While your image is what grabs attention to your ad, your copy is what sells the offer. Ad copy is the lifeblood of your ad. If an ad has bad copy you will not get clicks. There are many different methodologies of ad copy writing, and most can work very well on the platform. But there are basics that I see missed too often.

1.       The format of the ad.

Improper ad copy format (or flow), is one of the most common mistakes on the platform. The ideal ad should flow like this: Attention Grabber > Description/Sell > Call To Action. This is a very simple formula but one that’s

Attention Grabber

Use this to catch the attention of the reader. Recommended intros: Pose a question, bring up a pain point, strong statistics, or state a solution.

Ex.

Increase your sales by 30%

How are S&P 500 companies increasing their sales?

Is your team struggling to reach sales goals?

The 3 proven ways to crush sales goals.

Description

Used to actually sell your product. Could be one or two sentences. Show them why they should care about what you’re offering.

Ex.

The sales leaders’ proven strategies ebook. What the top salesmen are doing to crush their goals.

CTA

Very quick call to action. Include at the end of your copy. Should be short & to the point.

Ex.

Download Now

Book a Demo

Schedule Your Call

Keep it Short & Simple

LinkedIn ads have a 600-character limit for sponsored content & video ads. But only 150 characters will be shown before “learn more” cuts off the message. If possible, keep things below 150 characters. People rarely click “learn more” and you want to make sure you’re able to get your full message across.  

Next, keep your message as simple as possible. Avoid acronyms, slag, and overly technical messages. All of these complicate the message, take valuable characters, and will result in lower engagement. Keeping your message simple doesn’t cheapen your brand, it makes it more approachable & understandable.

So which to choose? Let’s discuss.

Landing Pages Best Practices
Most advertisers like to start by sending people to their site to convert. This is a great way to build awareness of your brand, get traffic to your site, and build retargeting audiences. In our experience, individuals who go to a website to convert tend to be slightly higher quality leads. That being said, CPL’s tend to be higher as landing pages convert at a lower rate than LinkedIn lead forms. So what can you do to see the best performance from your landing pages?

Answer 3 questions in the first 10 seconds.

When someone comes to your landing page, they need to know: who you are, why they should care, and what you want them to do. Answering these questions in as quick a time as possible is what we’ve seen succeed. A punchy, concise headline paired with a concise description below, with a clear CTA is the best way to do this. We recommend also including any forms you need filled above the fold to ensure the best conversion rates.

If you’d like to learn more about conversion focused web design, Unbounce has a great article on “The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Design” that we would highly recommend reading.
Note: If you want to use landing pages with your ads, remember to set up conversion tracking on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn insight tag needs to be on every page of your site and any conversion actions will need to be created in LinkedIn. This should be found under the “Analyze” tab.

Lead Gen Form Best Practices

LinkedIn lead gen forms are something we often recommend. They are perfect for companies who have struggled to convert on their site and are looking for consistent lead flow. They tend to see higher conversion rates than landing pages due to them being very easy to fill out.

The main weaknesses of lead gen forms is that intent usually is lower and you will lose out on pixel based retargeting of the traffic to your site. Even with these weaknesses, LinkedIn lead gen forms are the perfect avenue to generate high-funnel leads through content. Do not run demo, or low funnel offers through lead forms. These types of offers need additional information to sell someone on the offer and perform best with a well optimized landing page.

Setup of lead forms is easy. You will go into the “Assets” tab and there will be an option for “Lead Gen Forms”. All you will need is a link to your privacy policy and a link to where you will send people once they’ve filled out the form.

Keep your form copy punchy and to the point. Always end your description paragraph in a CTA. Keep the information you request to a minimum. Avoid having questions where they need to write in answers. This will drop your conversion rates by at least 30%. Requesting info that can be filled automatically from the info within an viewers profile helps smooth the conversion process and ensure the highest conversion rates possible.

And Google isn’t shy about how amazing they think Performance Max is: “Performance Max helps you drive performance based on your specified conversion goals, delivering more conversions and value by optimizing performance in real-time and across channels using Smart Bidding. Performance Max combines Google’s automation technologies across bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, attribution, and more. They’re all empowered by your specific advertising objective (for example, if you have a CPA or ROAS target) and the creative assets, audience signals, and optional data feeds you provide.”

I’ve tested Performance Max in several Google Ads accounts and I’ve found it to be very successful in some, mediocre in others, and downright abysmal at times. So should you test Performance Max? Ask yourself these 4 questions:

Question 1: Do You Have Iron-Clad Conversion Data in Google Ads?

As they say in computer programming, Garbage In Garbage Out (GIGO). So if you don’t have your conversion tracking set up correctly you won’t likely have success with Performance Max. This is easiest for ecommerce because revenue is the usually the ultimate goal. However, for lead gen advertisers this gets more difficult. You likely need to think about Offline Conversion Import (OCI) to update conversion values as leads progress through the funnel. For the smart bidding to do it’s job you’ll need to tell it which leads are good for your business and which ones are garbage (because there is still plenty of that out there.)

If you answered yes to this questions, move on to question 2. If not, don’t use PMax.

Question 2: Are You Comfortable With Ads Across All Google Ads Inventory?

When I say “all” I mean ALL. It will be showing ads on Google search results pages, Maps, Shopping results, search partners, Google Display Network, YouTube, apps, Discovery and Gmail. That compromises a vast majority of the web as we know it.

If you answered yes to this questions, move on to question 3. If not, don’t use PMax.

Question 3: Do You Want Precise Audience Targeting?

Say you’re an advertiser that know exactly who you want your ads in front of. You have personas that describe these people by their job titles, income levels, seniority at their current company, how big that company is, where they live, etc. If you want to limit your impressions and spend to just those people, you’d better go do some LinkedIn Ads.

Or maybe you’ve had success with using in-market audience, affinity audiences, or custom intent audiences with your Google Ads campaigns. Those don’t work with Performance Max.

You do have the ability to add Audience Signals during the creation of Asset Groups in a Performance Max campaign. Here is what that means: “Audience signals allow you to add audience suggestions that help Google Ads automation optimize for your selected goals.” So you can point the algorithm in the right direction, but it doesn’t have to listen if it thinks there are conversions outside that target.

If you answered no to this questions, move on to question 4. If not, don’t use PMax.

Question 4: Do You Have Strict Guidelines on Creative?

Performance Max really leans into the dynamic nature of ad creation. You provide assets and it goes from there. That can include the following:

• Images: Up to 15
• Logos: Up to 5
• Videos: Up to 5 (and if you don’t provide any, Google will auto-generate them for you)
• Headlines: Up to 5 (with a 30 character limit)
• Long Headlines: Up to 5 (with a 90 character limit)
• Descriptions: One short description up to 60 characters and then 4 more with a 90 character limit
• Call To Action: Select from their preloaded list
• Business Name
• URL pathways
• Final URL

Google will take all that info and create ads that fit the myriad placements around the web. And with the nature of machine learning, it will create some ads that you probably don’t like. Or you might be in an industry where creative is highly regulated (looking at you legal and healthcare).

If you answered no to this question, congratulations! You should consider testing PMax.