After a long beta period and eager anticipation, this week LinkedIn finally released new re-targeting features on its advertising platform.
Video views re-targeting
With this new feature, LinkedIn advertisers will be able to create campaigns targeting audiences that watched video ads at a ratio of 25%, 50%, 75% or 97%.
Although this feature has been available in Facebook for quite a long time, for LinkedIn it is almost revolutionary. This means that advertisers will now be able to create multi-touch campaigns much easier, moving prospects down the funnel more naturally.
For example, advertisers can target a wide audience of users and decision makers with video campaigns to create awareness. Then, after collecting enough views, they can
re-target decision makers only with consideration content, or can even send lead-gen forms to start generating leads after 2+ touches.
Lead-generation form retargeting
It is no secret that LinkedIn’s lead gen form feature is very powerful. But it had a downside: its inability to collect retargeting audiences since the traffic was not going to the company’s website.
With its new lead gen form retargeting, LinkedIn now allows advertisers to create audiences from prospects that opened lead gen forms but did not complete the filling process. This enables them to better re-engage with relevant audiences down the funnel, understand where they need to strengthen their call to action, or put emphasis on different messaging aspects along the funnel.
What can you and other B2B marketers do right now?
- Review your marketing funnel, understand whether these new tools can help you achieving your goals and objectives and think how to add them in the advertising arsenal.
If you don’t have activity on LinkedIn today, it’s recommended to think about using these the new tools as your ‘foot in the door’ to get into LinkedIn advertising.
Brainstorm internally and start thinking about creative ways to use and leverage the new tools – the interesting thing about them is that they provide a massive playground for creativity.
Think about complex messages – B2B messaging can be complex and marketers sometimes tend to avoid using such messages due to complexity. A mix of video and lead-gen re-targeting will enable you to break down complex marketing messages into multiple phases with a great deal of control over which message is being delivered at what time. With this idea in mind and some creativity – the sky’s your limit.
Test bottom-of-the-funnel messaging – with lead-gen form re-targeting, it is now easier to test multiple messages that will give you insights into performance at the bottom-of-the-funnel phase.
To sum up
Advertising on LinkedIn is never easy. Designed for B2B marketing and digital advertising, these new features are adding great tools for marketers. With the right marketing strategy and some creativity, you will be able to create better multi-touch campaigns and a smoother prospect journey.
On a higher level, as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy, in combination with a marketing automation tool (preferably tools with LinkedIn ads integration such as HubSpot) and other advertising platforms, LinkedIn is now a very powerful contributor to the toolbox.
