Jul 7, 2020
Show Resources:
LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox: LinkedIn Advertising Course
Free audit - click the scheduling link at the bottom of this article to get it
Sam Fonoimoana's email: sam@thestokegroup.com
Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.
Show Transcript:
Today we're talking about the advanced reporting capabilities for your LinkedIn Ads that you didn't even know were possible. Strap in, and let's do this.
Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox.
0:22
Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. Today I get to introduce you to my
secret weapon. Sam Fonoimoana from Stoke Analytics. He's a
reporting and data ninja, which you'll absolutely soon find out.
And he's got access to LinkedIn Ads API, which allows him to gather
data and insights that you won't find in campaign manager for your
account. I'm excited to introduce you to him as we are longtime
friends, and he's even got a really cool free targeting audit to
offer you. So definitely take him up on that. With that being said,
let's hit it.
0:58
Alright Sam, thanks so much. Welcome to the podcast.
1:01
Thanks so much AJ for having me.
1:03
So excited to be talking to you here. We've obviously worked
together on LinkedIn Ads for a long time. And this is so cool that
I get to introduce you to the LinkedIn Ads Show audience, I would
love just to have you start telling us about yourself. Tell us
about your background and why you do such cool stuff with LinkedIn
Ads reporting?
1:21
Well, it's true. Like we we've known each other now for a while,
remember our days back at the back of demo working for that
company? And you know, data was everything. And we had a lot of
fun. I remember you taking that sequel course when we were over
there, you did a good job for a marketer.
1:36
Not bad for a marketer.
1:38
Yeah, my world really has revolved around data I started off as a
finance guy. And, you know, quickly discovered that if I really
want answers to the questions I'm asking as a finance guy, I need
more data. And so it just led me down this path of being able to
pull the data myself from many different data sources. And really,
you know, try to try to answer the questions myself, you know,
using this data
2:00
Well, and Sam is crazy impressive. For those of you who don't know,
like he said, started out in finance and he is incredible at
sequal, incredible at servers, incredible at Python, and, and even
more. So just incredible with all kinds of data. And it's been so
fun to see him innovating and building stuff specifically around
LinkedIn, because that's what I get to use all day.
2:22
Well AJ, I really appreciated working with you over the years. And,
you know, working with LinkedIn getting access to that that
exclusive LinkedIn API, you know, we have access to more data than
then than anyone else trying to go into campaign manager. And it's
been a blast, just learning, like what you can do. And I know
that's what we're going to talk about today. But there's so much
reporting you can do, you know, if we're pulling data straight from
the API, and that's what you know that's what we'll talk about
today. So
2:49
Cool! All right. We'll get to dive super deep into the kinds of
reporting and things that you can pull that like you mentioned, we
don't get through campaign manager. I don't want to reveal too much
of our secret sauce as an agency, but just a heads up, Sam has
built all of our reporting stack, we are able to report on things
that not even LinkedIn can report on. And that's really all thanks
to him. So super stoked on that. Anyone who's looking to really up
your reporting game, check out Stoke Analytics.
3:17
Thanks so much AJ. Thank you.
3:19
Okay, so you've got kind of four different reports that you can
give a client who is advertising on LinkedIn. Could you give us a
kind of quick rundown on the types of reporting that's available?
What we as advertisers can can get with your help?
3:33
Sure. So the first one is, is an ABM report. And it basically just
drills a little bit deeper than then LinkedIn. But that'll tell you
how your content is resonating with specific targeted accounts
you're going after?
3:47
Yeah. And so anyone who is in your ads account, you can go into the
analytics into the demographic report, and you can see the last 10
companies that have interacted with your ads, those that have
interacted the most or whatever. How deep does your report go?
4:01
You know, we can get, you know, top 100 companies that have
interacted, you know, with with your leads, and that's over time.
So you know, we can go back by month and and show that for, you
know, up to six months back.
4:15
I love that my report I was just looking at has 3,500 companies
represented there. So you get a lot more data than we can get
through a campaign manager. Then also tell us about your your
persona level reports.
4:29
So next one is his persona and as similar to the ABM. You know, for
those companies that are specifically targeting, you know, job
titles, you know, we can we can do a similar type of report where
we can see which content is resonating with specific job
titles.
4:42
Cool. I love that the exact ad that the exact job title clicked on
and interacted with, you can see which titles tend to win, which
titles tend to lose. So we'll go deeper into that one as well. Now,
tell us about your most recent one, which is really exciting, the
targeting audit that you're offering.
5:00
Right. So this his next one is is our audience targeting audit. And
it's it's built to be able to show like for all your campaigns that
are using audience targeting, you could see, you know, what
percentage of your budget is going towards those audiences you
specified. And you know, just as importantly, if not more, you
know, how much of your budget is not going towards those.
5:21
Super super valuable to those who are advertising to know how much
of your audience is people you actually chose versus those who
don't? So these three reports are really cool for LinkedIn
advertisers. What else do you offer? I mean, what is your agency
offer to everyone?
5:37
I mean, really, our agency is focused around customer journey
analytics and so you know, we're really good at integrating
multiple different systems, all CRM to web analytics, web analytics
to AD platforms. And you know, that really is our bread and butter.
We're Adobe's official partner to do any, any Salesforce or
dynamics integrations into into Adobe products. I mean, they just
Trust us to do that integration. And yeah, that's that's where we
focus on customer journey. It's where it's at.
6:05
I love it. And I can I can say an amen to that because we've been
using your, your whole suite of reporting and analytics for years
and years. So thanks for hooking us up there.
6:14
You got it, AJ.
6:15
Okay, so let's dig specifically into the targeting audit, because
this is something that you're offering to any of our listeners for
free, dive way deep tell us like, what are the capabilities? What
are they going to be able to find, etc.
6:28
I mean, I think what's attractive about the LinkedIn platform is
that you can target you can set up your campaigns to target
audiences better than any other platform. You know, the the
platform, however, it doesn't really give good optics into how that
targeting is performing. And so this audit will go in and will pull
any pull all of your campaigns that use some sort of audience
targeting and basically just show you. It'll show you the total
number of dollars that is being spent outside of audiences that
you've specified.
7:01
And this works by what sort of targeting facets? Can we look by job
title? Can we look at job function? Can we look at company sizes?
You know those types of things?
7:10
Yep. So we can look at job title, seniority, company, industry,
company size, location. I believe there's one more, but those are
the main ones that people seem to be interested in.
7:26
Awesome. So you can take a lookat specifically your targeting that
you've selected for a campaign. And it will tell you how much of
your budget, how many of your clicks, how many of your impressions
came from that audience versus audiences you didn't explicitly
choose?
7:41
That's right. And I was able to, to build this with your help AJ,
so you know a little bit about this. And in the early stages, it
was interesting to see because you would think that, you know, if
you explicitly targeted let's say, a job title such as CEO, you
would think that LinkedIn would dedicate the majority of of that
campaign spend towards that job title. But you know, in our early
test so far, we've seen like, you'll, be surprised there's big
chunks of, of campaign budget that's outside of those job
titles.
8:11
Yes. And there are opportunities to use this information to tighten
up our targeting and make us even more efficient, which is nice. I
don't want this to feel like we're crapping on LinkedIn as a
platform, because, you know, their targeting doesn't actually hit
who it does. We find both winners and losers in this report. And we
can actually take action on that to improve things. So I think this
is still really valuable for anyone. And because this is a free
audit, any of you guys listening, can go get this audit for your
account and see what percentage of your budget is allocated to
people that you haven't explicitly chosen, which on an expensive
platform like LinkedIn, I mean, every dollar every click, you can
save is such a good thing.
8:56
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I would just add, it's like you said,
there's both winners. You know, and losers, like we, you know,
there's one use case where we find a job title that wasn't
included, but the click through rate was way higher, the cost per
click was way lower. And so instead of getting angry that they're
happy about that, oh, we're just gonna, we're gonna add this to the
campaign and get more of that traffic.
9:16
Oh, yeah, in fact, I remember seeing an example on one of our
accounts, where one of our job titles that was being included that
we didn't explicitly say, had something like a 2.3% click through
rate, I think was like VP of sales or something. And so we went and
explicitly added that as like, yes, this campaign wants to target
this job title. And we saw a couple others, where spend was going
and we went out, those are not the right title. We could go in and
explicitly add them as an exclusion, which is really cool. All
right. So for anyone who wants to get this audit on their account,
how do they get in touch with you? How do they get ahold of this
free audit so they can get ahold of me I'll leave my my contact
information, but it's a quick process. You basically just set up a
meeting with me. You invite one of our our LinkedIn user accounts
to your campaign manager to your ad account, the one that you'd
like to have the audit on. And then we'll have this spun up for
you. And within 24 hours, email you the link, and then we can go
through the audit results to help you interpret the results.
10:17
Very cool. So this is something I encourage every one of you
listening to take Sam up on. Super, super valuable even as just
insights to verify the targeting strategy that you're using. This
is really, really cool. I like I said, we've used it for all of our
accounts. And it's helped us to take some actions that have
improved performance significantly. I'll make sure that that Sam's
email address and web address are all in the show notes so you know
exactly how to go and get there. So what are some of the actions
that advertisers can take if they are looking at this audit and
they see, oh, man, this percentage looks really high towards
audiences. I'm not explicitly targeting, what sort of actions can
we take?
10:56
There's three main actions you can take off of the audit. The first
one is, you can already check on the audience expansion, if there's
like a, let's say there's 65% plus of your budget that's going to
outside audiences, then you can go in and double check that
audience expansion is not enabled. And automatically, that's going
to cut down that percentage, you know, if you do have it enabled,
and you don't want those broad matches, you can go ahead and
uncheck that. So that's one quick one. Second thing is you can go
through and exclude any any losers. You know, instead of just
saying, hey, just include this audience, but you don't do an
exclusion, you can go in and explicitly exclude clear cut losers.
And then the third thing is, is the opposite of that you can come
in and include any winners kind of like that, that use case that
you're talking about AJ.
11:49
I love that. And for any of you who've listened to more than one
episode, you know, my stance on audience expansion. I absolutely
hate it. I think it should be not included on any campaign, but
certainly if you use the audit and you do see, you know, we had a
situation where we did the audit pre and post removing audience
expansion. And we saw a 20% difference. I mean, it was like, night
and day between using audience expansion and the types of roles
you're reaching that you wouldn't want to necessarily versus not.
And from using this, what are some of the results you've been able
to see? I mean, I can share what we've seen by by using the audit,
but I wonder some of the other results that your other clients have
seen?
12:30
Sure. So we, you know, we had a large client of ours who spends
quite a bit on LinkedIn every month. And, you know, they they
definitely went through and double, you know, double checked all
the audience expansion, they went ahead and excluded some clear cut
losers. And, you know, in in one case, they just had spent so much
money on a on a job title that's so far outside of the, of the
target audience that, you know, they went back to LinkedIn, they're
still kind of in the process of trying to negotiate a credit and
that's no good. guarantee, but just because they had spent so much
money on it, you know, they felt like they had to go back to
LinkedIn. And so these are some of the things that our customers
are doing with it. I mean, for sure you can you can streamline that
campaign and you can get more optimized with this data. And then
who knows, maybe you can win some credits back. I don't know.
13:19
So when you're looking at the results of your audit, what are you
going to see? Can you tell us the specifics here?
13:25
Sure that there's four main sections of the audit. The first one up
at the top, you'll see the overall dollar amount spent on other
audiences. And then the next thing you'll see is a pie chart and
it'll show you the spend percentage breakdown, you know, targeted
audiences versus other audiences. So that's quick, easy reference.
Third thing is it'll show each campaign and it'll break down that
campaign you'll be able to see if it has audience expansion enabled
on the campaign. And you'll also be able to show you know, the
dollar spent on targeted versus other audiences by campaign That
way you can click on any campaigns that are just way off. And then
that that'll that'll filter the last part of the audit, which shows
you every single audience that has received impressions and clicks
on that campaign. And then you'll be able to see, hey, this was
this was part of my targeting. And it'll also identify, hey, these
ones are not part of the targeting, but are still spending dollars
against the campaign.
14:24
Very cool. All right so anyone listening, make sure you hit pause
on the podcast right now, go in order your audit so that it's
running and you'll get to see this 24 hours from now. And then
specifically around the other reporting that you offer. Tell us
about what you offer. I'd love to know how much it costs, you know
what we all get access to as advertisers by getting to work with
you.
14:47
Sure. So you know, for the full ABM reporting, you know, job title
reporting and for the targeting audit ongoing, you know, we try to
we try to keep it fairly cheap for advertisers. It'll run between
$100 and $400 a month if you're just depending on on your spend
levels. And, you know, it's quick, it's automated and you'll have
it whenever you need it.
15:13
Awesome. Let's dive into the the ABM report. Can you give us
specifics? Like when we're looking at the ABM report, what exactly
are we going to see? What sort of insights is it going to give
us?
15:23
You know, for the ABM report, it's useful to see you know, which
ads are resonating with with targeted accounts. I know for for a
lot of our customers they're trying to go after certain accounts.
The content team is coming up with so many different ads hoping
that it's, it's going to be sticky, you know, with these targeted
accounts, and they don't really have a good way of measuring it. So
this report will help you to see like what really is, you know,
sticky with with your targeted accounts, and what's not, I mean,
because that's the last thing you want to be is, is noisy, you
know, to your targeted account, and this will clearly help you to
be able to see that
15:59
Yeah. So you'll get to see your impressions, your clicks, by
company, your click through rates, your, if they're filling out
forms, either lead gen form or landing page, you'll get to see
which companies are converting. You'll be able to sort them, you'll
be able to see the exact ads that people from those companies have
interacted with, clicked on. I'll just add my, my voice to this.
It's incredible. We use this for all of our clients and gives us
pretty significant ammo that we can bring to our client reporting
every week.
16:32
Awesome, AJ. Yep.
16:34
All right. So let's also talk about the persona reporting, because
the persona reporting is really similar to the ABM. It's just, it's
targeting the persona rather than the company. Walk us through what
we're gonna be able to see by looking at the persona reports.
16:48
Yeah, it's similar to the ABM one, you'll be able to see by by job
title, you know, which ads are resonating and which ones are not.
All those same metrics that you had mentioned. You know, same same
type of things. So we can see clicks, impressions spanned. If it's
a video, you can see video start, percentage of completed videos,
all those different metrics. And I think for us the use case. You
know, one of the big use cases that we've had is, there's companies
that, you know, for example, one of our customers, they started
this new campaign, they're really trying to penetrate the mind
share of, you know, three, three different personas. One of them
CMO, the other one is CIO, and the last one is this new, CRO, Chief
Revenue Officer. And so with this reporting, it was awesome, were
able to bring to light that they were killing it with CMO and CRO,
like a lot of the content that they were serving up to these job
titles. They're very engaging high click through rates, low cost
per low cost per leads. And then for the CIO, it was also able to
reveal that there wasn't one CIO, there wasn't one CIO click, I
think we looked over a three week period. They were kind of kicking
themselves, but that It is important to know. You have to know
what's resonating and what's not so you can swap it out. The last
thing you want to be as noisy tier two target audiences.
18:09
Oh, yeah. And it's important for advertisers to not take it so hard
if you launch an ad to a persona, and it's a total miss. It's, it
really is valuable to see that miss to know how you can change. It
certainly doesn't reflect on you as a marketer, like, oh, you were
really bad at predicting. Predicting is what it is. We can do
really poorly and still learn from it and do great afterwards. One
thing I really love about this report, I don't know if this is
something that that is going to be publicly offered. But we were
able to break down not only the job title, but also the job
function of, of these personas. And it was really cool to see the
exact job titles and what LinkedIn which job functions LinkedIn
considers them, to be with him. So that was really insightful
information for us being able to not only include/exclude job
titles, but also do the same thing for job functions.
19:04
Yep, job function is definitely available as well.
19:07
And then of course, you offer reporting that is not just for
LinkedIn. I mean, obviously, we're friends specifically because
you've got really cool stuff. I mean, we're friends, because you're
awesome. But then we're, especially friends because of the insights
you give us into LinkedIn Ads, but you do not just LinkedIn. What
are the other channels that you bring into your reporting? What
sort of insights are you providing for your other clients?
19:29
I mean, really, our our company, I think I mentioned it before, but
we're all about true customer journey analytics. And so that's
every you know, from from the first ad click from the first visit
to a person's website all the way to the first dollar of sale. I
mean, we're we're gathering data from all the platforms. So from
all the platforms Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing, Google Ads, and from
all the different web analytics platforms, we have connectors into
all those. Very importantly for B2Bs, the CRM system, Salesforce
and Dynamics. We are well versed in all these different platforms
and, and really how to stitch them together in the right way so you
can see the full customer journey.
20:10
Oh, yeah, Google Analytics, Adobe analytics, every platform you can
think of Stoke does it. So I can testify. Sam, tell us where we can
find you. We'll have links in the show notes. But how do people
follow up with you? How do people follow you how to people learn
more? Sure, if you want to check out our website at stokedata.com.
And you'll see a little bit more about some of the things we've
talked about today and in our other services. And then of course,
you can find me on LinkedIn, Sam Fonoimoana and then my email
address is Sam@thestokegroup.com
20:44
Love it. Sam, thanks so much for sharing your awesome findings and
what you're offering with us today. I'm really excited for other
people to see the audit and get to take a peek at what they're
doing on LinkedIn and how to further improve because that's what
we're all about here at the LinkedIn ads show.
20:59
Awesome AJ. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.
21:03
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Reporting you didn't
even know was possible on your LinkedIn Ads initiatives. I'll share
Sam's contact info right after this.
21:18
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more?
AJ Wilcox, take it away.
21:28
All right, as promised, here's the episode resources. So we've
included the link in the show notes down below, or on the
B2linked.com/podcast website, if your show notes don't have it. So
check that one out. Absolutely, go get that free audit. And then if
you want to contact Sam Fonoimoana his email address is
Sam@thestokegroup.com. So you'll find his email address down below
there as well. If you are new to LinkedIn advertising, you'll want
to check out the LinkedIn learning course that I did all about
LinkedIn Ads. The link for that down below as well. Or you can just
navigate right to LinkedIn learning or lynda.com and search for the
LinkedIn ads course you'll see my face there. This course is either
free or I think $25. So it is a smoking good deal, considering if
you hired me to come in and train your team, the same thing would
cost somewhere around $750 in training time, so definitely well
worth boning up on that. Look down at your podcast player right now
and hit the subscribe button. And please do go into wherever you're
listening and leave us a rating. And I would love it if you would
leave us a review as well. I will shout you out if you review us.
So if you want that shout out definitely take me up on that. And
then with any ideas, any any suggestions, anything you'd like us to
cover, reach out to Podcast@B2linked.com and I would love to take
those and incorporate those into future episodes. Okay. With that
being said, I'll see you back here next week, Cheering you on in
your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.