Spotify
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Apple PodcastsIn this podcast, Dean Denny, host & founder of Owendenny Digital, discusses the exciting developments in LinkedIn advertising for SaaS companies and B2B organizations. He highlights the decreasing cost of traffic on LinkedIn compared to Facebook, making it a lucrative platform for marketers.
Dean advises adapting the tone and content of ads to suit LinkedIn’s audience and recommends rotating creatives for better results. He emphasizes the potential for lower costs per lead on LinkedIn and encourages listeners to take advantage of this opportunity before competition increases.
Top 5 Lessons you will learn from this podcast:
1) The cost of traffic on LinkedIn is decreasing compared to Facebook, making it a more affordable advertising platform for SaaS companies and B2B organizations.
2) LinkedIn’s targeting options are powerful and allow marketers to reach their key decision-makers and avatars more easily compared to Facebook.
3) Advertisers need to adjust their tone of voice and offers when transitioning from Facebook to LinkedIn, as not all strategies that work well on Facebook will be effective on LinkedIn.
4) Rotating creatives and aggressively testing different ad formats on LinkedIn can lead to better results and engagement.
5) Despite the initial investment required, running LinkedIn ads can yield lower costs per lead and higher lead quality compared to Facebook, especially in the B2B space with less competition from other advertisers.
Timestamps:
[00:02:56] Marketing costs rising
[00:04:23] Cost of Facebook Ads Dropped
[00:05:46] Media buying landscape flipped: Try LinkedIn Ads!
[00:07:00] Accelerate with LinkedIn Ads.
[00:08:26] Target key decision makers with LinkedIn.
[00:10:13] Change tone, rotate ads
[00:11:47] Invest in LinkedIn Ads for B2B.
Hey everyone. And welcome back to open source growth, your leading destination for all things, direct response advertising, growing your SaaS business and marketing strategy. My name is Dean Denny. I am the founder and director of Owendenny digital Australia’s top ranked SaaS marketing agency. And I cannot wait to go through today’s podcast with you. Why? Well, we’re pretty excited here at the agency because we’re starting to see some very exciting numbers pop through, and it’s not for our own accounts, even though we are doing this test right now, inside our own campaigns. And just for context, it’s the 26th of June 2023 and we’re right in the thick of it. When it comes to end of financial year here in Australia. Now the reason why I want to do this podcast today is to mark a point in time.
Here’s what’s been really interesting for us recently. At Owendenny, we do market a lot of SaaS companies. We work with a lot of B2B organizations, especially, you know, those seven to eight figure, um, services companies who are really looking for some aggressive scale. Um, and where they go to, when it comes to, you know, top line growth marketing strategy and coordinating everything from, you know, the head of marketing through to the team members, helping them work with our agency, providing them with the demand generation services and the SEO strategy, the whole name it, you know, we’ve, we’re across a lot of things at Owendenny digital.
So, um,
Why we want to talk about today is that we’ve been running tests internally and we have been running tests externally. And what we mean by that is that our clients are participating in our signature, our IT process, which is the rapid iterative testing process where we determine the best means of generating gated content leads or marketing qualified leads.
We determine the best process of generating sales qualified leads through either content or, um, the light sales offerings. We also determine the best platforms, the best creative angles, the best messaging. The best. Um, big ideas in order to get growth marketing to work for their business. So we do this with SaaS companies with online brands.
Um, services companies, very, it’s a very B2B thing that we do, and we do it exceptionally well. But what’s really crazy here is that in the context of one of our clients, one of our enterprise clients. We’ve been doing this both on Facebook and we’ve been doing it on LinkedIn. And we’re starting to see some very, very exciting, uh, things emerge. Now, as many of you would be listening to this podcast you’re probably a devoted marketer. You know what you’re doing, or you may have a pretty good understanding of what you’re doing. You’re running Facebook ads, uh, your, you know, You’re writing copy, your developing creatives, you might be doing it with the aid of chatGPT and Canva. You may be shooting short form videos on your phone, or if you’ve got a professional videographer that you’re working with.
Um, your, you know, obviously developing particular offers, particular frameworks. Um, you could be just running traffic directly to your website. Like this doesn’t really matter too much about that today, but what we are starting to see. Right here right now in this snapshot of time. Is the cost of traffic on LinkedIn is starting to pivot.
As you may be aware if you’re running Facebook ads right now, a thousand dollars on Facebook ads that you spend five years ago would be the equivalent of spending $5,000 on Facebook ads today. What we are trying to articulate here is that, the way facebook bills is based on not the number of clicks you generate, but it’s based on the number of impressions they serve and what we’re starting to see here. And it’s really quite fascinating this journey, is the cost of link of Facebook ads, say five years ago, you may have been only paying, you know, $8 to $12 per thousand impressions. In the B2B vertical from a lot of the campaigns we are running, whether they be conversion-based campaigns or they be lead form campaigns. So strictly demand generation based or lead generation based campaigns.
We’re starting to see the CPMs be a lot higher. Than our typical LinkedIn. Campaigns now this is super exciting. See, if you spoke to me about five years ago around about LinkedIn ads or spoke to any marketer, they would have said, don’t do it. It’s a waste of time. There’s not enough users. The cost per thousand impressions will blow your socks off. You’re going to be spending $25 a click. You’re going to be spending $150 per 1000 impressions.
It’s going to be hard to do. You need to spend at least $8,000 a month to get it to work. Nowadays that is not the case. Just last month, we’ve been running ads on LinkedIn. And we’re starting to see that our CPMs are cost per thousand impressions have dropped below $40 for high quality, high interest, wildly motivated b2B leads with C suite stake holders. It’s down to $40 per CPM. It’s gone from 120 down to 40 where we’re seeing Facebook go from eight to $12. For conversion-based campaigns and now that’s sword all the way above. 60 to $80 per thousand impressions. We’re talking about a complete flip in your media buying landscape.
So what does this mean? If you are a media buyer, or if you’re at CMR and you’re thinking, hang on a second, we’re spending 10 grand a month or $25,000 a month in Facebook ads haven’t even scratched the surface with LinkedIn. And now you’re thinking, hang on a second, there’s an opportunity. This is really, really cool. We can do something. We can make this work.
Uh, well, Ladies and gentlemen, it is the time for you to give it a crack. Now. I’m not going to go too much into the details of how LinkedIn is a different platform. Because it is it’s undeniable with respect to Facebook ads, but LinkedIn, as a platform, by the way, I’m not motivated to say this. I’m not paid on endorsed by the LinkedIn ads platform here. This is totally unbiased.
Unfettered views here. That with LinkedIn right here right now. You can start to hit the accelerator where your competitors are spending more and more to acquire customers. So if you have a proven funnel and you have a proven landing page with a proven sales process, you just need high quality traffic hitting your landing pages. Not only do you need higher quality traffic into your landing pages, you need the volume of traffic hitting your landing pages.
So if you’re fed up and sick of spending. Ending seven to eight, even $25 a click on Facebook just to drive a higher quality B2B prospect to a landing page. Changing your media mix from say 80% Facebook. It’s down to 60% Facebook and then putting a sampling budget or a testing budget towards LinkedIn.
Um, ads, maybe the smartest move you do all week, all year. All decade. Because of the fact that we’re starting to see such an improvement in the platform, not only from an artificial intelligence targeting perspective. They’ve changed the way they buy media. It’s not. A combination of impressions and clicks. It’s now just impressions just like Facebook. So you can really make a very easy comparison.
The targeting options, they are very, very powerful. It’s very easy to target your key decision maker. Or your, you know, your key avatar, very, very simply. It’s not like Facebook whose everyone’s providing you with a fake name or a fake address or a fake whatever. And it’s confusing the living daylights out of the Facebook ad platform, even though it’s very good at targeting.
LinkedIn has so much more nuanced B2B prowess nowadays. And the only thing that’s removed us advertisers from getting in the game and having a crack with LinkedIn is the cost of traffic that’s coming down. More users are hitting the platform. You can run ads, you can target people. It’s all really freaking powerful.
So. Guys, I’m really excited about this. If, if you do have a brand and if you are running LinkedIn ads, This is the time to double down because if your competitors are on Facebook and they’re spending money and they’re not getting anywhere with it. Just go for it. Like just absolutely knuckle down. If you can double your spend do it. It is the time it’s time to go. Especially when they were coming into a recession. Everybody.
We know historically that the best startups, the best growth stories come at. Uh, we’ll come out. No. Those best startups are those who manage to get through the sock of the recession and explode out the back end. And the way you can do that is by aggressively marketing throughout the recession. That is what’s going to keep you powerful, keep you strong.
And get you to grow. So. If you’re going to consider it, this is the time to do it.
Now, word of warning. If you are just a Facebook advertiser or a, or a founder, who’s running the Facebook ads. And you’re trying to get yourself to go across to LinkedIn. Believe it or not, you do have to change your tone of voice. Some offers will not work on LinkedIn. We’ve had.
Our own experiences with LinkedIn. We’re offers where we were generating marketing, qualified, lead off to marketing qualified lead for less than $10. A contact. Have fallen flat on LinkedIn. So just because something works really, really well on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s always going to work well on LinkedIn.
The other thing you need to consider with LinkedIn, just because of the fact that there’s not as much optics on rate on frequency. There’s plenty of optics on impressions that there’s not that much optics on reach. You don’t get those beautiful frequency numbers that you can honestly appraise the power of your advertising. So what we have found is working well with LinkedIn ads is rotating your ads aggressively. I’m not talking about changing offers aggressively because at the end of the day, you need to give something some life to see whether it’s going to work or not.
But changing out your creatives, that means changing your copies, changing your, um, creatives. Stopping our video formats for carousels and carousels for images. Um, really go aggressively there. The other thing we’re starting to see as well, is that. You need to be spending at least, and this is where it can be cost prohibitive.
You need to be spending at least $80 per campaign per day to see any meaningful results. Now. What does that translate to? Well, if you’re not willing to invest $4,000 a month into LinkedIn, you may just be spinning your wheels. But. There is hope because at the other end of the journey, What we’re starting to see are the cost of LinkedIn ads. Once you have the campaign dialed in much lower. We’re not talking. $80 per lead on Facebook. We’re seeing the same thing happen. On LinkedIn for $65-$70. We’re seeing the lead quality be better. If not. Much better than what we’re seeing on Facebook for a lot of our big B2B accounts right now. And. The best part about it. There’s a whole lot less competition. There’s a whole lot less R&D in this space, because the best advertisers haven’t caught around to doing it. And here’s the best part. You’re just competing with other B2B advertisers who really don’t know what they’re doing on the platform either. Whereas what you can see. On Facebook, is that you’re not only competing against B2B advertisers for the same?
Target market you’re actually going to be competing for. That same screen time against other direct to consumer brands and governments and all sorts of stuff that are marketing to those same people. So guys, if you are thinking about running LinkedIn ads, this is the time to do it. If you can’t afford an agency to do it, get onto YouTube and go for it.
If you’re looking for someone to coach you on this, find a good marketing coach that has experience here. It will be a lot more cost effective than working with a marketing agency. But if you are looking for someone. To take your demand generation by the collar. And get it to really thrive for you, or just wanting an honest appraisal of what you’re already doing.
No strings attached. We can help you. We are a direct response advertising agency, Owendenny digital we’ve been working with hundreds of brands over the past five years, getting them to grow and thrive online through the power of Facebook ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads. Marketing strategy and direct response advertising.
Think Gary Halbert think Gary Benson venue, think David Ogilvy and match that with Neo from the matrix, plus a whole heap of media buying geekiness. And your SaaS company. That’s what you get with Owendenny digital. So if you are interested, Why don’t you just go book a free 10 minute chat with me where we can go through you, what you’re trying to achieve and see whether there’s a fit for us to help you believe me. We do turn people away. So I’m one of those crappy sales calls. It’s unfiltered, raw, straight up marketing and personal growth advice.
And we may even be able to help you at the end. So then we can talk about next steps. So if you are interested in running LinkedIn ads, you don’t know where to start. Why don’t you go book a free 10 minute call, hit the link at the very bottom of this podcast. And we can take it from there.
But guys, get onto it. Cease this opportunity. It’s not going to last long. The AI window of opportunity is starting to close. This one has just opened. Get in there before it’s too late. My name’s Dean. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of open source. Um, growth and. If I don’t hear from you, I hope you’d be well. I’d go about executing this today. I’ll talk to you all soon. Cheers. For now.
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