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Paid social

The role of paid social in the pipeline

Paid social (often LinkedIn for B2B marketing teams) is ideal for top-of-funnel and mid-funnel initiatives. The targeting capabilities of the channel make it essential for finding your ideal customer profile (ICP), though it can be tricky to judge intent.

You’ll need to spend a lot of time nurturing most of the leads you generate through LinkedIn, as they’re generally cold prospects, but the sheer scale means there are plenty of people available for your marketing team to target.

If you integrate with CRM systems such as HubSpot and Salesforce, it’s easier to target your pipeline at a contact level, making it easier to engage directly with a prospect and reach them on multiple channels.

The best content for paid social

LinkedIn has become a thriving platform for building and capturing demand by providing content that educates and delivers real value. If we follow the funnel chronologically, these are the content types that suit paid social channels best:

Guides and eBooks

Webinars

Thought leadership

Benchmark reports

Case studies

Let’s see which formats deliver the best content for LinkedIn…

Mapping LinkedIn ad content to 3 key stages

Sharing thought leadership through LinkedIn Ads has become a quick-win strategy for many companies, as it provides the advantages of guaranteed reach and opportunities to provide new perspectives and build authority on the platform.

Articles, reports, and eBooks can warm up your audience and provide value without being overly sales-y. This means you can get away with lighter calls to action (CTAs), especially in the early ‘brand awareness’ and ‘consideration’ stages.

Further down the funnel, you can experiment with lead generation tactics and stronger CTAs, such as signing up for newsletters or downloading practical content such as templates, ‘how-to’ guides, webinars, and research reports.

The retargeting stage is the best place to incorporate case studies, social proof, product videos, demos, and trial CTAs designed to drive traffic to your website and generate conversions.

Not sure which content to gate?

Whether you choose to gate based on content performance, value, or position in the buyer’s journey, we discuss all your options in our Modern Demand Gen guide.

How to get the most out of paid social

Aim to
educate:

Use educational content as the driving force to build demand, generate leads, and collect opt-ins to fuel your email nurture programs. (If you’re stuck on how to plan successful lead-generation content, our new guide will help you out.)

Personalize your approach:

Address the specific needs, pain points, or aspirations of your target audience and ensure that the content you’re offering aligns with the copy you’re using to promote. Don’t overpromise and underdeliver.

Integrate your campaign:

You should never run an ad campaign ‘just because’. It has to fit in with the bigger picture of your business and connect with the experience your prospects will have in other channels.

Did you know…?

Your reach is determined by your campaign performance score. It’s a measure on a scale of 1–10 of how well your audience is engaging with your content, accounting for click-through rates (CTRs), content experience and relevance, and landing page quality.

How to activate effectively
on paid social

To make the most of LinkedIn, consistently experiment with:

Creatives that grab and hold attention (always check they fit with your chosen ad specs)
Different types of ads – don’t settle for one style
Clear, compelling, and well-placed CTAs
Direct, engaging ad copy
Multiple bidding strategies, to see what gets you the best return on investment (ROI)
Retargeting using LinkedIn audience engagement, website visitors, and targeted audiences from any of your integrated platforms

Keep it concise and to the point; LinkedIn users are busy people. Provide as much value as you can, make it worth their time, and then hone down on what you can offer them.

Get to know your demographic – and talk directly to them

If you’re not using LinkedIn’s demographics feature, you’re missing out.

By reviewing your campaign demographics, you can discover who’s most engaged with your ads and exclude anyone who’s irrelevant to your ICP or campaign. Targeting will never be perfect, but fine-tuning is key to optimizing your budget and content performance within the channel.

Don’t forget that paid social isn’t an intent channel. People don’t log on to LinkedIn to search for a testimonial tool. They’re there to engage with content, browse work-related news, connect with colleagues and friends, and so on.

Ultimately, you can get all of the technical parts right, but successful paid social activation boils down to the creative, the message you’re delivering to your audience, and your offering.

Don’t ask your audience to download a PDF

Once you’ve done all this work to catch someone’s attention, don’t waste the opportunity with a boring PDF.

Hear from our very own Chief Storytelling Officer (and CEO) Nick Mason about why this risks not only losing your prospect’s interest, but also prevents you from tracking engagement.

Find out why

Learn from your industry colleagues – and competitors

Try to remember the last ad you saw – what made it catch your attention? You can easily look for inspiration from successful campaigns (or peruse what your competitors are up to) on LinkedIn.

Simply head to a company’s page, click on ‘Posts’, and then on ‘Ads’, like this:

Here are a few of our favorites from 2023, to help spark some ideas:

Steal our style on LinkedIn

This ad, which uses our iconic ‘flippy gif’, has a CTR of 2.75%, compared to the industry average of 0.56%. By using a highly engaging, interactive digital document that includes analytics, you’re more likely to grab your audience’s precious attention and – most importantly – you can measure your content’s performance on the channel across the entire funnel.

We don’t mind if you copy us on this one: take a page from our playbook in our Modern Demand Gen guide.