For those who work in the B2B market, LinkedIn is an essential social media platform. Over the years, it has grown from a place where job seekers upload CVs, to the largest professional social media channel in the world – with more than 500 million members.Having an active stream of insightful organic content across LinkedIn undoubtedly offers a number of benefits; but, as social media platforms continue to incentivise businesses into putting some budget behind their activity, is sponsoring your content on LinkedIn the way forward for your brand?Here are 3 reasons why now’s the time to start sponsoring your content on LinkedIn:‍

1.  To reach your audience

‍It’s no secret that over the last few years, a series of algorithm changes to social media platforms (including Facebook and LinkedIn) have led to declining levels of organic reach. As a result, sponsored social content has become almost a necessity for brands and businesses looking to reach their target audiences.Fortunately, LinkedIn’s advanced targeting options allow you to target users with precision, whether you’re looking to share your content with employees from a specific company, users with a certain job title , job seniority, age or gender – there’s plenty of choice available. By sponsoring your content, you’ll not only boost your reach but have the opportunity to engage with those outside of your current network - in some cases, helping to build your following.When compared with other social media advertising platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn’s advertising system offers a considerably higher average cost-per-click (CPC). The value of this higher cost is justified for B2B marketers, due to the accuracy in reaching vital business-generating leads. So, if you’re looking for better quality B2B leads which convert at a higher rate, this is well worth the higher CPC.‍

2.  To gain insights into your audience

‍Another key benefit of running sponsored LinkedIn campaigns is the in-depth analytics available via LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Similar to the process in which you set up a campaign, you can filter the campaign results through a number of data fields including job title, job function, company name, location,allowing you to identify who is engaging with your content and adjust your content or audience targeting accordingly.In practice, this can be really helpful in optimising the ROI on your campaign budget. For example, you may recognise individuals from an inappropriate industry are viewing or clicking on your ads, at which point you could edit your target audience to exclude users from that industry.‍

3. To overcome stakeholder challenges

‍In our experience managing social accounts for international financial services companies, it’s not uncommon for a brand to have one flagship LinkedIn Company Page based in a specific country – where all the content is from a mixture of stakeholders and its audience isn’t exclusively comprised of the users you desire your content to reach (i.e a UK-based subsidiary posting from the US parent brand to its US-focused audience).In these instances, sponsored content offers an advantage, as international offices can create paid campaigns which use the brand’s flagship account, but feature messaging designed for a specific location and target those exclusively within that area. Unlike organic posts, content designed for paid promotion does not appear on the business page and can be hidden from their followers’ timelines.‍

Ready to start sponsoring?‍

We set up, monitor, optimise, and report on targeted LinkedIn content campaigns for clients on a daily basis. Whether it’s a specific marketing campaign or business as usual messaging, with the right content and audience scoping, LinkedIn sponsored content is most definitely the way forward in terms of getting your brand in front of the right eyes.If you would like to learn more aboutthe benefits and how we can help you with your own sponsored campaigns, contact our Digital team at info@brandformula.co.uk or call 020 7265 7880.