Just yesterday we got a call from an associate asking how he could advertise on Linkedin. Our initial reaction was why would someone in Zimbabwe want to advertise on Linkedin when Facebook offers a wider audience. Infact, we initially we thought it was not even possible to advertise on Linkedin from Zimbabwe.
Linkedin is the third largest social network with 200,000,000 (Wikipedia says 259 million) active users and 0.1% (200,000) are in Zimbabwe which is already enabled to advertise on the social network.
Unlike Facebook which is mass market, Linkedin advertising has probably the best B2B ad targeting tools available. These tools allow you to target by Job title, seniority, Industry, company size or company name.
The more you narrow down your target market, the fewer the audience as it picks up the relevant people and organisations. If your audience shrinks to below 1000, your targeted audience is considered too small for a campaign on the platform. Since our local audience is small, you can either target as many companies as possible or just select the all radio button if the product you are selling is relevant for “all”.
There are other targeting attributes like age, gender and skills, which will also narrow down the target audience but it has to stay at least over 1000 people for the advert to be displayed.
Linkedin has a the option of cost-per-click or cost for impressions for pricing. At a minimum of $2, cost-per-click is a bit pricey and probably not be the best option. Cost per impression gives you 1,000 impressions per day for the same minimum budget so we’re guessing this would deliver more.
Linkedin has the largest database of influential professionals in Zimbabwe but hardly has any adverts targeted at the Zimbabwean audience when you browse the site. The social network has been mainly used by job seekers and for networking purposes by skilled professionals that typically access it from their workplaces.
What are your thoughts? Should business users in Zimbabwe start including Linkedin as a social media platform for advertising campaigns.
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2 comments
Why not, i believe companies should use any available means of advertising available. LinkedIn also being a social network for professional gives your brand a certain feel of opulence and high value.
I don’t know the research on this, but Linkedin makes more sense to me for advertising professional services and products. I doubt you’re going to successfully sell me legal services or a house, say, on FB. I’m more likely to be in that frame of mind while browsing LI. On the other hand, I would more likely respond to entertainment services or consumer goods adverts while using FB.