10 Effective LinkedIn Advertising Ideas

While there is a slew of social platforms available for digital marketing endeavors, LinkedIn is unique.

Where else can marketers find business-minded individuals and target them with incredible accuracy?

The answer, obviously, is nowhere.

Before we look at LinkedIn advertising ideas, let’s talk about why LinkedIn is where you want to spend your time—and money.

Why Should You Advertise on LinkedIn?

While other platforms may boast higher user counts, LinkedIn is home to 740 million active users. Sixty-five million of those users are decision-makers, and an additional 61 million identify as senior-level influencers.

That means you’re inherently more likely to attract the attention of an individual who has buying power on LinkedIn than on any other social platform.

In addition to the large influential audience on LinkedIn, there are a slew of additional benefits to advertising on the platform, including:

Another important factor to note is how popular LinkedIn is for paid social advertising. In fact, more than 50 percent of US marketers will advertise on LinkedIn this year.

Why care about this statistic when weighing your LinkedIn advertising strategy?

Because with that much market saturation, your ads need to stand out from the crowd.

10 Examples of the Top 10 LinkedIn Advertising Ideas

To help inspire you to craft those attention-catching ads that can actually convert on LinkedIn, we compiled 10 LinkedIn advertising ideas that are pretty brilliant.

1. Use Loud and Playful Colors, Like Swag in a Box

The psychology behind colors doesn’t earn the attention it deserves in most marketing circles. Using vibrant hues is one of the most effective ways to attract attention to your marketing campaign.

In fact, colorful ads in magazines attract 26 percent more attention than their black and white counterparts.

Bright pops of color can help your ads go the distance, particularly when the colors align with your business.

However, if you’re working with a professional organization (think a law firm), you may want to tone down the brights to avoid interfering with the organization’s brand.

For a more visual example, check out this ad from Swag in a Box, a company that makes company swag.

This ad is bold, bright, and aesthetically pleasing, drawing the reader’s eye immediately to its vibrant depictions of boxed office swag.

As you assess LinkedIn advertising ideas, never forget the power of simple, vibrant hues.

2. Make an Offering in Your Ad, Like SharpRocket

When looking for LinkedIn advertising ideas to distinguish your ad from the slew of others, consider including an offering.

This can include a free PDF of a whitepaper, a budgeting worksheet, or a calendar.

The point is to provide your audience with something of value that they will remember as they proceed along the customer journey. In addition to grabbing attention, offerings allow you to demonstrate marketplace value, solidifying your identity as an expert in your field.

Looking for inspiration for a LinkedIn advertising idea with an offering component? Check out this ad from SharpRocket.

By offering a free blueprint for starting a linkbuilding campaign, SharpRocket offers value while simultaneously solidifying its expertise in the field of digital strategy.

3. Appeal to Peoples’ Emotions, Like Northwest Missouri State University

Emotion is a powerful force in marketing.

In fact, in a study of 1,400 successful advertising campaigns, those with exclusively emotional content performed nearly twice as ads that used rational content.

When searching for LinkedIn ad ideas, don’t forget the value of emotional imagery or language to entice your audience.

Here’s another study that further underscores the value of emotion in LinkedIn ads: Les Binet and Peter Field for the B2B Institute found that appealing to emotions is seven times more effective at driving profits, sales, and revenue than conventional, rational messaging.

For example, check out this LinkedIn ad from Northwest Missouri State University.

This ad’s focal point is the grin on a young graduate’s face as they embrace a fellow college graduate. Diploma clutched in hand: the emotion of delight is impossible to ignore.

Who doesn’t want to experience that unabashed glee? By using images that depict relatable emotions increases the chance that your audience will want to interact with your ad, and, hopefully, your product.

4. Feature Company Leadership, Like Goldman Sachs

LinkedIn is built on the premise of networking. By featuring company leadership, audience members can interact with prominent figures behind the brand, driving feelings of trust and putting a face to a name.

This trust creates a connection with your brand, increasing the chance of sales down the line.

Looking for inspiration to incorporate this tenet into your next campaign? Look no further than this ad from Goldman Sachs.

In this ad, Goldman Sachs features a candid conversation with the Global Co-Head of Asset Management.

By introducing audiences to a face that they will encounter in a variety of mediums, Goldman Sachs creates a personal relationship with each audience member, increasing trust and building connections.

5. Announce Industry Events, Like Children’s Mercy

If you’re looking for LinkedIn ad ideas, announcing industry events is a great place to start. By inviting your audience (and potentially your audience’s audience) to events, you increase reach—and drive connections.

Why? You aren’t just bragging about your brand when you promote an event, you’re offering them something of value.

Check out this ad from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City to see an effective event announcement.

This LinkedIn ad invites audience participation and fosters community involvement, but it also employs a video loop to be even more effective.

LinkedIn video ads tend to earn three times more engagement than their text counterparts.

If you’re looking to increase engagement while building a LinkedIn community through announcing an industry event, don’t forget the power of a visually appealing video.

6. Place Your Ad in Multiple Aligned Page Columns, Like Tunes

On LinkedIn, more exposure is never a bad thing. With opportunities to place your ad in multiple locations, you can take advantage of doubling the likelihood of audience interaction.

To see this theory in practice, check out the LinkedIn ad from Tune.

Tune uses aligned page columns to provide two opportunities for viewers to take action. Not only does this allow Tune to further promote their highlighted guide, but it also encourages audience members to follow the company.

Looking to gain maximum inspiration from this ad? Tune uses clearly delineated calls to actions (CTA) to demonstrate exactly what the visitor will gain by interacting with the ad.

7. Make Your Ads Topical, Like Asana

We’ve talked about the power of relatability—how it helps humanize your brand and encourages your audience to interact authentically.

When you craft topical content, you take the power of relatability one step further by not only proving that you’re human, but proving that you’re hip.

Looking for inspiration to prove your topical knowledge? Check out this ad from Asana.

Using an image representing the newly-blurred lines between work and home, Asana presents a relatable, effective ad.

The ad invites viewers to realize that they, too, have adapted to this new situation, and the tools offered by Asana can make that adaptation even easier.

8. Keep It Simple, Like Express Scripts

Great LinkedIn ads don’t have to be flashy. In some cases, the simpler the ad, the simpler the sell.

Looking for inspiration for simple, yet effective ads?

Check out this LinkedIn ad from Express Scripts.

In this image, a hand holds a pill against a brightly-colored background. The audience’s eye is immediately drawn to the pill.

The image is working two-fold: it grabs attention through color and contrast, while also underlining the brand’s core message: bringing prescriptions directly to you.

9. Highlight the Solution to User’s Problems, Like Sensor Tower

When we shop, we’re looking to solve an existing problem. When you build LinkedIn ads, you can attract consumer attention by creating a direct ad that highlights a solution to your audience’s problem.

Want an illustration of this tactic? Check out this ad from Sensor Tower.

Sensor Tower knows what its audience wants—and what its audience wants is metrics. In this ad, the company specifically solves that problem for users seeking education app performance data.

By solving this need for a specific audience, the company successfully creates a clear, direct ad that persuades the audience to take action by downloading their report.

To replicate this in your LinkedIn ads, identify your audience’s driving need, then build a campaign that solves that specific problem.

10. Demonstrate Your Social Justice Efforts, Like BMO Harris Bank

Corporate responsibility elicits a positive response in audiences, with 73 percent of consumers saying that businesses should do more than simply offer a product or service.

Looking for inspiration? Look no further than BMO Harris Bank.

In this ad, the bank underlines its commitment to making the workplace more inclusive to the LGBTQ2+ community. This video not only builds out the brand’s character, but also underline the morals and values that guide their brand.

This ad can do double work of building relatability and fulfilling corporate responsibility for individuals who align with the organization’s vision.

Conclusion

All 10 of these LinkedIn advertising ideas can help drive the clicks and conversions you’ve dreamt of. To be effective, however, you need to identify which strategy works best for your brand or your client’s brand.

Perhaps you decide to go the route of emotional marketing, using an image to tell your story. Maybe you decide that vibrant colors align seamlessly with your brand’s vision, and you redraft all of your graphic design around a brilliant theme.

Or maybe you decide to bring executive leadership to the forefront of your campaign, letting audience members put a face to a name.

Regardless of which route you choose, incorporating these LinkedIn advertising ideas with tried-and-true LinkedIn tips can help take your campaigns to the next level.

We can also help you with your LinkedIn advertising, if needed.

What’s the most effective LinkedIn advertising idea you’ve seen?

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