you want to start. Michelle J Raymond sits down with the LinkedIn Ads expert, AJ Wilcox, to give you the inside scoop on what's working to reduce your CPC and increase leads.
Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. https://i.mtr.cool/NEDXVZ
Key moments in this episode:
00:00 Introduction to LinkedIn Ads
01:36 The State of LinkedIn Ads
06:50 Common Mistakes in LinkedIn Ad Campaigns
09:39 Optimising LinkedIn Ad Performance
15:37 The Power of Thought Leader Ads
20:46 New LinkedIn Ad Formats and Features
25:53 Final Tips and Upcoming Events
Connect with AJ Wilcox on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/
ABOUT MICHELLE J RAYMOND
Michelle J Raymond is an international LinkedIn™️ B2B Growth Coach. To continue the conversation, connect with Michelle on LinkedIn™️ and let her know you are part of the community of podcast listeners.
Connect with Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/
B2B Growth Co offers LinkedIn™️ Training for teams to build personal and business brands and a LinkedIn™️ Profile Recharge service for Founders/CEOs.
Book a free intro call to learn more - https://calendly.com/michelle-j-raymond/book-an-intro-call-15mins
Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast is a fully accessible podcast. Audio, Video, Transcript and guest details are available on our podcast website - https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MichelleJRaymond
#LinkedIn #LinkedInAds #B2BMarketing
00:00:17
Welcome to the Social Media for B2B Growth Show I'm your host, Michelle J
00:00:21
Raymond, and this week listeners, we're going to be talking about LinkedIn Ads.
00:00:27
And there's a stat that stuck with me from a couple of episodes ago,
00:00:30
when we had a LinkedIn Insider join us, that shared some research that
00:00:34
three out of four ads are pretty much ineffective when it comes to LinkedIn.
00:00:39
And when you think about that, that's a lot of money going down the drain.
00:00:43
So when I think LinkedIn Ads, I think a friend of the show, AJ Wilcox.
00:00:47
Welcome back.
00:00:48
Michelle, thank you so much.
00:00:50
I'm so excited to be back here.
00:00:51
I've listened to every one of your episodes, so I'm a fan and I'm super
00:00:56
excited to share with your audience.
00:00:57
Well, fan and friend, you know, and this is the thing that I want people to
00:01:01
understand when it comes to LinkedIn.
00:01:03
Comes to Company Pages, paid and organic are two sides of the one coin.
00:01:08
And we're going to talk about that a little bit more as we go through
00:01:13
the episode today because AJ, I am trying to help B2B marketers
00:01:18
out there that want to leverage LinkedIn from blowing their budget.
00:01:22
I want them to get better returns.
00:01:24
I want them to have effective ad campaigns.
00:01:27
So I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions, which I know my listeners are
00:01:31
dying to know the latest and greatest info on LinkedIn Ads, and there is
00:01:34
no one better positioned to help.
00:01:36
So I'm going to start with the first one, which I think is just
00:01:39
going to be an easy one for you.
00:01:40
But over in organic Company Page land.
00:01:43
No surprises, things are pretty tough.
00:01:46
And I'm going to say, even on my personal content right now, I was going from,
00:01:51
guaranteed, probably two and a half thousand impressions a post, plus or minus
00:01:55
a little bit, depending what happens.
00:01:57
Now, that's probably sitting at around a thousand on most days at best.
00:02:01
And it seems to be the new norm.
00:02:04
With LinkedIn being crowded, does that impact ad campaigns or
00:02:07
can you pay your way out of it?
00:02:09
It's a really good question.
00:02:10
You can pay your way out of it.
00:02:12
That's the beauty of any sort of ad campaign is that if you turn
00:02:16
that knob up you can get views.
00:02:18
You can get impressions with your ideal target audience.
00:02:21
I'm finding the same thing you are, like from an organic perspective, my, the
00:02:25
things that I share are getting fewer and fewer views which totally sucks.
00:02:29
Yeah, I'll be honest.
00:02:30
I hate it.
00:02:31
But at the same time with ads, they've given us now more tools and
00:02:36
more abilities and hopefully a lot more on the way where if we are
00:02:39
willing to actually, Pay to play.
00:02:42
We have a lot of ways to do that and it's working really well.
00:02:46
That is a valid option.
00:02:47
There are so many advertisers out there.
00:02:50
I think Robin shared there's around 2 million advertisers on LinkedIn.
00:02:53
So there are plenty of businesses taking advantage of LinkedIn.
00:02:58
Last time when we spoke, we were talking about how everybody had moved
00:03:02
their ad budgets from other platforms, potentially around the COVID period.
00:03:06
Is that still the case?
00:03:07
Is LinkedIn still the hot place for B2B marketers to be
00:03:10
running their ad campaigns?
00:03:11
I'll be honest.
00:03:12
It's the only place to come with your ad dollars because most who've
00:03:16
tested out Google ads in both B2B and B2C You know, the platform's old they
00:03:22
figured out what the keywords are.
00:03:23
They figured out optimisations and they're holding steady.
00:03:26
I don't know a whole lot of people who are running Google campaigns who
00:03:29
are like, yeah, this is working great.
00:03:31
We're finding great efficiencies.
00:03:32
It's just, it's a quiet, constant hum.
00:03:34
Then you have Facebook who as advertisers have tested all the Meta
00:03:39
products especially in B2B, they found over time that although costs right
00:03:44
up front are very low they're ending up paying a really high cost per
00:03:49
qualified lead and per closed deal.
00:03:51
And it doesn't make sense.
00:03:53
Those are the first two platforms that everyone tested.
00:03:55
The only other game in town is LinkedIn.
00:03:58
If you want to go somewhere and be able to reach all of your ideal target audience.
00:04:02
And you want to be able to reach them by very specific criteria to make sure that
00:04:06
you're only generating high quality leads.
00:04:09
I'm sorry linkedIn has a monopoly on on that data of ours and there is no
00:04:14
other ad platform that can even compete.
00:04:16
So I've talked to lots of advertisers who tried LinkedIn Ads early on.
00:04:20
It didn't work.
00:04:21
And so they swore it off, but they ended up coming back three, four years
00:04:24
later because guess what, like it's the only platform if you want to be
00:04:28
able to target by this job title, this industry, this company size.
00:04:33
That's the thing even with organic is exactly the same.
00:04:35
At the end of the day, LinkedIn doesn't have a competitor
00:04:38
that we can all run away to.
00:04:40
So like it or loathe it, this is the platform right now.
00:04:44
There is no competition.
00:04:45
So let's just say, okay, we can all agree.
00:04:48
That LinkedIn is the place for B2B marketers to run their ads.
00:06:37
I'm guessing that there's probably a lot of listeners that have either had their
00:06:42
budgets reduced or they need to get their cost per lead down and they're under a lot
00:06:48
of pressure to try and do more with less.
00:06:50
So let's have a look at what are the most common mistakes that you see in
00:06:56
these ad campaigns that marketers are running that wastes their budgets.
00:07:01
So let's just get the easy wins upfront.
00:07:04
Yeah, perfect.
00:07:04
Okay.
00:07:04
So I'm really glad that you set this up because I've audited now over a thousand
00:07:08
ad accounts and what I've seen is in every single one of those there are at
00:07:13
least two of the following five mistakes happening that are causing people to pay
00:07:18
too much for their traffic on LinkedIn.
00:07:20
The average cost per click on LinkedIn is like $10 to $16.
00:07:24
Lots of advertisers are paying like $20 to $40 just because
00:07:27
they're taking LinkedIn's advice.
00:07:29
Spoiler alert, stop taking LinkedIn's own advice it's expensive advice.
00:07:33
The majority of our clients are paying somewhere between
00:07:35
$6 to $8 dollars per click.
00:07:37
Significantly lower than the average, significantly lower than if I were to
00:07:41
follow all the LinkedIn recommendations.
00:07:43
I'll just nail them off one through five.
00:07:46
Number one, the audience targeting.
00:07:48
When you very first start a campaign, it is set to the geo location of
00:07:53
recent or permanent and recent means someone could have been in that
00:07:58
geography in the last six months.
00:08:00
So switch that to permanent.
00:08:02
Make sure that you're only showing ads to the people who claim that they live in the
00:08:06
city, the state, the country, whatever.
00:08:09
Number two, when you get down past the targeting, LinkedIn has done
00:08:13
themselves a favour and auto checked a box called enable audience expansion.
00:08:18
That box is poison.
00:08:21
Everyone who is listening to me please go uncheck it.
00:08:23
Think to yourselves every time that I leave this box checked,
00:08:26
a baby seal gets clubbed.
00:08:27
Like it's that serious.
00:08:28
We please save the baby seals.
00:08:31
So, Yeah always, always uncheck that box.
00:08:33
The next one, there's another automatic setting that LinkedIn auto
00:08:36
checks for themselves down below.
00:08:38
That is called the LinkedIn Audience Network.
00:08:41
This is where you can reach LinkedIn members all around the web and on apps.
00:08:46
Which sounds really cool and I, I, I really, really want to love this.
00:08:50
But in all the testing we've done, we found really low
00:08:53
quality traffic coming from it.
00:08:55
And what's more, if you turn it on, LinkedIn will spend 99 percent of your
00:09:00
money on the audience network and only 1 percent of your money ever makes
00:09:05
it to people who are on LinkedIn, which is the highest quality traffic.
00:09:08
So uncheck that one.
00:09:09
There's more you can test in the future with it.
00:09:11
But for beginning uncheck,
00:09:13
So far, they're so helpful, aren't they?
00:09:16
They can help you more money faster.
00:09:19
Wow.
00:09:19
Who would have thought?
00:09:21
Yeah, and it's interesting.
00:09:22
Like you talk to any LinkedIn employee and no, no one has this air about them.
00:09:26
Like they're trying to just thieve all the money from your wallet.
00:09:30
But when you run the ad platform, you get this feeling that it is not in your favour
00:09:34
and it's just trying to drain your budget.
00:09:36
Not a fan of that particular thing.
00:09:39
Number four, LinkedIn's default bidding method that they set for
00:09:42
you is called maximum delivery.
00:09:45
Maximum delivery is it's the most expensive way to pay for your
00:09:48
traffic over 90 percent of the time.
00:09:51
So when you have this checked, LinkedIn is you're paying by the impression.
00:09:56
So you don't even have to get traffic for LinkedIn to be charging you.
00:10:00
And they can bid as high as it takes to spend your budget and they
00:10:03
will overspend your daily budget by 50 percent every single day,
00:10:07
which seems like highway robbery.
00:10:09
So, Best tip I have for you.
00:10:11
Go down to the hidden option.
00:10:13
There's two options that they show you.
00:10:15
One says click for additional options, click the additional
00:10:18
option, and it'll reveal one called manual cost per click bid.
00:10:23
And then you can choose and say I'm only willing to pay
00:10:27
this much when somebody clicks.
00:10:30
If no one clicks, I don't pay.
00:10:31
And that is the least expensive way to pay for your traffic.
00:10:34
90 plus percent of the time.
00:10:36
My mind is just blown, but not surprised when I'm listening to this.
00:10:41
It's like giving the teenager the credit card and just, you know, it'll be okay.
00:10:45
Take care of this.
00:10:46
Don't spend too much.
00:10:48
And it's Yeah, but there's so much online.
00:10:50
I could just buy a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
00:10:52
And then all of a sudden these little bits are adding up.
00:10:55
And to me, it sounds like this is where that additional cost that
00:11:00
people are probably unintentionally paying for their leads just because
00:11:05
they think LinkedIn's being helpful.
00:11:07
And I've had those words said back to me.
00:11:09
Oh, Michelle, but LinkedIn recommended this, so I understand
00:11:13
where people are coming from.
00:11:14
It's only that you've got so much experience with LinkedIn Ads, with
00:11:18
everything you've done for so long.
00:11:20
So absolutely.
00:11:22
Thank you.
00:11:23
Thank you.
00:11:23
Thank you.
00:11:24
Thank you.
00:11:24
On behalf of everybody listening for these cracker tips, which I can see are
00:11:28
so easy and have an immediate impact.
00:11:30
Yeah.
00:11:31
And it's so funny to me.
00:11:32
Like LinkedIn, bless their souls.
00:11:34
They, I think they think too short term.
00:11:36
They're thinking about their quarterly earnings report, and
00:11:39
they're not thinking long term.
00:11:41
If a new advertiser comes and I help enable all the settings for them to
00:11:45
help get them the very best performance, they're going to keep advertising.
00:11:48
They're not going to churn.
00:11:50
They're going to bring more budget next month or next quarter and instead, what
00:11:54
happens is all of these defaults, if you leave them checked you're going to
00:11:56
overspend your budget, you're not going to be happy with performance, you're going
00:12:00
to leave and LinkedIn is going to lose you and they're going to lose all the
00:12:02
budget that you could have given them.
00:12:04
So do LinkedIn a favor and stop taking their advice.
00:12:08
I guarantee in the long run, there'll be a lot happier.
00:12:11
I think that's pretty good advice in general.
00:12:13
And I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, but there's people that
00:12:19
design the systems and then there's people that use the systems and
00:12:22
they're two very different experiences.
00:12:24
And what I found, even when I was working with the Pages team, and I
00:12:28
got to sit with all the Company Pages engineers and have a time with them
00:12:32
to explain a day in the life of a Page admin so that they could understand
00:12:37
what it's like from the other side.
00:12:38
And it was like a light bulb moment going off.
00:12:40
I saw jaws on the ground for the whole hour that I was speaking, just going, Oh.
00:12:46
You know, so I don't think anyone does this intentionally.
00:12:48
I'm throwing it out there.
00:12:49
They are, I think, in essence, trying to be helpful, but also, like you said,
00:12:53
missing the point is, did I cut you off?
00:12:55
Did we do number five or have we done all of those?
00:12:59
Because I've got so many questions, but I want to make sure we give these tips away.
00:13:03
So I got through four, but number five is actually just a continuation of four.
00:13:06
So I told you to choose manual bidding rather than maximum delivery.
00:13:11
But then when you do that, LinkedIn will show you this message that
00:13:14
says, Oh, people like you are bidding between $25 and $98 per click.
00:13:21
You should be in that range, which is absolutely insane.
00:13:24
Like literally I, I, I don't know where they're pulling those numbers from.
00:13:27
It's definitely not from a reliable source because.
00:13:30
No one is bidding.
00:13:31
No one with a brain is bidding that much.
00:13:33
So instead, what I do is I suggest starting considerably lower
00:13:37
than what LinkedIn recommends.
00:13:38
So if LinkedIn is recommending $17 a click, I might start out with seven.
00:13:42
I might start out with eight, whatever that is, because the worst thing that
00:13:45
can happen is you're not bidding high enough to have LinkedIn show your ads
00:13:50
enough to get any sort of spend and you can always just come in two or three
00:13:53
days later and increase your bid a little bit every couple of days until it does
00:13:58
start spending at the rate that you want.
00:14:00
And that's the goal.
00:14:01
If your goal is to pay LinkedIn the least amount for the very highest quality ad
00:14:06
traffic, it's bid just enough to spend your daily budget, but nothing more
00:14:13
because if you, if you bid more, you're overpaying them, you're accelerating your
00:14:16
delivery and it's not going to end well.
00:14:19
No wonder every earnings report that I read says LinkedIn's ad revenue is
00:14:24
through the roof and continues to grow.
00:14:26
And I can just see that these little tips that you've given are game
00:14:30
changers for people out there because As you and I were discussing just
00:14:34
beforehand, there is no, here's how you learn how to be good at LinkedIn Ads.
00:14:38
There's experience that you build over time.
00:14:41
And so I've noticed that there's, a lot of people that are given,
00:14:44
LinkedIn Ads go and look after it.
00:14:45
It's not too hard.
00:14:46
Just click this, do this, get a post, upload that and away we go.
00:14:50
And so you can see how people can come really unstuck.
00:14:53
So I appreciate you sharing so generously as always, because yeah, even my mind
00:14:59
is just going, what they're doing And it's like the flight upgrades.
00:15:03
I don't know if your airlines have it, but if you want to upgrade to business
00:15:06
class pay anywhere between this and this and see if you outbid everybody else.
00:15:10
And so I can only imagine that there are some people going
00:15:13
straight to the top because you think, you know, naturally assume.
00:15:17
That is how you're going to win by going to the other end.
00:15:19
Again, I completely understand it, but there was something else that we
00:15:23
talked about on the last episode, which we're going to go back to as well.
00:15:28
And when they came out, these particular formats of ads were
00:15:33
something that I was like.
00:15:35
Wow.
00:15:35
That sounds really awesome.
00:15:37
I can see this as a huge advantage for businesses and these were
00:15:41
LinkedIn thought leader ads.
00:15:44
Are they hot or are they not?
00:15:47
And for those who may not know what a LinkedIn thought leader ad is,
00:15:50
can you give us a quick explanation and then let us know, should they be
00:15:54
included as part of our ads budgets?
00:15:57
Yes.
00:15:57
Spoiler alert.
00:15:58
They are red hot.
00:15:59
I'm still very bullish on them.
00:16:01
To give you a little bit of background, the majority of the ads that you could
00:16:04
run when you hop into LinkedIn Ads, they show up in the newsfeed and they show
00:16:08
up as a Company Page post When we run, and I'm assuming it's a lot better on
00:16:13
your side when it's organic, but when we run these as an ad, we are lucky if we
00:16:17
get over about half of a percent of an engagement rate, meaning 200 people scroll
00:16:23
past your post, your ad, before someone takes some sort of an action on it.
00:16:27
Thought leader ads.
00:16:28
These came out last year and we got a really cool update for this year
00:16:31
that I'm excited to tell you about.
00:16:32
So remind me if I space it uh, I'm so ADHD, so I apologise for that.
00:16:36
But what happens is we get to boost someone's organic post.
00:16:40
A person's not a company's and what we're finding is that because people
00:16:45
care more about people than they do a brand they've never heard of we're seeing
00:16:49
engagement rates that are six to 15%.
00:16:54
So we go from, if it's from a company, half of a percent to now six to 15%.
00:17:00
Literal orders of magnitude higher, and they're really good at getting attention.
00:17:06
So all of that to be, to be said, just from a an engagement, like getting
00:17:11
someone's attention standpoint, they are red hot and there's lots
00:17:14
of cool things we can do with them.
00:17:16
Hopefully a lot more, they're also limited, so hopefully a lot more that
00:17:19
we can do with them in the future.
00:17:21
I'm thinking AJ, does this create any issues on the other side?
00:17:25
Because I'm just wondering with the brands that you work with,
00:17:30
do they have trouble reconciling?
00:17:33
You're almost helping build a personal brand, which will reflect back on
00:17:37
the company because you're obviously, there's something loaded in there.
00:17:40
But is it measurable what happens if that person leaves and you've
00:17:44
run a lot of ads through them?
00:17:46
Do concerns like that come up or push back when you're talking
00:17:49
about these thought leader ads?
00:17:50
Because I can imagine you're sitting on the other side, you've got a budget to
00:17:54
build the corporate brand, and then we've got these thought leader ads, which are
00:17:58
effective, but they're not specifically or directly building the company brand.
00:18:04
So is the measurement possible through these ads as well?
00:18:07
Cause just my brain is going to.
00:18:10
I reckon clients would push back on that.
00:18:12
Not understanding the benefits of how company brands and
00:18:14
personal brands work together.
00:18:17
Yeah, it actually works really well because when I started out my company, I
00:18:21
was known as A.J Wilcox, the LinkedIn Ads guy, and no one had ever heard of B2Linked
00:18:25
before, and so over the last 10 years, we just turned 10 years old this last month.
00:18:29
Over the last 10 years, I've been working really hard to transfer
00:18:35
the name recognition from my own brand to the agency, Because I want
00:18:41
there to be shared resources there.
00:18:43
I want people to know, B2Linked and, knowing my name is great, but
00:18:46
I don't have that kind of an ego.
00:18:48
That's I think what's so great about these is it's really great as a first touch
00:18:53
with a cold audience to have them get to know a person first and then lend the
00:18:57
credibility of that person to the company.
00:19:00
So what we like to do is we like to run ads in multiple stages.
00:19:03
Cold audience first, we'll run thought leader ads, and then anyone who interacts
00:19:08
in any way with those ads, we then retarget them with a Company Page post
00:19:13
and then tell them more about the company.
00:19:14
The tools LinkedIn has given us have been actually really good for uh,
00:19:18
leveraging an individual and helping give that credibility to the company.
00:19:22
So you can work down to eventually they are now in, they're now
00:19:25
interacting with the company rather than just that one individual.
00:19:29
Look, teamwork makes the dream work.
00:19:30
It's exactly the same message that I share in all of my presentations as well.
00:19:35
It's use the Company Page, I call it Page Advocacy.
00:19:38
Get the page out, supporting your team, whether it's liking, commenting, running,
00:19:42
these thought leader ads, the team are then going to come and help support build
00:19:47
the brand and the page, and vice versa.
00:19:49
So it's all about the power of two.
00:19:51
It's all about bringing these things together.
00:19:53
You know, There's so much talk about the benefits of employee advocacy on
00:19:57
LinkedIn and LinkedIn is giving you a tool where you can even put this on
00:20:00
steroids and pay to play to get that seen by as many people as your budget allows.
00:20:06
You know and so this is for me has always been mind blowing.
00:20:09
And I've secretly, I've thought about doing it for myself.
00:20:11
B2B Growth Co could sponsor Michelle J Raymond's post.
00:20:14
Do I have big budgets?
00:20:15
Absolutely not.
00:20:17
But there is an opportunity that I could be helping my posts get seen by more
00:20:22
people if I wanted to run a campaign.
00:20:24
And so in a crowded feed, which we have spoken about over and over again on this
00:20:29
podcast, this may be one opportunity that people start to investigate
00:20:33
more as individuals and, also helping their team build their personal brand.
00:20:37
So I'm glad to hear that it's still as piping hot as it was on the last show,
00:20:42
but it would be silly of me not to ask AJ.
00:20:46
What's new in LinkedIn ad format?
00:20:47
Is there anything hot or not that they've popped out?
00:20:50
Because they're always releasing new things, but is everything old new again?
00:20:54
Or have we got something cool that's come in?
00:20:55
The one release that we got pertaining to thought leader ads this year.
00:21:00
So the last time we talked the way that thought leader ads worked is
00:21:03
you could only promote the post of an employee, a current employee.
00:21:06
But it was actually on April 1st, on, on April Fool's Day this year,
00:21:09
they released the ability to boost a post that is from a non employee.
00:21:14
We still need their permission, but now that opens us up to the ability to to
00:21:18
have influencer marketing happen where you work with an influencer or a partner.
00:21:23
UGC if your users are creating content and talking about
00:21:27
you, you can now promote that.
00:21:28
So lots of cool abilities that way.
00:21:31
LinkedIn has given us more retargeting options.
00:21:34
LinkedIn is always like four years behind Meta.
00:21:37
If Meta comes out with something, I'm like, Oh, that's awesome.
00:21:39
I can't wait till LinkedIn has that in four years.
00:21:41
Uh, LinkedIn has now surpassed Meta in its retargeting abilities, where
00:21:46
there's all kinds of different retargeting audiences we can build.
00:21:49
We can say, I want to retarget anyone who has visited my
00:21:52
Company Page in the last year.
00:21:54
Anyone who's interacted with my Thought Leader ad.
00:21:57
Anyone who's watched at least 25 percent of one of my video ads.
00:22:00
Like, You just have all of that control.
00:22:02
So that's exciting and new.
00:22:04
The other one I'll point out it's not exactly new this year, but I'm seeing
00:22:07
a lot of advertisers get a lot of good use out of it, which is document ads.
00:22:11
So I'm sure you've noticed organically the document posts that do quite well.
00:22:16
What I've noticed is all of the documents that do very well, they all have one thing
00:22:20
in common and that is they're more like a presentation than they are a an ebook.
00:22:26
If someone is looking because 80 percent of the time people are on LinkedIn or on
00:22:31
mobile, they have this tiny little screen.
00:22:33
And if they see a thumbnail that is just a wall of text,
00:22:37
they're not going to read it.
00:22:38
So uploading your ebook, uploading your guide, whatever is not
00:22:41
going to help and perform.
00:22:43
But if you treat it, let's say it is an ebook.
00:22:46
Treat it like a presentation where you pull out one big stat, one big takeaway on
00:22:51
every page, turn that into a presentation.
00:22:53
That is, it's thumb candy.
00:22:55
Makes you want to keep scrolling and turning those into ads,
00:22:59
those perform really well.
00:23:00
And there's some, some cool little hacks and tricks you can do to to get some
00:23:03
great traffic and ability out of that.
00:23:06
I love learning from you because I will be going and stealing that.
00:23:11
I'm just letting you know, you know, I do, and I love you for it.
00:23:14
But this is something that you could easily apply back to your
00:23:17
organic Company Pages as well.
00:23:19
And I've got some clients that put a lot of effort and research
00:23:22
into for instance, white papers.
00:23:25
And these reports are jam packed full of insights, but when you've just got like
00:23:30
a little square that you're trying to convey, Hey, if you just go behind this,
00:23:34
you're going to get so much magic, but getting them to stop scrolling and getting
00:23:39
them to actually entice them into that is something that is really difficult.
00:23:44
So I can see how that is just absolutely going to give people options, like there
00:23:50
is no one size fits all to LinkedIn.
00:23:52
There is experimenting.
00:23:54
So I love that you always come up with the cool things for people to try.
00:23:58
Thank you for being you.
00:24:00
You're so welcome.
00:24:01
I love to geek out on this stuff.
00:24:27
So is there anything else?
00:24:29
Cause I'm wondering, LinkedIn's just added in the brand new video feed.
00:24:33
Do we see the same trend coming across for short form vertical
00:24:37
videos through LinkedIn Ads?
00:24:39
Is that a thing?
00:24:40
Yes in short.
00:24:41
So talking about specifically about the video feed LinkedIn is leaving
00:24:45
that one alone with ads for a little bit, because I think they want
00:24:48
to make sure that, that users are getting the very best experience.
00:24:52
They're not seeing an ad every five videos or whatever,
00:24:54
or maybe even more often.
00:24:56
So they, they've kept us away from that.
00:24:58
But they have released the ability.
00:24:59
This has been the last several years, but now we can do video
00:25:04
ads that are in vertical format.
00:25:06
And when you do a vertical video, it is only served on mobile.
00:25:10
They will not serve that on desktop, which is great if you've actually
00:25:12
designed the video content for mobile.
00:25:15
As advertisers are having more and more success with that, I
00:25:17
think later when LinkedIn decides to monetise the video feed, it's
00:25:21
gonna be a really natural lead in.
00:25:23
Yeah, you can see that one coming from a mile away.
00:25:25
It's going to happen and you get it.
00:25:27
I think this year is the year where LinkedIn right or wrong.
00:25:30
It's their sandpit.
00:25:31
We play in it, but they are doing so many things to monetise.
00:25:35
I think it's been the year where LinkedIn after 20 odd years, finally
00:25:38
woke up and went, we've been given away a lot of stuff for free.
00:25:41
And when you're a monopoly, like that just doesn't make commercial sense to me.
00:25:44
So I don't begrudge them for that.
00:25:47
As a user, of course I would love differently, but it is what it
00:25:50
is and it totally makes sense.
00:25:52
Now.
00:25:53
AJ, as we come around to the end, my probably favourite part of this
00:25:58
is that I'm going to ask you for your best tip that you can give to
00:26:03
marketers who might be planning their LinkedIn ad campaigns for 2025.
00:26:08
What do you think they should be paying attention to?
00:26:11
What do you think will make the biggest impact?
00:26:14
And yeah, I always love to know, cause you are just so ahead of everybody else
00:26:18
when it comes to this kind of stuff.
00:26:19
So can you mind sharing just a little bit more of your knowledge with the listeners?
00:26:24
Yes.
00:26:24
I've actually been saving this one for the end specifically.
00:26:27
So the very best advice I have for marketers right now is get comfortable
00:26:28
hitting the record button . So we've talked about LinkedIn's thought leader
00:26:30
ads and how they're the highest performing ad format on LinkedIn right now.
00:26:30
Surprise,
00:26:40
Surprise, like getting personal was always going to trump getting
00:26:43
having a brand in their face.
00:26:45
But what we found the very highest performing thought leader ads are video.
00:26:51
So If you think about it, if you have your CEO, your founder, some other
00:26:55
internal thought leader record, just record into their phone, everyone has
00:26:59
it in their pocket a quick, here's a 15 second tip, trick strategy,
00:27:04
an industry update that you should be aware of, something like that.
00:27:07
Those are the highest performing ads that we've ever seen.
00:27:10
Performance off the charts.
00:27:11
And when you have high performing ads.
00:27:14
Costs come down.
00:27:15
So you, you end up getting huge discounts compared to your competitors.
00:27:18
Who doesn't want that?
00:27:20
So what we do, you can record for free.
00:27:23
Of course, it's nice to have better sound, a better camera or
00:27:25
whatever, but you don't need it.
00:27:26
Everyone's got good camera in their pocket.
00:27:29
You can record a video.
00:27:30
We use Descript to edit, which is $12 a month.
00:27:33
And yeah, with a few minutes, you can take one section or, one video,
00:27:38
chop it up into five or six little pieces, and then that becomes ad
00:27:42
content that's going to perform really well for the next two, three months.
00:27:46
So that's what I would say.
00:27:47
Get comfortable hitting the record button for yourself or coaching someone
00:27:52
else in your organisation on how to do that as well, because that video
00:27:56
content it's not going anywhere.
00:27:57
And it's cheaper attention on LinkedIn than any other ad format.
00:28:03
Think about that that's what works organically.
00:28:05
When we scroll the feed, we stop at the people we know,
00:28:09
the faces that we recognise and say, what's that person up to?
00:28:13
What are they talking about?
00:28:14
And, you know, I think it's the one point of difference that we can really have
00:28:18
that differentiator is your people and it may be yourself within the business.
00:28:23
Now I went in and I was helping a client to, come up with some new ideas and
00:28:28
we went into the LinkedIn Ads library.
00:28:30
So if you don't know, that's a thing, go and check it out because you can see
00:28:34
what other things people are running.
00:28:36
Now I went in to have a look at B2Linked because well, if I want to know
00:28:41
what's going on with LinkedIn Ads, of course, I'm going to go and check out
00:28:43
what ads AJ Wilcox has been running.
00:28:46
And I saw those videos in there of you, I think it was, maybe in your
00:28:49
backyard or somewhere like that.
00:28:50
It was you talking and they're the ones that I stopped and looked at
00:28:53
most and went, what's he got to say?
00:28:55
I want to know what's AJ up to and so I went, on a screen
00:29:00
full of different thumbnails.
00:29:01
That was the ones that I went and had a look at more so than some of
00:29:05
the other, content that was on there.
00:29:07
So if you haven't played around with the LinkedIn Ads library,
00:29:11
it's definitely worth a look.
00:29:12
One of the things we discovered was that the ads that this particular
00:29:16
client was running looked pretty much identical to one of their competitors.
00:29:20
There was very little way that you could distinguish between the two.
00:29:23
And so it was an easy win for us to try and figure out,
00:29:26
okay, don't do that anymore.
00:29:28
We've got to do the opposite or something different.
00:29:30
And so that, that was really helpful for them.
00:29:33
I think I realise now that with ads and correct me if I'm wrong, but
00:29:37
the images or the graphics or the thumbnails that we're using for these
00:29:40
things, they have to pop in some way.
00:29:43
And I'm thinking that you're going to agree with what I've been banging on
00:29:46
about probably for the last five episodes.
00:29:49
Stock images, bad templates.
00:29:51
Are we throwing them out the window with ads as well?
00:29:54
Cause I'm trying to banish them out of organic land.
00:29:56
I'm assuming it doesn't work to pay for a bad organic post
00:30:00
to be shown to more people.
00:30:01
Like the logic doesn't add up for me there.
00:30:04
Absolutely
00:30:05
We actually had a client one time who he was suggesting using stock
00:30:08
images and I was like, no, just take a random picture in your office.
00:30:12
I guarantee it's going to work better.
00:30:14
And sure enough, he did.
00:30:15
He took a picture of his coworker sitting at his computer and that became
00:30:18
one of the highest performing ads that we'd ever seen in the account.
00:30:20
Yeah, banish to stock photo land.
00:30:22
LinkedIn have gone all in on AI because they are a Microsoft property and
00:30:26
Microsoft's a huge investor in ChatGPT.
00:30:29
But what we've noticed is in order for them to be able to help
00:30:33
you with your ad content, they have to dip into stock photos.
00:30:37
They have to dip into DALL-E image generation.
00:30:40
And then of course for the text they're using ChatGPT on the backend.
00:30:44
So it's nice that they're giving us these tools that help
00:30:47
us create ads better, faster.
00:30:49
But don't let that be a, a replacement for coming up with good creative
00:30:54
that pops like, yes, thank you.
00:30:56
Couldn't have said it better myself.
00:30:57
Look, it's the same conversation I'm having over and over because
00:31:01
we are scrolling the feed so fast.
00:31:03
You know, I think it's 80 miles an hour, somebody measured it.
00:31:06
So imagine how many posts are going past somebody's eyes.
00:31:09
You have to get them to stop.
00:31:11
And the same applies organic to LinkedIn Ads.
00:31:14
Now as we wrap this one up, cause I could probably talk to you all day on this
00:31:18
and I'm mindful of time, but I just want to let the listeners know that if you
00:31:22
have enjoyed this conversation and you live somewhere around the UK or want to
00:31:26
travel to the UK in March, next year.
00:31:29
We are both speaking at Uplift Live in the UK in 2025 in Birmingham.
00:31:35
And we would love to see some of the listeners and get to meet you.
00:31:39
Come and ask us, come and listen to us both talk and share whatever
00:31:42
the latest trends are on Company Pages, organic and LinkedIn Ads.
00:31:47
We will be there and we hope to meet more people there.
00:31:49
I can't wait.
00:31:50
Look out.
00:31:51
You have another big hug incoming.
00:31:53
I can't believe I get to meet you another time.
00:31:55
Oh, the power of LinkedIn.
00:31:56
And this is my favourite part of it.
00:31:58
So AJ, you're the best.
00:32:00
Thank you so much for everything that you've shared.
00:32:03
Michelle.
00:32:03
Thank you so much for having me on.
00:32:04
Keep cranking out the awesome stuff.
00:32:06
I'm so grateful every time I hop in the car and get to commute
00:32:08
somewhere or cut the grass.
00:32:10
Like That's the time where I'm listening to Michelle.
00:32:12
So thank you.
00:32:13
I love it.
00:32:14
And to all of the listeners out there, keep on growing.
00:32:17
And when it comes to LinkedIn Ads, go back to the beginning of this episode, the
00:32:22
transcript will also be on the website.
00:32:23
So you can go through and scan all of these amazing tips that AJ has
00:32:28
given you that are going to make a difference that are going to
00:32:31
deliver better ad campaigns in 2025.
00:32:34
So until next week, cheers.
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