In this post, we’re going to examine the pros and cons of running LinkedIn Ads.

LinkedIn is an excellent channel to network with other professionals, find new job opportunities, and even reach out to prospective clients. LinkedIn is where most Fortune 500 decision-makers and executives like to spend their spare time, so think of it as a B2B gold mine. 

Unlike Facebook and other social media platforms, people are in a business mindset when they’re on LinkedIn, making it a great place to market business services, products, and software using LinkedIn Ads.

Because many companies aren’t currently taking full advantage of LinkedIn Ads, there’s less competition, and less competition means that businesses can successfully increase its market share and expand its customer base.

To help you decide if LinkedIn Ads are for your business, let’s look into the platform’s current pros and cons.

Pros of Advertising on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Ads has a lot to offer B2B advertisers in addition to being a business-focused social media platform. It combines unique targeting options with a straightforward interface to provide an incredibly intuitive user experience.

From a marketing perspective, LinkedIn is incredible because it allows you to target people using criteria you can’t find anywhere else.

Audience Settings

When marketers can get granular with their targeting, they have a better chance of capturing quality leads. LinkedIn Ads updated their audience settings, allowing marketers to target people using criteria you can’t find anywhere else. 

Here are some of the ways you can target users on LinkedIn:

• Member Age
• Member Gender
• Company
• Degrees
• Field of Study
• Location
• Schools attended
• Current Employer
• Member Interests and Traits
• Job title
• Industry
• Previous Employer (s)
• LinkedIn Groups They’ve Joined
• Current LinkedIn Connections

Since your LinkedIn profile is pretty much your resume, LinkedIn users are incentivized to keep their profiles accurate and up-to-date. For instance, when you target a specific industry, you can be reasonably confident that your ads will show up to your target audience, and not anyone else outside that audience. 

Location Targeting

This feature is a pro because marketers can target their audience on a local or international level, depending on the business goals. Advertisers can also exclude areas they don’t want to run ads in to cut costs.

You can reach members based on where they live or visit by searching for locations. Geographic location is based on the permanent or long-term location specified by the member in their profile or by their IP address for short-term visits. 

Cons of Advertising on LinkedIn

Although LinkedIn Ads allow you to target people using criteria you can’t find anywhere else, like many advertising platforms, it has flaws. 

Costs

While LinkedIn advertising costs vary by the advertiser, LinkedIn does require companies to bid a minimum of $2 for cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) campaigns. On average, however, businesses pay $5.26 per click and $6.59 per 1000 impressions.

Of course, those are just averages, and costs vary depending on your business and how you define a “conversion,” your prices may be quite a bit higher than that.

Compared to Facebook’s average cost-per-click of $1.72 and average cost-per-conversion of $7.85, the cost of advertising on LinkedIn can appear staggeringly high.

However, businesses must remember that LinkedIn is a highly targeted ad platform; the more specific your targeting is, the higher your cost-per-conversion will be.

Since LinkedIn is such a highly-targeted ad platform, it makes sense that clicks just cost more. For B2B businesses that make thousands-to-millions from closing a new client, spending extra on LinkedIn’s focused targeting options is often an excellent investment—provided that your customer lifetime value is large enough to absorb the cost.

Targeting Limits

Although advertisers can target its audience on a local or international level, unlike Google Ad’s platform, LinkedIn Ads have their limits. 

Advertisers can’t target their audience by zip code or radius level, and this is a con for the following reasons:

• less control over your advertising budget 
• unable to segment your audience based on your customers’ zip codes
• unable to exclude areas at a granular level (zip codes)

Wrapping It Up

So, is LinkedIn Ads right for your business? The answer is ultimately up to you, but if you’re trying to market a B2B company and haven’t invested in LinkedIn Ads lately, it might be a good idea to give it another try. If you’d like help with LinkedIn Ads or marketing in general, let us know here or in the comments. We’d love to help!