Companies today are told that they can gain new customers through social media platforms like LinkedIn. While this is true, the statement is oddly deceptive. Most companies do not know the correct way to advertise on LinkedIn, or even the process involved. This leaves them feeling lost and confused by the entire concept of social media marketing.
In reality, these companies simply need to be pointed in the right direction. With the right insights and transparency into the process, companies can remove the confusion around social media marketing and generate value from every interaction and platform.
Today, we’ll start clearing up some of the confusion surrounding one of the more popular B2B social media platforms, LinkedIn.
Get started on LinkedIn
LinkedIn Advertising operates through LinkedIn’s all-in-one advertising platform, Campaign Manager. The platform allows you to set up your ad accounts, objective, audience, format, budget and campaign schedule.
A LinkedIn advertising strategy can provide your business with higher engagement rates, conversion rates and 13.5% lower cost per acquisition when using LinkedIn’s conversion tracking tool.
This blog will look at more specified costs if you decide to use LinkedIn as an advertising platform.
How much does it cost to advertise on LinkedIn?
While LinkedIn cost varies according to the advertiser, it does require companies to bid a minimum of $2 for cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) campaigns.
The cost of your advertising on LinkedIn will depend on various factors like target audience, campaign objective and bid. LinkedIn Advertising averages at $5.26 per click, $33.80 per 1000 impressions and $0.20 per send for Sponsored InMail campaigns.
Four factors determine your LinkedIn advertising costs:
Target audience
When advertising on LinkedIn, you compete with other advertisers to get your content seen. If your target audience is in high demand, you can expect higher costs according to the audience value and the increased competition for that audience’s attention.
Bid
Due to LinkedIn having limited advertising space, advertisers need to compete for this commodity through a bidding system. While you won’t ever exceed your bid, you will pay a portion of it. LinkedIn’s ad auction has the auction winner pay one cent more than the next highest bid, known as a “second-price auction”.
Ad relevance score
The Ad relevance score plays a big role in LinkedIn advertising. A high ad relevance score can lower your expenses because LinkedIn wants to serve users relevant and engaging ads. LinkedIn deems the more relevant your ad, the less you have to pay.
Objective
Depending on what you want to achieve with your campaign, you will be priced accordingly. Each objective has a chargeable click behaviour, depending on how your leads react and what you hope to achieve. Selecting a different objective will directly affect how you are charged.
As we have established, LinkedIn has different price listings depending on multiple factors. Therefore, we should look at CPC according to these factors. Here is a breakdown of some benchmarks:
LinkedIn CPC by Objectives
- CPC based on Lead Generation Objective: $4.22
- CPC based on Website Visits Objective: $6.84
- CPC based on Website Conversions Objective: $6.84
- CPC based on Engagement objective: $2.53
Within each category, there are various marketing objectives and each objective has a different pricing model. For example, brand awareness is charged based on impressions - this is why some objectives do not have CPC benchmarks, as they are impression-based buying. As such, it is important to understand chargeable clicks and click behaviours to make full use of LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn CPC by Regions
- CPC in APAC: $2.78
- CPC in EMEA: $4.02
- CPC in LATAM: $1.68
- CPC in NAMER: $9.64
Company structures are usually divided based on these four geographies. This results in marketers advertising based on the region they own. LinkedIn lets you target these regions in your campaign manager tool, helping you avoid keying in dozens of countries from the same region manually.
LinkedIn CPC by Industries
- CPC of Technology Industries: $7.00
- CPC of Finance Industries: $5.70
- CPC of Education Industries: $4.70
- CPC of Government Industries: $5.10
- CPC of Media & Communications Industries: $6.00
- CPC of Consumer goods Industries: $6.70
- Others: $5.80
Industry targeting is one of the unique targeting facets that LinkedIn has on offer.
LinkedIn CPC by Seniorities
- Average CPC of Senior Decision Makers: $7.20
- Average CPC of Entry & Mid-Level: $3.20
The main point of advertising on LinkedIn, usually, is to influence decision makers. In these benchmarks, a senior decision maker is anyone who is above managing level - CXO’s, VPs, Directors, Partners and Owners. These positions are all targetable options in the LinkedIn campaign manager. The higher cost for senior decision makers is because they are in high demand - many advertisers are bidding on them simultaneously.
LinkedIn CPC by Country
- Australia: $6.40
- China: $3.50
- Hong Kong: $5.00
- India: $1.15
- Indonesia: $1.57
- Japan: $5.26
- Korea:$4.86
- Malaysia: $3.36
- New Zealand: $4.90
- Philippines: $2.30
- Singapore: $5.80
- Taiwan: $3.00
- Thailand: $3.60
- Vietnam: $3.40
- Austria: $5.80
- Belgium: $4.98
- Denmark: $4.10
- Finland: $5.80
- France: $3.60
- Germany: $7.90
- Greece: $2.00
- Ireland: $4.10
- Italy: $3.70
- Netherlands: $3.80
- Norway: $5.10
- Portugal: $2.20
- Russia: $3.90
- Spain: $3.60
- Switzerland: $6.00
- United Kingdom: $7.00
- United States: $9.90
Matured markets tend to have higher CPCs and these countries are usually home to many business headquarters. The more you pay here, the more your chances of landing a larger, more developed customer.
How it all works
Let’s take a look at how you would get started on your own LinkedIn advertising campaign.
STEP ONE - Select Self-Service or Managed
When you open LinkedIn advertising, you’ll be presented with a choice for your advert. You can self-service your adverts or use a dedicated account team in a managed campaign. Self service advertisers can use advanced ad targeting, sponsored content and text ads.
Managed campaigns have access to the same, plus sponsored InMail, display ads, dynamic ads and account-based marketing. You’ll also get a dedicated account team to help you through each stage of the process, from targeting to optimisation.
STEP TWO - Choose your Ad Format
Here you’ll choose whether to create Sponsored Content, Text Ads, or both.
Sponsored content appears on LinkedIn member feeds, while Text Ads display on the side, top or bottom of the feed.
STEP THREE - Create your Ads
At this stage, you’ll be guided on how to create your specified adverts. Sponsored content lets you promote updates to your company or showcase page on user feeds. Text Ads use an image, headline and brief description while letting you link out to external pages.
STEP FOUR - Target Your Ads
One of the most significant advantages of advertising on LinkedIn is targeting based on first-party, self-reported information. Using the above CPC prices and categories, you can increase or decrease the range of your ads - but it’s never a good idea to sacrifice relevancy for larger audience numbers.
STEP FIVE - Set your budget
LinkedIn’s built-in Campaign Manager will now suggest bid ranges for your adverts. We suggest you stay on the upper end of the suggested range. You will only ever pay just enough to beat the second-highest bidder, not your maximum range.
STEP SIX - Launch your ad
After the details above have been taken care of, all you have to do is submit and your ads will do their magic!
Get going on LinkedIn Advertising Now
Getting the right partner is the first step towards effective LinkedIn marketing. It saves you time, money and frustration and lets you find success even without deep knowledge in setting up social media campaigns. We know how important social media marketing is today, and how confusing it can be to those who don’t have the experience to apply it. As a small company ourselves, we’ve gone through this process ourselves and found a way to succeed. That’s why we’ve spent the last 12 years planning and implementing award-winning digital marketing campaigns for B2B clients worldwide.
Contact us for a quick 30 minute meeting and we will present you with a social media marketing campaign plan with the right messages, channels, audience and content to use, to assure your success online.