In order to make the most of your LinkedIn Ad campaigns, it's important to understand which LinkedIn Advertising stats are worth paying attention to.
LinkedIn Advertising is a great marketing platform for Business-To-Business (B2B) marketing campaigns. And if you’re looking to convince your higher-ups just how great of a platform it is, you’ve come to the right place.
For starters, advertising on LinkedIn is a great choice for B2B campaigns because over 645 million professionals use LinkedIn.
If you want more expert advice on mastering LinkedIn Advertising you can check out our Boost Sauce Episode podcast or the transcript blog post as well.
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Most marketers and business owners overlook the value of advertising on LinkedIn for several reasons.
“One reason people don’t get started on LinkedIn advertising is that they already have too much on their plate (or they think they do). But the other reason most companies don’t advertise on LinkedIn is that LinkedIn advertising can cost more than other paid media campaigns.”
While you may think you’re too busy to set up and run LinkedIn advertising or you think the costs will be too high, the good news is that you can overcome both of these issues with the right planning and strategy.
Let’s take a look at how you can target your advertising on LinkedIn with less effort and costs than you thought possible.
In 2016, Microsoft announced that it had finalized a deal to buy LinkedIn. This move was a surprise to some, but many analysts saw this as a natural step for Microsoft. LinkedIn is a natural partner with Microsoft’s strong corporate connections and Office Suite.
Microsoft began investing in the social network to bring the platform’s features to be more in line with mainstream social networks.
Over time, LinkedIn has developed features to help people connect through video, voice, and in-person meetings.
In the past, LinkedIn had limited advertising options for companies. Yet, as the platform has continued to mature it has seen some different marketing tactics open for business owners looking to engage professionals on the social network.
Through its B2B targeting options, you can make sure the right people see your ads. Advertising on LinkedIn can help your business achieve a number of objectives when kicking off your LinkedIn advertising campaigns like:
- Brand Awareness
- Audience Engagement
- Drive Qualified Traffic To Your Site
- Lead Generation
- Boost Website Conversions
LinkedIn could be a better marketing choice than Facebook or Twitter because LinkedIn algorithms are tuned to drive engagement from qualified business professionals. This is especially true for B2B sales and marketing initiatives.
Whether you are running a retail shop or a manufacturing business, LinkedIn has advertising options that can help you reach your target audience and reach your goals.
Advertising on LinkedIn is best if you want to reach business professionals who focus on learning about new business opportunities.
LinkedIn advertising is a smart investment because your ads can reach millions of people. Each month, about 303 million users log in to LinkedIn to engage with content.
This means that your business has a great opportunity to reach your target audience and drive engagement for more conversions and sales. But that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why you should invest in LinkedIn Ads.
We aren't about blowing smoke – we want to back any platform we support with tangible, mathematically significant statistics.
So, below, you'll find 53 LinkedIn Advertising statistics meant to show you the power of LinkedIn's professional audiences and connection-based platform.
We'll start by covering LinkedIn stats based on their users and different LinkedIn Advertising audience engagement rates. Then focus on LinkedIn content and how it engages differently with these unique users.
By better understanding these stats you can better manage your social traffic to better prime your brand page for professional profiles and LinkedIn content views that can earn you actual revenue.
Lastly, we'll look at the actual returns (ROI and ROAS) of LinkedIn Advertising campaigns and how they've actually performed across different LinkedIn Ad types and other subtle nuances. *Hint Hint* That’s the section you want to stick around for.
Hopefully, by the end of this post, you'll have everything you need to start building your LinkedIn advertising campaigns with confidence today.
We all want statistics that help give us solid ground to stand on when making decisions regarding our ad campaigns. In fact, the stats speak for themselves on the subject:
“If your sponsored content update actually includes a statistic, like in the actual like written portion of the actual text of the ad, there was a 37% higher click through rate and 162% more impressions.”
Coming straight from the mouth of LinkedIn themselves, the platform sees over 172,800 new users every single day. Which rounds out to around 62 million new users every year.
And this is just adding to the whopping 650 million users that are already using the platform.
Of this massive user base, over 303 million of these professionals are actively using LinkedIn and 40% of that 300M visit every day.
That's a highly active, high-engagement, and highly qualified daily audience you get to practice with.
According to certain sources (Kinsta), there's a total of 121 million users who visit LinkedIn's site every day. Now let's do some basic addition: If you combine this stat with the LinkedIn Advertising stat that stating there are approximately 173K new users every day, you get an audience of (rounding up) 300 thousand daily users.
I don't know a single marketer who would pass up on at least taking a look at a daily audience of that size. Especially one that boasts the professional userbase that LinkedIn Advertising does.
Now, what's really important about LinkedIn is the professional level audiences that you gain access to (as opposed to the average Joe hodgepodge of the Google Search Network and Facebook).
The hype about LinkedIn's professional network is true: over 92% of the Fortune 500 use LinkedIn (not quite sure what the other 8% are doing).
An even more valuable LinkedIn Advertising stat, however, is that the vast majority of LinkedIn users (daily or otherwise) don't use the platform as their primary social media.
In fact, out of the 2 hours and 22 minutes of daily social media usage, average consumers today only spend about 17 minutes a month on LinkedIn. That averages out to about 30 secs/day with daily usage.
Of course, there is an exception to the rule: LinkedIn users looking for a job (which can sometimes take up a vast majority of the user base) spend more time on the site than ordinary users. Job seekers can spend as much as 30 minutes a day on LinkedIn scrolling through their news feeds.
“What's important and congruous through all of these LinkedIn statistics is that the professional user base is highly engaged, but in rare spurts.”
The average LinkedIn user is incredibly scrutinizing with their activity on the platform. So, it's all the more vital you make the most out of every impression.
There’s a reason LInkedIn Pulse has continued to see increasing popularity since its implementation into the LinkedIn Advertising platform.
It’s the same reason why so many content marketers (yours truly included) turn to LinkedIn for the exclusive content syndication and promotion purposes.
LinkedIn professionals like to read. With only 9% of LinkedIn users having a highschool degree or less, that leaves the vast majority of users who are well read and well educated. Which means that your content can’t just be click-baity one hit ads if you want it to succeed.
“With real readers (qualified, professional prospects in your LinkedIn audience) comes real challengers, and also real rewards.”
Given such a dense population of qualified readers that you can target with LinkedIn groups and the like, it’s no surprise that 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as a content distribution network. And that’s a number that’s on the rise over the past years, climbing from 94% back in 2017.
LinkedIn boasts nearly the entirety of the Fortune 500 as part of its user base. So you can expect some big names to be reading your content.
And you’d be right to take a second look at your posts just in case it catches a CEO’s or CFO’s eye. It turns out that 91% of marketing executives turn to LinkedIn as their first choice for high quality content.
That said, here’s another important LinkedIn Advertising stat for any content creators out there: only 3 million users share content on LinkedIn a month.
Which means that even if your content is being engaged with highly on the platform, you’ll probably end up relying on boosting your LinkedIn posts to spread their reach (as opposed to relying on organic shares).
This is fine, because the power of LinkedIn lies in it’s professional audiences and Group targeting that you can layer with different demographics in order to fine tune what users see which ads and what content.
No wonder LinkedIn beats out its more popular competitors in terms of actual preference for advertising campaigns. (That’s right. I said it.)
LinkedIn boasts a 78% preference for marketers choosing a social ad platform. Facebook and Twitter, in contrast, throw up a shockingly low 42% and 48% respectively.
Let’s start with some of the linkedin advertising stats you’ve probably been looking for since you started reading this post. (Congrats to the keyword sleuths who managed to scroll straight to the high-value section of the post).
Currently, LinkedIn CPC’s (cost per click) run somewhere between $2-$7, depending on the demographic you’re targeting (as well as the ad type you’re using).
Now, at first glance, this stat seems fairly daunting. Not only is it just an average CPC, but it’s a high one at that. I mean, $7 – holy cow!
However, when you combine the stat with a few other LinkedIn advertising stats it becomes very intriguing. For example, at such a high CPC, you’d be surprised to know that LinkedIn Ad managers see general success in their conversion campaigns nearly 65% of the time.
And even more so, that 65% converts at an average 2.74% lead-to-conversion rate.
“For such a high CPC, it’s mysterious that so many marketers are still converting at such a low rate. Why would they chase their tails like that? Simple: LinkedIn conversions are far more valuable.”
But before we get into the actual performance section of our LinkedIn statistics post (and why LinkedIn ads are so darn valuable), let’s take a look at a few different types of LinkedIn Ads and how they work.
This way, you can refer back to the section below to see which LinkedIn Ad type is best for your campaign optimization goals.
Before we move on to the next section of LinkedIn statistics, let's take a look at some of the different LinkedIn Ads that you can use. Each will bring with it a unique bevy of statistics for us to examine later on in the post.
Advertising on LinkedIn is a useful way to market B2B products, bring in job applications, and increase your web conversions. Once you decide to market your company, the next step is to learn how to advertise on LinkedIn.
Sponsored content is a way to share your posts, presentations, and videos with your targeted audience.
This type of LinkedIn advertisement will push content that you already have on your LinkedIn company page. You can reach an audience that does not currently follow your business on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Sponsored Content ads show on the LinkedIn feed of your audience. This content will appear as native content along with other content in their feed.
You can choose to promote images, videos, and text to a new audience. And you can set goals to get your content boosted with likes, comments, and shares.
This option allows your advertisements to blend in with the feed the user already consumes. It is a natural, organic way to share your content with your targeted audience.
You should choose LinkedIn Sponsored Content if you want to drive engagement like:
- Drive highly qualified conversions from a professionally focused user base
- Increase followers of your Company page.
- Boost awareness of company news and fresh information.
- Drive more traffic to your blog or landing page through a LinkedIn post.
LinkedIn Text Ads are like the text ads offered by Google and Bing search ads. These PPC text ads can help you drive traffic to your website or LinkedIn company page.
LinkedIn Text Ads appear in the feed of your audience or placed in the side rail of specific pages on LinkedIn.
You can customize the message of your ad with 25 characters for the headline and 75 characters for the description.
While these ads only work on desktop, they are good at grabbing the viewer’s attention. They also come in different variations. You can use these text ads to drive specific goals through LinkedIn advertising like:
- Drive qualified traffic to your website or landing page.
- Boost brand awareness by showing ads on specific pages for a target audience.
- Run experiments for different campaigns with conversion tracking.
Sponsored InMail is a way to advertise a personalized message within someone’s inbox on LinkedIn. This makes it feel like your advertisement is talking to the user.
This is a personalized option that includes a custom greeting, body text, and call-to-action button. LinkedIn Sponsored InMail works like a regular email message because you can reach your audience through their inbox.
Since LinkedIn Sponsored InMail is personalized, you should use this LinkedIn advertising option for targeted audiences for high-value goals like:
- Drive engagement with valuable prospects.
- Generate leads for a new product or service.
- Promote specials and other offers that a specific audience will buy.
Companies use LinkedIn Sponsored InMail messages because they offer advanced customization and audience targeting.
You can choose who your message reaches and you can customize your greeting, text, and CTA button at the end of each message.
LinkedIn Paid Video Ads is a type of sponsored content that appear in the LinkedIn feed of your audience. You can promote content on your Company page with this type of advertising on LinkedIn, or you can promote customized video content for specific audiences.
This is a top choice if you want to differentiate your brand, spread awareness, and generate leads. It is ideal for targeting different market segments and reaching decision-makers. Paid video ads offer different formats and targeting options to help you reach your objectives, like:
- Generate more leads with a CTA button on each video.
- Drive qualified traffic to a landing page with engaging video content.
- Build brand awareness and engage your audience with visual stories.
Similar to other LinkedIn advertising options, you can use LinkedIn Paid Video Ads to build a relationship with your audience and guide them through the Customer Journey.
LinkedIn Paid Video Ads are a great choice if you are looking for a way to engage your audience with visual content.
Not to leave anyone out, you can also take a look at LinkedIn Carousel Ads. These allow advertisers to leverage the diversity and adaptability of Facebook’s famous carousel ads (where you can show multiple tabs to advertise different products or service packages) on LinkedIn.
This combines the highly interactive and engaging ad formats from Facebook and applies it to the highest professional and high-value audience of LinkedIn.
Sounds like a great social media advertising combination to me. No wonder over 75% of marketers said they plan to use carousel ads in their next LinkedIn Ads campaign.
LinkedIn Dynamic Ads use information that user share in their profile to create highly personalized ads. These ads only appear on a desktop to people who are logged into their LinkedIn account.
This means that you can target a specific audience and boost engagement with advanced ad personalization.
Since LinkedIn Dynamic Ads personalize each ad with information from individual users, you will see great Click-Through results for each ad and drive more traffic to the desired URL. Dynamic Ads can also generate revenue because users can input their name and email address directly into the ad.
You can use LinkedIn Dynamic Ads for a number of objectives other than lead generation like:
- Reach highly qualified job applicants.
- Show relevant content to a target audience.
- Increase leads with downloadable content and offers.
From Sponsored InMail messages to targeted Sponsored Video Ads, you have a number of ways to reach highly qualified customers for your B2B marketing.
And so, we finally come to our performance-based LinkedIn Advertising Stats section.
The fact is that most of these Linkedin stats speak for themselves in terms of user engagement and conversion rates. Where LinkedIn's value truly shines it the quality of its prospects.
The average LinkedIn user earns over $75K/year. In other words, they're well educated, well employed, and probably have some money to spend.
It's no surprise then that 89% of B2B marketers include LinkedIn in their digital marketing strategies in at least some way, shape, or form. In fact, LinkedIn is actually responsible for 80% of B2B leads in current PPC campaigns.
On top of that, 58% of marketers say that LinkedIn delivers the best value in terms of ad spend, engagement, ROAS, and lead quality over other platforms. (And, in my opinion, that number only dropped down from 80% because of Facebook's powerful eCommerce capabilities.)
No wonder more than 42% of marketers have already decided to increase their LinkedIn Advertising budget in 2020.
So, having read up on all the stats and just how effective LinkedIn ads can be, don't you want to join them?
Advertising on LinkedIn has never been easier (or more effective). You can gain a competitive edge through targeted marketing tactics with LinkedIn advertising solutions.
Choosing the right type of LinkedIn advertising ads can be difficult. But you'll succeed if you start with goals and then build an advertising strategy around your target audience and offerings.
Take a closer look at LinkedIn advertising options today. Use the tips above to start promoting your business on the world’s largest professional social network today!