If you’re targeting a professional audience, LinkedIn, with its 750 million users, is the place to be for marketers wanting to get the best bang for their buck.
For advisors seeking clients among business owners and corporate executives, as well as firms looking to grow through mergers and acquisitions or seeking new recruits, LinkedIn offers several ad options, at different costs.
Advertising budget needs vary by business, but putting aside about $500 to $750 per month should yield significant returns on investment for independent financial advisors in particular.
In fact, LinkedIn’s menu of ad options also allows marketers to choose the right combination of paid content that’s more effective across the four main types of paid advertising a financial advisor can offer on the platform: text ads, single image ads, carousel image ads and video ads.
Starting With The Basics: Text Ads
Easy to create and only requiring a minimal amount of copy and no image, text ads are LinkedIn’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising option. These snippets appear on the sidebar and are designed to create minimal distraction as users navigate the site.
Text ads work best for an advisor wanting to generally promote their firm or promote a specific service that can be described in less than 100 characters (with a limit of 25 characters for headlines and 75 characters for descriptions).
Caveat emptor: You shouldn’t use text ads if you want to promote some sort of free content or build leads—these are typically difficult to describe in such a small space.
Up Your Game with Image Ads
A picture is worth 1,000 words. Unlike text ads, these promotional pieces appear as part of the page’s main content feed. Ads such as these tend to blend in well since they look like a LinkedIn post rather than promotional content.
Single image ads work best when advertising an ebook, a specific service or promoting site traffic for a general awareness campaign.
Carousel Image Ads
These ads work like the single image ad but invite user interaction with multiple images that can be swiped through.
Promotional items, such as a retirement planning ebook, could be accompanied by images showing people at different stages of their life, driving home the message that retirement should be on the radar of people of all ages.