10/07/2020

LinkedIn boasts the most relevant and fastest-growing audience for B2B sales and marketing contexts, with 80% of users driving business decisions. It has over 640 million professionals, and with a significant percentage of these being senior-level influencers or decision-makers, it makes it the premier social network for B2B demand generation and audience engagement. In fact, in most B2B focused industries, LinkedIn is the only relevant social network. This is succinctly emphasised by the fact that B2B brands see 3.5x higher conversion rates on LinkedIn than on other social channels. These statistics indicate that LinkedIn has become the primary channel for B2B demand generation. As a consequence, it is becoming an essential focal point for the advertising efforts of B2B companies and brands. This brings many marketers to the dilemma of how to pick an advertising agency to help support these campaigns. The following list of factors will help provide a foundation in understanding what you need to consider in your selection of a LinkedIn Advertising Agency. 

Experience in Your Industry

This might come as a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how many companies choose to work with agencies that have little to no experience in their respective industry. It’s crucial to work with an agency that has a deep understanding of your target market and the persona profiles you’ll be reaching; their pain points, KPI’s, industry conditions and more. 

LinkedIn Specialisation and Expertise

LinkedIn has been growing exponentially year after year, nevertheless, there is a relatively small number of agencies that specialise primarily as LinkedIn Advertising Agencies. Due to the increased prominence of LinkedIn, many traditional agencies are shifting to this new channel. However, due to their orthodox structures and past work, they tend to apply the same classic agency models that work on B2C-focused platforms such as Facebook or Instagram to LinkedIn. These models are based on mass-targeting, rather than the hyper-targeting that is possible on LinkedIn. Furthermore, different types of advertising resonate with a LinkedIn audience versus a normal social network due to its professional orientation. Simultaneously, there are a large number of different ad formats that can be used and optimised depending on the objectives of the campaign. These elements of Linkedin advertising, among many others, are crucial to consider when carrying out a LinkedIn advertising campaign, and few agencies already have enough experience to fulfil this requirement. 

Global Language Capabilities

The large and widespread audience available on LinkedIn covers all markets and countries. Concurrently, the Linkedin Advertising agency you choose to work with should have native speaking capabilities to service campaigns oriented towards any market included within your scope. 

Employing New Technologies

Marketing is a field which is constantly evolving and undergoing innovations to solve problems and achieve new milestones. These technologies range from Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation to Social Listening and audience data crawling. It’s pivotal to choose an agency that has a clear understanding of the current state of technological development within marketing and your industry as a whole. This is key to ensure that your advertising efforts are being maximised by all available tools and methodologies in order to not fall behind your competitors. 

Data-driven and Numbers-focused

If you talk to any marketer or agency, they will vehemently mention that they are very “data-driven”. This trend is a direct result of the rise of data and its applicability within all areas of business and the world in general. However, when talking to prospective agencies, it’s paramount to verify whether they truly are data-driven. Signals of this proficiency can be the fact that they have a dedicated data analyst team or their own database. This database must have rigorous standards that keep it up to date, in compliance with legislations such as GDPR, and apt at obtaining on-demand data. Ask them about their data collection process and how they refine, clean and enrich their data.

Skilled Creative Team 

Although advertising is becoming increasingly data-driven and technical, there is still a salient creative component that is essential to power a successful campaign. The agency you choose should have a devoted creative team for ad design and content creation/optimisation. This team should have the capability of working on their own account from start to finish or to collaborate with your own creative department. An indispensable litmus test to evaluate the creative team of the agency you consider is to ask for examples of their past campaigns, with all associated results and material. A competent agency should have pre-formulated case studies to share with you of similar projects and campaigns to provide proof of the quality of their work. 

Measurement and Flexibility Oriented

A high performing agency is highly adept at measuring their results and embraces it as an opportunity to show their prowess. When choosing a LinkedIn Advertising Agency dive deep into how they measure their impact, as well as how quickly they are able to report results back to you. This level of rapid measurement is crucial to ensure consistent optimisation. Moreover, the digital landscape is constantly changing, as evidenced by recent pandemic events, and an agency that can transform and refashion their efforts quickly is a requisite in today’s business climate. 

If after reading this article you’re still finding it challenging to find a marketing agency that possesses all of these attributes, feel free to reach out to us over at hello@momentumdata.com. The Momentum Data B2B Marketing Suite is a great example of a marketing agency service that combines all of the above and more, personalised to your needs and objectives.