The Campainless Blog
Video is the preferred language of many modern marketers. While image, carousel, email, conversation and GIFs all have their place – it’s video that often gets the highest engagement. On LinkedIn in particular, video generates an average of 3x the engagement than other types of posts. But with so many brands all over the globe distributing paid video content daily – it’s important that you put in the effort to stand out from the crowd.
In this comprehensive guide we’ll run through everything you need to find success with Linkedin video ads. From showing you how to create click-worthy video content and set up a video ad campaign to the key specs, best practices & examples – we’ll make sure every base is covered. Put your trust in us to act as your video sensei and there’s no way you’ll miss the mark. Let’s get into it.
So you’re introducing video ads to your mix, or wanting to level up your current video marketing efforts. There’s probably one golden question on the tip of your tongue: how do I create the perfect video? While the answer will change depending on a number of variables – there are a few core ingredients to success that you should hang on to. Let’s run through them.
Following the number #1 principle of LinkedIn content marketing, top-tier video ads are always built with campaign objectives in mind. For example, if you’re trying to achieve brand awareness – your video should focus on education. This could mean platforming your brand story, sharing insights from a whitepaper or testimonials of customer success.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to generate conversions – the focus of your video should be on getting prospects to take a specific action. For example, book a demo, get in touch or sign up for a webinar. This means a video which shares a quick product demo, highlights a few key features or gives a sneak peek of your webinar would be better suited. Regardless of your objective, alignment is key!
Just as your video content should be designed for the relevant funnel stage and objective – it also needs to be built with your target audience in mind. Therefore, before you start creating, you need to ask yourself – will someone in your target audience immediately identify with and be drawn in by the video you have planned out? In the first three seconds? If not, you need to go back to the drawing board.
With so many ads out there, the odds are that unless you capture a user’s attention straight away, they will keep scrolling. In fact, studies show the first 3 seconds are crucial. So, how do you stop people in their tracks? You need to give them something eye-catching to grab onto straight off the bat and front load your key messaging.
Despite LinkedIn video ads being set to autoplay, they are muted by default. This means that it’s absolutely vital that you design for the possibility of the sound being off, as this is how most people will end up viewing it. If you don’t – as the old adage says, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. Adding subtitles to your videos is the most obvious way of ticking this off. Simply add closed captions and make it as easy as possible for your audience to be reeled in by your video even if they can’t hear it.
Video length is another key factor influencing the success of your video ads. For brand awareness and consideration objectives – LinkedIn recommends you stay under 30 seconds (with 15 seconds being the optimal length). Slightly longer videos are recommended for demand generation. No matter what stage of the buying cycle your video is designed for, the video needs to be direct and to-the-point. Don’t mess around. Cut the fluff.
When creating your video, it’s worth building a couple of different variants you can test as opposed to spending all your time filming one single, perfect video. Whether it be different lengths, different focus points or offers you play around with – it’s important to get your testing hat on in order to see what works for your business and get the best results.
Along with your best practice tips, you’ll need to refer to the most up-to-date Linkedin video ad specs to ensure you’re set up for success.
Ad copy recommendations:
Once you’ve got your shiny new video at your fingertips – it’s time to put it to good use. Luckily, if you’re well practiced in launching non-video ads, you’re already 90% of the way to launching a video campaign. Let’s break it down into a few simple steps.
Once your video ads are out into the world, it’s not your signal to hit the snooze button. Rather, it’s time to measure, analyse and optimise! How? Circling back to your objective, the way you measure success and optimise your campaign will be dependent on what you’re trying to achieve. Some key metrics to check in with for your video campaign are – video views, cost per video view, view through rate (VTR) and percentage of video watched but depending on where in the funnel you are, you also might look at conversion rate (CVR), reach, leads or impressions.
Whatever your KPIs are – customise your dashboard accordingly and check in regularly with performance. As you start to see more volumes of data coming through, identify any significant variances (e.g. a drop in VTR or an increase) and make adjustments accordingly. We’ve pulled together our most handy LinkedIn campaign optimisation tips here if you need more help.
By now you know what to do in theory, but you might not know what a good LinkedIn video ad actually looks like out in the wild. How can we address this? Let’s sift through some A+ examples of real companies excelling at video marketing to give you some helpful and encouraging inspiration.
Salesforce’s recent 30 second brand video is a great example of a video ad done well. For starters, it clearly aligns with the top-funnel awareness stage. The focus is on educating prospects about the Salesforce brand, what they stand for and how they help organisations around the world every day. The intended audience (all businesses across industries with a customer focus) is also clearly articulated. Want to create a top-funnel video for your brand? Take some pointers from this short video.
Another example of a KPI-smashing LinkedIn video is brought to us by Meta (aka Facebook). In this short video, they share a heart-warming customer story through some evocative storytelling and clever call-out stats, paired with simple messaging that focuses on the SMB audience and the positive impacts of a particular product of theirs. This video does a great job of building positive brand recognition and building trust. Plus, appealing to the specific audience (SMB).
Later’s recent LinkedIn event sign up video is an equally excellent example of how to nail this ad format. In this case, the ad is used to achieve a clear bottom-funnel conversion objective. You can tell that this is the case straight away, as well as who the audience is (social media professionals), what the offer is (event sign up), what the intended next step is (to head to a landing page to sign up) and the key details of the event. The branding is also very clear right from the get-go and the fun graphics draw the user in right from the first few seconds. Phenomenal 👌.
After covering all the bases (best practices, specs, campaign set up instructions, optimisation and examples) – you should be well on your way to creating top-knotch LinkedIn videos and ad campaigns. Need a bit more help? Campainless can deliver AI-generated optimisation recommendations & best practice to help you get 110% more juice out of your LinkedIn video campaigns.
