Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Anthony Blatner who is a tech founder and ex -IBMer. Anthony helps companies unlock their B2B marketing potential using LinkedIn ads and the power of technology. We talk all about LinkedIn advertising – the power of them, the cost of them, the different types and how you can get started with them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Ads are there for when you are ready to throw gas on the fire – you have something that is working and your funnel is in place.
• You have to know who you are targeting for your ads to work properly.
• LinkedIn ads target people based on who they are such as their job roles or industry – which is why they are best for B2B.
• LinkedIn is great if you want to target a niche professional at scale.
• LinkedIn is a more expensive platform to advertise on.
• The minimum spend for LinkedIn Ads is around $10 per day but you will likely need more than this for really driving traffic. You can expect to pay around $8-$10 per click.
• Be really specific with your audience you are targeting on LinkedIn.
• Types of LinkedIn Ads - Sponsored content, sponsored email, conversation ads, dynamic ads (desktop ads) and text ads (desktop only).
• Start with sponsored content ads using lead forms if you are new to LinkedIn.
• You can be professional and personal on LinkedIn – personal content can cut through the noise and get your personality across.
• The best way to get started is to advertise a lead magnet with a sponsored content ad and lead form.
• You can only advertise from a company page on LinkedIn.
• Business pages on LinkedIn are good from an SEO perspective and tend to come up higher in search results.
• Have some recent updates on your business page before advertising but you don’t need to worry about posting too much.
• Only your followers see your content on your business page so keep it up-to-date but more people are likely to see your content on your personal page.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

LinkedIn Ads enable you to really target specific groups of people, so you don’t need to target a huge audience like you would on Facebook.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

• An introduction to Anthony 04:53
• Are LinkedIn Ads more technical? 06:50
• The power of LinkedIn Ads 09:22
• The cost of LinkedIn Ads 13:40
• Are you ready for LinkedIn Ads? 15:23
• Common LinkedIn Ads mistakes 20:45
• Different types of LinkedIn Ads 22:32
• LinkedIn content 27:14
• Getting started with LinkedIn Ads 29:27
• Do I need a business page on LinkedIn? 36:28

CHECK ANTHONY OUT:

Website

LinkedIn

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Create Your Dream Business Bootcamp

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So this week got an interview all about LinkedIn advertising. I'll get to that in a minute. However, before we do that. I just want to tell you that I've bought the bootcamp back. So back in, I said like, May, May, April time. I did a five day bootcamp called Create Your Dream Business Bootcamp.

It was so good. It was basically, it has three workshops and those workshops are aimed around knowing, you know, what do you want your business to look like? How you structure it to get to that sort of business and then your mindset around it. It includes things like prizes and coaching calls and so much good stuff.

And like I said, the feedback was awesome that I had last time. So if you signed up, you didn't get chance to do it, then you definitely want to come and do it. If you haven't checked it out or signed up, then please do go and have a look. Cause it's going to be fab. It's completely free by the way. So go to Teresa Heath, I've got my name, teresaheathwearing.com/bootcamp.

And you can sign up there and you'll get everything sent to you when you sign up. That's going to be brilliant. So I'll just leave that with you, for you to go and, um, and go and take a look at that when you've got five minutes, obviously, if you're on social, any of my social, we'll start sharing the fact that we're doing the bootcamp coming up.

So on to today's interview. Now I really liked, I really like it when I don't know the subject and I know nothing about LinkedIn advertising. I did it years ago, but wasn't very successful and then hardly anybody I know does it. So when this guy approached me to say, could he come on the podcast? I was like, do you know what?

Yeah, because some of you will be using LinkedIn for your main platform. And I just think it's good to give you a heads up or an idea as to whether you should look at the advertising. Is there any good? What does it do? So, like I said, I was complete student with this. I was asking all the questions because I didn't know what I was talking about. So the lovely Anthony came on to talk about it. So Anthony was a tech is a tech founder and an ex IBM-er. He has seen lots of companies with great services failed due to ineffective marketing. So he started an agency to help those companies unlock their B2B marketing potential.

By blending his experience in marketing and software, he's able to help digital agencies reach their potential using LinkedIn ads and the power of technology. So like I said, I'm not even going to like deep dive into anything we talked about because I'm just going to let you to jump in and listen to what he had to say. So here is Anthony.

It's my great pleasure that I welcome to the podcast today Anthony Blatner. Anthony, how are you doing?

Anthony: I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Teresa: I am good. Really good. Thank you. It's the end of the day for me, it's been a busy one. I was going to say go my house call, but actually have a life to do a bit later on.

So, um, and then I can enjoy a glass of wine. Um, but where are you based? You're obviously in a different part of the world to me.

Anthony: Yes, I'm in Austin, Texas. So I am, uh, not just starting my day, a little bit late in my day. It's 11:00 AM here. Um, but yeah, Austin, Texas.

Teresa: Because were British and we asked you the questions like this, what's the weather like?

Anthony: Um, well, it's actually kind of rainy and overcast here today. Uh, but overall temperature wise has been pretty good. Last few weeks have been good, like mid seventies, low eighties. Now is the perfect time for Texas, you know, overall, uh, it's going to get pretty hot pretty soon.

Teresa: So what does it kind of go up to?

Anthony: Uh, it'll get to triple digits Fahrenheit. Um, and usually over the summer, we'll have a lot of like a hundred degree days, a hundred, 105.

Teresa: Wow.

Anthony: Yeah.

Teresa: That's crazy. Crazy hot. I have not been to Texas. It's on my list of places. Obviously that list is just paused during this amazing time that we're in, but it is on my list.

So anyway, we will crack on, like I said, I love asking what's the weather like question. So Anthony, in case my audience haven't heard from you, why don't we start off as we always do in explaining who you are and what you do.

Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. So I, uh, I specialize in LinkedIn advertising. Uh, there's not many people out there that do.

Um, so you know, happy to share tips and tricks for LinkedIn advertising. It's been a great platform. Um, but a little bit about me is my background, I come into the marketing world from the software side of things. I started my career at IBM building big e-commerce websites, going out to their clients. And when I was in, when I moved to Austin here, I got involved in the startup scene. So I started building mobile apps on the side and eventually started a mobile app development agency that I ran. Um, we built a lot of apps, a lot of software for a lot of different companies from startups to big companies and saw that a lot of companies would build an app and put it on the app store and do really well, um, with a good marketing plan, if they, if they were able to get that distribution.

And then we saw a lot of other companies spend a lot of time and a lot of money and build just as good of software, but without a good marketing plan, you would launch your app. And it would just sit on the app store and, you know, and it would die. So we saw the need and the opportunity we that's, how I kind started getting, getting pulled into the marketing world was once you build the app, you got to help them market it distribute it. Um, so that was my segue getting into the marketing world. And then over the years, just finding that LinkedIn was the best platform. Um, with my background, I had mostly B2B software clients, so that B2B space was just doing the best on LinkedIn. So that's what I've been focused on over the last several years is just LinkedIn advertising and targeting those B2B audiences.

Teresa: Love it, love it. And that's cool. Like, you know, it's come from a software point of view. I'm interested actually. Now I done LinkedIn ads many, many, many years ago. I think I dabbled once. Is, is it the kind of more tacky type of ad? Is that, did that kind of path help you with this, or is it just the same, a little bit of the types of ads?

Anthony: Um, I'd say it's, it's pretty similar to the other ad platforms. I always like to say, like, LinkedIn's like a few years behind, like Facebook and people in terms of like what, like what their ad platform looks like. Like you get in there and you're just like, this is simple, like simple, but I'm confused.

Teresa: And I think that's generally LinkedIn full stop.

It's there you know. And I hoped for Microsoft to go, but we're like, please make it beautiful. Please make it beautiful. And they just haven't quite got there.

Anthony: They, they did a redesign of like the front end, the consumer side of the platform. So my hope is that will eventually make it to the backend. I know they're working on a business manager, which they don't have yet for the ads platform.

But uh, they are in, are working on it. I think it's going to be out next year. They said, so they're definitely making a lot of advancements. Um, I think originally when Microsoft took them over, we were like expecting a lot really quickly. And I think they've been kind of working in the backgrounds and we've seen a lot of new features over this last year, especially during COVID like LinkedIn lives, LinkedIn events and like a lot of that stuff getting promoted.

So I think they're making strides. But to jump back to your question, as far as like the techie side of things, I think, I appreciate being able to get into code when I need to. And like, you know, as simple as like adding conversion tags to websites and LinkedIn insight tags to sites and like, you know, being fine with just copying and pasting code, putting those snippets in there.

If I need to rearrange anything else, um, you know, I do spend a lot of time doing that, but I'm very comfortable like getting in that and I, I appreciate having that background of being able to do that when I need to. So often I'll spin up landing pages for people and that's pretty easily connect all that stuff together.

Teresa: Yeah. Cool. So, okay. I said to you, before we got on, I love it when we talk about subject that I literally have no idea. Right. Because one, I learned stuff, which is really cool, but two, I asked the stupid questions, so you're just going like, you can just put your fear now, because this is probably going to be the easiest stuff topic in your life. But I really do want to get to basics because one thing that my listeners will have, like most business owners slash marketers slash social media managers have is the overwhelm of so much stuff. And lots of them are some of them dabble in Facebook.

Some of them are not quite there yet in terms of advertising. So let's get right to basics in terms of explain to me, if you, if I had never thought of advertising for what does the LinkedIn ads do for someone using them?

Anthony: Um, so ads, so starting very basic, you know, ads I, you know, even to the very small business, I'd say ads are when you're ready to throw gas on the fire.

So when you have something that's working, when you have your sales process, you have your funnel when it's working, then ads are good to go. Throw a fuel on the fires, what I always say, be careful not to throw a fuel on the fire before there's a fire there, or are you going to waste a lot of money. So, you know, throughout the years there's been people I've talked to who are like, you know, let's, let's start ads.

It's a brand new business. You know, we don't know who we're targeting. And I'm like, well, you're going to spend a lot of money testing those audiences and those ads to figure out what does work. So in general ads are when you have something that's working, you're just know you're ready to push more traffic, more leads, more customers into that funnel.

That's where ads are handy. And now where LinkedIn ads kind of play in the big ecosystem is, you know, on, in the, for the big platforms you have like Google, Facebook, and you have LinkedIn. Facebook's great for B to C when you're targeting a broad consumer audience, maybe based on, you know, the demographics or what they're interested in.

Um, Facebook is great with that because they have a lot of content. They see how people, they have seen people, you know, interact on and off the platform. Now some of that's changing, but, um, LinkedIn is more targeting based on who somebody is. So based on job titles, company, names, industries, company sizes, and all those various, um, options.

So. That's why LinkedIn is good for B2B. Facebook's good for B to C and the platforms themselves are kind of configured for those ways. Whereas on LinkedIn, we have all the options. You know, Facebook does have some options for like job title and industry, but they're very limited. And just like the way people use Facebook, you know, I know I probably have my professional stuff on Facebook a long time. And I know most of my, you know, um, family and colleagues, I don't see them putting that stuff in the Facebook. So Facebook just lacks a lot of that data. Whereas on LinkedIn, we always say like, that's one of the first places, somebody updates when they get a new job or when they start a new company or even starting a new side project.

So LinkedIn's data is, you know, all the users put that in there. It's all first party data. So thinking about iOS 14, that's coming out this week. You know, LinkedIn owns that data. They know it. So. We're not really concerned in the LinkedIn space of, you know, much of that impact. Sure. There'll be something as far as like conversion tracking and like re-targeting, but as far as like the core of what we're doing and our, where our campaigns are based off of all that data is coming from LinkedIn, none of that's going to change.

We're still going to use job puddles, company names, none of that's going to change. So LinkedIn is great. When you want to target a niche professional at scale. So, again, Facebook's good for broad consumer audiences. Even if you were saying all business owners, maybe Facebook is a better platform for you because it will be cheaper.

Potentially LinkedIn is a more expensive platform. Um, and you pay for the targeting that you get, but you can target specific types of professionals. Say you wanted HR directors at financial services company. That'd be finding a needle in the haystack on Facebook. You know, you'd be, you'd be getting a lot of clicks, but 99% of those would not be the right person.

So all the data your pixel seeing is just not the right data. So, you know, that kind of muddies your data and it's hard to drive any kind of result out of that. Whereas on LinkedIn, I can specifically target HR directors in the financial services space, you know, at a big company at a small company. And use that to drive the campaign. And then I knew I'm getting all the right people. So that's kind of where LinkedIn plays in the space, um, and where LinkedIn is good. Good for, um, So that's, that's kind of a rundown.

Teresa: On my experience is that LinkedIn is considerably more expensive than Facebook, but you raised a really good point there in the fact of, if I'm running an ad, I might be getting impressions, but it's a vanity metric, you know, or it might even be getting the clicks, but not the conversions because I'm targeting an audience that is that I'm trying to find the right people.

Whereas if I know someone's job title or I know the sector or the industry or the kind of types of business I'm after then obviously I can get a much stronger, I guess, person looking at it, but it might cost me more. How much are we talking? Is there a minimum per day? What's your expense in terms of like paying for ads?

Anthony: Yes. A minimum per day is 10 bucks per day, uh, in the US um, is LinkedIn's minimum. So, you know, Facebook's like a dollar, but LinkedIn is 10 bucks a day. Um, but you're probably going to need more than that, you know, significantly more than that to drive enough data, to make decisions based off. Um, what we usually see on LinkedIn in the US um, targeting a mid-level or higher, you're usually paying at least 8 to 10 bucks per click or more if you're targeting, you know, CEOs of fortune a hundred companies.

Sure. You can be paying 25 to 50 bucks a week. Um, but it just depends on the competitiveness or your audience. Most people are going to be around 8 to 10 bucks per click. Um, but you know, when you, again, when you need to target that niche decision maker that you can't find anywhere else, if you know, if you were to run that campaign on Facebook, Sure you could be paying like a dollar for a click over there, but you know, I'm sure even like, you know, I'd say 90, 90% of your clicks, aren't going to be the right people, probably more than that.

So suddenly you're paying a lot more on Facebook or, or the same amount that you are paying on LinkedIn, but making sure you're getting good traffic and good clicks coming through there.

Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to touch on just a bit,...