LinkedIn DirectAds Time of Day Tactic

On LinkedIn you can find all sorts of people looking for jobs and business networking opportunities as well as networking and updating their profiles for current jobs that they are happy with. Towards the bottom I’ll give you a big Split Testing trick, but first let’s explore what you NEED to know about LinkedIn.

Targeting for B2B and tough demographics such as a certain type of corporate executive or company size can be tough. Most people don’t realize that LinkedIn has a DirectAds program.  For around $3 CPM (or a pricey CPC option) you can display similar ads (text and image) as you can on Facebook, to ultra targeted demographics. There are lots of business people on LinkedIn and it’s premium ad space for any product that they might be interested in. However, you have to realize WHY and *WHEN* they are on the site in order to capitalize on it on top of just knowing the demographic.

For the sake of saving money, I would suggest figuring out your effective CPC elsewhere then bidding CPM on LinkedIn, their CPC tends to be very pricey. You can select all sorts of options such as what size of a company they work for, what their particular profession is and etc.

This is PREMIUM ad space for any type of B2B product or other product that targets people working at small to large companies. Most of the people on LinkedIn are employed and then from there you have the ability to target to all size companies with various other specific demographic related options. People generally are fairly accurate with their LinkedIn profile, maybe even more-so than Facebook, which is VERY good for marketers that know their demographics.

Advertising for services can be effective on LinkedIn as well. People go to LinkedIn for several reasons. They go their for work related updates to their profile & networking, and if they are thinking about work and see a relevant ad that could benefit their company they are likely to click it right at work. They also go there when they are at home, looking for another job, updating their profile or doing some networking outside of work.

The most important aspects of LinkedIn DirectAds are 1) Demographic targeting (which is almost exclusively how their ads are targeted) and 2) Understanding why, when and where people are accessing their account. (If someone is at home and fed up with their Job then I highly doubt that they are going to be interested in a product/service that benefits their current company.)

Time of Day Rotation Script

Here’s a BIG tip about making a successful LinkedIn campaign. As of the time of this writing DirectAds has the ability to do all sorts of cool things as far as how to target VERY specifically to a demographic. The problem, is that you can’t target to the time of day!

A businessman AT work is not likely to click on anything that his current employer would not approve of, such as any type of business opportunity. Whereas someone at home would be much more likely to look at that. Similarly, a businessman at home is less likely to be interested in something that his current company can benefit from, whereas if he his AT work, it would be more likely that he would click and take a look.

For these and many more similar reasons, we need to test LinkedIn by the time of day. Here’s the basic PHP script to do so (note, you can also target by Day of the week as well with a similar code). Put this code on an index.php page and send your DirectAds traffic to index.php. The actual landing page codes should be in index2.php and index3.php. Note: You can set this up with many more variations. You can hire a PHP programmer on DP to write you a script for your exact case for $15-20 or contact me if u want free help.

<?php
$hour = date(“G”);
if ($hour < 6) $page = “index2.php”;
if ($hour > 6) $page = “index3.php”;

include $page;
?>

So with this you are showing one variation during the day and one variation at night. Keep in mind, this php code works on your SERVERS time, not your computers time, so be sure to calculate that or write a more detailed script to account for all the time zones that you are targeting. If you need help use the contact me at the top of the page. The point here is to give you an ah-ha moment in realizing that its not just about the demographic especially when we are targeting B2B, business opportunity or other business related people/products. Time of day is very important!

–Brian