LinkedIn thought leader ads have emerged as a powerful tool, offering a unique approach to engage and influence your target audience. In this article, we share eight expert strategies that will empower you to maximize the potential of LinkedIn thought leader ads.
8 Best LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads Strategies
Whether you’re looking to enhance your brand’s presence, build credibility, or generate leads, these proven tactics will help you navigate the thought leader ad landscape on LinkedIn with confidence.
1. Elevate Your CEO’s Voice
A straightforward yet effective approach is to switch your current single image LinkedIn ads to a thought leader format by using your founder or CEO’s account. Compare the results and tap into the potential of personal branding to drive better performance.
In this super simple approach, you don’t need to make any significant changes to the ad itself. Just switch it over to a thought leader format and observe which version performs better. The assumption is that the results from a personable and influential figure like your CEO will likely surpass the performance of a corporate account.
2. Consider the Engagement Objective
While LinkedIn thought leader ads can be used for both awareness and engagement objectives, experimenting with the objectives might be cost-effective. Initially, most marketers, including myself, have tended to launch them under the awareness objective. However, experimenting with the engagement objective can bring about some advantages.
Here’s the catch: while awareness objectives charge for every interaction, engagement objectives might not do so. This can prove to be a cost-effective way to boost audience engagement without incurring additional expenses for each interaction.
As a starting point, I recommend using awareness for the cold initial layer to enhance brand visibility. However, for retargeting efforts, experimenting with the engagement objective might prove beneficial, especially when considering bid strategies.
3. Use It as an Alternative to LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn thought leader ads could offer a clever alternative to traditional LinkedIn lead gen forms. Here’s how it works: instead of relying on a typical landing page form, create an engaging post with a lead magnet that entices your target audience. Add a link directing them to the actual landing page where you can capture their preferred personal information.
The beauty of this approach lies in the reduced cost of acquiring leads through thought leader ads. Unlike lead gen forms, where you pay for each form submission, thought leader ads charge you only for interactions, making it a more budget-friendly option.
Though there’s a trade-off – you won’t have a headline or a CTA button within the ad – you can still encourage engagement effectively. Employ links in the post or invite users to “comment below for access,” initiating interactions. As users comment and interact, you can provide the resource or engage with them through direct messages.
4. Showcase Expertise Through Case Studies
One highly effective use of thought leader ads is to share compelling case studies from the subject matter experts within your company. Whether it’s your CEO, founder, CMO, or CTO, sharing case studies from these individuals can overcome the main objections of trust and credibility. What sets thought leader ads apart is the psychological impact of delivering these case studies directly from the subject matter experts, rather than the company’s corporate account.
An additional advantage is the character limit of 3,000 compared to the 600 characters allowed in company-sponsored ads. With this additional space, you can delve deep into the details of the case study, sharing insights into the issue, challenges faced, strategic approach, results obtained, and best practices learned.
By delivering a comprehensive case study within the thought leader ad itself, you eliminate the need to direct users elsewhere or wait for page loads, thereby maximizing engagement and keeping your audience captivated. This strategic approach empowers you to establish authority, inspire trust, and entice potential clients.
5. Leverage Step-by-Step How-To Guides
One powerful strategy that has driven remarkable results for us and our clients is sharing detailed how-to guides. It’s incredible how posts that offer step-by-step instructions on tasks our clients pay us for, such as setting up a LinkedIn ads account, optimizing it, or building a campaign strategy, generate significant leads and revenue organically.
By diving into the technical aspects of these processes, we establish trust and credibility with our audience. With the freedom of 2,000-3,000 characters in a personal post, we can provide meaty and valuable content that showcases our expertise and know-how.
Moreover, this approach humanizes our brand, enabling our audience to connect with the individuals behind the company rather than seeing us solely as an agency.
Ultimately, offering comprehensive how-to guides in thought leader ads establishes us as subject matter experts and fosters a deeper connection with our audience.
6. Surface Your Company Culture
Another highly effective strategy to leverage thought leader ads on LinkedIn is by surfacing your company culture. This approach involves highlighting various aspects of your brand that reflect your values, achievements, and positive work environment.
While brand building typically involves company-centric communications like PR releases and website content, this strategy takes a different route. Instead, you can tap into the power of your employees’ voices to tell your company’s story. Encourage business leaders or team members to create posts that detail their pride in the company, celebrate achievements, share exciting partnerships, and more.
By having these posts come directly from your employees and sponsoring them from the company page, you create a genuine and authentic portrayal of your brand. When retargeting website visitors who match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), these ads will subtly re-engage potential clients during their evaluation stage.
The beauty of this approach lies in its inconspicuous nature – these ads don’t look like typical marketing content. Instead, they resemble organic posts from your team, shedding a positive light on your company. This psychological effect can significantly sway prospects’ opinions, transforming their initial skepticism into a sense of familiarity and trust.
Testimonials play a pivotal role in building trust and credibility for your brand, and thought leader ads present a fresh approach to showcasing them. Rather than a typical ad with a quote and static image, why not have your satisfied clients themselves create the testimonial post?
In this strategy, your clients, whether past or current, can share their positive experiences in a post that you sponsor. To make this happen, you might consider a strategic partnership or encourage these individuals to connect themselves to your company page, perhaps with a title like “Previous client.” By sponsoring their posts, you can give them the platform to detail their authentic experiences with your brand.
The good thing about this approach is that these testimonials come directly from the source, and they don’t look like typical paid ads. When prospects visit LinkedIn, they’ll stumble upon a handful of different people singing your praises without realizing that it’s a sponsored post. By surfacing testimonials in this manner, you can make a lasting impact on potential clients, who will view your brand as reliable and trustworthy.
8. Forge Strategic Partnerships
Team up with complementary businesses and create posts recommending each other’s services. As a LinkedIn ads agency, collaborating with other agencies like email, Facebook, Google, and SEO can yield great benefits for everyone involved.
Imagine this seamless collaboration: your agency and your strategic partners agree to connect and promote each other’s services. By making posts recommending these partners and allowing them to boost those posts, you create a network of paid referrals that can significantly boost each other’s traffic and visibility.
To prospects, this approach appears natural and organic, enhancing their trust in your recommendations. As they follow you and recognize your endorsement of specific agencies, they’re more likely to engage with and choose your partners’ services, creating a win-win scenario for all parties involved.
Final Thoughts
Thought leader ads on LinkedIn can be a game-changer for your brand. By utilizing these strategies, you can harness the power of personal branding, engage your audience authentically, and build lasting relationships with potential clients. Embrace the possibilities of thought leader ads to take your LinkedIn marketing to new heights.
More helpful resources:
- LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads 101: The Definitive Guide for B2B Marketers
- LinkedIn Video Thought Leader Ads and Their Best Practices
- 7 High-Performing LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads Examples
- LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms: A Comprehensive Guide
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