Item: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Rating: 7
Author: Adam Lumley

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions are used as a lead acquisition tool and an engagement tool for our audience. It offers more precise targeting than other platforms we use on a regular basis. Multiple departments use features relevant to their roles in the company. However, most of our usage comes from the marketing department.

Pros and Cons

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

Ad management is cumbersome - a bulk editor would be great. Uploading/editing one ad at a time can be very time consuming.
User Interface - although they have come a long way over the past few years, the UI is still more difficult to navigate when compared to other platforms.
Budgeting - campaigns can potentially spend up to 20% over your submitted budget so it may be necessary for some marketers to adjust their budget down in the platform. It's a small change that would take the burden off the marketer to allow them to simply set a spending cap.
Reporting - their reporting features are very limited and performance charts only allow single metric views.
Competition - there are no insights provided around how your ads are doing vs your competition aside from your costs fluctuating. Even something as simple as "share of voice" would be nice to see.

Return on Investment

A close eye has to be kept on your cost per conversion to ensure positive ROI - it can get pretty high vs other platforms.
Sales teams like leads from LinkedIn Ads - they are hyper targeted and have a higher conversion to sale vs other platform.
Lead volume can be difficult to scale, however, there will be less low-quality leads vs other platforms

Alternatives Considered

Facebook for Business, Twitter Ads and Google Ads (formerly AdWords)

Audience type (professional) - LinkedIn has worked great for SaaS offerings while other social media advertising platforms seem better suited for product offers.

Lead volume - other platforms tend to produce more form submissions

Lead quality - LinkedIn often produces higher quality leads vs other platforms

Lead efficiency - by providing higher quality leads, the qualification process is simplified often shortening they sales cycle.

Key Insights

Do you think LinkedIn Marketing Solutions delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions's feature set?

Yes

Did LinkedIn Marketing Solutions live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy LinkedIn Marketing Solutions again?

Yes

Support Rating

Our support rep support is amazing. We often get responses from our rep within the same hour we email her. We have productive meetings and she allows provides followup and feedback.

Usability

It's not difficult to use but, as mentioned earlier, it can be cumbersome. Uploading new creative/copy has to be done one by one and there is no bulk editor.

Likelihood to Recommend

LinkedIn has a much higher CPC than most commonly used platforms resulting in a much higher CPL/CPA. For businesses that don't have big CPC budgets, it would be difficult to be able to run tests without breaking the bank. Unless they get it right out of the gate, they may not find success with their efforts.

On the opposite side of that, if a business can afford higher acquisition costs, this platform is likely worth exploring. They offer precise targeting with audiences full of professionals so often the leads are really high quality if you get it right.

LinkedIn Ads - The good and not so good.

Overall Satisfaction with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions