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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Ads

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.

    $500

    in Ads credit in the first 60 days

    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ALinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…N/A
    Pricing
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Editions & Modules
    Offer A
    $500
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    Offer B
    $1500
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    Offer C
    $3000
    in Ads credit in the first 60 days
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    LinkedIn
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    81%
    Would buy again
    42 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    76%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    79%
    Happy with the feature set
    41 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    69%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    34 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    70%
    Implementation went as expected
    35 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    9 Answers
    Features
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Ad Campaigns
    Comparison of Ad Campaigns features of Google Ads and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Feature
    Google Ads
    7.3
    11 Ratings
    12% above category average
    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    -
    Ratings
    Ad campaign creation7.911 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad deployment7.510 Ratings00 Ratings
    Display advertising7.410 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad display and retargeting segmentation7.511 Ratings00 Ratings
    Sequence targeting6.910 Ratings00 Ratings
    Contextual advertising7.210 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social advertising6.35 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Ad Reporting & Analytics features of Google Ads and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Feature
    Google Ads
    7.3
    11 Ratings
    6% above category average
    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    -
    Ratings
    Ad dashboards7.511 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad performance reports7.911 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad conversion tracking7.311 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad attribution reporting7.211 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad forecasting and optimization6.911 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad Auctions
    Comparison of Ad Auctions features of Google Ads and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Feature
    Google Ads
    7.9
    10 Ratings
    6% below category average
    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    -
    Ratings
    Ad bidding7.910 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Small Businesses
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    X Ads
    Score4.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    WordStream
    Score6.9 out of 10
    X Ads
    Score4.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    X Ads
    Score4.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (126 ratings)
    9.9
    (48 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.7
    (17 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.6
    (6 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google AdsLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    Google Ads is a useful advertising tool to build brand exposure and generate lead volumes for your chosen product. Whilst it can be costly at times due to competitor bidding strategies and requires constant monitoring to ensure campaigns perform as expected, it typically provides the desired quality and quantity of leads for custom budgets.
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Google
    • Automated targeting via Smart Shopping campaign. It's one of the best campaign types in Google Ads. In the beginning, you may see lower revenue and ROAS, but once you give some meaningful time to your campaign, it is most likely to perform well.
    • Smart bidding strategies: Google Ads has developed some really great bidding strategies such as maximizing conversion and maximizing conversion with ROAS settings. Based on one's requirement and their goal with revenue and target ROAS, they can choose the appropriate bidding strategy.
    • Reporting: A business owner and advertising must know about their audiences, how their campaigns have been performing, what's working and what's not, and for that reason, powerful, effective reporting is needed, and Google Ads provides rich details reporting that covers almost every aspect of a business.
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    • 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
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Google
    • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
    • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    • 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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    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Google
    This is more of a subjective rating, because I think it can be increased with how much our ad spend is. The more of an ad spend, the more visibility we can get, and therefore all features can climb. With an overall larger presence the usability is that where we can get messages out quick, and that's the main thing we try to do with our campaigns.
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    LinkedIn
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Google
    We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    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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    Online Training
    Google
    Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
    Read full review
    LinkedIn
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    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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    Return on Investment
    Google
    • Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
    • Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
    • If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
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    LinkedIn
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots