Google Ad Manager vs. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

I like that I can see several clients in one place, which can be convenient. However, the UX could be a lot better as outlined previously. In other words, the benefits of combining clients into the Ad Manager don't seem to be much more beneficial than logging into each client's ad account separately

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Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.

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• The obvious is the data - Google Ads Manager gives me essential and even critical data about which jobs and industries are hot right now and what is driving the most response.
• Google Ad Manager gives us more control over the search engine results page as we get more visibility and real estate on our branded search terms and job/industry-specific search terms.
• Google Ad Manager gives us the chance to compete with major national players in job recruitment, Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc.

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• Targeting - they have done a great job of allowing you speak to ideal audiences
• Support - dedicated customer service and account advising is always accessible and very responsive
• Curation of professional audiences - one of the biggest advantages to the platform is that its users are for the most part are professional

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• Support. Not that they don't call or offer help, it's that our account people are bullies. I tell them I don't have time, so I am insulted and told that I need to get in front of the laptop otherwise I have "failed the company." I have never had a situation where I wasn't bullied by our Ad reps. They don't respect or value our time, which can make their calls frustrating.
• Too quick on support. They don't take the time to understand the product. We are a preschool which shares a name with a popular motorcycle. An Ad rep insisted he knew the company so well that he could help me within five minutes. After being interrupted frequently, I just let him continue to tell me how I "could increase awareness of our aerodynamic seat design by creating ads with those keywords..."
• Better management of trademark keywords and program awareness. We switched over to a new site, the domain changed for about ten seconds. All of our ads were unapproved and put on pause. The email stated it would be fixed very quickly, but I had to go in for the last 3 days to reactivate each one individually.

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• The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
• LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
• This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
• LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.

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I think it's useful for our team and we rely on it to improve our business. It is within our budget also. Although we still will need an approval from the upper-level management team, I don't see any problem with that

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While most of Google Ad Manager is user-friendly, certain parts of the ad creation process could use some improvements. Specifically, the way you insert keywords can be clunky and time-consuming, and I would like to see better and more keyword suggestions when designing a campaign.

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in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.

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I could say a lot about this topic. As an agency, we get a new [representative] to talk to almost every quarter to go over select accounts and the campaigns within. Most of the time, these [educated representatives], don't provide any new feedback, or I just simply [disagree] with their approach. This is not all the time however. I have learned a lot from a rare few, [individuals] that have given me new strategies and access to betas early on. The other side of support, is the [overseas support platform]. [It] is usually not very helpful, but you can [emphasize] issues and they can research [them]. The Google Tag Implementation team is pristine though. When you need them, you need to set an appointment, which is usually 2 weeks out; they are so over-my-head intelligent, I've never had a bad experience with them and whenever I needed them for a fix, they solved it [within] the first call.

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So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.

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As I've said in prior comments, I like how the Google Ad Manager makes better use of the Google data and results compared to the others. Yes, I've tried them - I used to evaluate software for a former company. They will all do the job I didn't like their usage as much as I preferred the Google information - and I said even that had flaws - so you have to realize that nothing is completely perfect so far.

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If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.

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• I was able to work well with my budgets - mainly because of the reports.
• I saw a great spike in the way my ad traffic increased.
• It was a very easy way to work with Google Ad Manager than connecting other platforms with less compatibility - Less investment.

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• We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
• LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.

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