LinkedIn provides a range of powerful tools to help you market your business, and one of the key tools in your arsenal is advertising. There are various types of ads on LinkedIn, each with its own unique strengths and applications.
In this article, we’ll explore the different types of LinkedIn ads and how to leverage them to reach your target audience effectively. We’ll also provide illustrative examples of each ad type to help you grasp their appearance and functionality.
Types of LinkedIn ads
Let’s begin by giving you an overview of the different LinkedIn ad types, along with some practical examples. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear understanding of which ad type best suits your specific needs and goals.
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1. LinkedIn Single Image Ads
So let’s start with probably the most popular ad type – a single image ad. The LinkedIn single image ad is just the basic type of ad that you see in your LinkedIn feed that has an image, some intro text above it, a headline, and a call to action.
Usually, what would be the best type of single-image ad is dependent on what stage of the funnel you’re looking to go after.
The initial ads that I see work really well, putting in front of prospects who have never heard of you, never seen, or never been to your website, usually something super simple. You should structure it around one of three basic principles:
- How you’re different than others
- What is the core thing you offer or sell
- What are the main pain points you solve
For single-image ads in the retargeting layer, if they’ve already heard of you and kind of know what you do, the types of single image ads that I’ve seen work the best are a press release that doesn’t necessarily look like an ad and is a third-party validation. It could be an image of a news article or an expert interview or your company in the news.
2. LinkedIn Carousel Ads
The LinkedIn carousel ad is that ad that has multiple images, and you can scroll and see. And each of those little slides has its own headline and button that could direct to something else.
In my mind, the best way to use carousel ads is not to put those in the cold layer. But on the other hand, it’s really good at showing different angles of what you do or offer.
LinkedIn carousel ads are great for e-commerce if you have a bunch of different products like clothing brands, for example. You visit their website for one thing, and then you get hit with a carousel ad as a retargeting ad that has five of their top-selling items. And each one of those images, if you clicked, it would take you to that specific item in a different section on that website.
LinkedIn carousel ads can be applied in the B2B world as well. For example, if they visit our website and then there’s a carousel ad that shows all of our different services such as LinkedIn outreach, LinkedIn paid ads, Google search, Website visitor identification… it’s almost like a product catalog that would be a really good use.
Another really good use for that is to use carousel ads for testimonials.
So that is what I would say would be the best use of the carousel ads.
3. LinkedIn Video Ads
LinkedIn video ads are a compelling way to reach a target audience. I particularly like this ad type because it gives you more information than if someone clicked or didn’t click your ad. They allow you to see how interested or engaged the users were with the ad by showing how much of the video someone viewed (25%, 50%, 75, or 97%) and you can retarget based on that .
The other reason I really like LinkedIn video ads is that it’s a great chance to humanize the brand. By using video ads in the retargeting layer, you can show your team and what you do to the users who previously visited your website to get to know you a little better and remember you.
The expert videos also work really well. One of them I strategically did was auditing a $5 billion company account we worked with and using this recording as a retargeting ad. People visited our website, and then they saw this LinkedIn ads audit of $500,000 a month, so the ad did a good job of positioning us as experienced experts.
4. LinkedIn Event Ads
LinkedIn Event Ads are designed to promote events on users’ feeds. These ads focus on essential event details, such as the webinar title, company name, and event time.
Here are some compelling reasons to consider this ad type:
- Increased Social Proof: The more attendees an event has, the more attractive it becomes. LinkedIn Event Ads dynamically update the number of attendees, creating a sense of urgency and encouraging more people to join.
- Organic Reach and Engagement: Event ads can also boost organic promotion. When users sign up for your event, personal notifications are generated within their network, expanding your event’s reach.
- Invitations to Personal Connections: Unlike other LinkedIn ads, you can invite your personal connections to attend your event, creating a more personalized approach.
- Retargeting Opportunities: Those who attend your event become a valuable retargeting audience, enhancing your marketing efforts.
LinkedIn events and event ads combine paid advertising with community building, making them an effective strategy for engagement and lead generation.
5. LinkedIn Document Ads
LinkedIn Document Ads are designed to share your content directly within the LinkedIn feed. These ads allow users to access and download documents without leaving the platform. Whether you’re sharing thought leadership pieces, valuable resources, or informative content, Document Ads can help you engage your target audience effectively.
Here are the key advantages of using LinkedIn Document Ads:
- Boosting Awareness and Building Trust: Share educational content and establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry, building trust and connections with your audience.
- Quality Lead Generation: By using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, you can turn curious clicks into high-quality leads, facilitating meaningful interactions.
- Understanding Audience Interests: Gain insights into document engagement to refine your marketing strategy at every stage of the funnel.
6. LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads
LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads enable you to sponsor personal posts from your LinkedIn ad account and target them to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). These ads allow for specific audience targeting, budget allocation, performance monitoring, and user interaction retargeting.
What sets Thought Leader Ads apart is their authenticity. They resemble regular personal posts rather than traditional ads, which helps convey your message more effectively.
Here’s why Thought Leader Ads are a compelling choice:
- Authentic Appearance: Thought Leader Ads avoid the typical corporate or sales-oriented feel associated with traditional ads, making them more appealing and engaging.
- Humanizing Your Brand: These ads humanize your brand by presenting information from real people within your organization, fostering a deeper connection between your audience and the individuals behind the brand.
- Positioning Your Team as Experts: Thought Leader Ads showcase the subject matter expertise within your organization, building trust and credibility among potential clients.
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7. LinkedIn Message Ads
LinkedIn message ads are almost identical to conversation ads. The only difference between them is that conversation ad has multiple choice buttons that you can have at the bottom, while message ad is just a straight message.
8. LinkedIn Conversation Ads
Another ad type I really like is LinkedIn conversation ads.
They send a message to the person’s inbox, and it looks like it’s coming from a personal LinkedIn account. They show up as a sponsored InMail, and it has a message, but then has multiple-choice options for the prospect to choose from, with each option either sending them to a URL or delivering a reply.
So it could be like, “Hey, First Name. I noticed you were checking out our website…did you have any questions?”, and then it could have three options, like “Take another look”, “watch a quick demo”, and “book a call”. And each of those buttons could either go to answer or send them to a website or a call booking link or something like that.
LinkedIn conversation ads need to be hyper-targeted because you’re charged per send. You should get super narrow on a very specific industry, company size, and even who within those companies you’re targeting, so that your message could be super personalized, like “Hey Jeff, I notice you’re the CMO of a software company here in Texas..”.
If you want to use these in the cold layer, I would also recommend leveraging some kind of intent data (e.g., they attended some conference). If you could get a conference list of everyone who attended a relevant conference, and you send out a cold email and said, “Hey, I noticed that you were ad world 2022. You know, I was there, and I really enjoyed it. I’d love to get your thoughts on …”. So using some very personal piece of information to stand out would be really good.
You can also use conversation ads in the retargeting phase, so after they visited your website you hit them with a conversation ad, but it’s specific to an industry. For example, our retargeting message would sound like “Hey, I noticed that you were checking out our website and you run a marketing agency. I wasn’t sure if you saw this, but we offer white label solutions. We’d be more than happy to talk more about x, y, and z”.
This is a really cool type of ad, but they can be costly though. Because you pay per send, you can’t send a million of them, so you need to be much more targeted.
Lead Gen Forms
9. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms serve as both ad types and objectives, specifically designed for lead capture. These forms can feature videos or images and include a prominent call-to-action button. Unlike traditional ads that direct users to external landing pages, Lead Gen Forms provide a seamless experience within the LinkedIn platform.
The primary goal of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms is to encourage prospects to provide their contact information in exchange for valuable gated assets. These assets can include ebooks, checklists, industry trend reports, and case studies. Once a user submits the form, they become a lead, initiating the lead nurturing process.
Text and Dynamic Ads
10. LinkedIn Spotlight Ads
Another ad type that I really like right now is spotlight ads. LinkedIn Spotlight ads show up to the right of the feed, you’re able to customize it with the prospect’s first name and profile picture – it’s a great way to catch their attention.
This type of ad is really cheap. You can get 10 times more impressions with the same spend as the in-feed ones and I think it’s because they’re just underused.
Some of the really clever ways to use spotlight ads were using those for webinars sign-ups or even advertising a video like, “Hey, curious to learn how to do X, Y, or Z”, watch this quick video, and the click actually sends them to a YouTube link or to a prerecorded webinar or a landing page.
I think LinkedIn spotlight ads are really cool because they can educate you instead of just selling to you and are really versatile because the destination URL can be anything you want.
The call to action button is customizable. So instead of using “learn more” or “click here”, it can be “watch this three-minute video” or “subscribe to our channel” or anything you want.
Those kinds of ads do really well for us and they’ve actually been getting conversions because it’s selling without selling. We position ourselves as experts and give them a valuable resource for free – when they’re actually ready or looking for a LinkedIn ads partner, we’re top of mind for that.
11. LinkedIn Follower Ads
A LinkedIn follower ad is used to encourage users to follow or visit your LinkedIn page. This is a little ad to the right of the home feed that has a couple of lines that you can customize. It’s a very short amount of text (like one sentence at the top) and it also pulls in the profile picture of the prospect.
So each person that’s viewing the ad sees a customized version of it, so if I’m viewing the ad, it might have my profile picture and say, “Hey, Justin” and have a quick message.
Unlike the LinkedIn spotlight ads which are totally customizable as far as what you want the call-to-action button to say and where you want the CTA to take them (you could put any URL that you want as the destination), LinkedIn follower ads provide a couple of default CTA options.
If the prospect is following you – then the CTA is going to say, “Visit company”, and if they’re not following you the CTA button will be “Follow”. Although you have less creative freedom when creating follower ads (compared to spotlight ads), the big thing that I’ve seen work really well is using emoticons to catch their attention.
One big mistake I’ve noticed is that most people are putting LinkedIn follower ads in front of prospects who have never been to their website and trying to get them to follow the company page. What I like to do is after they’ve already visited my website, I retarget those people with follower ads.
12. LinkedIn Text Ads
LinkedIn text ads are simple ads that have two different positions they can be placed in: at the top and on the right of the feed.
Here are a few main reasons to use this ad type:
- LinkedIn Text ads are low-cost. Text ads are not going to get a ton of clicks just because a lot of times they go unnoticed, but they do a really good job of peppering someone’s feed and staying in front of the prospects for a really low cost.
- The destination URL can be whatever you want. Depending on your goals and stage of the funnel, you can strategically use different destinations for the prospect. I like to funnel prospects over to our YouTube page and say something like “Learn how we booked 140 plus calls without using lead gen forms” sending them straight to that YouTube video.
- You’re selling to people without them feeling like you’re selling to them. When I send prospects to a video about our LinkedIn retargeting strategy that really resonates with them, and it’s really something they think will work for them, they’ll hit us up and book a call.
Final Thoughts
The right type of LinkedIn ad can help promote your business in the best way possible, and our team is available to consult on how to achieve the most impactful results.
If you’re curious but don’t know where to start, contact us today – we’d love to hear from you.
One Response
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