Jake Potter discusses Colt's approach to using LinkedIn paid ads to generate leads. Colt focuses on LinkedIn due to its large audience and targeting capabilities. It runs four key campaigns per year across six languages, targeting audiences and demographics. Colt tests different calls to action, assets, and optimizations using data to improve performance. The goal is to generate leads while integrating paid social into a joined-up approach with other marketing channels for maximum impact.

1. Using LinkedIn Paid Ads to
support a lead generation
campaign
Jake Potter // Colt Technology Services
@jake.potter4

2. Our channels of focus
Colt has almost 130k followers across social media:
 LinkedIn: 116k
 Twitter: 8k
 Facebook: 2.5k
 Youtube: 1k
 Instagram: 1.5k.
Colt: The current state of social

3. The social engine:
Video
content
Organic
Social
Paid social
media
Social
selling
Tools for
salespeople
Paid social
media
Form fills
Social
Remarketing
Hot
topics
Social selling
hub
Awareness Influence Insights Leads Nurture

4. 4
How does Colt generate
leads from
LinkedIn paid ads?

5. Who’s been doing paid social this year?
Who has done paid social activity on LinkedIn this
year?
Who has done paid social activity this year?

6. In 2018, Colt started an always on Paid Social
approach, focussing on LinkedIn
At a high level:
 Four key campaigns per year
 6 languages
 Target audience list
 Demographic targeting
 Lots & lots of testing
Paid social: Always on

7. Taking a more considered approach
Hot leads
Deliver
gated
content
Use
LinkedIn
IP
Tracking
Branded
content
Strengthen your
brand for more
downloads later
Add LinkedIn IP
tracking code to
webpages to
prepare for later
Serve up super
gated content
based on list
targeting

8. 8
Paid social approach, where to start?

9. 9
Paid social approach, where to start?
LinkedIn is
our largest
audience
The
targeting
features
Support
our key
languages

10. You’ve got your high-level
strategy, what next?
Testing!

11. 11
Test #1
What call to action do you prefer?
Learn more
Get the guide

12. 12
Test #2
Which asset do you prefer?
Now you need to do this across all your target languages

13. 13
Optimisation

14.  At Colt, we measure our results based off of CTR that
are inline with technology benchmarks
 If posts perform above the benchmark, great! If not,
then it must be optimised
 Here are some of the conclusions we’ve drawn from
data:
 Posts that include a stat perform better
 Interactive assets such carousel images and
videos work best
 Every language has different preferences
14
How to optimise: drawing conclusions from data
Some optimisations we’ve made at Colt include:
 Removing a post that proves to be controversial
 Editing assets to have a different CTA
 Swapping dark images to light

15. 15
Other conclusions we can draw from our paid activity
Our UK audience likes short videos Our DE audience likes Berlin Our JP audience likes
bright images

16. 16
A joined-up approach

17.  At the end of the day, we want to generate
leads for the company, and paid social alone
will not do that
 Share your strategy with everyone in your team
and beyond, this way you can create a joined-
up approach that helps you all get to your goals
 Be accountable for your KPIs but help others
reach theirs
 When thrown into the mix with SEO, landing
pages, PPC and global campaigns, this is when
the power house works well
 Conversion from paid social may not be clear,
so with good SEO, our site is easily found on
search engines, and an optimised websites
means a great user experience
17
Say goodbye to the silo

18. 18
Planning for the future –
keeping it data-driven

19. When building your 2020 lead generation
strategy:
 Create actionable insights from the results of
your paid social
 Add KPIs based off of industry benchmarks
 Work with teams to deliver your KPIs together
19
You’ve got the data, now what?

20. 20
3 golden rules:

21. 21
#1
Always use data available

22. 22
#2
Test everything for all
languages

23. 23
#3
Optimise, optimise, optimise!

24. Thank you