Jan 5, 2023
Show Resources
Here were the resources we covered in the episode:
NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox
Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.
A great no-cost way to support us: Rate/Review!
Show Transcript
Have you ever wanted a library of all the LinkedIn Ads out there that you could look through for inspiration? We've got just the thing for you coming up on this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show.
Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ
Wilcox.
Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics! I would bet that most of us have
wished that we could go somewhere to look at the highest performing
ads on the LinkedIn Ads platform, maybe for inspiration as we're
writing new ad copy, or maybe even to look at competitors ads side
by side and check out what they're doing. Today, I'm interviewing
Sander de Lange, from AdSearch.io, which is a very affordable
LinkedIn Ads library to do just that. We talked through what it's
capable of pricing, and especially the actionable ways that you as
the LinkedIn Ads marketer can go and use these tools to your
advantage. Sander is an agency owner out of the Netherlands, and
he's the founder of AdSearch.io. Let's bring him on.
AJ Wilcox
Hey Sander. So excited to have you here on the podcast.
Sander de Lange
Hey, AJ, great to be here!
AJ Wilcox
Cool. Well, tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me a little
bit about the company ad search. Love to hear all that
background?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, sure. So about myself. I'm from the Netherlands. I'm married.
And we just got our first daughter.
AJ Wilcox
Congratulations.
Sander de Lange
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, me and my wife, we really love to
travel. So currently, I'm working remote from Thailand, which is
our favorite country in the whole world.
AJ Wilcox
Oh, I have not been but I want to.
Sander de Lange
Yes.
AJ Wilcox
Cool. Well, tell us about the background of AdSearch.io
Sander de Lange
Yeah, sure. Sure. 10 years ago, together with my business partner
Ozlem, we launched a marketing agency called Team Digital.nl. In
the Netherlands. We're focused on getting B2B customers. And we do
a lot of LinkedIn Ads for our clients. We really love the platform
because of the great targeting and great way to reach ideal
customers. But we were really missing a LinkedIn Ads library. So
yeah, this year in 2022, we launched AdSearch.io, which is the
world's biggest LinkedIn Ads library to help you find great
LinkedIn Ad examples to mobile in seconds.
AJ Wilcox
Love that. So tell us about why you were looking for a library.
Obviously, that was a problem you were looking to solve for
yourself. What is that problem that we LinkedIn advertisers should
be thinking about whether we're feeling this or not?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, exactly. So the idea actually started because of a few few
challenges we kept running into because if you advertise on
LinkedIn, you probably know that LinkedIn Ads has a higher cost per
click than other ad platforms, which can be a bit scary for people
if they start launching their first campaign because every new
campaign can be a risk. Some people also might notice that ads with
low engagement actually pay more per click. So you know, the
LinkedIn algorithm works with the ad relevancy score. And that's
based on factors like click through rate, comments, likes and
shares. And the more relevant the ad, the lower the price you pay.
So this also means that if you have ads with low engagement, you
pay more per click. So creating relevant, engaging ads is very
important. And on top of that, we kept running into that you need
also enough fresh new ad creative to prevent audience fatigue. And
that's actually when your target audience sees the same ads over
and over and your ads can lose their impact. We figured that you
don't want to be wasting ad budget on the wrong boring ads, because
that can get expensive. And we wanted to find a way to decrease
that risk. And that's actually where you had something to do with
this. Because I'm a frequent listener of your podcast and you
actually quoted you, you said, like, when you're spending money on
LinkedIn Ads, it's inherently high risk, because the costs are
higher. So any research you can do ahead of time to find out what
your audience will like is going to be very useful. So that
inspired us to create AdSearch.io.
AJ Wilcox
Oh, so cool. I'm glad I can be of any help there. So you obviously
felt this pain, you realize that we need some sort of an ad
library? How did you go about solving?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, so we believe that it was missing. And as librarian and it's
a great way to get inspiration for new campaigns, you need to study
ads that are performing well to generate ideas. And we didn't just
want to create the ads library where we just put a few ads in
there. And that's it, we really wanted to go the extra mile and add
all kinds of features and functionality, so you can really find
highly relevant ads quickly. So we did that by adding a few type of
features. The first one is the search features. So you can really
find relevant ads quickly. You can search by keywords, the whole
database of ads is searchable by keywords. So for example, you
could search for CRM or email templates and find ads that contain
those keywords. You can search by company name or even by URL. So
for example, if you search URL search, and you use like read
remarketing, you will find remarketing ads. So that's the search
features, you can find relevant ads quickly. And then step two is
the sorting features. So you can discover the most engaging ads
very quickly. So you can sort by engagement metrics, like likes,
shares, comments, you can find the ads your audience loved most.
And then you can use the filter features to find exactly what you
need. Like you can filter by country, industry, ad formats, company
size, all kinds of stuff. So if you were looking for a video ads
containing the keyword CRM from a US company in the 50 to 200,
staff range, you can find it.
AJ Wilcox
Oh, that's so cool. So I love the standard. How should LinkedIn
advertisers actually use your tool?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, so I'd like to get into like a really step by step process
with just a high level overview. First, it's really useful for
everybody advertising on LinkedIn, but mostly people who can use it
as LinkedIn advertising agencies and freelancers. In house LinkedIn
advertisers can use it, but also the ad creative design teams. And
they can use it for campaign optimization to improve the success
rates and generate A/B testing ideas. But also, it might be helpful
for the sales team to find companies that advertise on LinkedIn so
they can reach out to them. Yeah, and of course, we're competitive
research to spy on the best ads in any industry. But if you want to
get into the step by step process of how we use it in our agency,
we could go through that.
AJ Wilcox
Yes, I would love to see the step by step. And my background here
for asking is because I think with a lot of these tools that are
just giving us ideas, it's really difficult to come up with
actionable principles, a lot of things you might look at and just
say, Oh, that looks pretty, it looks nice. That sounds good. But
then when you actually go to take action, there isn't. So walk us
through your method for how you use your own tool to research and
launch ads, that would be really cool.
Sander de Lange
Yeah, let's go through three steps that we use for our clients to
get a lot of value out of it. The first is the A/B testing an idea
generation process. Step one would be like researching the ads. So
for example, I opened the tool and search for the campaign subject
by keywords. So let's say, email templates, or something like this,
or CRM, the tool will generate results of ads containing those
keywords. Then I would go in the left sidebar, and sort by most
reactions, or most comments to find the most engaging ads, and then
I'll start studying their strategy and try to generate two ideas I
would want to test. For example, I want to test using lead gen
forms versus landing pages or test a different offer or test some
type of ad copy. I'd go through all the ads that end up at the top,
for example, study their introductory test and generate two ideas I
want to test, study the ad creative and the visual, generate and
think of two ideas I'd want to test. For example, square image ads
that you had been on about the CTR increases that that can get you
versus the non square ones. I go to the headline, try to generate
two ideas, but also click through to the landing page and see what
they do there. And also study the comments that people leave on the
ads, because if you click view original ads, you can see sometimes
people leaving questions or some type of stuff like this, which can
be good intelligence for your campaign. So that's step number one
trying to see all of these add elements and generate ideas based on
top of that, once you've generated the ideas, I tried to see if you
go to the ad creation and launch process, so all of these ideas,
I'd rank them based on the potential impact they have, the ease of
implementation and decide which ones we can launch and use in our
next campaign. I'd see if I can share the ad examples that we found
in a tool with the design team. You can click show ad details and
easily share them with the team. You can also bookmark the ads to
find them back later, easily. Then your design team will create
them. And then when you upload the ads, you make sure to give them
very clear names inside of LinkedIn so you can easily find back and
find the results for A/B test. And you write down in an Excel sheet
your hypothesis on which KPI you will judge the test.
AJ Wilcox
I'm a huge fan of that level of organization. Thank you for sharing
that. Okay, so I'm just taking notes. Here we have the A/B testing
idea generation. Then once you've generated those ideas, you go and
actually start implementing the creative. And then step three was
analyzing your results.
Sander de Lange
Yes, exactly, exactly. So step three would be the optimization and
analyze process after you've launched them. So if you gave them a
good naming structure, it would be very easy to find the results
per ads, and you can then check if the results are statistically
significant. And pause the loser, keep the winner alive and try to
make a new variant based on the winner. So you can try and beat it.
And if you do that, you can go back to the library and see based on
the winner if you can find any other ads that might help you with
that.
AJ Wilcox
Beautiful, I absolutely love that. What I like to do is, all of my
ads that I launch on a certain day, I'll actually put the date. And
whether it's the A or the B version in the ad name. So in the ad
platform, I can go and just type the date, and then all the ads I
see will just be either an A or B, I can very quickly evaluate. I'm
a bit of an Excel geek like I would rather get it out to excel and
run it in a pivot table. But if it was simple, like there was only
a few of them, that'd be really good to do right within the
platform. So I love that recommendation.
AJ Wilcox
Here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive back into the
interview with Sander.
Unknown Speaker
The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you be B2Linked.com,
the LinkedIn Ads experts.
AJ Wilcox
If you're a B2B company and care about getting more sales
opportunities with your ideal prospects, then chances are LinkedIn
Ads are for you. But the platform isn't easy to use, and can be
painfully expensive on the front end. At B2linked, we've cracked
the code to maximizing ROI while minimizing costs. Our methodology
includes building and executing LinkedIn Ads strategies, customized
to your unique needs, and tailored to the way that B2B consumers
buy today. Over the last 11 years, we've worked with some of the
largest LinkedIn advertisers in the world, we've spent over $150
million on the platform, and we're official LinkedIn partners. If
you want to generate more sales opportunities with your ideal
prospects, book a discovery call at B2linked.com/apply. We'd
absolutely love to get to work with you. All right, let's jump back
into ad search.io.
AJ Wilcox
I'm curious, and I don't even know if you can share this, but where
are you getting the data from on these? How does your software
determine which company is important enough to index their ads?
Sander de Lange
In the beginning, we were looking at companies that have ads with a
lot of engagement on them. But there's actually not that many
companies that are doing a really great job on this. So we started
to expand a little bit to add more ads in the tool so people can
find lots of inspiration. And then we try to now adding more ads by
companies that are doing a really good job. Based on the likes and
the comments and the shares. Yep.
AJ Wilcox
Do you have any way of estimating how much a company is spending?
And part of the competitive research would be looking at a
competitor and trying to figure out like, are they spending $5k?
Are they spending $300k a month? Can your tool do anything like
that? Or do you have a rule of thumb that you might use to estimate
how much I'm spending?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, as of right now, we don't have it yet. But we've definitely
been thinking about if we could estimate or create a formula to
estimate that that would be great. We do have some other cool ideas
that might correspond with this a little bit. But as of right now,
we didn't yet figure that one out.
AJ Wilcox
Do you have any thoughts on how we could use this tool for sales
intelligence, I'm imagining if you're trying to sell into a certain
company, or trying to sell into an industry, how you might use that
to get a foot in the door.
Sander de Lange
Yeah, for sure, you can use our tool to find clients in specific
regions and industries and company sizes. So you would know they
are advertising on LinkedIn. You can already see the type of ads
they are running. So what a sales team could do is that they could
reach out and offer audits to a specific target industry. First of
all, generate a list of qualified LinkedIn advertisers in that
space. Currently, we have around 60,000 advertisers in the
database, so there's probably going to be some qualified prospects
in there. Yeah, and reach out to them offer ideas on how they
should improve the advertising strategy, and see if you can offer
them audit or free consult to develop a sales opportunity for the
company.
AJ Wilcox
Very cool. I love that. What about competitive research? How would
you go about using this? Let's say you're launching ads for a
company, you want to research their competitors? How would you go
about doing that?
Sander de Lange
That's a good one. Let's say you want to research one of your
competitors. One of the things that our tool makes available is
that you can actually find the ads that the most engaging ads your
competitors are running. So that's one thing our tool can do that
you can find on LinkedIn that easily yourself. So for example, if
it's a big company, there might be 1000s of ads, they're running at
every one time. And you can just go to our tool, type in the
company name. Once you click on the company logo, there'll be view
all ads by this company that will show you the ads they are running
and then you can sort them by reactions like likes or sort them by
comments. You can see these ads are the most engaging ones. And
maybe also go through the comments that people leave on your
competitors ads because that might be really valuable information
as well. So based on that, you could see what's really working for
them.
AJ Wilcox
And do you have to do all of this within the tool? Or is there like
an export to Excel for us Excel junkies?
Sander de Lange
That might be a really good feature to add AJ, so you've given us a
good idea. We have it on the back end, but maybe we should make the
export available.
AJ Wilcox
Or at least to my account, because I would love to get some good
use out of that.
Sander de Lange
Okay. I'll write that down
AJ Wilcox
I love getting big data into Excel. So I think the biggest question
I think we're all going to have is, What does a subscription cost
for those who aren't currently using it? Can you walk us through
what pricing is like?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, sure. Currently, the pricing plans are per quarter or per
year. So as of this point, they are $49 US dollars per quarter, or
$99 per year. And that would include unlimited searches, unlimited
filters, bookmarks, everything. There's no limitations on the plan.
So I gotta be honest, here, we're not sure how long this is going
to be that way. As of right now, that's the current pricing.
AJ Wilcox
Perfect. But that does feel really reasonable to me. I do hope
everyone here who's listening who thinks this might be interesting,
go and get subscribed, make sure you're grandfathered into any rate
to before increases in the future. So love that. Are there any
questions that you wish I would have asked you anything cool about
the tool you want to point out? Or anything coming up on the
roadmap that we should know about?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, I'd like to bounce a few ideas, that'd be great. Well, one of
them is that we think we might have discovered a way to create also
some insights into the targeting of a specific LinkedIn Ad
campaign. So you could see, for example, what type of targeting
your competitor might be using. But I'd like to see what would you
think of that? Is that something that would be interesting to
you?
AJ Wilcox
Oh, that would be so cool. To me. I mean, that takes your
competitive intelligence, text that up to 11. Can you share with us
how you'd narrow in on that? Or is that proprietary?
Sander de Lange
I gotta be a bit careful here. But what the end result would be,
you know, LinkedIn recently released that feature where you can see
like, okay, your audience, they have these types of skills, these
type of job titles, these type of company sizes, all that type of
stuff.
AJ Wilcox
Yeah, the audience insights feature.
Sander de Lange
The audience insights feature. We would be able to create something
like this, but then for other companies, then your own for your
competitors, that will be the end result.
AJ Wilcox
Oh, I love that. Okay, yeah. Sign me up. Whenever that happens.
That'd be fantastic.
Sander de Lange
That's good to know. And maybe maybe we're also thinking of adding
a few more ad channels in there, and maybe doing like a monthly
curated, best LinkedIn Ads newsletter type of thing, you know,
AJ Wilcox
Oh, yeah! Because the LinkedIn reps, obviously, our team, when
we're working on 50, 60 accounts a month, we always have a whole
bevy of account reps. Sometimes we get put on their newsletters.
And so I've got 20 emails a month from reps. But a lot of times
what they do is they show like the top ads per month in that
industry. And so if you had one that was always updated, you'd have
to wait for it from a rep or ask your rep for it. That would be
really cool.
Sander de Lange
Yes, yes, yes. Okay, then you've given me a lot of valuable
feedback there.
AJ Wilcox
So I do have a question. That is, it's this is selfish of me, it's
very much to our own strategy. But a lot of times, what we'll do is
we'll build one ad per campaign, and we'll have a lot of campaigns,
which means that if you actually looked at the ads on the company
page, they would have very few likes, or very few comments. But if
you aggregated them all together, by all the ads that looking at
the same, there could be quite a few. Is there any way to combine
similar ads in your tool? Or I'm imagining like a live pivot table,
but something that's like, oh, this same image, the same ad text is
found across 50 different ads? So we've aggregated them for you. Is
there anything like that?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, I think if we would make like the Excel exports available,
you would be able to do that. Yeah, if the introductory text or the
headline matches, you'd be able to do that in Excel. So that could
take the intelligence to a new level. So that's a good idea.
AJ Wilcox
Very nice. Okay. I like that I can do that. Cool. Well, I think the
last question I want to ask you is, both professionally and
personally, what are you most excited about?
Sander de Lange
I'm really excited about all the positive feedback we're getting on
the tool. So developing it even further with new features is
something that really excites us. And personally, I'm trying to see
if I can keep doing this working remotely thing because in my
country right now, it's wintertime, and I'd love to get some more
sunshine in my life, you know,
AJ Wilcox
Oh, yeah. But I would imagine in Thailand, like your money goes a
long way. And you can pretty much live like a king.
Sander de Lange
That's true also. So inflation and everything. This is a good
move.
AJ Wilcox
And you're traveling right now with a baby, right?
Sander de Lange
Yeah.
AJ Wilcox
How was that? Is that difficult?
Sander de Lange
You're right the first time we have our daughter is now almost one
year old. We've been here like 11 times before but this the first
time with a baby and yeah, it's a bit different, but she's loving
it here as well. I think it's definitely something we can keep
doing.
AJ Wilcox
Oh, yeah. Where's the rest of your team? Is the rest of your team
all within the Netherlands?
Sander de Lange
Yes, yes, they're based in the Netherlands. But ever since the
pandemic, we've been getting used to more remote working, they are
welcome to join me here if they want to, but they've got all their
lives in the Netherlands. So sometimes they do, sometimes they
don't.
AJ Wilcox
Cool. Curious, you're doing an agency, you're also running SAS
software? Is that a split that you want to do forever? Or do you
like one over the other?
Sander de Lange
Yeah, so I like both of them. But as you know, we're trying to get
into more recurring business models. And it's just interesting for
me to learn all of these models, I can also use that knowledge in
the agency life, you know, growing a SAS company. But eventually, I
think I'd like to make a decision there, because I noticed that
running multiple projects requires two dilutes the focus. In the
end, I'd like to make a decision there.
AJ Wilcox
Okay, I like it. Well, this has been fantastic having you on.
Thanks so much for your openness, for giving me so many cool ideas.
I am a user of your product, but I just found out about 10 extra
ways to go and use it. So I would invite everyone go and join while
costs are low. Because this is definitely one of those things I
could see charging significantly more for and, and even charging
more to agencies versus an in house person who might not use it as
much. So lots of good growth possibilities. But you guys all heard
it here first get in at $49 a quarter or $99 a year.
Sander de Lange
Yeah. Thanks, AJ. It's been awesome to be on.
AJ Wilcox
Thank you, Sander. We'll be excited to hear how things develop in
the future. And we may have you back on to give us an update on the
tool sometime.
Sander de Lange
Okay. Cool, AJ.
AJ Wilcox
I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick
around.
Unknown Speaker
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more?
AJ Wilcox, take it away.
AJ Wilcox
If you go down and look in the show notes below, you'll see a link
to AdSearch.io, as well as a link to Sander's LinkedIn profile if
you want to go and connect with him or follow him there. If you or
anyone you know, is looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, look
no further than the course that I did with LinkedIn Learning, all
about LinkedIn Ads. It's by far the highest quality and the lowest
cost course out there. So click on the link in the show notes for
that. If this is your first time listening, welcome, and please do
hit that subscribe button. But if this is not your first episode,
please do rate and review the podcast in whatever podcast player
you use. Especially those reviews. They help a lot. And it is the
biggest favor that you can do me for enjoying the show. With any
questions, suggestions, corrections, and anything like that on the
podcast, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that
being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in
your LinkedIn Ads initiatives!