Advertising on LinkedIn

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two_days_late

two_days_late

Chief Lobster Fisherman
Oct 5, 2008
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Hey guys, have been reading the forum for a while so thought I might as well start posting.

Wondering if anyone here's tried advertising on LinkedIn? The traffic's expensive compared to other places but could be quite targeted for the right offers. The ad manager is very very basic and only updates once a day (from what I can tell anyway).

I've put on $25 for a test and used $10 so far (without any conversions). Though there are probably far better offers I could have tried, the one I'm running is reasonably well targeted.

Just wondering what experiences other people have had running ad's on there, good or bad.

Cheers
 


What offer are you trying, if you don't mind me asking? I'd think you'd need a very targeted business ad (leads for some sort of business service?), but I can't think it would have a great ROI. Try AdWords content network targeting to LinkedIn.com if that's possible.
 
When I read this thread earlier I was thinking the same thing. Normally I can think of something to advertise to pretty much any audience but I came up blank on nationwide type campaigns for linkedin.

Office max coupons? Toner? TPS Report Templates?

Shrug
 
I bet headhunters would have great luck with it. Head hunters can easily make at least 10%+ finder's fee on executives. Maybe you can hook into some CPA lead gen site for certain jobs?

If you can record all the profiles that clicked on your ad, that would be even better. Then you could call them up and find if they're actually looking around or just a misclick. If it's the former, then sell that lead to head hunters.
 
I remember reading on Techcrunch a new job site that was going to open up recruiting to affiliate marketers. So if someone clicked on your ad you'd get paid the 2K bounty or whatever the price is set at. I can't remember the name of the startup which was doing this though.

Also you could check out theladders which has an affiliate program through google.
 
Well, if you can target them, I'd say go for the high end.
Senior level managers love to have new toys to show off to people, so advertise PDAs and other executive knick knacks.
For the REALLY high end, expensive cruise holidays to get away from the stress of making the sorts of decisions that seem like they consulted a magic 8ball.
Lower enders probably hate their jobs, so some job seeking sights might convert for you.
If you're marketing products like toner & other stationary, select the EXACT audience that are the ones responsible for buying that shit: Office Managers & Secretaries.

My $0.02 anyway
 
Cheers for the replies guys, all good idea. I'm currently running a professional dating offer targeted at men only, so like I said earlier it's probably not that great (More of a test to check out the ad manager etc.).

I think job type offers could have some potential.

Cheers
 
two_days_late said:
Cheers for the replies guys, all good idea. I'm currently running a professional dating offer targeted at men only, so like I said earlier it's probably not that great (More of a test to check out the ad manager etc.).

I think job type offers could have some potential.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I'm a merchant that sells ink & toner product online. I've been thinking about testing this out as mentioned in an earlier post...but the CPMs are scaring me off a bit.

I don't like running CPM as a general rule...even more so when the CPMs are over $75 for certain segments. Of course, that may just be what they have on their rate card...not sure how negotiable it is.

On the flip side, the user base is extremely high quality (especially when compared to other social networks). If you had the target audience nailed down, and a great offer to match up to that audience it might yield a decent ROAS. I just wish they had CPC available.

I think I might have just talked myself into testing this out on a few things.
 
It'd be good to hear how you go if you do a test Nvan. CPC would definitely be better.

Yea I heard lobsters sell really well too aye funny man. Get your arse back from Vegas, we got cash money to make.
 
nvanprooyen said:
On the flip side, the user base is extremely high quality (especially when compared to other social networks).
Click to expand...

LinkedIn's user base is of no better quality than that of any other social network. You might think that because LinkedIn is viewed as a "professional" site that this is the case, but you'd be incorrect for the most part.

Personally I wouldn't buy CPM ads on LinkedIn because of every 1000 ads, probably 500+ are going to be viewed by recruiters/headhunters/etc. who couldn't give a crap about ads and aren't likely to click.

If LinkedIn was selling clicks for the same price as other social networks, I'd probably test a few offers. But with their current rate card - screw it.
 
tangy said:
Personally I wouldn't buy CPM ads on LinkedIn because of every 1000 ads, probably 500+ are going to be viewed by recruiters/headhunters/etc. who couldn't give a crap about ads and aren't likely to click.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much what stopped me.
I prefer knowing how much I'm paying per click. I mean, it could be $0.025 if magically all 1,000 views click, or it could be $25.00.. which if I could find some $150 lead offer I might do.
 
I can't imagine CPM ads would perform well on that site. I use the site pretty frequently and have never even noticed ads on the site let alone clicked on one.
 
tangy said:
LinkedIn's user base is of no better quality than that of any other social network. You might think that because LinkedIn is viewed as a "professional" site that this is the case, but you'd be incorrect for the most part.

Personally I wouldn't buy CPM ads on LinkedIn because of every 1000 ads, probably 500+ are going to be viewed by recruiters/headhunters/etc. who couldn't give a crap about ads and aren't likely to click.

If LinkedIn was selling clicks for the same price as other social networks, I'd probably test a few offers. But with their current rate card - screw it.
Click to expand...

Let me clarify. I was speaking about the demographics of Linkedin's user base (avg 39yrs old, 130k avg salary). Meaning, that this could be a very lucrative segment...for the right offer of course (primarily b2b). Grant offers and blasting Acai / colon cleanse / credit repaid etc probably isn't going to work so well with this group.

Regarding the % of ads viewed by recruiters & headhunters; I'm pretty sure that you can target ads by job function. If you could target by education level, you might be able to do ok w/ online university offers. Of course that means they jack the CPM up even more, with every tier of additional targeting you do which would probably make if cost prohibitive.

But I agree with you. With the current rate card, screw it. Pretty tough to make any money with $75 CPMs...even w/ a perfect offer / LP / creative / targeting etc.
 
I was all set to advertise some executive toys (i.e. Touch LCDs, PDAs etc) through CJ merchants when BAM! landing page domain has to match link domain.

Frankly, I really don't have any inclination to buy a domain and setup a mall page when I can't even get a decent reply to an email about metrics out of their own ads sales team.
 
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