Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Anthony Blatner who is a tech founder and ex -IBMer. Anthony helps companies unlock their B2B marketing potential using LinkedIn ads and the power of technology. We talk all about LinkedIn advertising – the power of them, the cost of them, the different types and how you can get started with them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Ads are there for when you are ready to throw gas on the fire – you have something that is working and your funnel is in place.
- You have to know who you are targeting for your ads to work properly.
- LinkedIn ads target people based on who they are such as their job roles or industry – which is why they are best for B2B.
- LinkedIn is great if you want to target a niche professional at scale.
- LinkedIn is a more expensive platform to advertise on.
- The minimum spend for LinkedIn Ads is around $10 per day but you will likely need more than this for really driving traffic. You can expect to pay around $8-$10 per click.
- Be really specific with your audience you are targeting on LinkedIn.
- Types of LinkedIn Ads – Sponsored content, sponsored email, conversation ads, dynamic ads (desktop ads) and text ads (desktop only).
- Start with sponsored content ads using lead forms if you are new to LinkedIn.
- You can be professional and personal on LinkedIn – personal content can cut through the noise and get your personality across.
- The best way to get started is to advertise a lead magnet with a sponsored content ad and lead form.
- You can only advertise from a company page on LinkedIn.
- Business pages on LinkedIn are good from an SEO perspective and tend to come up higher in search results.
- Have some recent updates on your business page before advertising but you don’t need to worry about posting too much.
- Only your followers see your content on your business page so keep it up-to-date but more people are likely to see your content on your personal page.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
LinkedIn Ads enable you to really target specific groups of people, so you don’t need to target a huge audience like you would on Facebook.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS
- An introduction to Anthony 04:53
- Are LinkedIn Ads more technical? 06:50
- The power of LinkedIn Ads 09:22
- The cost of LinkedIn Ads 13:40
- Are you ready for LinkedIn Ads? 15:23
- Common LinkedIn Ads mistakes 20:45
- Different types of LinkedIn Ads 22:32
- LinkedIn content 27:14
- Getting started with LinkedIn Ads 29:27
- Do I need a business page on LinkedIn? 36:28
CHECK ANTHONY OUT:
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Create Your Dream Business Bootcamp
Transcript
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week got an interview all about LinkedIn advertising. I'll get to that in a minute. However, before we do that. I just want to tell you that I've bought the bootcamp back. So back in, I said like, May, May, April time. I did a five day bootcamp called Create Your Dream Business Bootcamp.
It was so good. It was basically, it has three workshops and those workshops are aimed around knowing, you know, what do you want your business to look like? How you structure it to get to that sort of business and then your mindset around it. It includes things like prizes and coaching calls and so much good stuff.
And like I said, the feedback was awesome that I had last time. So if you signed up, you didn't get chance to do it, then you definitely want to come and do it. If you haven't checked it out or signed up, then please do go and have a look. Cause it's going to be fab. It's completely free by the way. So go to Teresa Heath, I've got my name, teresaheathwearing.com/bootcamp.
And you can sign up there and you'll get everything sent to you when you sign up. That's going to be brilliant. So I'll just leave that with you, for you to go and, um, and go and take a look at that when you've got five minutes, obviously, if you're on social, any of my social, we'll start sharing the fact that we're doing the bootcamp coming up.
So on to today's interview. Now I really liked, I really like it when I don't know the subject and I know nothing about LinkedIn advertising. I did it years ago, but wasn't very successful and then hardly anybody I know does it. So when this guy approached me to say, could he come on the podcast? I was like, do you know what?
Yeah, because some of you will be using LinkedIn for your main platform. And I just think it's good to give you a heads up or an idea as to whether you should look at the advertising. Is there any good? What does it do? So, like I said, I was complete student with this. I was asking all the questions because I didn't know what I was talking about. So the lovely Anthony came on to talk about it. So Anthony was a tech is a tech founder and an ex IBM-er. He has seen lots of companies with great services failed due to ineffective marketing. So he started an agency to help those companies unlock their B2B marketing potential.
By blending his experience in marketing and software, he's able to help digital agencies reach their potential using LinkedIn ads and the power of technology. So like I said, I'm not even going to like deep dive into anything we talked about because I'm just going to let you to jump in and listen to what he had to say. So here is Anthony.
It's my great pleasure that I welcome to the podcast today Anthony Blatner. Anthony, how are you doing?
Anthony: I'm doing great. How are you doing?
Teresa: I am good. Really good. Thank you. It's the end of the day for me, it's been a busy one. I was going to say go my house call, but actually have a life to do a bit later on.
So, um, and then I can enjoy a glass of wine. Um, but where are you based? You're obviously in a different part of the world to me.
Anthony: Yes, I'm in Austin, Texas. So I am, uh, not just starting my day, a little bit late in my day. It's 11:00 AM here. Um, but yeah, Austin, Texas.
Teresa: Because were British and we asked you the questions like this, what's the weather like?
Anthony: Um, well, it's actually kind of rainy and overcast here today. Uh, but overall temperature wise has been pretty good. Last few weeks have been good, like mid seventies, low eighties. Now is the perfect time for Texas, you know, overall, uh, it's going to get pretty hot pretty soon.
Teresa: So what does it kind of go up to?
Anthony: Uh, it'll get to triple digits Fahrenheit. Um, and usually over the summer, we'll have a lot of like a hundred degree days, a hundred, 105.
Teresa: Wow.
Anthony: Yeah.
Teresa: That's crazy. Crazy hot. I have not been to Texas. It's on my list of places. Obviously that list is just paused during this amazing time that we're in, but it is on my list.
So anyway, we will crack on, like I said, I love asking what's the weather like question. So Anthony, in case my audience haven't heard from you, why don't we start off as we always do in explaining who you are and what you do.
Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. So I, uh, I specialize in LinkedIn advertising. Uh, there's not many people out there that do.
Um, so you know, happy to share tips and tricks for LinkedIn advertising. It's been a great platform. Um, but a little bit about me is my background, I come into the marketing world from the software side of things. I started my career at IBM building big e-commerce websites, going out to their clients. And when I was in, when I moved to Austin here, I got involved in the startup scene. So I started building mobile apps on the side and eventually started a mobile app development agency that I ran. Um, we built a lot of apps, a lot of software for a lot of different companies from startups to big companies and saw that a lot of companies would build an app and put it on the app store and do really well, um, with a good marketing plan, if they, if they were able to get that distribution.
And then we saw a lot of other companies spend a lot of time and a lot of money and build just as good of software, but without a good marketing plan, you would launch your app. And it would just sit on the app store and, you know, and it would die. So we saw the need and the opportunity we that's, how I kind started getting, getting pulled into the marketing world was once you build the app, you got to help them market it distribute it. Um, so that was my segue getting into the marketing world. And then over the years, just finding that LinkedIn was the best platform. Um, with my background, I had mostly B2B software clients, so that B2B space was just doing the best on LinkedIn. So that's what I've been focused on over the last several years is just LinkedIn advertising and targeting those B2B audiences.
Teresa: Love it, love it. And that's cool. Like, you know, it's come from a software point of view. I'm interested actually. Now I done LinkedIn ads many, many, many years ago. I think I dabbled once. Is, is it the kind of more tacky type of ad? Is that, did that kind of path help you with this, or is it just the same, a little bit of the types of ads?
Anthony: Um, I'd say it's, it's pretty similar to the other ad platforms. I always like to say, like, LinkedIn's like a few years behind, like Facebook and people in terms of like what, like what their ad platform looks like. Like you get in there and you're just like, this is simple, like simple, but I'm confused.
Teresa: And I think that's generally LinkedIn full stop.
It's there you know. And I hoped for Microsoft to go, but we're like, please make it beautiful. Please make it beautiful. And they just haven't quite got there.
Anthony: They, they did a redesign of like the front end, the consumer side of the platform. So my hope is that will eventually make it to the backend. I know they're working on a business manager, which they don't have yet for the ads platform.
But uh, they are in, are working on it. I think it's going to be out next year. They said, so they're definitely making a lot of advancements. Um, I think originally when Microsoft took them over, we were like expecting a lot really quickly. And I think they've been kind of working in the backgrounds and we've seen a lot of new features over this last year, especially during COVID like LinkedIn lives, LinkedIn events and like a lot of that stuff getting promoted.
So I think they're making strides. But to jump back to your question, as far as like the techie side of things, I think, I appreciate being able to get into code when I need to. And like, you know, as simple as like adding conversion tags to websites and LinkedIn insight tags to sites and like, you know, being fine with just copying and pasting code, putting those snippets in there.
If I need to rearrange anything else, um, you know, I do spend a lot of time doing that, but I'm very comfortable like getting in that and I, I appreciate having that background of being able to do that when I need to. So often I'll spin up landing pages for people and that's pretty easily connect all that stuff together.
Teresa: Yeah. Cool. So, okay. I said to you, before we got on, I love it when we talk about subject that I literally have no idea. Right. Because one, I learned stuff, which is really cool, but two, I asked the stupid questions, so you're just going like, you can just put your fear now, because this is probably going to be the easiest stuff topic in your life. But I really do want to get to basics because one thing that my listeners will have, like most business owners slash marketers slash social media managers have is the overwhelm of so much stuff. And lots of them are some of them dabble in Facebook.
Some of them are not quite there yet in terms of advertising. So let's get right to basics in terms of explain to me, if you, if I had never thought of advertising for what does the LinkedIn ads do for someone using them?
Anthony: Um, so ads, so starting very basic, you know, ads I, you know, even to the very small business, I'd say ads are when you're ready to throw gas on the fire.
So when you have something that's working, when you have your sales process, you have your funnel when it's working, then ads are good to go. Throw a fuel on the fires, what I always say, be careful not to throw a fuel on the fire before there's a fire there, or are you going to waste a lot of money. So, you know, throughout the years there's been people I've talked to who are like, you know, let's, let's start ads.
It's a brand new business. You know, we don't know who we're targeting. And I'm like, well, you're going to spend a lot of money testing those audiences and those ads to figure out what does work. So in general ads are when you have something that's working, you're just know you're ready to push more traffic, more leads, more customers into that funnel.
That's where ads are handy. And now where LinkedIn ads kind of play in the big ecosystem is, you know, on, in the, for the big platforms you have like Google, Facebook, and you have LinkedIn. Facebook's great for B to C when you're targeting a broad consumer audience, maybe based on, you know, the demographics or what they're interested in.
Um, Facebook is great with that because they have a lot of content. They see how people, they have seen people, you know, interact on and off the platform. Now some of that's changing, but, um, LinkedIn is more targeting based on who somebody is. So based on job titles, company, names, industries, company sizes, and all those various, um, options.
So. That's why LinkedIn is good for B2B. Facebook's good for B to C and the platforms themselves are kind of configured for those ways. Whereas on LinkedIn, we have all the options. You know, Facebook does have some options for like job title and industry, but they're very limited. And just like the way people use Facebook, you know, I know I probably have my professional stuff on Facebook a long time. And I know most of my, you know, um, family and colleagues, I don't see them putting that stuff in the Facebook. So Facebook just lacks a lot of that data. Whereas on LinkedIn, we always say like, that's one of the first places, somebody updates when they get a new job or when they start a new company or even starting a new side project.
So LinkedIn's data is, you know, all the users put that in there. It's all first party data. So thinking about iOS 14, that's coming out this week. You know, LinkedIn owns that data. They know it. So. We're not really concerned in the LinkedIn space of, you know, much of that impact. Sure. There'll be something as far as like conversion tracking and like re-targeting, but as far as like the core of what we're doing and our, where our campaigns are based off of all that data is coming from LinkedIn, none of that's going to change.
We're still going to use job puddles, company names, none of that's going to change. So LinkedIn is great. When you want to target a niche professional at scale. So, again, Facebook's good for broad consumer audiences. Even if you were saying all business owners, maybe Facebook is a better platform for you because it will be cheaper.
Potentially LinkedIn is a more expensive platform. Um, and you pay for the targeting that you get, but you can target specific types of professionals. Say you wanted HR directors at financial services company. That'd be finding a needle in the haystack on Facebook. You know, you'd be, you'd be getting a lot of clicks, but 99% of those would not be the right person.
So all the data your pixel seeing is just not the right data. So, you know, that kind of muddies your data and it's hard to drive any kind of result out of that. Whereas on LinkedIn, I can specifically target HR directors in the financial services space, you know, at a big company at a small company. And use that to drive the campaign. And then I knew I'm getting all the right people. So that's kind of where LinkedIn plays in the space, um, and where LinkedIn is good. Good for, um, So that's, that's kind of a rundown.
Teresa: On my experience is that LinkedIn is considerably more expensive than Facebook, but you raised a really good point there in the fact of, if I'm running an ad, I might be getting impressions, but it's a vanity metric, you know, or it might even be getting the clicks, but not the conversions because I'm targeting an audience that is that I'm trying to find the right people.
Whereas if I know someone's job title or I know the sector or the industry or the kind of types of business I'm after then obviously I can get a much stronger, I guess, person looking at it, but it might cost me more. How much are we talking? Is there a minimum per day? What's your expense in terms of like paying for ads?
Anthony: Yes. A minimum per day is 10 bucks per day, uh, in the US um, is LinkedIn's minimum. So, you know, Facebook's like a dollar, but LinkedIn is 10 bucks a day. Um, but you're probably going to need more than that, you know, significantly more than that to drive enough data, to make decisions based off. Um, what we usually see on LinkedIn in the US um, targeting a mid-level or higher, you're usually paying at least 8 to 10 bucks per click or more if you're targeting, you know, CEOs of fortune a hundred companies.
Sure. You can be paying 25 to 50 bucks a week. Um, but it just depends on the competitiveness or your audience. Most people are going to be around 8 to 10 bucks per click. Um, but you know, when you, again, when you need to target that niche decision maker that you can't find anywhere else, if you know, if you were to run that campaign on Facebook, Sure you could be paying like a dollar for a click over there, but you know, I'm sure even like, you know, I'd say 90, 90% of your clicks, aren't going to be the right people, probably more than that.
So suddenly you're paying a lot more on Facebook or, or the same amount that you are paying on LinkedIn, but making sure you're getting good traffic and good clicks coming through there.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to touch on just a bit, you said before that I thought was really interesting is that.
This is good for when you want to throw gas on the fire. So I liked the fact that you said if something is working. So give me an example of that. Like, is it just as simple as you've put a post up and people seem to be resonating and going into the post and converting, or is it a campaign you've put somewhere else that then you want to try and link them?
What's your idea of understanding that something's starting to work and then you're throwing gas to the fire.
Anthony: Yeah. Um, that's a good question. So there's a few different ways that you'll typically see a company maybe get started or starting to build out their sales and marketing processes. Um, I'd say on the basic level, you have kind of the one-to-one type of outreach where maybe you're just a business owner and you're just doing outreach through your network, through word of mouth.
That's where most people start. And if you, you know, maybe you're getting referrals to start, maybe you're reaching out your local community. And then once you've built up a few clients, um, you know, maybe then you hire a sales person or maybe you do start some social media. Um, some marketing and you, you look to get more prospects coming into your funnel, so kind taking your offer, packaging it up, and then sending it out to a broader audience and starting to convert those people.
So you have like the one-to-one, um, sales that I'd say. And then after that next up is kind of more marketing of like getting it out to a broader audience. So once you get your one-to-one sales working, that's when you can start thinking about going out to a broader audience. You know, in the grand scheme of things, you're probably going to start with, you know, what a lot of people do approaching LinkedIn is should I do start with like the organic side of things and just making posts, but that's probably not going to drive a ton of traffic.
Sure. You can like you know kind of talk about your services on there, but you know, you don't often get a lot of people just messaging you if they are then awesome, you know, keep doing that. But, uh, a lot of people start, you know, maybe start using LinkedIn with like say sales navigator and then targeting in a very similar way to the people that you want to target and then reaching out to them in a one-on-one fashion.
And then saying, you know, putting your pitch in there, like, “Hey, I see you're in the financial services space. We have software, that's helping financial advisors save three hours per week. Would you be pairing more.” Um, they say, yes, boom. That's a prospect. That's a one that's still a one-on-one approach, but it's more of a outbound approach.
You know, one stuff like that is working. That's when we take that similar targeting, similar pitch, we put that into an ad campaign, you know, with a, with a one-on-one, one-to-one outreach, even if it's like email or LinkedIn, you know, maybe you can send tens or maybe a hundred per day. Eventually Gmail is gonna, you know, all the email providers are gonna throttle you eventually LinkedIn's gonna throttle you, so there are limits there and just like your time um, if you're doing it manually. So an ad campaign, you know, I can easily create that in an ad and put it out there and hit 10,000 people in a day. So that's where putting fuel on the fire kind of comes in and is like, one-to-one you, you probably, and you want to start, there's going to be the cheapest. There's no ad spend involved.
And then once one-to-one is working, then turning it into a marketing process of putting a new ad campaign or, or even some, some other type of marketing to get to a broader audience.
Teresa: Love it love it. So do you know, what's really interesting. I was thinking to myself, I don't think I recognized any ads on LinkedIn and obviously I go on LinkedIn a lot and I do this, like things round the edge, but I don't, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them as I do on Facebook.
And before the call, I was scrolling through my LinkedIn and I realized that the ads I see. Not that they're necessarily aimed or targeted to me because some of them absolutely weren't of relevance. But I think because the content I see is so diverse, because on LinkedIn, I still see things that, oh, so-and-so liked this post, you know.
Because. And you'll know better than me, you know them, but like, I guess on, on Facebook, there's just too much content. So we can't see oh, so, and so's necessarily like this post or, you know, the kind of interactional elements of it. Whereas on LinkedIn, we still do. We still do see someone's commented on it. Someone liked it and whatever.
So I'm very used to seeing content in my feed, but doesn't necessarily a hundred percent fit with me. And therefore, I think that's why I have skimmed over or not realized that these are ads. Like, you know, is that, is that something you're smiling at me? Is, is that something that you think like, you know, that happens and that maybe is a benefit of LinkedIn ads?
Anthony: So there's, there's a couple of things, what you just said. Uh, first I'd say the organic side of things of like content, um, I'd say you're right. Like Facebook has too much content and they're like, throttling it. Like, you're not going to see everything that all your friends are posting. And LinkedIn is more on the, we want you to post content side of things.
So there's a lot more opportunity on the organic side. To get go viral or just to get more organic reach out on LinkedIn, because they're looking for you to post more so that they can promote it to your network and to your third degree network, your network of your network and stuff like that. So I'd say that there's still a lot of organic opportunity on LinkedIn, especially like their new stories format.
I keep an eye on that and like, I don't see many people post stories. It's a brand new format. LinkedIn loves to promote it. So go be the first in your network to start posting it. And you'll be on the top of someone's app. And that's just the way to get in front of people. Video, LinkedIn wants to promote more video, hashtags.
We recommend use like, two or three don't do, don't do the Instagram thing of cramming all of them possible in there, like two to three or else LinkedIn thinks you're spamming and then they'll throttle you. But organic is so a big opportunity on LinkedIn. Um, and then as far as ads go. Yeah.
If you've seen any bad ads set in my way or contact me, we'll help them with targeting. Um, but you know what I do usually see in I'll let, I can kind of give you some tips on, or just talk about targeting in general. A lot of people, um, a mistake, a lot of people make is if you're coming from say Facebook ads to LinkedIn ads. On Facebook, usually give it a big audience and you let that algorithm go find the right person for you.
And you, you, you rely a lot on the algorithm to find that right person. You just kind of give it a big audience and you say, this is probably a good audience you made it to look like, or maybe something like that, or people interested in something and you rely on the algorithm to go find it. Whereas on LinkedIn, On LinkedIn, we have the exact targeting options that we want.
So I recommend flipping that around and giving it a very specific audience and only target, you know, the exact titles and the exact industry of the exact company sizes that you want to get in front of. And further on that is on Facebook. You're usually paying for every impression. So you want to draw as many people into your funnel as possible.
On LinkedIn you're usually paying for every click. So you want to eliminate any irrelevant clicks. And when you're paying 8 to 10 bucks a click, that's a lot of money for somebody who, you know, you don't want to just give it a big audience and say, find somebody in here. You want to give it a very specific audience and say, if I'm paying 8 to 10 bucks per click, I only want these people to be seeing and clicking on my ads because these are the people I want to target.
So on Facebook people they got big audience, on LinkedIn be very specific on who you want to target.
Teresa: Okay. So let's talk about the types of ads. Because again lots of us are familiar with Facebook and they'll come to the fact that Facebook is just about to have a kick in the pants of the whole ad situation, but I'm already used to Facebook ads.
So, you know, if someone was talking to me about the types of ads, like what this video and this carousel and this, you know, this type, that type, but obviously LinkedIn has different art options in terms of content. So is that reflected in the ads and what type of ads should people be doing?
Anthony: Yeah. So there's several different ad types on LinkedIn for, to give you the quick rundown is basic.
The basic ad is like the sponsored content and the newsfeed ad. Um, you'll have, you can either have a single image or you can have a video or you can have a carousel in the, in the newsfeed. That's where most people start. That's where I do recommend starting that's LinkedIn's highest quality ad unit. You can put the most information in there as far as like image, headline, body copy.
So sponsored content in the newsfeed. And then other ad types you have is you have sponsored InMail on LinkedIn, which kind of shows up as a message in someone's inbox. These are effective. Those are effective for like invite type of offers, recruiting offers and stuff like that. Uh, and then LinkedIn.
Further on the InMail. They have a new ad unit there that they call conversation ads. And these are more of a chat bot like experience where you'll build a tree that someone can basically click through. As far as when the ad shows up, it can provide them multiple options. Instead of just one call to action, there can be like three call to action.
And it could be like, um, you know, maybe you pitched some services or talk about your company and you say, download our white paper or, you know, schedule a call or other interested and basically give people multiple options of what they can do there. Email ads, conversation ads, and then other ad units is, um, text ads.
And these only show up on desktop and they are like the little ad that show up on the very top. When you're looking at your newsfeed on the right hand side, they're very small, very basic, but they are also the cheapest clicks that you can get on LinkedIn. So if you are looking to just test a very little bit, um, you can try out text ads just to get a feel for the targeting that's there.
Clicks and maybe the people that are coming through. So that is one option where maybe you have a Facebook funnel that's working and you want to move it over to LinkedIn and test it. That'll give you some similar, you know, CPCs. Uh, another ad unit is the dynamic ads and these are the ones that'll show up.
Um, usually on the right hand side, and these are the, these are kind of like the creepy ones that put your face next to like a company logo or some other upload. Those are best used for like recruiting type of ads or like apply now type of ads for some membership or some offer. Um, you see a lot of companies use these for like, you know, follow our company.
Basically your, their profile picture is going to grab their eye and make them look over there. And then maybe they'll click onto your ad. Um, those are also only on desktop, so they tend to be effective, but those are the different types of ad units. And I recommend most people start. I recommend most people start with the sponsored content image ads in the newsfeed.
Uh, and then LinkedIn also does have the lead forms similar to Facebook where you can click on an ad, open up a form right away, and someone gets, submit that information there. Um, so if you're doing a very basic task, I'd say sponsored content and newsfeed use it using LinkedIn ads.
Teresa: Yeah. So I think, like you said that the ones that kind of stick out to me are the ones you said in terms of the image, the videos, carousel, because that is very much the types of ads we're looking at in in Facebook. Do we need to do different sizes for different things? Can you advertise in their stories yet or not?
Anthony: It's in beta. So stories are relatively new and then they are, they have a beta, uh, for the stories ad unit. You probably have to have a LinkedIn rep. I know for a couple of our accounts, we have it enabled that we're tossing it out.
Um, but if you have LinkedIn rep, they can get it enabled on your account if you're spending a certain amount. Um, I'm really excited for stories because, uh, you know, we, I have done a lot of Facebook advertising way in the past, and I noticed there you know, stories did do pretty well because people, it's a big video.
It's immersive people often have sound on. So it performed well on Facebook in the past. And I think it will perform well on LinkedIn or I'm kind of just interested to see how people use it there too.
Teresa: Yeah. So can I ask you a general question about LinkedIn then, in terms of content, I guess this could span into the ads content, where do you sit on, on the type of content for LinkedIn?
Because obviously there's always been this like, well, there was that whole me thing going round, you know, me on LinkedIn, me on Instagram, me on Tinder or whatever it was. I've never been on Tinder by the way, just so you know. But like, you know, LinkedIn has this serious aspect of ethic because it's business to business, you know, whereas I'm very personable on Instagram.
Like I do this thing on Instagram where the way we were called garden watch because we had our gardens on last year, we had a whole light renovation thing. We're doing some uptakes this year and it's the most interaction my Instagram gets is when I put pictures of my garden up. I can never do that on LinkedIn.
Like I think people would think I'd lost my mind. So is it still very traditional that we post a more professional thing on LinkedIn than necessarily we would anywhere else. And does that still stand with the ads.
Anthony: So my advice here is both like yes and no. And what I usually recommend is, um, you know, the mindset that people have when they're on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn is, is a business mindset.
They're thinking about, you know, maybe they have a meeting coming up and they're going to go research somebody's profile. See who's who they're going to be talking to. Maybe they are looking for a job. Um, you know, maybe they're messaging with somebody. Uh, so people are usually in a business mindset when they're on LinkedIn.
So just thinking about that is they're gonna most the most receptive to business content when they're in that mindset, you know, when someone's on Facebook and they're just watching videos of their family and like a business thing pops up, they're less likely to be interested in that just because they're not in that mindset of the time. But that said, so I do usually recommend, you know, probably most of your content. You want to be business-related professional. Also, if not all the content on LinkedIn is professional and business related, then you can be the pattern interrupt that post personal thing here and there. I think that builds more of a personality for you. Whereas like if someone just sees business stuff for you all the time, that's all they know about you, but you know, it's an opportunity to post some of your personality occasionally so that people do learn more about you and what you do outside of work, or, you know, just, you know, have some funny jokes or something that you have.
Uh, so I think it's a mix. You probably want it to be mostly professional content, but I think having some personal content. Um, to be used to both build your personality and to, to be that pattern interrupt every once in a while. It's useful.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I remember going to see, um, uh, social media marketing world years ago, and I think it was Guy Kawasaki that was there.
And he was like, just to add anything on there. I don't care, you know, and he was really a big advocate of like, you know, to be the disruptive one, to be putting the stuff on there about them doing stuff at the weekend and whatever. And I'm like, do you see. Sometimes the slightly different content does get a bit of a, you know, a bit more reach than you kind of the average content.
So if I was going to do, or it's going to start in LinkedIn ads, what would I, you mentioned early about the text one, but if I wanted to put something in the feed, because I wanted, you know, the image or the carousel or the video, how would I get going? What would I start with? How, what's your advice to someone looking to get started on LinkedIn ads?
Anthony: Yeah. So the easiest task is to advertise a, what we call a lead magnet, usually a content offer, um, some kind of PDF or a guide. That's usually the easiest thing to put in an ad. That's going to kind of do the basket of a low budget. So if you're just getting started, just want to test it out. I recommend do a lead magnet, some type of content offer, do sponsored content ad in the newsfeed with a lead form.
Very simple. You set up, you set up your ad there, you set up the form that somebody has to complete and submit. And then after they submit that form, just send them right to the PDF or to your website or somewhere to go from there to get it. Um, so at a very basic task. Average used content offer advertise a lead magnet.
Um, and then you can test it out that way.
Teresa: Something that I would use a lot. The one thing I would do on Facebook more is, is there still the ability to do things like remarketing. So I would normally run a video first, send out for views and then remarket back to the views. Is that something that stands on LinkedIn or something you would try or.
Anthony: Would you do that on LinkedIn? Those are usually for bigger, much bigger campaigns with much bigger budgets. Um, because LinkedIn is a marshal of platform, the amount of money you got to the amount of the size of budget to get enough views, to be able to segment like that is a lot more expensive on LinkedIn. So we do do it for big campaigns and big accounts that, um, you know, maybe you are maxing out your, your bottom of funnel audience and you just, you need more um, middle thrown on top of funnel. So you spilled more brand awareness to the campaigns, and then we will do video views, top of funnel. We targeted those people bottom of funnel. Um, but for your, for your smaller campaigns, naturally spending a couple thousand or a couple of hundred, then that's going to be not enough.
Um, it's definitely doable, but usually for bigger accounts.
Teresa: Okay, cool. So just going to, it's coming straight back, getting it. Thank goodness. Let's talk about the fact of obviously LinkedIn generally has never been anywhere near where Facebook is and the same with the ads.
However, Facebook I've just had a, uh, a bit of a boot in the backside by Apple and the update in the iOS for the phones. Um, Obviously that is now having an impact. And I've been running some ads on Facebook and they're not doing separate and be compared to the past. In fact, strangely enough, me and a couple of other people I know who've run ads for ourselves. We all noticed a drop in deliverable stuff that we've normally get. A few weeks before iOS came out and we sort of discussed it. And one of my colleagues was sort of saying to me, it's as if they're trying to get us ready for the fact that it's going to be terrible. So.
What's your insider prediction. Are we all going to be flocking to LinkedIn and go “I'm so sorry, we should have used you.” Or what do you think's going to happen?
Anthony: What's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Uh, the way that I see it I'm, um, you know, I do think LinkedIn will be the least effective platform compared to, uh, Facebook and Google, you know, a lot like just a lot of the way Facebook works depends on them. Understanding the user based on what they do off the platform and building interest and stuff around that. Um, based on what they're buying, what are the websites they're going to, that puts a lot into the Facebook algorithm. So with all that cut off Facebook has a lot less data that they can use.
So I think we're going to see a big shift initially, you know, there'll be some kind of initial drop, you know, like you're mentioning and they're probably over the next couple of weeks running big shift. But on, you know, on LinkedIn, a lot of the data that we use to start our campaigns are still are, is not going to change job huddles industries, company sizes.
Everyone will have all the platforms will have reduction in conversion tracking for any conversion tracking off the platform. Um, just because, you know, he won't be able to get that data back into the platform. Um, and then being able to retarget people. Uh, based on people who have been to your website, you know, you won't be able to track as many of them and then, um, you know, retargetting and then showing display ads off the platform.
You know, those are going to be harder to, to display as well. So I think everyone's gonna be impacted a little bit. I think LinkedIn will be the least impacted because none of our data's changing and none of our targeting is changing. You know, we'll have a little bit of reduction in conversion tracking, but to be honest, we don't rely on the LinkedIn algorithm too much because we just picked that direct audience and we're like use the people we want.
Um, and often. Often we're comparing metrics from like, um, the client's CRM or their backend system from LinkedIn to do our own conversion tracking that way. So no matter what UTM parameters are still going to work. And we do a lot of that for tracking. So the links that you're going to send people to the landing pages that people are opting in on, you know, we might have to get a little bit more, um, sophisticated in our, in our setups of our funnels where maybe certain campaigns need to go to a certain landing pages.
Certain ads go to certain landing pages so that you can get that data more clearly on the backend and not just rely on your pixels, conversion tracking to be able to, um, do that. Um, so yeah, I think, I think all platforms will be impacted a little bit Facebook, probably the most so LinkedIn, hopefully the least.
I hope the least. Um, but yeah, that'll be good to see all plays out over the next couple of weeks.
Teresa: Yeah will be super interesting. Okay. Uh, I'm really conscious of our time. And obviously you've given so much good information and I'm always really conscious of our listeners that they're like, “Okay that's as much as my head going to handle.” especially on a new subject, like, and something like LinkedIn advertising.
Quick question, obviously on Facebook, only business pages can advertise. How does it work on LinkedIn? Because obviously most people just have their profile. So can you advertise from a single profile?
Anthony: Need a company page on LinkedIn.
Teresa: So you can only advertise from a company page. So if you, and it's going to show up as the company page.
So you need to make sure you've got a company page and then that's the thing that promotes it. What about, so interestingly enough, my company page on Facebook is my name because my name is my business. So I don't think I've ever set up a company page on LinkedIn for this business, given that it's my name and my profile is my name.
So could I technically set up my name as a page and advertise from there, even though I have a profile with my name?
Anthony: Yeah. Oh, a lot of people do that and like the coaching and consulting space.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And I think when I think about my audience, that's probably what they would do. Because, and the other thing is that's interesting is, is the pages are hard to do anything with aren't they? You know, they have a lot of options. They're not particularly, you know, engaging in terms of what people can do. So I made the decision. I think that obviously I've just thought, well, I'm going to put the content on my own profile. I wouldn't put on a page. So I guess that's one of the reasons why lots of us wouldn't have business pages as our accounts.
Is there any other advantage do you see in having that business page there other than the fact that I get to advertise?
Anthony: You get a little bit of SEO value out of it. I'd say, you know, they do tend to rank, well, like whenever someone's looking for your business, um, LinkedIn pages, LinkedIn company pages often show up near the top.
So I do think that they're important. Um, just from our organic side of things. And when you're running ads or not running ads. People are going to go to that page and you'll want to have some kind of recent updates there, just so that people know that you're active and kind of get a feel for what you're doing.
Overall don't spend it, you know, don't, don't feel like you need to spend a ton of time in your company page because unless you're a really big company, you probably don't have enough followers for it. Uh, there's gonna be a bigger impact from your personal profile, because you have so many connections, you probably have like thousands of connections.
Whereas your company page probably has like tens or hundreds of followers. Um, just LinkedIn people don't tend to follow company pages nearly as much as they, you know, connect with other people. On Facebook, they do tend to like pages a lot more often. So we don't see company pages getting a lot of followers organically.
So if you're posting on your company page, you know, it's going to be most of your followers who see that, and that's pretty small. So it is better to post from your personal profile. But that said, you know, people are going to go to your company page and just want to know what you're up to. So have something to, you know, even if it's post monthly, trying to post monthly.
Teresa: Yeah.
Anthony: Just to let them know you're active in there.
Teresa: And with all the schedulers and most of them scheduling and posting to most places, the chances are, you could just, you know, every so often include one of the posts that you're doing somewhere else and check it into company page as well. So, you know, it's like, “Gosh, do I really want another platform or really one of the profile.” the chances are, if you're using a scheduler, then it's not going to be a whole lot more work. So do you think there bring it to profile.
So I'm just thinking, like what if I was looking for a job and I wanted to promote myself as a great employee to a particular company or a particular industry, I would have thought that would have been a nice. You know, a potential nice thing to do. So do you think they'll let that bring it into to profiles or just pages?
Anthony: What do you mean? Scheduling?
Teresa: No, sorry. The, um, the advertising elements. So I can imagine that if I was looking for a job and I really wanted a job at a certain industry that I could put up an ad on my profile, go, “Hey, I'm looking for a job. I'm awesome.” You know, I could imagine that would be quite a nice ad to run, but obviously they can't because they can't run them from that there profile.
So do you think that'll ever change that?
Anthony: They do have an option for you to set uh, if you're open to work or if you're actively looking for a job, um, it's, it's somewhat of a private setting. LinkedIn has a whole suite of tools around the recruiter side of things. And a lot of HR recruiters will use LinkedIn as a recruiting tool set, um, to go find people.
And that's kind of where that data will show up is if you set your profile to actively looking or passively looking or open to offers, um, then you will show up to those recruiters where you can go to recruiting tools, um, and. Uh, it's funny. Like even without changing those, I still get lots of messages here and there.
You know, people are like, “Hey, I saw you worked at IBM.” I'm like, “Yeah that was 10 years ago.”
Teresa: Check my profile. And it's funny, I guess that's where LinkedIn gets this negative side of it. That it's just for finding jobs because, and for big businesses, because obviously most people advertising. If it's got to come from a page is going to be a business page and lots of small businesses probably wouldn't go to the effort of having a business page and a profile.
So, yeah, that's really interesting in terms of if they want to open that up, cause they may not want to, they may be perfectly happy that LinkedIn advertising is more for bigger businesses and for recruiting, you know, and then they leave the small business stuff to, to other platforms maybe. But, but yeah, that is interesting.
Isn't it? Because obviously on Twitter you can do it on a page, on a, any profile because every profile is just a profile, so you can advertise. So. Yeah, very interesting. Um, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this and explaining it to us. It's been really super helpful, even if like for you listening, even if you go “Yeah that's great. And I realize it's not, for me.” it just kind of, at least gives you the information because I think there's nothing worse than going “I should be doing that. That's something else I've got to go and learn about.”
And then going down this big old route of doing a course or doing something else and then realizing actually that wasn't for me. So I think sometimes it's just as helpful to go, right these are the facts. Is it for you? Isn't it for you, but, but no, that was super helpful. Thank you so much. Obviously I will link up to everything in the show notes, but if people want to come and find you, where can they find you?
Anthony: You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, I'm the only Anthony Blatner on there. So feel free to look me up, send me a connection request, go a little note in there. Um, but if you want to get in touch with me, um, my email is [email protected] and then our website is speedworksocial.com we have a, a blog with some good content for LinkedIn ads, tips and best practices. Talking about the campaign set up and then just add creative tips and best practices.
Um, so feel free to go look that up or send me an email.
Teresa: And I will put a link to that in the shownotes. Anthony thank you so, so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Anthony: Thanks for having me.
Teresa: There we go. That was lovely. Anthony. Hopefully you found that useful and picked up some good tips. And things don't forget to go and check out the bootcamp. It's going to be awesome.
You get to hang out with me for in fact, we're not doing five days this time we're doing four, but yeah, you get to hang out with me four days, which would be cool. I'm looking forward to it. And obviously we will link up to everything in the show notes for Anthony. So you can go check him out if you want to check him out. So have a great week and I will see you next week.
