LINKEDIN ADVERTISING IN MALAYSIA

With the explosion of budgeting placed on online ads, at the tip of everyone's tongue are either Facebook ads or Google Adwords targeting and placements. 

According to Statista, in 2018, 100 billion dollars were spent on digital ads alone in the United States, more than what China, the U.K., Japan and Germany spent combined within the same year.  

The growth of digital spending in Southeast Asia is forecasted to triple in size, reaching new heights at an estimate of $240 billion over less than a decade. Popular online marketplaces like Lazada, Shopee, and Tokopedia, homegrown players, helped tip the scales. 

While we're familiar with Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads, here's a rundown of what Linkedin is, what and who they serve, and how it works.

 

WHAT ARE LINKEDIN ADS & HOW THEY WORK

LinkedIn, in as far as a social media platform is concerned, takes a backseat for avid social media users. Not many companies, groups, organizations, or individuals consider it the go-to option as a digital advertising platform in Malaysia. 

That's because LinkedIn, as a social media social platform, is more of a B2B networking powerhouse. Most of the users on LinkedIn are business players, headhunters, freelancers, and organizations looking for talents to either recruit or work with. 

The audience on LinkedIn, when you're thinking about placing an ad on the platform, are there with a business mindset. While users on Facebook or Instagram are there to scroll through it during break time, the audience on LinkedIn are there with an eye out for specific work-related content. 

Malaysians, in particular, tend to stick to the familiar. Hence, Facebook and Instagram. 

But the LinkedIn platform and ad campaigns are where the digital dilettante thrives. Here's why. 

 

WHY LINKEDIN ADS ARE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS IN MALAYSIA

“Research shows that the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for Linkedin ads is 500% more likely to convert compared to Facebook ads’ 567%. The leads collected via LinkedIn Ads also are also more qualified compared to those from Google AdWords.”

Placing ads on LinkedIn for a Malaysian business can be more expensive compared to popular platforms. But if you're serious about making the right connections, it is worth it. Placing video ads on LinkedIn can cost up to eight times more than Facebook, so, how do we justify it?

After taking into consideration the fact that audiences on LinkedIn have twice the purchasing power of those on other social media platforms, the ROI for each ad-spend explains it all. 

By targeting LinkedIn employees working with major corporations (or their first-party connections), it's a major benefit for B2B networking. 

LinkedIn users and the platform are also notorious for their intolerance of flagrant floundering of their in-house rules. They are a professional networking platform, aiming to connect like-minded business people, potential customers, talented employees seeking employment, and recruiters. 

The reality is that LinkedIn is the kind of engine that drives qualified leads. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are focused on delivering brand awareness, engagement, and sweeping reach. 

 

HOW TO CREATE LINKEDIN ADS

If you are familiar with ad placements on Facebook or Instagram, placing similar targeted ad campaigns on LinkedIn is going to be a seamless breeze. With a lead-gen form, it allows campaigners to auto-fill their information, making it easy to complete and submit these forms. 

Here are the steps:

1. Log into your LinkedIn Business Profile
2. Head over to Linkedin's new Campaign Manager
3. Click 'Create Campaign'
4. You can link the Ad Campaign to a personal or company account. This step is optional.
5. Hit the 'Create Account' option 
6. You'll be asked to choose the kind of end-result you want which includes (at the point of writing this article) Awareness, Consideration, Conversion
7. You can now decide on the audience, location (with exclusion option), language preference, ad format, link to your company's website or social profile, location of the ad, daily budget, start and end date, and the ability to measure conversion and effectiveness of the ad

To get a better idea of how you can best reach your target market and optimize the LinkedIn ad campaign, LinkedIn has a guide for that. 

Placing the right ads with the researched keywords at the right time is worth far more than the 10% open-rate of email marketing. In comparison, LinkedIn Sponsored InMail has a whopping 50% open-rate.

 

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LINKEDIN ADS

First off, there are no hard and fast rules about churning out THE BEST LinkedIn ads. The ROI varies from one industry to another. The good news is that there are ways to optimize the ad campaigns to help you reach your intended target market with the lowest ad payout. 

Company Pages on LinkedIn actually have access to visitor/follower profiles. Under the Admin View section, it's very transparent. Here, you'll have access to 'Analytics' and 'Activity' of your LinkedIn business profile, outlining your progress. 

By using the data collected from your Google Analytics and LinkedIn Insights, it paints a clear picture of the kind of visitors you're getting. 

That's what you're going to be focusing on if you wish to improve your LinkedIn ads. 

Under LinkedIn Insights, there is a breakdown of categories according to:

• Job title
• Company
• Location
• Industry
• Past work experiences
• Skills/Talents
• Professional interests

The key is to know who your target market is, what they're interested in, and what's trending in their profession, industry or market. 

A/B testing helps you narrow down the type of ads you place on LinkedIn. Are you targeting managers, decision-makers, or the CEOs of companies and organizations? If it is not working, ask yourself why and keep tweaking things up. 

Without a smidgen of doubt, placing LinkedIn ads is more expensive than the ones on other social media platforms. But most B2B marketers agree that LinkedIn ads yield better marketing ROI. 

LinkedIn allows you to build and save your audience profile to save you time for future ad campaigns. You can also customize the ad campaigns using your own data and saving it as 'Matched Audience'. The Matched Audience profile helps you scale the campaign for retargeting, email contact targeting, and account-based targeting. 

The Linkedin Sponsored InMail feature is another striking tool to utilize for businesses because it allows for the sending of customized messages to the right audience in a matter of minutes. These are targeted, sifted-through, qualified leads of high value to your company. 

 

SPEAK TO RA MARKETING ABOUT YOUR LINKEDIN AD CAMPAIGNS IN MALAYSIA

Instead of toiling over who to target, what kind of ad copywriting to use, sifting through images, hiring graphic designers, and scheduling your LinkedIn ads, RA Marketing consultants can help you by analyzing your industry market and demographic profiles. 

Using data, we’ll segmentize them for you to sift out ‘cold’ leads to target ‘warm’ and ‘hot’ leads. 

This way, people seeing your Linkedin ads are those who are most likely or are already interested in what you have to offer. LinkedIn ads tend to deliver better click-through rates compared to both Google Adwords and Facebook ads.

If you have questions, we would be more than happy to help you propel your business to the next level with our knowledge, experience, and expertise in LinkedIn ad campaigns. 

Get in touch with us to find out more.