Maximizing Customer Reach: Essential Strategies

LinkedIn recently announced that the users will now be able to upload video Ads too. Until now Linkedin displayed only images or text for advertising. But now that it has rolled out global video advertising too, let’s see how it can make a difference to the social media marketing scenario and more importantly, how it can help your business.

Linkedin is one of the most popular business-oriented social networking services.  Launched on the 5^th of May 2003, it already had 259 million acquired users spread over more than 200 countries as of June 2013. So you can expect your Ad to reach out those millions out there, but what is more important is, you can be rest assured that your video Ad reaches the right audience too.  With the video Ads, advertisers will be able to import videos or use existing YouTube videos. Ideally, using video Ads will up advertisers’ presence on YouTube since their audience will grow with the addition of Linkedin’s users.

Linkedin boasts of millions of profiles belonging to various categories; this helps you in segmenting and focusing on a particular segment as per your business needs and effectively targeting the decision makers. Moreover, creating an Ad on Linkedin is pretty simple.

Creating a video Ad is similar to creating a text advertisement, except you select Video from the Media Type dropdown.

If you’re a new advertiser:

1. Move your cursor over Business Services in the top right of your homepage and select Advertise.
2. Click Get started.
3. Click Create an Ad
4. Under the Media Type dropdown, select Video. Name the campaign; add your headline, description, and YouTube.com video URL.
5. Click Next.
6. Select the target audience for your Ad and click Next.
7. Set a daily budget and bid on how much you’re willing to pay for each video view.
8. Click Save Changes in the bottom right.
9. Enter your billing information.
10. Submit the Ad for review.

If you’re an existing advertiser:

1. Move your cursor over Business Services in the top right of your homepage and select Advertise.
2. Click Manage to go to your Campaign Manager.

• You may be prompted to sign back into your account.

1. Click Create new campaign in the top right of your Campaign Manager.
2. Click Create an Ad.
3. Under the Media Type dropdown, select Video. Name the campaign; add your headline, description, and YouTube.com video URL.
4. Click Next.
5. Select the target audience for your Ad and click Next.
6. Set a daily budget and bid on how much you’re willing to pay for each video view.
7. Click Save Changes in the bottom right.
8. Enter your billing information if you want to update or change information.
9. Submit the Ad for review.

The Cost?

When creating a video Ad the advertiser will be able to set a maximum Cost Per View (CPV) bid. This means that the advertiser will only pay when a member clicks to play the video. The minimum CPV bid for video ads is $4.00.

So it can be said that video advertising on Linkedin is quite cost effective as it offers you a vast yet focused reach.   So when the next time you think of using the social media for advertising your brand, make sure that your brand is linked in effectively with your potential customers.