Does LinkedIn Advertising and Sponsored Update work?

I have never clicked on an advert on LinkedIn, or knowingly clicked or shared a sponsored update.

But I have taken advantage of the LinkedIn promotions wehre they give you £20 or £30 to try running ads or sponsored updates.

I tried advertising & sponsored updates.

Sponsored Updates burn through cash

I burned through the ‘free’ cash on the sponsored update in a day or so. Suspecting that this might be successful, I paid to increase the ad budget.

A few days later the cap was reached.

Result.

• A few shares. A few clicks.
• But no upsell.

Perhaps I picked the wrong update to sponsor?

Certainly it got in front of people, but I had less interaction with the sponsored update, than I do on a normal update.

So I probably will not try this again.

Text Ads

I created two text ads.

I thought two might give me an A/B test, and feel kind of scientific.

One of my ads has achieved 49 impressions over 30 days, with no clicks, at a cost of $0.00

The other ad has achieved 9576 impressions, with 1 click, at a cost of $2, over 32 days.

I chose “Cost per Click” model.

LinkedIn suggests that other advertisers are paying $6 - $10 per click. Whereas I decided to target the long tail and see how long the budget would last, so I went for the minimum $2 per click.

I have just increased the cost Per Click to $4 and will see what happens.

At the moment Ads seem like a way of putting text on people’s screen that they don’t click on. But it doesn’t cost much.

And you can cap the daily spend - so provided you remember to check the ads section of LinkedIn periodically you might not end up too much out of pocket.

Does this work?

Again, I’m not convinced of the efficacy of this advertising approach.

I suspect that quality updates and posts might have a better impact.