Feb 2, 2023
Show Resources
Here were the resources we covered in the episode:
Ep 43 about Gen Z Market Research on LinkedIn
Sarah Weise's LinkedIn Learning Course on Market Research
Certified Marketing Experts Certification
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.
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Show Transcript
LinkedIn Ads is a market research tool. Yeah, you know it. We're talking about market research 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! For a long time, I've treated
LinkedIn Ads as much of a market research tool, as an ad platform.
You've probably gotten a little bit of a taste of this, if you've
been listening for a while. Especially episodes like 65, where we
talked about micro segmentation. So if you haven't listened to that
episode, definitely go back and add it to your queue. But today, I
wanted to cover market research and let you into these additional
uses of LinkedIn's fantastic ad platform. Of course, all of this is
made possible by LinkedIn's incredible targeting.
0:53
First in the news, LinkedIn first cohort of certified marketing
experts just graduated this week. During episode 76, n the news
section, I announced the opening of LinkedIn's Certified Marketing
Experts Program. And it's basically an ad certification exam that
you can take to show your prowess on LinkedIn Ads. It's actually
really complex. It has four levels, and it's its own learning
management system all baked in with tons of different lessons. If
you haven't checked it out yet, first you become a certified
marketer, then you fulfill some requirements to become a certified
insider, then you can rise up to being a certified expert in
training. And then once you've met the requirements there, you can
graduate to a LinkedIn certified marketing expert. All of these
levels, you can then add to your LinkedIn profile as a
certification, which is really cool. I was lucky enough to be
selected for their first cohort. So LinkedIn flew six of us out to
their offices in New York City, inside the Empire State Building,
for a few days. And as of recording, I just got back in yesterday,
I have to say it was awesome to get to hang out with the other six
graduates in New York, we had great food, great collaboration
opportunities, and learning together, I'll be posting a synopsis of
the event and some of my learnings and takeaways, and they're
probably already out by the time you're hearing this. But if you
want those details, make sure you're following me on LinkedIn and
go find that post. You'll also find a link in the show notes to
that certified marketing program. So if you haven't already, I'd
highly recommend you go and get signed up and get certified.
Seriously, if you're hardcore enough to listen to a podcast all
about LinkedIn ads, you really deserve the credentials to prove
your geekiness. Okay, I'll get off that pedestal. The next news
item really got me excited and then let me down on January 24 of
2023. LinkedIn rolled out the ability to break down performance by
device type. We were so excited when we noticed it. And we posted
about it. The way it worked is within campaign manager, you go to
break down, and then in that drop down, you'll see either
impression, device type, or conversion device type. And then it
would break out your actual ad performance by desktop web, mobile
app, and mobile web. Well, we posted about it got excited about it
started playing with it. And then within hours, it was gone
completely. Not sure what happened. But while we had it, we did
notice some discrepancies. If you go under impression device type,
it displays all metrics broken down by device type. Where if you go
into conversion device type, it only displays conversion metrics.
But the conversion metrics between the two are a bit off. So maybe
it was a rollout that LinkedIn didn't intend to roll out yet. Maybe
someone accidentally hit the button. I don't know. But we're highly
anticipating its return. And I know I am reaching a bit on this,
but it feels to me like exposing the metrics around devices and how
they're interacting is the first step to allowing us to target by
device, which is a feature I've been pleading for since 2013. All
right, let's jump into the market research topic on hand. Let's hit
it.
4:02
First, I think it helps to define what market research is. The
definition I got when I just binged it. That's a thing, right?
Binging it? Anyway, is that the action or activity of gathering
information about consumers needs and preferences. And if you
listened at all to Episode 43, where I had Sarah Weise on the
program. She is a market researcher. This is what she does for a
living. So in that episode, we did talk a little bit about market
research. But that episode was mostly about a survey we did about
how Gen Z uses LinkedIn. But we went ahead and linked to her
LinkedIn profile as well as that episode in the show notes. So feel
free to go check that one out to get caught up. Okay, so market
research is all about gathering information about needs and
preferences from your consumers. So why in the world am I talking
about doing this on an ad platform? Well, my reasoning is very
simple. The targeting is so good. It allows you to create like
little focus groups. And then based on the behaviors that we see,
and even the differences between groups behaviors, that tells us
what someone is willing to engage with, or maybe what they're not
willing to engage with. For instance, if you look at click through
rates, they'll really tell us who's interested. And if you are
offering some sort of a conversion, the conversion rate will tell
us how intensely interested they are enough to actually convert.
Years and years ago, I remember reading the book, The Four Hour
Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And although I'm not a huge proponent of
the methodology found in that book, one of the things he mentioned
that I really liked was he used Google Ads back then to test
different titles for his book. So what he would do is hit put both
titles that he was considering into an ad, and run those ads, and
then see which one got more conversions. I think he ran them to
something like a landing page that said, click here to be notified
when this book becomes available or something like that. I remember
thinking that was a little bit misleading, a little bit skeezy. But
the concept really carried with me. And I realized early on that
because LinkedIn is targeting allowed us to target by very specific
elements of who someone is, as a professional, we could do testing
much in the same way. And actually even better if you ask me, so
much of the communication I've had with market researchers, has
been them trying to find people who fit a certain criteria, they
have a certain level of experience in business, or have a certain
seniority, or in a certain company size. And all of these are
things that just by the virtue of LinkedIn targeting, we can
already do very, very easily. One of the ways that I'll use this is
within a single campaign. So we're targeting the same person, I
will AB test ads to test different ideas, or even different
motivations. So for instance, one of my ads might be fear inducing,
like I'm trying to communicate, if you're not paying attention to
this concept, you're gonna be behind in your career, and you'll get
fired and passed over for promotions, that kind of feeling. And
then the other ad might make them feel like more of a hero. Because
you're doing this, you're ahead of the curve, you're gonna be
lauded as a hero within the company. And what I've done there is
just figured out to a certain type of professional, which concept
is actually more engaging to them. So that's really cool. You can
also really do the same thing that Tim Ferriss did, where you have
two ads, each going to a different offer that doesn't exist, and
then have a conversion action to sign up for early access or
expressing interest. Another way you could do this is by AB testing
audiences. So let's say you have the same two ads, you put those
into two different campaigns that are identical except for one
difference, what you're looking for is to see a lift in one of
those audiences, Episode 65, all about micro segmenting. This is
all about that, you have the same targeting, except you can break
out campaigns by something. One of the ones I really like to break
out by is by level of seniority. So all the other targeting stays
the same. But maybe one campaign is targeting managers as a level
of seniority. And then another one is targeting just directors,
another one just VPs and another one just C level. And then we get
to compare performance differences between the different levels of
seniority. You'll get to find out something like does my content
speak to executives, or low level management, or even individual
contributors. Based on the engagement of each seniority, you could
consider creating new offers just for them. And again, click
through rate, it's going to tell you your level of engagement.
CPCs, or CPMs, could tell you what it costs to get in front of a
specific segment. And then conversion rates can tell you how
invested someone is in actually taking the next step. And I know
it's crazy, I think you just assume that if you're going after
someone who's in the C suite, it's going to cost more to reach them
than someone who's a manager or someone who's an individual
contributor. But that's not the case. So many times we've done this
test. By being able to speak relevantly to a C level audience, you
get click through rates high enough that it actually costs less to
reach them than it does to reach someone of a lower seniority,
which is obviously already a cool learning in and of itself. Your
boss is probably going to be really excited when you tell him or
her that it's actually cheaper to reach a CMO or a CIO or a CTO
than it is to reach a manager of IT. Obviously creating new
segments new audiences can be a lot to manage within an account. So
if you don't want to actually do this through micro segmenting and
breaking out different campaigns. You can also do a little bit of
this through the demographics tab. If you're on the demographics
tab, you can break down your ad performance by company size, by
industry, by seniority, and quite a few other things. With company
size you can find out do larger companies interact with my content
better, or smaller companies, or enterprises. Industry is obviously
pretty self explanitory. Seniorities, we already talked about. You
can also break out performance by location, but one thing I've
learned is that when you're breaking down by location, be aware
that earlier time zones in the day will be over represented in your
data, if you are hitting your daily budgets. What I mean by that
is, if I was just targeting North America, for instance, if I have
a combined daily budget of like $50, it's totally possible I could
spend that entire $50, just on the East Coast, like New York and
Toronto are getting into the office that day and turning on their
computers and booting up. But if you're not actively hitting your
daily budgets during the day, then location will be a lot more
accurate. You can break down by job function. So like, does someone
in accounting, care more about what you're advertising than someone
in finance. You can also break down by job title, but I will say
that it's a little bit less helpful for market research, just
because it's so granular. But if your targeting is really on point
really tight, then maybe job title will be a lot more helpful. All
right, here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive into how
to use LinkedIn Ads to find out which keywords are most
engaging.
The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts.
11:17
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12:07
Alright, let's jump into how we use LinkedIn Ads to test different
keywords. So you may have the same ad copy, the same offer, but you
might be curious if one keyword peaks someone's attention more than
an another one. As a recent example of ads I was launching, it was
for a client who has software where a machine learning model does a
lot of the work. So what I did is I launched ads, the same version,
but one of them talked about AI like artificial intelligence, and
another use the words machine learning. And if everything else is
the same, all except for that word, it gives us a lot of certainty
that using the word that got the highest click through rate, maybe
it's most topically interesting. Wth the rise of chat GPT, and
DALL-E, the image generating service through AI, the word AI has
gotten a lot of headlines recently. So I won't be surprised if this
test shows that AI is more interesting than machine learning. Just
as another example, if you were targeting marketers, you could try
having the word marketer and the word marketeer. And everyone's got
an opinion about the word marketeer. So I'm not pushing it by any
means. But it is another example of some sort of a keyword test
that you can do from within your ads.
13:19
Now, if anyone's listening who actually does do market research,
I'm sure you are putting your glasses up closer to the your face
and saying what you're talking about AJ is not actually market
research. And that's correct. It's more a lot of audience testing.
But you can actually use LinkedIn Ads to do actual market research.
For instance, the offer in your ad could be a survey to get
responses, or to elicit participation from specific audience
segments. Market researchers are usually given specific constraints
around what they need. So if they have 300 participants, but they
need 350, it's not crazy to think that you could go on to an ad
platform and pay a little bit more participant just to fill up the
study. So for instance, if a market researcher needs more surveys
from people in a certain corporate environment, they might pay $50
to $100 per participant, but it might still be worthwhile.
Something we've seen to be successful is offering gift cards in
exchange for a participation in a survey. And that tends to work
well on LinkedIn Ads. So then that leaves us with what do you
actually do with the data you collect while you're doing this
market research? I think the obvious answer is to make hay while
the sun shines. When you find anything that's performing better,
optimize towards that top performing ad copy, or those offers, or
those audience segments. You may be really surprised if one segment
of your population really becomes your core audience that the whole
company's marketing team turns to focus on. And you can find this
because LinkedIns amazing targeting is helping you do it. If a
certain segment is performing well. You can go and raise budgets on
those top performing segments. You can increase bids to try to get
more of that traffic. You can go and write more ad copy like your
top performing copy. You can go and create more offers like your
top performing offers. And of course, all along the way, if there's
a segment that isn't delivering, you can pause it, you can bid it
down, shut it off. This really is the magic of being able to micro
segment your audiences because really anything that we want more
of, we can turn those dials up in a way that we couldn't if they
were just combined into one larger campaign. Being able to raise
budgets and raise bids on those super high performers, and turning
the dials down lowering bids lowering budgets on the segment's who
aren't performing. If these were combined into one campaign, you
have no levers that you can pull to get more of what you want. You
can also craft new offers for that high performing segment. If you
know one segment is performing better than anything, go out and
start creating specific content for them. They're obviously hungry
for what it is you're offering. Alright, I've got the episode
resources for you coming right up so stick around.
Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more?
AJ Wilcox, take it away.
16:18
All right, all of this is going to be in the show notes below, but
Episode 43, we've got the link to that. It was the one all about
market research around Gen Z on LinkedIn with Sarah Weise. I've
also linked to Sarah Weise's LinkedIn profile. Episode 65, was all
about micro segmentation so we've linked to that as well. You'll
also see a link to Sarah Weise's LinkedIn Learning course, all
about Market Research Foundation. If this has been interesting to
you talking about market research, you'll definitely want to go to
the source and learn deeper about what's involved. I linked to the
certified marketing expert certification down there as well make
sure you go and get signed up and participate. If you or anyone you
know is looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, check out the
course that I did with LinkedIn Learning all about LinkedIn Ads.
The course is an hour and a half long, it's relatively simple, and
it covers a lot of the topics we talked about here on the podcast.
It is by far the best course I've seen on LinkedIn Ads, especially
given its cost, it's extremely affordable. If this is your first
time listening, welcome! So excited to have you on board, make sure
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your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.