In an effort to expand our content marketing and lead gen efforts, we’ve starting putting some cash into LinkedIn Sponsored Updates. Our budget isn’t terribly large, but it’s big enough to generate some useful data.
And so far, it has been VERY productive. CPL is very, very good.
Here are some takeaways from the LinkedIn Sponsored Updates process, followed by some data from two weeks of campaigns.
– The best thing about LinkedIn Sponsored Updates is that you can be VERY targeted with your audience.
You can target ONLY people from specific companies, specific job titles, members of specific LinkedIn groups, specific age groups, and even individual people. The geographic filters are foolproof, meaning that if you ONLY want people from the U.S. and Canada to see your ads, only the people from the U.S. and Canada will see your ads.
This is MUCH more effective than Google AdWords where foreign leads still click your ads even when you have excluded them with your filters.
– The process to set up the ads and manage them is a bit cumbersome
The first time you do it. Once you get the hang of it, though, it isn’t a big deal.
– Plan to spend up to 20% more on your ads than your daily maximum
LinkedIn can’t turn off the ads immediately. So when you hit your daily maximum, there are still people who will see your content, click your content, and LinkedIn will bill you for those clicks.
– Content that has higher CTR will be shown more frequently than content that has a lower CTR.
For the first 2 weeks we split our budget between blog content and White Paper landing pages. The goal of both of these efforts was to generate White Paper downloads. Not surprisingly, sending people straight to White Paper landing pages was a much more effective use of ad spend than sending people to blog posts (at least in terms of lead gen). The reason for this is obvious. Visitors to the blog have to complete one more step (click on the landing page) before they actually download the White Paper.
Week 1 – Landing Page (CPL): $65.97
Week 2 – Landing Page (CPL): $31.30
Week 1 – Blog CPL – $188.08
Week 2 – Blog CPL – $249.11
Obviously creating campaigns around White Paper landing pages is the best option. Sending people to landing pages is far better (in terms of lead gen) than sending people to blog posts. We’ve stopped trying to generate blog clicks in Week 3. We expect our CPL to hover between $30 and $35.
We promoted two White Paper landing pages in Week 1 and two different White Paper landing pages in Week 2.
– Week 1 – Landing Page
– BIA Kelsey Report: Why Call Tracking Fails the Local Marketer: CTR 0.08%
– The Authoritative Guide to Call Tracking and SEO: CTR 0.35%
– Week 2 – Landing Page
– The Agency Guide to Call Tracking: CTR 0.36%
– The Authoritative Guide to Call Tracking and SEO: CTR 0.16%
– Week 1 – Blog
– 45 Cool Analytics We Can Extract From Phone Calls: CTR 0.67%
– AdWords Q&A With Former Google Evangelist Frederick Vallaeys: CTR 0.27%
– Week 2- Blog
– 45 Cool Analytics We Can Extract From Phone Calls: CTR 0.68%
– Awesome New Pay-Per-Call Infographic from BIA/Kelsey: CTR 0.17%
Conclusion
Obviously only two weeks worth of data is less than conclusive, but the early results have been promising. So far our CPL for LinkedIn Sponsored Updates is better than most other marketing efforts. Will this continue? Will the audience become saturated?
I don’t know.
We’ll keep you updated on our success/failures as we continue using LinkedIn Sponsored Updates.
