LinkedIn is finally finding its feet as an advertising platform.
After a decade of trailing Meta, the tables have turned on LinkedIn or Meta advertising for business-to-business (B2B) marketers.
LinkedIn now offers a product which depending on your audience and objectives, is comparable or superior to what Meta offers the marketplace regarding usability, visibility and ROI.
LinkedIn or Meta Advertising for B2B Marketers in 2023
Let’s break down the different social media advertising elements impacting our analysis: LinkedIn has finally wrestled the B2B advertising space initiative away from Meta.
Objectives
Social media platforms align their objectives with the traditional sales funnel stages of Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.
LinkedIn and Meta give you a wide range of objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor your progress in line with your chosen objective.
Audience
LinkedIn has steadily grown its audience to over 34.9m users (Sept 2022), with usage suggesting the platform has the visibility and influence of crucial decision-making demographics, as more than 77% of LinkedIn users in the 25 – 54 age bracket.
Whereas Meta has a larger number of users (approx 44m) but has reached demographic maturity with a risk that younger generations are switching off and switching to newer platforms.
This audience change is significant as whilst Meta runs the risk of being substituted, LinkedIn has established its role and become a staple of the modern business infrastructure.
This means that ads on LinkedIn may reach users in a more B2B aligned mindset, leading to higher intent activity.
Ad Formats
LinkedIn and Meta both have similar options regarding the available advertising formats with attention to users’ feed or inbox.
Each platform has its ad formats tailored to different features such as Reels and Stories (Meta) and dynamic or InMail (LinkedIn).
Content should be tailored to each format, although smaller options on the main LinkedIn feed give users better visibility than on cluttered Meta infrastructure.
Targeting Options
The targeting is where LinkedIn stands head and shoulders above Meta for B2B sectors.
Whilst both platforms offer effective re-targeting options, the ability to hone in on an audience by industry, company size or name provides a specificity that can generate massive results with the right objective.
The Meta algorithm is effective at finding its audience. Still, with IOS 14.5 and other privacy-related restrictions, LinkedIn has a winning hand in ensuring your message reaches the right people.
Cost
LinkedIn ads are still more expensive than Meta ads in key metrics such as CPM and CPC. The targeting specificity means that the ROI increasingly overcomes this from an effective LinkedIn advertising strategy.
LinkedIn Or Meta Advertising
Choosing the right platform for your advertising depends on all the elements above and how they match your audience and marketing objectives.