The Campainless Blog
LinkedIn follower ads are a unique dynamic ad format – with only a few very specific use cases. For this reason, they are often perceived by marketers to be more ‘fringe’ or ‘edge’ rather than staple.
Despite this assumption, there are many benefits of follower ads that make them a powerful ad type to use in your creative mix. Particularly if you’re running top funnel activity and looking to boost brand awareness or engagement from your target audience.
We’ll run through the basic anatomy of the LinkedIn follower ad – what they are, their mighty benefits and how to leverage them successfully. Don’t worry about fluff, we’ve cut through the fat so you only know what you need to.
LinkedIn follower ads are designed with the specific intention of helping marketers drive targeted traffic to their company page and get more followers.
They can be used in conjunction with two top funnel objectives on LinkedIn – Brand Awareness and Engagement.
If you select Engagement as the objective, a “Follow” button will be automatically added. For existing followers, you can customise the call-to-action you would like members to see on the ad.
Every follower ad is tailored to the member who is viewing it. What they will see is their profile photo next to your company’s logo. They’ll also see their first name and your company name in the ad copy.
LinkedIn follower ad campaigns have a number of interesting benefits that many marketers are unaware of. Here are just some of the very valid and compelling reasons why they can and should be used to enhance your overall LinkedIn strategy.
Followers ads can be found in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager account, and can be selected where you would for any other ads on LinkedIn.
Like video ads, dynamic ads, message ads, you choose your audience, objective (awareness or engagement) and bidding set up the same way.
Our recommendation would be to exercise the following tips:
If you’re driving people to your LinkedIn company page, there’s no excuses for a poor set up. It would be worthwhile doing a little clean up and tidy before starting any follower ads. Go through all your posts and sense check for relevance and value, trim the fat.
Alternatively, if your company page is very sparse, it’s probably worth investing in some organic activity on your page before you start directing your ads there. It’s not a good trust symbol for new users to see nothing there!
With follower ads, LinkedIn allows you to pin a post to your company page so that you can curate what your prospect sees first. You should be strategic with your choice here. Opt for something that’s more top-funnel: focus on trust building and education here rather than pushing for a conversion. Again, you need to match your content with the funnel stage.
While using a cold acquisition audience with your follower ads is still worthwhile, particularly if your objective is brand awareness, we’ve typically seen it work better when they’ve already seen your brand, heard of it, or visited your website.
If your audience is already familiar with you, there’s a far better chance that they might want to actually follow your company page.
Now that you have all our wisdom, tips and information, you’re more than capable of going out there and achieving follower ad greatness. Our only remaining piece of advice is to test and experiment until you see what approach works for you. It’s possible this format doesn’t even align with your business objectives, but you won’t know until you get out there and start testing the waters.
The Campainless team have years of experience in LinkedIn ads, including followers ads and are happy to answer any of your questions. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a more holistic, longer term solution for boosting your LinkedIn performance, our AI-powered platform Campainless can give you the recommendations you need to nail all of your ad campaigns from start to finish.
