If you’re not growing your email list as quickly as you would like, then you might want to consider taking the next step and trying some paid advertising. This will help you reach specific target audiences that you would like as subscribers.
In this post, we’re going to look at the best LinkedIn advertising options for your email opt-in page. Should you wish to explore other ways to improve your lead generation strategies, be sure to also read this thorough article on how to build an email list.
The Squeeze Page & Giveaway
Before you start advertising to grow your mailing list, you will need two things. First, if you don’t have one already, you will need a landing page dedicated to driving email opt-ins, also known as a squeeze page.
The characteristics of a good squeeze page are simple – there’s nothing on the page except information meant to drive visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. Preferably, there’s no headers, sidebar, footer, or outgoing links that might distract your target subscriber. All it should have are the reasons why they should sign up for your mailing list and the opt-in form to do so.
The key to making a squeeze page convert well is a relevant incentive that will attract qualified leads. If you’re trying to build an email list full of project managers for your project management software business, then your offer could be an ebook of 101 organizational tips for project managers. If you’re trying to build an email list full of CEO’s for your social media consulting business, then your offer could be a report on why CEO’s need to be on social media.
The combination of a squeeze page and relevant incentive should help you not only create a great ad, but also help you drive conversions to make the ad worth it.
Now, let’s look at how to use LinkedIn Ads to grow your mailing list.
Setting Up Your LinkedIn Ad
LinkedIn ads are powerful because they allow you to create up to 15 variations of your ad and target it to very specific professionals based on industry, company size, seniority, job title, and other demographics. So if you wanted to grow a mailing list of project managers for medium sized businesses in the healthcare industry in the US, you could target your ad to them directly.
First, you will start out by entering your ad’s title, description, link, and image. Since you can use variations, you can try different combinations of images, titles, and descriptions to find the ones that resonate best with your target audience. Even the smallest variations can make a difference.
If you would like to track your ads in Google Analytics, you may want to add UTM parameters to your URL. These are simply tags that will tell Google Analytics that visitors clicked on your LinkedIn ad to reach your website. So instead of this URL: http://kikolani.com/guest-blogging-ebook, you would have this: http://kikolani.com/guest-blogging-ebook?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=Guest+Blogging+Guide
You can use Google’s URL builder to quickly add UTM parameters to your squeeze page URL.
Once you’ve created your ad variations, you will then define your target audience.
You can also add skills, groups, and other criteria in your targeting options. While this will reduce the estimated target audience size, it will also reduce the chance of people who are not qualified coming to sign up for your mailing list.
Once you’ve created your ad, you will need to specify your spending type. If your goal is to grow your mailing list, you will definitely want choose CPC, the ad type where you will only be charged if people click on your link. You can then choose your cost per click bid (they will give you a suggested amount), daily spend limit, and duration of your ad.
Once you’ve set up your payment method, you will be all set.
Improving Your Ad Performance
Throughout your ad campaign, if you have set up multiple ad variations, you can go in to view their performance and inactivate low performing ads.
This will help further increase the likelihood of clicks and conversions
Tracking Your Results
There are two ways to see if your LinkedIn Ad is worth the investment. The first is to use LinkedIn’s analytics to see the demographics of the people who clicked on your ad.
The second is to look into Google Analytics to see how much traffic you received from your ad. If you used UTM parameters, then look under Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. Otherwise, you can just look under Traffic Sources > Social Media > Network Referrals to see general LinkedIn traffic to your website.
If you have Google Analytics goals set up to measure goal conversions for your mailing list, you can use this to see if your LinkedIn ads are leading to subscriber sign ups.
This should help you determine the true value of your LinkedIn ad campaign.
Have you used LinkedIn ads to grow your B2B mailing list? What were your results?
