Video Advertising on LinkedIn: A Guide to Best Practices

To get the most out of your marketing campaigns on LinkedIn, you need to venture into the world of video advertising. Video content is increasing in popularity everywhere, with LinkedIn being no exception. Of the almost 840 million monthly active users on LinkedIn, over 50% interact with videos daily.

Despite not being oriented around video content, LinkedIn users engage with video more than any other type of content. Moreover, brands that post video content garner more attention than those that don’t. Clearly, the use of video content is crucial for brands that want to establish a presence on LinkedIn.

Though the effectiveness of video advertising on LinkedIn is apparent, it can be tough to run a successful campaign on the first try. Hence the reason for this guide. In it, we’ll be discussing video advertising on LinkedIn, taking you through the best practices, and ensuring you have what you need to run standout video advertising campaigns on the platform. Let’s get started.

What is video advertising on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn video advertising is exactly as it sounds – posting video content to your LinkedIn platform in order to achieve specific marketing goals. By using LinkedIn video advertising, you will be able to serve your videos to a much wider audience than you would organically. This can be ideal for drawing attention on a broader scale, or breaking into a new demographic.

For best results, however, customizing your LinkedIn video advertising campaigns is a good idea. LinkedIn provides marketers with a range of options to narrow down which audiences your videos reach, allowing you to hone in on particular niches. But, although the advertising strategy is important, it’s only as good as your video content. Without high-quality content and solid video design, your campaign is likely to flop.

Getting started with LinkedIn video advertising

When creating your first video advertising campaign on LinkedIn, you might be a little overwhelmed by the tools you have available. Once you get started, however, you’ll find that setting up an ad campaign is relatively straightforward.

First off, you should keep a few key points in mind before diving in. Alongside your video, you’ll need to direct your viewers to a particular destination. This could be another social media platform, product or service information page, or your main website.

Next, you should have at least one call to action. To make the most of your ad spend, you want your viewers to follow the marketing funnel, ideally ending up as your customers. You’ll need to take the initiative for this to happen, however. Making calls to action in your videos is one way to get the ball rolling, prompting your viewers to continue interacting with your brand.

Lastly, you need to consider your target demographic. As we mentioned, LinkedIn offers a few options to hone in on a particular niche or audience, and you should make use of them for the best results. After all, you don’t want your carefully crafted content to end up in front of people that won’t appreciate it.

Creating your first campaign

With the above in mind, it’s time to get started on your first LinkedIn video advertising campaign. You can find the button to do so, labeled advertise, in the top right corner of your home page. Once you click it, you will be met with the ability to create a campaign, view existing campaigns, and a few other tools.

Once you click the “create campaign” button, you will be able to choose from three objectives to center your campaign around. These are awareness, consideration, and conversions, each capable of bringing different benefits to your brand. Make your choice, then continue on your campaign setup.

Next up is to select your target audience. This allows you to choose how wide a net to cast. For some campaigns, targeting a large audience could be ideal. For others, narrowing it down to a niche group could bring about the best results.

The effects of your proposed target audience are handily displayed in the Forecasted Results section. This shows you key information, such as the estimated size of your target audience, click-through rate, and impressions over 30 days. Tweak your parameters until you have satisfactory estimates, then continue with the campaign setup. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

Choosing your video marketing objective

As we mentioned, selecting a video marketing objective is part of creating a video advertising campaign on LinkedIn. But, it can be difficult to make the right choice, and all too easy to make one your target audience isn’t ready for. Though aiming to increase conversions might be tempting for your first campaign, the likelihood of a new audience converting so quickly is slim at best.

Rather than be too hasty in your selection of marketing objectives, you should carefully consider your situation and how it compares to the benefits of each objective. For example, a young brand will struggle to gain many conversions from a new audience. In fact, pushing conversions too much too fast is likely to alienate a new audience. Pushing them away from a brand rather than drawing them in. Instead, a new brand would be better served by adopting one of the other video marketing objectives. Growing your audience by increasing brand awareness is a great idea, while boosting engagement amongst your existing audience is also excellent. In time, shifting to a conversion focus will generate good results. Giving a receptive audience the last push they need to become paying customers.

Best practices for video marketing on LinkedIn

You could create the perfect video and commence the perfect marketing campaign. But, if you ignore the best practices, you’re likely to be swimming against the tide. It creates an unnecessary obstacle, leaving many marketers scratching their heads, wondering where they went wrong.

To avoid this happening to you, keep these best practices in mind:

• Be human – Taking a personal, human approach to marketing gets the best results. People aren’t keen on the “faceless corporation” sort, reacting much better to brands that place real people and real experiences front and center. To accomplish this, you should consider emphasizing personal content, such as telling stories with real people in the video. Including humor and a pinch of emotion goes a long way too. Moreover, keep the overt branding to a minimum. People are quick to catch obvious attempts at marketing. When you’re trying to come across as personal, it often snaps viewers out of the experience.
• Keep it short – To maximize engagement, you should endeavor to keep your videos as short as possible. This is especially true when conducting an advertising campaign. You should aim for videos around the 15-second mark; any longer is likely to lose your viewers’ attention.
• Keep it interesting – Dovetailing with the above point, you should only include content vital to your video’s message. This keeps the video short and sweet, ensuring every second is as attention-grabbing and informative as possible. Make sure you include the most important bits, such as your brand information, at the start of the video.
• Add captions – Failing to add captions is likely to lose you viewers. People browse through social media on their phones in public places. But, are typically considerate enough of others to keep it muted. If a prospective viewer sees your video without captions, they aren’t going to watch it. No matter how interested they might be.
• Include a strong call to action – Your video should feature an energetic call to action. Inspiring your viewers to do whatever it is you want them to. You should clearly address your audience, use action-oriented words, and put some feeling behind it. If your viewers see that you aren’t excited about your call to action, they won’t have a reason to be either.

Wrapping up

Getting started with video marketing on LinkedIn isn’t nearly as difficult as it might first seem. The platform offers marketers a wealth of tools to craft the most suitable campaign for their marketing goals. Even offering an estimated result. With a bit of time and appropriate application of the best practices, you’ll soon be making the most of your marketing budget indeed.