How Do LinkedIn Conversation Ads Work?

[SEM Geek]

LinkedIn conversation ads are a powerful way for marketers to engage their target audience and drive conversions through personalized messaging. But how exactly do these ads work? In this article, we'll break down the key things you need to know.

What Are LinkedIn Conversation Ads?​

LinkedIn conversation ads, also called LinkedIn Message Ads, allow you to reach out directly to your target prospects and start 1:1 conversational messaging threads with them within the LinkedIn platform.

With these ads, you can:

• Send personalized messages to your ideal prospects
• Continue the conversation over multiple messages
• Showcase your brand story through sequential messaging
• Drive prospects to your website or offers

The key benefit is that, unlike regular display or sponsored content ads, conversation ads enable you to build relationships with individual prospects at scale.

How Do Conversation Ads Work?​

At a high level, LinkedIn conversation ads work through the following process:

1. You determine your target audience and create highly relevant, multi-message sequences tailored to them
2. Your message sequences are shown to matching prospects in the LinkedIn feed
3. Prospects can respond to your messages, starting a conversation
4. You continue nurturing promising leads by responding to messages
5. Conversations eventually convert into sales pipeline

Next, let's look at some of the key components powering this process.

Targeting Options​

LinkedIn offers extensive targeting options to ensure your messages reach the right prospects. You can target by:

• Demographics like age, gender, education level
• Job title, seniority, company
• Groups, interests, skills
• And more

You can also leverage LinkedIn's account-based targeting to personalize outreach to key companies.

Message Sequences​

The key to success with LinkedIn ads is crafting multi-message sequences tailored to your audience rather than generic one-off messages.

For example, you may have a 3-5 message sequence focused on product education, relationship-building, and driving conversions. Personalization tokens let you insert the prospect's name, company, position etc. directly into messages.

Conversation Tracking​

Within Campaign Manager, you get a centralized inbox to manage conversations with prospects. You can see open & response rates, assign conversations to sales reps, and export promising leads.

Powerful analytics provide insight into optimal messaging sequences. You can A/B test content to improve performance over time.

LinkedIn Conversation Ad Best Practices​

Here are some top tips to drive success:

• Personalize every message extensively using first name, company, position etc.
• Provide value through helpful insight before any sales pitch
• Use visuals like gifs and images to increase engagement
• Automate sequences but have a human takeover promising conversations
• Experiment and optimize with A/B testing to improve conversions

Real-World Examples​

Here are some examples of brands excelling with LinkedIn conversation ads:

• Adobe used sequential storytelling and personalization to increase sales conversations by 2x
• Zendesk leveraged employee advocacy and gated content to generate 800+ sales opportunities
• Flexport ran hyper-targeted campaigns across Europe to qualify inbound leads

The key is crafting messaging aligned with the prospect's journey while leveraging automation and personalization.

Wrap Up​

So in summary, LinkedIn conversation ads provide a way to combine mass-reach with the high-touch engagement of 1:1 messaging.

By targeting ideal prospects, crafting customized messaging sequences, tracking conversations in real-time, and running continual testing, brands can drive more inbound leads and pipeline.

What questions do you still have about LinkedIn conversation ads? Feel free to start a discussion in the comments below!