How to Successfully Start Doing Video Ads on LinkedIn

Advertising is often considered intrusive and definitely wasn’t the most sexiest communication and promotion tool for a while. But things have changed!

These days, advertising online is considered a great way to increase visibility, generate qualified traffic or collect data from your target audience.

A lot of companies are communicating using LinkedIn nowadays, and a client might end up asking you to get into LinkedIn ads, so you better be prepared!

This article will tell you everything you need to know to create successful video ads on the platform. Just keep reading to find out more.

Best practices for a memorable LinkedIn ad video

LinkedIn is one of the main channels used by B2B marketers when it comes to promoting their content. Why, you ask?

• LinkedIn generates 3x more conversions than Twitter & Facebook (Hubspot, 2020)
• LinkedIn members spend almost 3x more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content, according to a study from 2018.

Video ads therefore appear to be one of the best ways to reach your marketing goals at every stage of the conversion funnel.

You’ll find some of the ways you can make sure your campaign is successful below.

Always define the objective of your video campaign

Don’t rush creating a video for your LinkedIn advertising campaign. Instead, start by defining your main campaign objective.

This professional social network offers 6 different objectives:

• Brand awareness: LinkedIn will show your ad as often as possible to increase brand awareness. If you are working with a new brand, we suggest focusing your video on your company’s expertise and showing your products’ benefits to generate impressions.
• Website visits: The goal is here to take users to your website or landing page. These campaigns will be shown to the LinkedIn members that are most likely to click your ad. This objective is ideal for companies looking to strengthen their online presence.
• Interactions: Your ad will aim to encourage users to comment or share your post and click to a landing page.
  Video views: This is the perfect objective if you are looking to communicate a specific information. When working with this objective, make sure your video is so attractive that users keep watching until the end when it appears on their feed.
• Lead generation: Users that click your ad will be directed to a LinkedIn form pre-filled with LinkedIn members’ profile data, which will allow you to collect and integrate data while providing them with a cost estimate, PDF content or access to a webinar.
• Website conversions: Drive your prospects to your e-commerce platform using Linkedin and generate valuable actions, such as whitepapers downloads, training course purchases etc. If your company is already established and launching a new course, you could share information on this new program to increase your conversion rate and generate interest.

Rely on storytelling

Advertising doesn’t have to be cliché or disruptive. Actually, a story is 22 times easier to remember than a series of facts, according to a study by a Stanford professor.

Storytelling is ideal to showcase the human side behind a company name or logo, and is essential to every efficient marketing video.

Wanna see an example? Check out this video by Point S Canada and see how it manages to tell a story within just 30 seconds.

Good storytelling requires high-quality images and a character that internet users can identify with within the first 3 seconds of your video, for example thanks to habits, thoughts or gestures that everyone can relate to.

Pay attention to your video ad’s length

On LinkedIn a 15-second video is short enough to capture users’ attention and hold it, which in turn will increase brand awareness. An internal LinkedIn study from 2018 revealed that videos that are shorter than 30 seconds are 200% more likely to be watched until the end.

If your objective is lead generation, your video can be up to 1 minute long as this gives you enough time to showcase your values, convince your prospects to engage or include customer testimonials.

Looking to create LinkedIn videos that captivate your audience? Discover the power of PlayPlay's LinkedIn video maker! Our user-friendly platform helps you transform your ideas into engaging videos, so you can share your message with confidence.

Use the right dimensions for your sponsored video content

Your campaign may be shown on LinkedIn as well as on mobile and other devices.

Therefore, it is essential for each video to have the right dimensions.

Here are the main LinkedIn video specs:

• Horizontal ad: 1920 x 1080px
• Square ad: 1080 x 1080px
• Vertical ad: 1080 x 1920px

Your video file size should be between 75 Ko and 200 Mo and should be saved as .mp4.

A step-by-step guide to creating a LinkedIn video ad campaign

Once your video is ready, it’s time to set up your campaign on the platform’s Campaign Manager tool.

Target your audience

Do not skip this essential step as it would prevent your video from being seen by the right people. Expect a low click rate and lack of credibility if you do.

On the other hand, do not narrow things down too much as you might end up excluding potential customers.

The first step here is to define the geographical zone where your video should be shown.

We suggest only selecting the “Permanent location” option to avoid targeting people in locations where they do not reside.

You can also choose to target a specific language using the “Profile language” option so that it matches your product’s language.

Afterwards, you can go deeper thanks to additional targeting facets that include demographics, job function or interests and traits.

For example, if your product is dedicated to large companies, you should target members working at companies that have over 5k employees.

Make sure you disable Audience Expansion as otherwise LinkedIn will tend to show your video to users that are outside of your target audience.

You can also exclude specific audiences. Depending on your product, it might make sense to exclude interns as they usually have little to no decision-making power.

Set your budget and bids

If your advertising budget is limited, we recommend choosing the total budget model. Once your budget has been spent, your video will stop appearing on users’ feeds. No overspending possible!

As you are competing against other advertisers’ ads targeting the same audience, bidding is how LinkedIn decides which ad will be shown first.

There are 3 different bid types to choose from:

• Automated Bidding: This format is recommended to reach a high conversion rate all while distributing your budget evenly over the chosen time frame.
• Enhanced CPC Bidding: Your ad will be shown to as many users as possible, provided they are likely to click your link, regardless of the price.
• Maximum CPM Bidding: This is the ideal format for brand awareness campaigns. You just need to set a price for 1k impressions and will pay depending on how many times the video has been shown to your target audience.

For a conversion-focused campaign, we recommend going for CPC bidding. Once the click rate is over 0.7%, it makes sense to switch to automated bidding.

Pay attention if choosing CPC or CPM bidding as LinkedIn will automatically suggest a fairly high bid. We suggest starting just over the minimum bid.

Select your ad format

LinkedIn does not allow you to create campaigns that use both video ads and static content. Make sure you select the video ad option under “Campaign Format.”

Once you are ready, you can upload your first video ad—in the right format with the correct aspect ratio!—and add subtitles if needed.

LinkedIn will also let you add a thumbnail image, which will be shown to your audience right before the video autoplays.

Note that if your video is under 30 second long, LinkedIn will loop it.

Analyze your performance during and after the campaign

To know whether your campaign was successful, you will need to analyze it according to a specific set of KPIs:

• Total impressions for brand awareness campaigns
• Click rate and full-screen views for consideration campaigns
• Conversion rates, number of qualified contacts and cost per conversion for conversion campaigns

Whether you are representing a newly-launched company looking for brand awareness or an established brand, LinkedIn video ads are a great way to reach your communication goals. Just give it a go and upload videos today.