28 Oct Do Social Network Advertisements Fit Into Your Strategy?

I have received a lot of questions regarding advertising on Linked In as of late. I thought I should address this topic, as more and more companies are looking to advertise on the different social networks.

In my experience with Linked In direct ads, I have found them to be very useful. For starters, the demographic targeting options are great. Attributes range from age, location, sex, occupation, and education. Once you get into the occupation attributes your options for targeting really open up. You can select seniority level, industry, and many other attributes. You will be impressed with how many options there are to choose from. This makes Linked In direct ads an effective way to target professionals. I have always stood by the idea of targeting your audience as much as possible and in comparison to Facebook ads, Linked In does a better job at this.

This doesn’t mean that Linked In ads are better than Facebook ads. It still depends on whom you are trying to reach. If you are advertising for business-to-business purposes, then Linked In is a great option. You can pinpoint the exact companies, positions, and industries that you are trying to reach given that this information is provided on every Linked In profile.

While these new forms of advertising are great, I think it’s important that we not forget about Google AdWords and SEM as a whole. There is still a lot of benefit in search engine marketing considering users are actually seeking a service, product, or solution when using search engines. Social network ads may be highly targeted but they should still be considered interrupters where as Google ads are a response to search queries.

I think an effective online campaign should focus on both. There is a lot of utility in both of them. A good idea would be to start on multiple networks and monitor their performances. Once you get a grasp on what is working and what isn’t, you should shift your budget accordingly. Sometimes it’s about trial and error.