Getting the recipe right
If you’re not using LinkedIn for marketing yet, you’re missing out big time: over 94% of B2B marketers distribute content on LinkedIn, and 92% of them use it more than any other platform. It’s safe to say that if you know what you’re doing, LinkedIn marketing can be pretty darn powerful.
So what’s the most effective strategy for engaging your audience on LinkedIn?
One company that’s done a good job is LinkedIn itself. Why not take a page out of their book?
LinkedIn’s “secret sauce”
Literally — LinkedIn’s new e-book breaks down the results of A/B testing they’ve conducted over the years on sponsored content to develop the recipe for successful marketing on their site.
3 cups of facts
– A sponsored post containing a statistic received a 37% higher CTR and 162% more impressions than the same post without a stat.
– The ad headline “Download the Research” generated 5x the number of clicks than “Download the eBook.”
Users are hungry for legit information.
2 heaping scoops of personalization
– To generate awareness about a blog, LinkedIn sent personal InMail messages using a dynamic macro to insert a member’s name in their greeting. This friendly touch earned them 1240 blog subscriptions
– The company saw 185% more engagement when addressing its audience directly versus indirectly
Your audience wants to feel special.
A tablespoon of brevity
– Posts with fewer characters (150 or less) experienced 18% higher engagement rates. They also recommend keeping InMail messages shorter than 1000 characters.
Keep it short, sweet and to-the-point.
A dash of aggression
– Bids set 10% higher than the max suggested bid saw 15% higher CTR and 27% more conversions
You can’t change the game when you play it safe–boldness pays off.
A pinch of patience
– LI recommends letting your campaign run for at least three weeks to see what’s working and what’s not. Continually A/B test subject lines, CTAs (calls to action), and Target Audiences, and turn off what isn’t performing well.
Constantly fine-tune your campaigns, and make informed decisions based on solid data.
Get the goods
If you’ve worked up an appetite reading this tasty recipe, check out their e-book to learn how LinkedIn defines marketing objectives, balances organic and paid, approaches bidding, and budgeting fuels their always-on content strategy, and what they’ve learned about targeting, testing, and optimizing campaigns.
#LISecretSauce
Helen Irias is a Staff Writer at The American Genius with a degree in English Literature from University of California, Santa Barbara. She works in marketing in Silicon Valley and hopes to one day publish a comically self-deprecating memoir that people bring up at dinner parties to make themselves sound interesting.

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