Last year, LinkedIn enabled businesses to add video directly to company pages, as well as create video ads as standalone posts to appear in the LinkedIn news-feed. Posting videos on LinkedIn is believed to be one of the most effective strategies for businesses and B2B marketers to engage their target audience. LinkedIn says that video is 5x more likely to generate conversation among members than other types of content.
Previously we wrote about why you should be posting videos on your LinkedIn business page in more detail. Today, let’s look at some of the best practices for LinkedIn video advertising campaigns.
Define your objective
The first step is to define the goals you want to achieve – this will help you design the right content for your video, as well as measure the success of your campaign. There are different types of goals you can pursue: raising awareness about your company, differentiating yourself from your competition, and generating demand. For the first two goals you should track impressions, views, view rates and click rates. For lead generation you should look at conversion rates, leads and cost per conversion.
Content is king
Align the content of your video to the objectives you have chosen. If you want to raise brand awareness and consideration, your video should tell the story of your company and brand, position you as a thought leader, provide useful information to your audience, or share success stories of your current customers. If you want to generate demand for your products/services, you can be more specific; post a short demo of your product, a preview of an event or webinar you are hosting, or an explainer video of your product/service.
Keep it short
Shorter videos are more effective than long ones, so it’s best to keep your video length under 30 seconds. Long-form videos can however be an effective way to tell a richer story or explain a complex product/service to your customers. Viewer attention typically drops after the first 10 seconds, so do try to convey your main message right away.
Make it visually appealing
Make your video visually appealing by including graphic elements, people, text… Don’t rely too much on sound, as many people will watch your video on mute.
Follow LinkedIn’s video specifications
Make sure your video is properly formatted and in line with LinkedIn video specifications:
- Keep the video size between 75 KB and 200 MB
- Use a horizontal MP4 format
- Keep it under 30 frames per second
- Follow the pixel & aspect ratio requirements
Define your target audience
Follow LinkedIn targeting best practices to avoid being too broad or too niche; you should be specific enough in order to reach people who matter most to your business without narrowing down your audience too much.
Include a CTA button
Equip your video with a persistent call-to-action button (CTA), which will tell your audience what to do next. You can choose between ‘Learn more’, ‘Apply Now’, ‘Download’, ‘Sign Up, ‘Register’, ‘Subscribe’ or ‘Get Quote’ as a CTA – depending on your goal.
Test and optimise
There is no single recipe for success, but you can always test different strategies to see what works best for your business. Try A/B tests with changing one variable at a time and compare results. You can test different video lengths, different content types, headlines and descriptions, etc.
Just go for it!
The best thing is that you don’t have to hire help or buy expensive equipment to produce compelling videos. With a little effort you can easily create engaging content that will help you increase website traffic, conversion rates and sales.