In this episode we talk to the LinkedIn Marketing specialist, AJ Wilcox

The founder of B2Linked.com, AJ Wilcox has managed hundreds of accounts and a combined 100 million dollars in adspend on LinkedIn. He has worked directly with several of the top 10 LinkedIn accounts.

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AJ Wilcox got recruited into a technology company in Utah to run all their digital marketing. On his first day he went out and presented his marketing plan, she said that it was great and to go ahead and execute it and let him know that they started a pilot using LinkedIn ads, and told him to see what he could do with it. Said yes, and then asked himself what he'd gotten himself into. He'd never heard of LinkedIn ads.

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Went into the platform, tried to figure things out, and within about two weeks one of the sales guys came up to him and said that they had no idea what he was doing but that they loved his leads, they were fighting over them, and to keep it up.

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Went into their CRM (Sales Force), looked at all the leads that this was dispositioning, and all of them that he was talking about were from LinkedIn. At that time, it was not the only channel he was running. Kept investing and growing in LinkedIn, until he grew to become the world's largest LinkedIn advertiser.

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What can you do on LinkedIn ads that you can’t do on other platforms?

• Specific targeting.
• You can reach specific people by their job titles, company sizes and industry among other things.

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Even though the clicks on LinkedIn are much more expensive than on other platforms, the leads are of much higher quality. It’s the same people are using both platforms, but on other platforms (like Facebook) it’s more difficult to find a professional person because it contains a lot of personal information and little to no business information.

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If you’re looking to reach a CEO that works for a company with more than 500 employees in the United States, you know that you’ll find specific targets that fit that criteria, and thus creating a high-quality lead. The approach on Facebook is very wide, therefore getting a lot of unqualified people.

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Websites are not enough anymore, now you need a website like you used to need a storefront, but now with social media you have to be engaged and you have to reach people through social media.

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Bring your AMO to social advertising (Audience, Message and Offer)

• Audience: Nailing down your targeting.
• Message: How are people actually seeing your add, imagery, video, what your add copy is like.
• Offer: What is it that you're offering to someone in order to get their attention.

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Who LinkedIn ads are for

If you don't fit in this category, then you should save your dollars. AJ has launched hundreds of accounts so that we can find out what works and what doesn't work.

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Three verticals that work really well:

1. High value B2B lead generation. To close deals that are worth $15,000 dollars or more to you over the lifetime of that deal.
2. White collar recruiting. If you're a technology company trying to fill in 30 or 40 new seats this year, then using LinkedIn ads is probably a really good thing to use.
3. Higher education. MBA programs, PhD programs trying to recruit students. LinkedIn has very good targeting in regard to education. What they study, what degree they have, what degree they don't have to be able to target.

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