Social media marketing is the new norm, and LinkedIn has emerged as one of the best business-to-business (B2B) marketing platforms worldwide. With over 10 million LinkedIn subscribers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), of which over 67% acknowledge that LinkedIn helps them build relationships and drive new business leads, it makes sense to use the platform for marketing campaigns in the region as well. Here are some tips and live examples for MENA marketers to consider to ensure that their campaign hits the bull’s eye.

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How to Run an Effective LinkedIn Campaign
 Social media marketing is the new norm, and LinkedIn has emerged as one of the best
business-to-business (B2B) marketing platforms worldwide. With over 10 million
LinkedIn subscribers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), of which over 67%
acknowledge that LinkedIn helps them build relationships and drive new business
leads, it makes sense to use the platform for marketing campaigns in the region as
well. Here are some tips and live examples for MENA marketers to consider to ensure
that their campaign hits the bull’s eye.
Define the target customer segment for your product or service on LinkedIn. Keep in mind
that your target segment on LinkedIn may not necessarily be end-consumers and may not
necessarily match the identified segment as per your previous sales. For example, the largest
customer segment for your computer peripherals business may be students, but on LinkedIn,
the prospective segment may be small scale businesses looking for low-cost computer set up.
Similarly, if you are a brand manager at a cosmetics company, most of your offline marketing
campaigns would be directed towards individual female users but on LinkedIn, the target would

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probably be different, say professional make-up artists and beauty parlor chains, so the
campaign has to be plotted around them and not the end users.
Build your target list and create a targeted campaign using LinkedIn PPC. Once you have
identified the target segment or group, you can use LinkedIn PPC (pay per click) which offers
filters according to job title, function, seniority etc. Use combinations that work for you and get
the most relevant set of prospects. You can then profile these prospects to design an
appropriate campaign. LinkedIn offers several unique PPC advertising opportunities – poll ads,
social ads, ‘Join Group’ ads, and video ads.
LinkedIn banner ads can be customized for specific audience. So, if you are targeting employees
of a particular company, they should see your ad designed specifically for their company when
they log on to LinkedIn. Your ad can speak about solutions to their issues, resulting in higher
click-through rate (CTR). LinkedIn recommends creating about three to fifteen ads per
campaign with varying headlines, call-to-action phrases and images.
Monitor the performance of your campaign and improvise. Track your results by directing
your PPC ads to a landing page instead of home page to gather data about the leads. It will help
in improvising on your advertisement for better traction. Further, keep track of the success rate
of each ad and withdraw the ones with lowest CTR.
Choose the right mode of payment to optimize cost. Cost per Click (CPC) campaigns are better
for lead generation purposes, while Cost per Impression (CPM) campaigns are better for
branding purpose. You can optimize campaign cost by choosing the right mode of payment, as
a LinkedIn campaign has to be worth the cost involved to be effective. LinkedIn offers two
payment methods viz. cost per click (CPC) and pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM). The CPM mode
of payment may suit for a branding campaign to get as many people to see your campaign
while the CPC mode may be apt for lead generation campaign.

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LinkedIn suggests a bid range depending on budget and the competition for ads from similar
campaigns. Ensure that you bid within the range. Analyze when your target audience will most
likely be online and bid higher during that time or day to win over competing ads. It will require
a bit of trial and error to achieve an optimum bid and budget.
Use the Lead Collection feature to gather list of interested customers.LinkedIn offers a feature
called Lead Collection where it allows people to ask for more information or to be contacted by
your company via a checkbox at the end of your advertisement. You will be notified by email of
such leads and also be allowed to promptly respond via LinkedIn InMail. Note that you will
not receive any contact details of the leads.
Businesses having a niche target audience can use Inmails to market their value proposition.
If your target segment is small and specific, you can also connect with them via Linked Inmail.
The feature allows for extremely targeted messages delivered to exactly the right person
through personalization. In fact, LinkedIn offers a “guarantee” on these messages.
Revamp your LinkedIn profile page for an expected rise in visitors. Showcase your offerings on
your LinkedIn profile page, and ask for recommendations from satisfied customers, like
Hewlett-Packard whose “Products & Services” tab features over 3,000 recommendations for
nineteen unique products and services. It makes for the most powerful form of endorsement,
word-of-mouth marketing, as recommendations from your own connections are highlighted.
Use LinkedIn groups to create a community for your existing and prospective customers.
LinkedIn’s “Custom Groups” premium option allows brands to control the entire group page,
including sidebar ads, polls, videos, blog integration, and other custom media. This space is
usually reserved by LinkedIn to show ads that the group owner does not control. The option is
quite expensive, so can be used for short spells along with an offline campaign to give an
instant push.

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The best example of successful application of this feature is Dell Business Solutions Exchange
LinkedIn Group. With nearly 8,000 members, the group is full of Dell’s most valued prospects,
with over half of them being in IT and computer industries and maximum are in decision
making capacity. While the group added 50-100 members per week, there were durations
when the group attracted unusual membership, which is, most likely because of a simultaneous
marketing campaign- offline or on another social network.
Case Study: Vestas, a world leader in wind energy and infrastructure space, used its “Energy
Transparency” campaign on LinkedIn to reach out to carbon conscious corporations about the benefits
of investing directly in wind energy, and promote Vestas as their partner of choice.
As part of its growth and expansion strategy, Vestas wanted to run a campaign that raised awareness of
the brand benefits for companies that use wind energy, and to reach out to key stakeholders in specific
companies to drive consideration for wind energy and Vestas as a preferred partner. So, the company
commissioned two studies, the Global Consumer Wind Study in partnership with TNS Gallup and the
Corporate Renewable Energy Index in partnership with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which found that
that corporations are eager to source more renewable energy and also identified consumers that wanted
products made with wind energy.
When the company decided to build a marketing campaign to target these customers, it felt that the
conventional method of using the email campaign along with banner ads may not generate the continual
effect, the kind they were expecting from the campaign. Therefore, armed with target audience and
consumer preference research data, Vestas designed a LinkedIn campaign including:
 LinkedIn Inmail- Personalized (regards to the recipient’s name and company name) InMail messages
were sent to smaller set of prospects as compared to the overall campaign. Each InMail had a link to
a customized version of EnergyTransparency.com including company and industry information.
 Customized banner ads: 400,000 employees of these corporations were targeted through banner ads

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placed in LinkedIn. In spite of standard ad used for each impression, the company created custom ads
specifically featuring targeting company.
 Custom Landing pages and microsites: It created custom landing pages and microsites with targeted
content for each prospect. This allowed Vestas to deliver precise messages, offering real and specific
insights to each prospect. It also allowed Vestas to capture accurate data on the interest level for the
firms targeted and for the overall success of the campaign.
 Adaptive design across platforms: Vestas used adaptive design to ensure an optimal experience for
users receiving the campaign cross-devices including desktop, tablet and mobile.
Result: Vestas’ LinkedIn campaign was highly successful, as depicted by the results below.
 11 million impressions with a click-through rate (CTR) of 0.11 – 0.21% among targeted companies
 10,680 corporate executives, employees and key opinion leaders visited the site, averaging 7.02
minutes
 High efficiency with minimal waste: 80% of targeted opinion leaders & 30% of targeted executives
visited the microsite spending an average of +8 minutes
Source: Arab Business Review Research, LinkedIn
The article was originally published at: Arab Business Review
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