This week, LinkedIn launched the ability to create and advertise unpublished posts from company pages.
Similar to Facebook “dark posts,” LinkedIn’s “Direct Sponsored Content” gives advertisers the ability to advertise content in users news feed without the content appearing in the on the company page.
The beauty of this, is that businesses can create several “sponsored content ads” that enables them to:
- Personalise their message to different audiences.
- Test different messages for the same audience
- Control what appears on your company page
This is incredibly powerful.
Marketing is more effective when messages are more relevant to the target audience.
Having the ability to tailor messages to specific audiences or even test messages within a specific audience is cheap research that can help you learn more about your audience.
But it’s not just about the testing. Direct Sponsored Content can help with lead generation. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to develop the right offers that generate leads. This is where having a solid content strategy can help.
Ad hoc content promotion without a strategy is simply going to be less effective.
The feature will be available in LinkedIn’s campaign manager – where is were you can run ads or sponsor content.
It’s a logical extension to their Sponsored Content advertising feature that was launched last July.
At the moment, a dozen or so companies are participating in the pilot and you need to speak to your LinkedIn representative to access it or access one of the few LinkedIn partners.
We’ve yet to see it appear for in out company campaign manager but that’s no surprise – it’s in pilot mode.
With 19% of LinkedIn marketing solutions revenue from sponsored posts, it’s likely to be rolled out to the masses in the not too distant future.
Keep your eye open for it when it is rolled out – it’s great feature to look out for – especially if you are in the B2B space.
In the meantime, you can still promote content in LinkedIn. It’s just that you won’t have the ability right now to control what appears on your company page.
Here’s how it will appear when it does eventually roll out to Australia.