law firm linkedin advertisingLinkedIn is the most popular and successful choice when it comes to firms investing in sponsored content on social media. In fact, we found that 30 percent of the Am Law firms use LinkedIn advertising, which is a significant increase from only 10 percent just a year ago. That number will only grow as the platform expands and continues to provide opportunities for thought leadership and highly targeted promotion. As more and more law firms leverage LinkedIn advertising, knowing how to use the platform is becoming exceedingly important for law firm marketers. That being said, we decided to address some of the more commonly asked questions about running advertising on the platform.

1. Is there a relationship between audience size and duration of campaign that drives success?

There is certainly a correlation between audience size and your budget. For example, if you have a large audience and a large budget, you will saturate that audience within a month. If you have a smaller budget, the chances of saturating that audience are very low. Generally speaking, the audience size and the budget you have to reach them will determine campaign success. Look at your CTR and build a graph to show trends. If you see a sharp downturn, you’ll know you’ve saturated your current market.

2. What is the minimum audience size we should look at for LinkedIn advertising? 

When setting up your target audience, the minimum required audience size is 300 members. LinkedIn will advise you to have at least 300,000 in an audience, however, we recommend keeping your audience small and focused. Somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 is ideal for any given campaign. A small audience size can make sense if your law firm is targeting a very niche, specific group of people.

3. How can we use the targeting options available if we have a clear demographic, but it has nothing to do with occupation? 

LinkedIn naturally lends itself to targeting occupations – it was built around professions. However, if you’ve developed client personas, you can use those other attributes for advanced targeting. You would need to use that persona to match up with criteria provided by LinkedIn. Criteria outside of occupation include: skills, interests, group memberships, education, and much more.

4. What is the effect of overlap targeting? Will we be competing with our own campaigns? 

The LinkedIn advertising platform does a great job of preventing you from competing with yourself. LinkedIn will take your relevancy score in a pre-auction phase from both campaigns and both ads that are competing for the impression, and then choose to serve only one of them based on the auction happening. Just make sure you’re running your firm’s campaigns within the same ad account in Campaign Manager..

5. How can I ensure my ads are running evenly between two regions that I’m targeting? 

You should split the budget between two separate campaigns and manage from there. For example, if you’re targeting two states, but one is running through budget faster than the other, you can limit bidding to $5 per click in one area, and $7 per click in the other. There isn’t a truly automated way of doing this, so you can employ a tool like AdStage, or work with a trusted partner to help effectively manage campaign budgets and performance. 

6. If my goal is conversions, should I lean toward Sponsored Content or Text Ads? 

LinkedIn says that there isn’t a big difference in conversion rates between the two types of advertising – it’s more about the offers attached to the content. We do not recommend Text Ads for conversion goals, however.

Text Ads are small, don’t function well on mobile, generally have a very low CTR and require a pretty large audience to really drive any volume. If you must use them, Text Ads can accommodate your law firm’s logo for an awareness-based campaign.

In general, law firms will hope to gain leads, so sponsored content probably makes the most sense. An added benefit is that sponsored content ads take up a lot more real estate on LinkedIn.

7. What’s the secret to getting an ad to take up more space? How can we get a “full screen” sponsored content image? 

When you create sponsored content, you have the choices of a content update or an image update. If you choose the url of an image, you’ll get the larger image size which takes up more space. On the other hand, by choosing an image, you lose the headline and description (you’ll only get an intro). You can optimize for this by bringing in a larger image and including a link to the right landing page within the intro. Keep in mind the way the user views the content will also make a difference. Viewed on a desktop, your image will be 180 pixels wide, versus being viewed on a tablet where it could be up to 1200 pixels. 

8. Is the description text or the intro text more important for CTR?

That is going to depend on your firm and your ad – so test them! When you test the description field and the intro field, look for the amount of variation in your CTR. Whichever has the biggest variation between tests, is the most important component for your particular LinkedIn Ads.

9. When we change our creative, do we need to create a totally new ad, or can we edit an existing one? 

On sponsored content, you cannot edit something that’s already launched. You will need to create a new ad (or recreate one that you like). For text ads, you can change anything about the ad and the relevancy score will be reset. If you change the title, description, or image, the relevancy score will be reset and measured like a fresh ad. 

10. We noticed that switching to CPM bidding resulted in a lower CTR. Does that have a negative impact on relevancy score? If so, how can we work around this? 

When changing to CPM bidding, you should know that if you don’t bid high enough, your ad will not be in the first sponsored content slot in the feed. In fact, it could get pushed down several slots. LinkedIn’s algorithm does normalize your CTR for this, so your relevance score won’t be affected just because your CTR dipped. LinkedIn knows that your ad was dropped to a lower position.

Takeaway

LinkedIn is a crucial marketing channel for law firms. Though it can be complex to navigate – with a bevy of things to track, tweak and monitor – LinkedIn advertising remains an effective and impactful method of reaching potential clients.

We know that running advertising on LinkedIn presents some unique challenges – we’re in the platform day in and day out running campaigns for our clients! 

That being said, if you would like to learn more, you can purchase our on-demand webinar for $45: The Law Firm Guide to LinkedIn Advertising.

In this one-hour session, founder and CEO of Good2bSocial, Guy Alvarez, will teach you exclusive techniques, including:

  • Which ad formats work best and which formats you should avoid
  • What is the right type of content for LinkedIn Ads
  • How to target and segment your audience
  • Retargeting strategies for nurturing prospects
  • And much more….

Whether you’re launching your first LinkedIn advertising campaign or want to learn how you can achieve better results with your current campaigns, this webinar will teach you everything you need to know.

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