It costs just under Rs. 2 to reach out to your targeted customer segment thru LinkedIn. Do you want to know how?

My Pain:

LinkedIn is an expensive Platform?

How do I target a specific segment of audience in LinkedIn?

How to launch a campaign in LinkedIn?

My experience:

We initiated an advertisement in the in-flight magazine (please read our blog How effective is it to advertise on in-flight magazine). Our objective was to communicate to maximum people (our own customers database & maximum corporate Air travelers) who were to travel in near future, about our free stay contest in the in-flight magazine (honestly the purpose was not that the people were dying to win the contest but got an excuse to reach out to all travelers about TrustedStay). Means our objective was to create an awareness that TrustedStay is a Pan India Service apartment provider. We were not bothered about leads at this point of time.

We decided to launch awareness campaign across Social Media. LinkedIn was one of them.

If you want to know how to launch awareness campaigns on other Social Media platforms, follow the links below.

Launch Facebook awareness campaign in 30 minutes for Service apartment/Hotel Industry?

How to setup your advertisement campaign in Twitter for serviced apartments?

Audience: we defined our audience as under

Job Title: Our serviced apartments decision makers are Admin, Facilities, HR, Procurement & Travel desk. The idea was to reach out to all these people in Social Media with any of the above designations who could be our potential client.

Company Name: Our service apartments users were mainly the following Industry, Banking, Insurance, IT, Automobile, Engineering, Pharma, Start-up’s, Major Corporate Group companies. So, we thought of targeting all employees in these companies.

Own Customers: We have a database of 35000 customers who contacted us for serviced apartment. Which includes customers who gave us the booking and who did not, but we captured their details in our CRM database. We thought of non-intrusive communication to all those who are in SM platform.

Before you setup & start running the campaigns, you need to have an ads account LinkedIn. Thankfully, creating an Ads account in LinkedIn is easier than any of the other Social Media platforms. Here are the steps to create an Ads account in LinkedIn.

How to create an Ads Account in LinkedIn:

1. Go to https://www.linkedin.com/campaignmanager/
2. If you already don’t have an ads account, you will be asked to create one.
3. Fill up the details Account Name, Currency (Make sure you fill this up correctly since you won’t be able to change it later) & If you already have a LinkedIn Page, you can put in the URL. If you don’t have you can either skip it or create a new company page by visiting https://www.linkedin.com/company/setup/new/
4. Once you have created an account, you will be taken to the next page where you can start setting up your campaign.
5. Please note that your Ad account will be on hold until you fill up the Billing details. To do that, go to https://www.linkedin.com/campaignmanager/ Select you ad Account.
6. On the top right corner, you will see a gear icon, click on it to see the drop-down.
7. Select “Billing center” from the drop-down.
8. Click on “Add Credit Card” and fill up the details. Once your card has been approved, you Ad account status will start showing as active.

Campaign Setup:

LinkedIn Campaign: (login to https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions )

Create Campaign Group :

Enter Campaign Group Name: Inflight Campaign

Select: Brand Awareness

Budget: Blank

Period: Define

Campaign-1 (wanted to reach out to all employees of a particular Job Titles)

Campaign Name (Jan Job Titles)

Campaign Objective: Brand awareness

Audience

Where is the Target Audience: India.

Who is the Target Audience: Job Titles: After defining all Job Titles 36 , Target Audience size went was 8.5 Lac+

Ad Format

Selected Video Ad

Placement

Enable the LinkedIn Audience network

Budget & Schedule

Selected amount & period. Selected daily budget 100 and period

Create Ad

Once the campaign is setup with Audiences, Budget, Schedule – LinkedIn asks to review it once and then the campaign can be launched.

Campaign-2 (wanted to reach audience having specific Company/Companies)

Campaign Name (Jan Companies)

Campaign Objective: Brand awareness

Audience

Where is the Target Audience: India.

Who is the Target Audience: Company: Company Name: Enable audience expansion: then selected almost 80 companies. The target audience was 14 Lac+

Ad Format

Selected Video Ad

Placement

Enable the LinkedIn Audience network

Budget & Schedule

Selected amount & period. Selected daily budget 100 and period

Create Ad

Once the campaign is setup with Audiences, Budget, Schedule – LinkedIn asks to review it once and then the campaign can be launched.

Campaign-3 (wanted to reach our own customer database)

We did not find this feature in Linked in

Results:

Audience	Reach	Amount	Period	100% Video Views/1000 Rs Spent
Job Title	8.5 L	15,000	20 Days	693
Company	14 L	5,000	10 Days	300
Own Customers	NA	NA	NA	NA

We felt that Job Title wise Audience was the most effective and targeted audience.

Incase you are wondering whether LinkedIn is the best platform for your ads, you can read this post about Which social media platform is most effective to create awareness for Service apartment / Hotel Industry?

My Conclusion:

693 Video Communication views (100% video Views) seen by targeted segment for just Rs 1000, means less than Rs 1.50 Per targeted customer? If you agree please put your comment.