Paid + Organic = Match Made [In] LinkedIn Heaven

In 2019, my LinkedIn account generated over 10 million impressions and Skaled as a whole had about 12 million total. This is the equivalent of roughly $660,000 dollars in ad spend. 

(12 million / 1000) x 55 = $660,000 in free advertising

That’s a whole lot of free advertising. But the question isn’t should I do paid or should I put all my eggs in organic. Companies need to start developing a cohesive strategy that combines the pros of each. 

Larger orgs are treating paid and organic like two separate tactics. They may have a Social Media Manager or someone who’s assigned to post regularly but not paying attention to KPIs, and then are running paid through someone else or a separate agency.

Organizations are assuming organic strategy on LinkedIn won’t work because it’s tough to get organic reach on other platforms, and they’re treating paid like banner ads just for clicks or to capture emails. 

Both are wrong my friends.

LinkedIn is starving for content. Organic traffic on this platform is engaged, quality traffic. With paid, people are just looking for a little bit more than a catchy headline to get them to engage as they quickly scroll through a feed. People don’t come to LinkedIn to click download, but if you give them a compelling reason, they’ll pause to learn more.

I’ve talked a lot about what you should do to build an organic following through building a personal brand. For companies, pay-to-play is a must on other platforms and it also has its benefits on LinkedIn.

Jake's MUST-READ LinkedIn resources: Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Fill Your Pipeline

If you’re starting out.

Candidly, It’s going to take time to build to 10 million impressions, and a very strategic approach. If you’re just starting to build up your company profile and LinkedIn strategy, paid is a good way to bootstrap some visibility because you just don’t have a following yet. But then, if you’re not developing organic at the same time, you’re going to miss out the next year on 10 million organic impressions and half a million dollars in free advertising. 

LinkedIn is also the best social media platform for connecting with the right buyers in B2B, getting your content in front of them, and pulling them back to your company page. Once you get them to your company page, now you can move more towards an organic model without as big of an ad spend.

Aside from paid, LinkedIn added the ability for business pages to request people to follow them. Dedicate someone on your team to do the research and use this feature to bring your buyers into your branded ecosystem.

How to get your paid ads to be more engaging.

Fortunately, LinkedIn feeds aren’t cluttered with a ton of paid ads at this point. By my team's estimate, you may see an ad every 4-7 posts.

The issue with paid is a lot of B2B companies are still working off the old HubSpot model and trying to capture email addresses via giving away a white paper. The whole focus of these ads is just capture without giving people a reason to engage. 

Why are “vanity metrics” such as Likes and Comments important for paid ads?

If you get people to Like or Comment on your ad, it will show up in their activity feed. If it shows up in their activity feed, their network will now also see your ad.

Do you realize what an amazing opportunity this is?! The typical B2B ad gets almost no engagement, but if you can get more people to Like or Comment, you’re now getting those extra organic impressions from activity feeds, essentially turning one view (with a like/comment) into 12 free views on that user’s feed. 

How you’re going to get people to interact is the same way you get them to engage with organic content. Is it all ask and no value? Then change it up. Give people some type of insight into what you’re trying to get them to take action on. 

You have a 600 character limit in the headline section. Take advantage of it. Make your images more descriptive. Right now, LinkedIn doesn’t have image-to-text ratio restrictions like other platforms. Take advantage of it.

Disrupt the scrolling mindset and get people to stop on your content.

Marketing and Sales organizations need to have a more sophisticated way of looking at this. Challenge your people and challenge yourself. 

Think of your company’s LinkedIn page from an organic, inbound lead generation approach - the same as you would your website. The content shouldn’t be that different. 

Have a call to action, but tease your audience, give them a little something up front, and give them a reason to take action - don’t expect them to. Here’s the difference:

An ad that expects a user to take an action looks like this:

I mentioned this earlier, but a lot of companies are treating LinkedIn like banner ads with a formula of simple headline + click now please… PLEASE. 

An ad that gives a user a reason to take an action looks like this:

Yes, I do want solutions to my media challenges. Yes, I would like to know what to expect in 2020. Will these trends affect my business? I don’t know. Let me learn more.

This is a fairly simple ad that made a fairly simple change, but it doesn’t expect a person to want to learn more just because they were served an ad. It’s specific and asks a question. 

The first ad is assuming the person who sees it needs a marketing consultation and for some reason they should pick this agency they know nothing about. 

Don’t be the first ad.

Key Takeaways - Paid + Organic is a match made in LinkedIn Heaven

 Cheesy? Yes. True? Yes. 

Here are the key takeaways to paid and organic advertising on LinkedIn that will make an impact.

• Create a cohesive social and paid LinkedIn Strategy.
• Content should always show value and not just ask for something.
• Paid will help you build a following when you’re first starting out.
• Organic lets you engage with people in a more authentic way.
• Stop using the Download Now with no context approach in your ads.
• Come up with some amazing copy for ads that focuses on getting people to engage
• Likes and comments are just as powerful as clicks to grow your following

Jake's MUST-READ LinkedIn resources:

Invest in Your Digital Presence in 2020 - You Won't Regret it

Sharing and Engaging with Your LinkedIn Audience has Never Been Easier