Hey %NAME%, Here’s Your Simple Guide to LinkedIn Conversation Ads

by Syrup | Jul 28, 2020

If you’ve received a direct message from someone on LinkedIn with “sponsored” attached to it, then congratulations, you’ve officially received your first LinkedIn conversation ad. 

Image from LinkedIn

As marketers, we knew it was coming – a capitalization on the most personal aspect of your LinkedIn profile, the only logical next step for social media platforms playing catch up to Facebook’s Messenger Ads. 

How They Work

Similar to Facebook Messenger Ads, LinkedIn Conversation Ads gives advertisers the ability to create a “choose your own path” experience with multiple customized CTAs. Each CTA then drives the user to a specific landing page or prompts another message to pop up with, you guessed it, more customized CTAs. 

But the real kicker here is that these Conversation Ads can come from either your business page or a personal page. If you read my last blog post about LinkedIn and the type of content users look for on the platform, you know how big of a role the human component plays on engagement. So to be able to target a specific audience, with tailored multi-funnel CTAs, from a person with a face (not just a logo) is one giant leap for marketing kind.

What’s the Big Deal, Anyway?

Still not sold on the impact of this? Understandable. We’re all data people here. We tested the impact of Conversation Ads being sent from another person and saw a 129.4% increase in impressions and a 94.8% increase in clicks within a month. To back it up even further, according to Chase Gladden, Growth Marketing Manager at Hired:

“By turning ad engagements on LinkedIn from one-sided messages to two-sided conversations, Hired saw a big uptick in quality candidates entering the system. The clickthrough rate was almost 5X higher than what we’d seen previously, which goes to show the level of engagement is pretty wild when you’re able to provide multiple opportunities to click.”

**Note: For finding metrics on these Conversation Ads, you can check out this article from LinkedIn. 

A Few Best Practices To Get You Rolling

Taking a quick step back, remember that LinkedIn is all about personalization and human-to-human interaction. Nobody likes an unsolicited, salesy direct message. In the wise words of Josh Braun, you need to make a deposit to the networking bank before you can make a withdrawal.

With this being said, here are a few suggestions for making the most out of your Conversation Ads:

• Keep it short and friendly!
• Speak simply, remember you have only a few words to capture their attention.
• Converse like you’re talking to a friend, but don’t be too formal or informal. It’s a fine line you’re walking.
• DO NOT GET THEIR NAME WRONG. Make sure your merge fields are correct. (Hence the title of this blog.)
• If you’re selling something, be a little discreet about it. Maybe make your initial CTAs link to a learn more page, or to schedule a time to talk. That way it’s not in your face, but rather at their own convenience.

The most important thing to remember when creating these ads (or any ads in general) is to test, test, test! You never know what your audience will resonate with until you put it into the market. If you need any help getting started, let’s chat!