Event Marketing on LinkedIn: 4 Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
Event marketing on LinkedIn provides a great opportunity for event organisers to grow their network, generate traffic and leads, and connect their brand with over 400 million active influential professionals across all industries and sectors.
LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers some of the best ad targeting capabilities around with over 20 different audience categories for targeted B2B advertising and lead generation.
Finding the sweet spot on the platform can take time and what works best for your event campaigns can depend on the industry type and size.
Here are 4 common mistakes event organisers make when marketing their events on LinkedIn and how you can avoid them:
Mistake #1: Campaigns going live with no tracking
Campaigns can often be launched without tracking in place when marketing an event on LinkedIn, which we do not recommend! If you are running event marketing campaigns to drive conversions, the LinkedIn Insight Tag should be placed on all of the pages of your website. The Insight Tag is a snippet of code for your website that helps you to optimise your campaigns, retarget to website visitors and learn more about your audience.
Once the Insight Tag is installed on your website and a LinkedIn member visits, your domain will show as “Active”. This lets you know when the last signal was received. It is important to note that tag activation may take up to 24 hours depending on your website traffic.
Mistake #2 Not following creative best practices
Due to LinkedIn’s ad frequency cap, we recommend that all event organisers have a minimum of four ads running in one campaign. If you only have one ad running, a user will see the same ad every 48 hours! Often a user needs 8-10 impressions before completing an action or engaging with your brand, so the more ad variations you have live, the more opportunity you have to generate user engagement. The same landing page, asset image and even the headline can all be used as long as there is a slight change, then LinkedIn will count this as a different ad and it will serve outwith the 48 hour cap.
Mistake #3 Not focusing enough on the target audience and audience size
One of the biggest opportunities and threats with LinkedIn is targeting. With so many targeting options, it is easy to make mistakes. LinkedIn has excellent targeting options, allowing advertisers to be specific on the exact audience you want to target. From company and job titles to demographics and interests, you need to focus your audience on the most relevant segment for your message. It is so important to understand what narrows an audience and what makes it bigger. The more targeting options you choose the more narrow an audience gets, for example, if you choose Job Seniority & Job Titles the user must match both selected categories to see your ad.
A recommended audience size for event marketing on LinkedIn is between 50,000 and 300,000. Audience sizes smaller than this may have trouble scaling and meeting daily budgets, as well as risking users not seeing your ads.
Your content strategy will play a big role in audience selection and size. Starting with a broad audience and scaling down based on the demographics tool is recommended once your campaigns have started learning. Most event organisers we work with begin by testing a combination of Job Titles, Job Seniorities, Company Size and Member Skills – this is a great way to start event marketing on LinkedIn and ensure a solid audience.
Mistake #4 Underfunding your campaign
A common mistake is underfunding your campaign. For event marketing on LinkedIn we recommend controlling your advertising spend by a daily budget. As a minimum, the platform requires a daily spend of $10.00 per each campaign. The ads are sold through an auction, so when you run an ad, you compete with other advertisers who want to reach a similar target audience.
LinkedIn is not the cheapest digital advertising platform for event advertisers, so we recommend avoiding too small of a budget if you want to drive conversions and grow your data.
Don’t spread your campaigns too thin! LinkedIn recommends spending $150.00 per campaign and bid 1 per campaign higher than the suggested bid. Why? To experience better results, beat competitors in the auction, and improve your content relevancy score. Once you get a high content relevancy score you can lower your bid and still win audiences over your competitors!
When LinkedIn event PPC marketing is used correctly, it’s a fantastic tool for prospecting new leads, nurturing existing customers and converting users who are ready to take the next step.
If you need more information on event promotion strategies on LinkedIn, let us do the work for you. Book a call with one of our team here and we can discuss the best options for your event.
Author: Jess Mowat, Paid Social Specialist