LinkedIn Ads: What to Prepare Before Investing

You have decided to try ads for LinkedIn, but the campaign still depends on a too broad idea: "We want to get customers." If you don't specify which person to respond to and what to do next, it's hard to evaluate the message, creativity or even if you want to activate the campaign.

LinkedIn ads make sense when you can join three pieces: a well-defined professional audience, a proposal that that audience can value, and a destination prepared to continue the conversation. By finishing this guide you can decide what to define first, what to expect, and what to leave out of a first campaign.

The elements to be prepared, in order of decision

A observable target Avoid targets such as "gain visibility" if you don't know what action would justify the investment. Formulate a specific action: request a meeting, download a resource, ask for information about a service or fill out a form.

The goal determines the rest. If you are looking for business conversations, the ad and the destination page should make it easier for the person to understand the service and take the next step. If you are looking to validate interest in a new proposal, you will need a call to action and a way to register that interest.

An audience defined by its relationship to the problem Do not start with "businesses" or "directives." Describe who you want to reach according to their role, context and need: for example, responsible who have to solve a particular process or profiles involved in a particular purchase.

Too wide an audience forces generic messages to be written. A very closed segmentation, however, may leave no room for learning. The decision is not to seek the maximum possible precision, but to choose a group that you can speak to clearly.

An offer understood without a previous commercial call The ad doesn't have to explain your entire business. It should allow you to understand what you offer, who it is and what problem it addresses.

An offer can be a defined service, a valuation session, a demonstration or a useful resource. Choose a single proposal per campaign. If you mix multiple services, needs and calls to action, it will be more difficult to know what has aroused interest.

A message centred on a recognizable voltage A good starting point is to express a situation that the reader can identify: manual tasks that are repeated, queries that are lost, a website that does not explain well a service or information distributed among tools.

Then connect that situation with the proposal and ask for a proportionate action. Do not affirm results you cannot sustain. It is preferable to make a concrete promise about what the person will find by clicking on a grandiloquent phrase.

A creativity that clarifies, not that adorns The visual piece and text should work on the same idea. If the headline raises an operating problem, the image, video or document should help you understand it, not enter another message.

Before producing several versions, define which element you want to contrast: the problem, the focus of the offer, the profile you are addressing or the call to action. Changing everything at once makes it difficult to interpret what has influenced the response.

A destination consistent with the ad The click does not solve anything on its own. The destination page, form or resource must exactly continue the announcement promise.

Check that the destination answers these questions: what is offered, for who it is, what should be done by the person, what information is requested and what happens next. If the destination is a generic page with many possible paths, the campaign can attract interest without turning it into a useful conversation.

A way to review the quality of the answers Measuring is not just about counting clicks or forms. Before publishing, decide which signals will indicate that the campaign attracts the right audience: the type of consultation, the requested service, the information provided or the real possibility of continuing the conversation.

It is also appropriate to assign who will review the answers and with what criteria. If no one can attend to them or classify them, the campaign adds work without providing clear learning.

How to prioritize if parts of zero

Do not try to solve the seven elements with the same level of detail. Use this sequence:

-First, target and audience. Without these two decisions you cannot judge whether the offer or message fits. -Afterwards, offer and destination. confirms that there is a specific proposal and a place to send the person concerned. -Then, message and creativity. Redact and design from the above, not the other way around. -Lastly, measurement and management. Define what data you need to learn and who will take care of the answers.

This priority avoids a frequent error: to spend time on an attractive piece before knowing what conversation to start. If you still can't express the goal, the scope of the campaign and the solution that will sustain it, keep those decisions open rather than supplementing them with assumptions.

Example applied: hypothetical campaign for a service SME

Imagine a company that provides services to other companies and wants to generate conversations about a solution to order internal applications. This is a hypothetical example, not a real case.

-OBjective: receive requests for valuation of the solution. -Audience: responsible for small business operations that manage requests through emails and spreadsheets. -Omertà: an initial conversation to check if the process requires a tool, integration or easier improvement. -Message: from a specific situation, such as loss of tracking when multiple people manage requests through different channels. -Destination: a page explaining the problem addressed, the type of solution possible and a form asking only for the information needed to understand the query. -Review: classify requests according to the problem described, the role of the person and the clarity of need.

In this example, the announcement does not promise to eliminate all management problems. Its function is to attract people who recognize a specific situation and take them to a next step that the company can attend.

What to leave out of the first campaign

Leave out any element that complicates the interpretation without helping the initial objective:

• Several offers aimed at audiences with different needs.
• Messages that try to explain all the services of the company.
• Extensive forms requesting data without a clear purpose.
• Several landing pages with different promises for the same announcement.
• Simultaneous changes in audience, offer, text and creativity.
• Monitoring automations that you have not reviewed under real conditions.
• Affirmations about results, savings or performance that you cannot verify.

It also separates business decisions from obligations that require specific validation. For example, if you collect personal data or connect the form to other tools, check with responsible people what information is involved, who accesses it, and what requirements apply to your case.

Next step

If you already know who you want to address but need to turn that idea into a coherent offer, parts and destination, you can explain your advertising content project to AVSISTEC.