LinkedIn thought leader ads or LinkedIn influencer ads were introduced in June, and so far, many users love them. Unlike other ad types, these ads allow users to promote their original content from their personal page in their audience’s feeds. Initially, you could only sponsor text or image posts, but now LinkedIn allows users to promote posts with videos.
Keep reading to see how to use video for your thought leads ads, what kind of videos are the most effective, and more.
Overview of LinkedIn Video Thought Leader Ads
Before, thought leader ads only supported text posts, images, and GIFs. Now, you can attach a video to your personal posts and boost them through this new format.
LinkedIn influencer ads allow you to boost organic content from your personal page, which we explain how to do here. The advantage is that they don’t look like regular ads, but they look just like a video someone shares on their feed.
Currently, the only campaign objectives available for thought leader ad are awareness and engagement. If you want to explore different thought leader ad strategies, check out this article.
Despite their usefulness, video thought leader ads have a few drawbacks and challenges, which we’ll cover in the next section.
Challenges to Consider Before Using Video Thought Leader Ads
Creating videos consistently is a big time and resource commitment, and you need to be prepared before you start. These are some common challenges you may face:
- High-quality videos: Video ads may require higher quality and more thought to make a good first impression compared to text and image ads.
- More effort to make: You might have to buy new equipment and spend more time creating quality videos that can capture attention.
- Consistently making high-performing content: You won’t get much traction from posts with low engagement, so you must ensure that your thought leader ads have already generated leads.
Drawbacks of Video Thought Leader Ads
Video influencer ads also have their drawbacks:
- No direct CTA button: The absence of a direct CTA button makes it less convenient for users to convert.
- Time-limited: You can only promote posts made in the last six months, so if your best-performing posts are older, you can’t use them.
- Needs a particular profile to work: Your thought leader ads depend on the profile’s owner. If your employee or founder leaves, their ads become unusable.
- Not as effective for conversions: The only ad objectives are engagement and awareness, so any interaction (profile click, comment, like, etc), does not directly lead to conversions, unlike other ad types.
- Higher feed consumption: Instead of driving significant traffic to your landing pages or website, these ads encourage more feed consumption from your traffic, reducing the number of conversions you can get.
Important Metrics to Track
Currently, questions remain about how metrics like CPE (Cost Per Engagement) and view percentage will compare to normal ads and whether retargeting based on video view percentage will be possible.
We plan to test video thought leader ads, especially in retargeting campaigns, to evaluate their effectiveness and performance and share them with you in a later article.
Best Practices for Video Thought Leader Ads
When running video thought ads on LinkedIn, there are some best practices you need to follow.
Let’s dive into best practices for video thought leader ads:
- Smaller ad ecosystem: Don’t over-rely on influencer ads since they don’t have call-to-action or headlines that can drive significant traffic to your landing pages. Your prospects wouldn’t be able to easily access your landing pages or get exposed to your other resources unless you add links to your posts.
- Use them for retargeting: These ads perform better in a retargeting layer after your audience has already seen you, recognizes your expertise, and knows who you are. It doesn’t have to be as calculated to be a first touch.
- Finding employee content to promote: Leveraging employee video posts is a smart move to position your team as a group of experts and foster awareness.
- Use engaging, high-quality videos: Make sure the quality is sharp, the sound is clear, and the first few seconds are engaging to hook more users.
Suitable Content to Promote in Your Ads
For a retargeting thought leader ad campaign, you can make videos such as:
- Case studies
- Client testimonials
- Expert advice you can share with your ideal audience
Videos on LinkedIn tend to get good engagement. Additionally, you can include your thought leader’s subject matter expertise and share it with a wider audience.
Promotional content from your leadership sharing who your company is and what services you provide may work better for cold audiences.
Conclusion
Embrace video thought leader ads to strategically elevate your LinkedIn presence. Despite challenges, their engaging format can establish your authority effectively. Remember, influence isn’t just about what you say but how you say it – and video thought leader ads offer a powerful medium for distinction.
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