How to Maximize Your B2B Video Marketing Ad Dollars on LinkedIn

Read Time: 4 minutes

We just can’t talk about B2B video marketing without talking about LinkedIn. With over 600 million users, marketers now have the ability to speak to professionals while wearing their business hats (and suits and ties). This is a huge win compared to disrupting them on more personal social channels like Facebook and Twitter.

In fact, recent HubSpot research has uncovered that it’s 277% more effective to generate leads on LinkedIn than on Facebook and Twitter. Need a picture of what that looks like? Our partners at HubSpot thought you might like one. Take a look at this.

LinkedIn best social network for lead generation HubSpot graph compared to Facebook and Twitter b2b video marketing — Image: HubSpot

Ya… It’s pretty nuts.

The good news is that LinkedIn is, by far, the optimal choice for talking to the right people (your niche audience of business professionals) in the right place (where they’re looking for business content, humor, and insight), and the right time (when they’re wearing that business hat).

Here comes the bad news. Advertising on LinkedIn can get pretty pricey. That can scare away a lot of SMBs from running ads on the platform.

So what’s a marketer or advertiser to do? These are the people you want and need to target. But unless the LinkedIn Genie is coming to town anytime soon, seems like you’re fresh out of discounted ad wishes. Which leads us to ask: How can you maximize your ad dollars on LinkedIn?

To answer this question, our Chief Evangelist, Renee Teeley, got in touch with B2Linked Founder and secret DDR extraordinaire, AJ Wilcox. They talk all about how you can maximize your dollars for video ads on LinkedIn. Hint: It’s all about utilizing a simple to scale model. Let’s save big and win bigger!

B2B Video Marketing: ROI as a North Star

We’ve already said this but it’s so important that we should repeat it again: LinkedIn has the biggest pool of professionals in the world and has the best ad targeting in the world. (A double whammy win!) So if there’s a niche your company has a solution for, you’re gonna find and target them on LinkedIn.

For example, if you market a SaaS product that helps corporate trainers and instructional designers, you can choose the buyer persona exactly as you imagine them; be it via industry, job title, job function, seniority, age, skills — the list goes on!

Making a target audience that’s picture perfect will have the best chance of resonating and closing a deal. Which in turn means the best ROI for you, making those LinkedIn ad dollars money well spent.

Testing for Each Stage on the Funnel

When you start testing your ads, be sure to test your ad content throughout the buyer’s journey funnel. That all starts with the click through rate (CTR) of those first top-of-funnel ads. If that highly targeted crowd is clicking, you’re moving in the right direction. Not seeing the clicks you’re after? It might be time to rethink your messaging and see if there’s other copy that might resonate better.

Once you have enough people who have converted based on your ad, be sure to follow those folks down the funnel (or as we in Powtoon Marketing team call it, The Rabbit Hole). Based on your LinkedIn ads, what becomes the cost per lead? Cost per contact? Cost per SQL? Cost per deal? You get the idea.

Following that funnel through to the end helps you better understand where you’re striking a golden cord. (And when you aren’t, exactly where promising prospects seem to trail off.)

Budget LinkedIn Ads

Now that we’ve talked about your ad’s audience and their buyer’s journey, it’s time to talk about your B2B video marketing content. Our advice? Start with something simple. Even if it’s just a static image, go for it. Once those simple ads are hitting the mark, start expanding to video ad content (it’s easier than you think).

A quick tip about video ads on LinkedIn, be sure to add captions or subtitles to your videos. This is rule goes for non-ad videos you natively upload to LinkedIn as well. While people are scroll through LinkedIn at work, they most likely have their sound off. Add captions (via an SRT file or hardcoded) to help add value, trigger intrigue, and get your message across.

Last thing to note: if you have video ad content that’s crushing it on other social channels, try them out on LinkedIn! If they resonate elsewhere, there’s a great chance they’ll grab attention on LinkedIn as well. Considering the cost of running LinkedIn ads, best to play it safe and use what ads you know work best.

Warning: Possible B2B Trap Ahead

As a B2B marketer, you know it takes more than one person to make a business decision. You’ve got personas, gate keepers, decision makers, and so many others that have a role in the B2B deal dance.

That’s why marketers may be tempted skip all the steps, and focus their targeting on the CEOs in the final deal.

But this, my advertising friend, is a common mistake that can lose you sad and serious money. Yes, these powerful men and women will be the ones ultimately footing the bill. That being said, they personally aren’t the ones feeling the acute pain that your product or service so miraculously solves.

Pinpoint the persona who would most benefit from your business and create ads that speak to their pains and emotions. Success comes if the ads speak volumes about what it’s like to walk in their shoes. And the content they click through to should drive that point home. Use content marketing to inspire them and you can be sure they’ll get your one pagers or demos into the hands of the person who calls the shots.

LinkedIn Video Ads that Bring Home the Bacon

To maximize your b2b video marketing ad dollars on LinkedIn, you’re going to want to create ads that truly resonate with your target audience and put your best content forward for them to fall in love with. Do that (bonus points if you use video!) and you’ll be on your way to generating that ROI you’ve been dreaming of.

Got any of your own ideas on how to make LinkedIn ads that speak to persona pains? Let us know in the comments below or on YouTube. As always, don’t forget to subscribe to Powtoon’s YouTube channel for more episodes of the #MakeItAwesome Show and more awesome content from the Powtoon team!

Stay Awesome!

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Shoshi Davis

Shoshi joined Powtoon as a Marketing Assistant. To read more of her stuff, you can find her content on Upwork and Business 2 Community talking all things inbound marketing for SaaS. After only 2 weeks at Powtoon, Shoshi was dubbed by the marketing team as having the superpower of "Unbridled Enthusiasm." So that was pretty cool.