Home » How to pick the right LinkedIn Advertising Agency
Choosing the right LinkedIn advertising agency is a crucial decision that can significantly impact your brand’s visibility, lead generation, and overall ROI. LinkedIn stands as a powerful platform for B2B marketing, talent acquisition, and brand positioning. With over 700 million professionals actively using the platform, the potential for targeted outreach is immense. However, navigating the intricate maze of LinkedIn’s advertising options can be overwhelming, and that’s where a specialized agency can provide invaluable expertise. Here’s a lowdown from an industry expert on the factors you should consider when picking the perfect LinkedIn advertising agency.
Looking for relevant experience in a LinkedIn advertising agency is a critical component in the selection process. By narrowing your search to agencies with a track record in your industry or similar fields, you increase the likelihood of finding a partner who understands the intricacies of your target market. Let’s delve deeper into why this matters and what kinds of examples of relevant experience you should be looking for.
Why Relevant Experience Matters
– Industry Jargon: Agencies with relevant experience will be familiar with the terminology and buzzwords commonly used in your industry, which is crucial for crafting compelling ad copy and messaging.
– Audience Understanding: Such agencies are more likely to have a deeper understanding of the challenges, needs, and pain points of your target audience.
– Insights: Agencies that have worked within your industry will have a good sense of what your competitors are doing, prior learnings and be in touch with your industries nuances. These are all things an agency will need to ramp up on if they don’t have relevant experience.
Request case studies that showcase campaigns the agency has run for businesses in your industry. This could include strategies they’ve employed, KPIs they focused on, and the ROI achieved. The agency’s portfolio should include campaigns that are either in your industry or have similar elements that could be adapted for your business. Client testimonials from businesses in your field can provide valuable insights into how effective the agency is in delivering industry-specific results. Agencies often display logos of past or current clients on their website. Look for familiar names in your industry.
By paying close attention to these examples and types of relevant experience, you can better assess an agency’s ability to meet your specific needs.
You need to specifically look at Organic LinkedIn. If the agency only talks about Paid LinkedIn as a standalone channel – move on to the next. To run effective B2B LinkedIn marketing campaigns, the agency must understand how LinkedIn fits into the overall strategy and how you can leverage LinkedIn to support other channels.
Another good measure of an agency is to ask about their own organic social channel on LinkedIn. Agencies are B2B and if they don’t leverage organic social, odds are, they will struggle to launch the right paid campaigns for you.
Obvious one but don’t just take the agency’s word for it – check their track record by doing some standalone sleuthing.
You can find current client pages on LinkedIn and use the ad transparency tools to get a feel for the agencies execution. To do this, visit the client’s LinkedIn page, hit posts.
Then hit Ads. This level of detailed evaluation will arm you with the knowledge and confidence to pick an agency that is genuinely suited to help you achieve your marketing objectives on LinkedIn.
One often-overlooked but vital aspect of selecting a LinkedIn advertising agency is its ability to seamlessly integrate and collaborate with your internal sales team.
Effective LinkedIn advertising goes beyond just generating leads; it’s about driving quality leads that are ripe for conversion. An agency that understands the importance of this synergy will not only focus on creating compelling ad campaigns but also ensure that these efforts align closely with your sales objectives and strategies.
This involves regular communication between the agency and your sales team, sharing critical metrics, and adjusting strategies based on real-time feedback. For instance, if the sales team identifies that leads from a particular campaign are not converting well, the agency can quickly pivot the strategy to target a more qualified audience.
The end goal is a unified, efficient approach where advertising efforts fuel the sales pipeline, and insights from the sales process, in turn, refine advertising strategies. The alignment between the two units acts as a force multiplier, ultimately driving better ROI and achieving shared organizational goals.
When choosing a LinkedIn advertising agency, the competence and dynamics of the team responsible for executing your campaigns should be a focal point of your evaluation. It’s the team’s expertise, creativity, and collaborative spirit that often make the difference between a good campaign and a great one.
Take time to review the qualifications, experience, and roles of individual team members—this includes strategists, copywriters, designers, and data analysts. You might also consider setting up introductory meetings or calls to gauge not just their technical skills but also their ability to communicate and align with your vision.
An agency’s portfolio and past success stories are good indicators, but they are reflections of the work of a particular group of people. Ensuring that this team aligns well with your business needs, culture, and objectives is critical for a successful long-term partnership.
The style of reporting that a LinkedIn advertising agency employs is a critical element for evaluating campaign effectiveness, especially in the realms of demand generation and demand creation. Clear, insightful reporting, tailored to your business’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), helps you make data-driven decisions to optimize these objectives. Ideally, the agency should present data in a manner that’s easy to interpret, whether through visual aids or concise textual summaries, and align these insights with actionable recommendations.
An effective reporting style goes beyond just relaying facts and figures; it provides a strategic framework for understanding how well the campaigns are generating demand for existing market needs or creating demand for new offerings.
Whether through interactive dashboards that allow real-time analysis or customized reports that focus on metrics like cost per acquisition (CPA), the agency’s reporting should offer regular, timely updates that enable quick, informed decision-making. In this way, the reporting style becomes an invaluable tool for not just assessing but also driving your overall ROI.
In conclusion, choosing the right LinkedIn advertising agency requires research and careful evaluation. Look for an agency with relevant experience, a track record of success, a strong team, transparent reporting, and a willingness to collaborate. By taking the time to choose the right agency, you can set your business up for success on LinkedIn.