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How Your Business Could Benefit from LinkedIn Ads

Small Biz Buzz hosts Crystal Heuft and Scott Martineau are joined by AJ Wilcox, who works for an ad agency that helps with the account management side of LinkedIn Ads as well as teaching, training, consulting, auditing, and anything else individual teams need to attract leads.

Wilcox expressed that the big limiting factor for LinkedIn Ads is their cost. The average cost per click, when you're using their ad network in North America, ranges from $8 to $11. This isn't traffic that's ready to buy–these are individuals who are interested in learning more about topics, or they're interested in consuming content. So $8 to $11 a click for something that is more mid to top of funnel.

“What I tell people is, if you have a lifetime value of $10,000, $15,000 or more of one of your future customers, then LinkedIn Ads is a great place to get to know them and get in front of them,” said Wilcox. “If less than that, smaller B2C offers, even smaller B2B offers, you're going to have a really hard time getting a return on your investment.”

Wilcox said you're launching a combination of AMO–your audience, your message, and your offer when you present your LinkedIn ads. The first thing you're going to be looking for is your click-through rate.

“I think most people who start using LinkedIn Ads should use one ad format. It's called single image sponsored content,” said Wilcox. “It's the simplest, shows up in your newsfeed type of ad. Very versatile. And the average click-through rate on these across the network is a little bit less than half a percent.”

Click play for more.

Transcript:

Crystal Heuft (00:09):

That's how I feel about Donkey Kong.

AJ Wilcox (00:11):

Same here with street fighter. Street fighter's my jam.

Scott Martineau (00:13):

Well, I think for all of our listeners, you'll never guess where we've gone in this conversation and we haven't even started yet. We started though, with the discovery of a new planet that is habitable. We went all the way back into high school where we discovered that AJ Wilcox, our guest for today, and Dusey, our man behind the curtain who does everything, actually went to high school together.

Crystal Heuft (00:34):

And now I'm jealous.

Scott Martineau (00:34):

Crystal had a bit of a breakdown, and now we're ready.

Crystal Heuft (00:39):

A bit.

Scott Martineau (00:39):

I think we've set the stage for today's podcasts, which is going to be amazing.

Crystal Heuft (00:42):

Jealousy, mayhem, and LinkedIn Ads. Who's with me?

AJ Wilcox (00:49):

Crystal and I got to hang out at Social Media Marketing World right before all the COVID stuff hit. So I don't think I've walked outside since then. That was fun.

Crystal Heuft (00:57):

I know. We were like the last conference standing. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So we're so happy to have you here today. I feel like we should just jump in because we really have been talking a lot of nonsense wasting your very valuable time here. I hope you at least enjoyed it, but today we're going to really be talking to our listeners about LinkedIn Ads. And I was telling Scott and the crew here all about how you really were one of the first people to move to LinkedIn Ads.

AJ Wilcox (01:21):

Yeah, it was really interesting, the way I did it is when I started in digital marketing, I was all about the search channels. I did a lot of SEO, a lot of Google ads. Back then it was AdWords, and I kind of stumbled into LinkedIn Ads. When my boss at my last company said, "Hey, we just started a pilot on this stuff. See what you can do." I kind of walked out of her office and went, "Oh, I don't want to look stupid to my new boss, but I have to assume that if I've never heard of LinkedIn Ads before they must not be any good. So I'll try and see what I can do with them." But sure enough, about two weeks in, my sales rep came up to me and said, "AJ, we don't know what you're doing, but we are fighting over your leads back here, keep it up."

Crystal Heuft (02:01):

That's awesome.

Scott Martineau (02:02):

That's so sweet.

Crystal Heuft (02:03):

If the sales team is saying that then you know it's good. So just in case we-

Scott Martineau (02:07):

What year are we talking here, AJ?

AJ Wilcox (02:11):

That was like 2011.

Scott Martineau (02:11):

Okay. Holy cow.

Crystal Heuft (02:13):

Right? So just in case we brushed over this cause we were all laughing and joking, I want to make sure everyone knows this is AJ Wilcox. He has a very thriving, like a big thriving business on LinkedIn Ads. And he is going to be helping us through all that today, just to make sure we get that name out there because I want everyone to know how to find you, if they have questions.

Scott Martineau (02:32):

And AJ just for our listeners, so you obviously use LinkedIn Ads in your business. Do you also teach others? Is that part of your business now, is to teach others LinkedIn Ads?

AJ Wilcox (02:41):

Yeah, I'd say we're an ad agency, that LinkedIn Ads is really all we do. And about 90% of what we do is the account management side, where we manage the accounts of our clients. But about 10% is me teaching, training, consulting, auditing, all the stuff to help individual teams do their stuff.

Crystal Heuft (03:00):

And I know Scott, you're always teasing me about Social Media Marketing World ever since you found out that networking events at night are really like a big party.

Scott Martineau (03:07):

That start [inaudible 00:03:09]

Crystal Heuft (03:09):

Yeah, exactly. No, they really do start at like 6:00 to 7:00 PM. And the conference goes from like 8:00 AM till then, but you're right. It is a party in the evening. That being said, what I wanted to really call out is I feel like at Social Media Marketing World, the speakers there are so giving of their time. So that 10% for that week probably goes up to 80 or 90 because you're just giving away so much free information. You're really helping and consulting with people constantly. And I just want to say thank you for that, cause it's always so great.

AJ Wilcox (03:37):

Oh, you're welcome. And I'll be honest. I have an ulterior motive. I love teaching. I get so much out of it. So anytime someone puts me on a stage in front of 800 people, I'm in. Count me in.

Crystal Heuft (03:48):

I do want to share a little bit, or have you share a little bit about what made you start with LinkedIn Ads? I know you shared a little, but I think you really were like a pioneer for trying to make that really lead gen and grabbing business from.

AJ Wilcox (04:01):

I kind of stumbled onto LinkedIn Ads. I kind of got forced in another position, but when the leads I was generating from LinkedIn Ads ended up becoming the largest or the best lead generation source for that company, and I just kept investing, kept investing, I got to a point where I'd grown that account to become LinkedIn's largest spending account worldwide. I ran that for two and a half years and the whole time, I'm a smart visual marketer, if I can say so myself. I was tracking every LinkedIn Ads term on Google Alerts and Talkwalker alerts.

AJ Wilcox (04:35):

And on Twitter, I was following every mention of it. And the whole time I'm slaying it on LinkedIn Ads, I keep watching like, what is the world saying about this? And it was like maybe one or two mentions a week, is all LinkedIn Ads got across the entire internet, as far as I could tell. And I went, "This is stupid. I can't believe that I'm doing so much with these and no one's ever heard of this platform." That's really what gave me the idea. You know, I started out in SEO where I would go and pitch to speak at a conference and they'd say, "Oh, we already have 200 SEOs who are pitching. Sorry." Just wasn't worthwhile. But as soon as I was like, "Hey, I know LinkedIn Ads really well," all of a sudden people were interested in learning something they didn't know before.

Crystal Heuft (05:19):

Yeah. And I still think it's highly sought after, because there's still such, I would say, an on ramp of LinkedIn Ads. People are definitely aware of it now, but there's still not very many people that have adopted to using it in their own businesses. So I definitely think it's still sought after and still should be looked to as, I think, one of the premier ad platforms for social.

Scott Martineau (05:38):

Hey, so AJ, give us an idea here, maybe just at a high level at least, what's different between LinkedIn and other social platforms from an app perspective?

AJ Wilcox (05:48):

Yeah. It's a great question. Especially when so many of you are going to know Facebook Ads really well. It gives us a really good analogy here. So LinkedIn has 24 different targeting facets that we can use, and all of them are about who you are professionally. So while Facebook, if you're doing B2C offers, it works amazingly well. It's great targeting. As soon as you start getting into the B2B side, the data gets either really thin or really flimsy. You end up having to try to stretch, and of course the costs are significantly lower there, but you end up having to spread your targeting so wide that you ended up spraying and praying for leads. And the sales team will tell you like, "Hey, these leads are garbage," and you end up paying too much when you start looking all the way down to a cost per sales qualified lead, for instance.

Scott Martineau (06:35):

So what are some examples of things that maybe somebody who has experience with Facebook would be shocked to see in terms of targeting?

AJ Wilcox (06:42):

I think people are really... Everyone goes to the job title targeting on Facebook and realizing that it's something like only 4 to 6% of people even bother filling in that information. So if you're running a job title campaign on Facebook, you might be really shocked to understand that if you did the same campaign over on LinkedIn, you'd have potential to reach an audience of five or 10 times the same size. The other thing that we get on LinkedIn that Facebook doesn't get is the ability to target my groups. So Facebook groups are awesome and they're hot, but you can't target members of the groups. But on LinkedIn we've been able to do that ever since they came out in 2008.

Crystal Heuft (07:19):

Well, I always think that's really great. And I know you and I have talked a bit about who are LinkedIn Ads right for? Like what size of business, the industry, the budget. Can you share with people a little bit more about who should be using LinkedIn Ads?

AJ Wilcox (07:33):

It's really important to understand that the big limiting factor for LinkedIn Ads is their cost. So the average cost per click, when you're using their ad network, especially in North America, is like $8 to $11. And this isn't traffic that's ready to buy. These are people who are interested in learning more about topics, or they're interested in consuming your content. And so $8 to $11 a click for something that is what we'd consider more mid to top of funnel, is difficult to do if you have a small lifetime value.

AJ Wilcox (08:06):

So what I tell people is, if you have a lifetime value of $10,000, $15,000 or more of one of your future customers, then LinkedIn Ads is a great place to get to know them and get in front of them. If less than that, smaller B2C offers, even smaller B2B offers, you're going to have a really hard time getting a return on your investment.

Crystal Heuft (08:26):

Are there any industries that you find are a little easier to find on LinkedIn Ads?

AJ Wilcox (08:31):

Most industries do really well. I haven't found any, where I'm like, that one's a total dud. I have figured out though that some industries, especially the ones who don't live in front of their computer, they can be hard to spend a lot of money on. So for instance, if you're going after doctors or let's say door-to-door sales reps, those are both professions who would be great to target, but they don't live in front of their computer, which means they don't always have LinkedIn open. So you could target a similar audience size of them as you might of someone who does. And I only spend a tenth as much.

Crystal Heuft (09:09):

Yeah, that's smart. That's a good way to look at it. And I think the lifetime value is such a smart way to look at this because the number one, I would say, complaint people have about LinkedIn Ads is the cost. But really when you look at what you spend to get to a way broader audience that you didn't have to funnel through and keep spending money to funnel through from Facebook, LinkedIn Ads really, I think, hold up in the long run when you're looking at cost per acquisition.

AJ Wilcox (09:32):

Yeah. Every time I tell someone that the cost per lead on LinkedIn is oftentimes in the $15 to $60 kind of range, they go, "Oh man, we're paying $4 or $5 a conversion on Facebook." But when you're watching all the way down to the sales qualified lead to the cost per proposal kind of stage, LinkedIn really does look great, but you know what you have to be to actually track your metrics down that far? You've got got to be a pretty sophisticated marketer. And so not everyone's in that position yet where they actually have the capabilities of tracking all the way down.

Crystal Heuft (10:05):

Which is great. That's why I think it's great that you have a business like you do, because it really helps people see the value longterm versus just looking at first click or what it costs. Also, I think people get in the habit with Facebook of looking at cost per click, instead of looking at what it costs to actually drive that customer through. It's a much different number.

AJ Wilcox (10:25):

Yes. And such an important one to look at. We as marketers, we have a lot of technology at our disposal now and we're going to be held to a much higher... Oh, why do words not come? Standard, there we go.

Scott Martineau (10:38):

Standard? Standard.

AJ Wilcox (10:40):

Yes. We're going to be held to such a high standard, just like sales reps are. Right now, sales reps, if you don't perform, you get cut. And marketers, we now have the data to justify ourselves and we can prove that we're moving what we are. And so that means you've got to, as a marketer, you have to be very comfortable with that data and learn to present it in a way that you are proving yourself invaluable to the organization.

Scott Martineau (11:04):

What about, kind of along the same lines of who are they right for, is there a minimum budget... We've kind of been talking in the cost per click per lead and so forth, but is there a minimum budget that I might need to have to be able to test effectively?

AJ Wilcox (11:19):

Yes, but certainly with a caveat. So in North America, because that's the majority of advertisers, we're going to spend $8 to $11 per click, and LinkedIn's minimum is $10 per day.

AJ Wilcox (11:34):

So you'll never be able to spend less than $10 a day and advertise. But what we find is it's not necessarily about the budget you need every month. It's about how much data you need in order to start seeing the trends and making smart optimizations [inaudible 00:11:50]. And so what we've found is with this $8 to $11 cost per click kind of range, it's usually around $5,000 in spend before your conversion rates becomes statistically significant. And so what I'll coach marketers to do is try to spend $5,000 a month. Have a budget that's that large. And that way, by the end of month one, you can look back and say, "Yes, this program is working. This shows promise." Or, "No, this sucks. We should get out." And certainly if you have a budget that's not in that range, then that's fine. You have a budget of $2,500, it means you can get the same data by going for two months rather than one. So it just means don't make the call after month one and say, "I don't see the business impact. It doesn't seem to be working," because you just don't have that data yet.

Crystal Heuft (12:37):

That's very smart, valuable help there.

Scott Martineau (12:41):

I just love the mindset that you're bringing to the whole conversation, which is, it's not just about the lead, it's about what's happening after. And you would talk about this in lifecycle automation all the time where we tend to want to go put in leads, put in leads, and we can close leads that are hot and ready to go. But really, the effectiveness of the overall machine relies on us being able to take those leads that aren't ready today, and put them through a process and make sure that they're being nurtured, followed up with and prepared so that when they are ready to buy, you're the person that they're thinking about.

Scott Martineau (13:11):

So I think that's awesome. So we kind of talked about budget, but if an entrepreneur has never been doing anything with LinkedIn, is what you just described the first step? Carve out a test and let's make that test? Are there other things too, that business owners need to be doing kind of in the getting started stages, you know, like with their profile and other things? What are kind of the key things to do if I'm just ready to start with LinkedIn Ads?

AJ Wilcox (13:41):

Oh, so glad you asked. There's an acronym that I use called AMO, and it's the three things that every social media campaign needs in order to function. So you have your... it's your audience, your message, and your offer. And the audience is the targeting, the message is really what you show to the audience. You know, your ad copy, your imagery, whatever. But the offer, O, is by far the most important piece here. And the reason why is, if you have something that you're offering, that people are actually excited about, everything just runs smoother.

AJ Wilcox (14:15):

I'll give you an example here. I think pretty much every new advertiser wants to start by saying, "Hey, we want demo requests. We want trial signups. So let's push people right to them." Well, what happens is you're showing these ads to people who are on their way to go do something and it's a distraction and they're not there to do business with vendors.

AJ Wilcox (14:35):

So they end up clicking at a very low rate, which means LinkedIn is going to charge you more because it's costing them more. And then the people who do click, they look at it and kind of second guess and go, "Ah, maybe I don't really want to talk to a high pressure sales rep today." And so you end up with these cost per conversion that are in the like $200 to $1,000 range. And it's crazy. But if you go this route of, I'm going to provide value first, before I ask for anything, and you say, "Hey, download this free checklist or this cheat sheet, or this guide, or join a free webinar here, or come to this free in person event." All of a sudden, now you're giving them real value first. And you're going to see conversion rates in excess of 15% and cost per capture of your ideal audience in the $15 to $35 range, often.

Scott Martineau (15:24):

One question I have, my wife does a lot of Facebook advertising and she's comfortable with generating leads that cost her a dollar. What would you say to people who say LinkedIn Ads are too expensive? I think you gave great advice earlier in terms of the lifetime value of the customer, but in general, how do you, I'm sure you get that feedback. How do you answer that?

AJ Wilcox (15:47):

Yeah, I would say anyone who's using Facebook ads or Google ads, just take a look at the quality of the leads that you're getting and ask yourself, are you throwing out 80% of them because they're not a good fit? Then you're probably paying five times too much. On LinkedIn, we're going to pay $8 to $11 a click for sure. But every single one of those impressions is going to go to someone who fits our target criteria perfectly. This job title at this company size in this industry. So watch further down the funnel, not just that initial cost per lead metric, but what is your cost per qualified lead, your cost per proposal? And then usually LinkedIn starts to look really good.

Scott Martineau (16:33):

It doesn't sound like in your agency, you manage anything other than LinkedIn, but do you usually see that clients have a healthy diet that cuts across different ad platforms? Do they kind of convert and they're all then on LinkedIn?

AJ Wilcox (16:45):

I would say we have a few clients who are big, big on LinkedIn and just other channels don't really make a dent, but I would say the majority are already advertising on Facebook and Google, and LinkedIn is just one more channel they're tacking on. And I love it because the channels really do work together very well. Google is so good at capturing people at the bottom of the funnel when they're ready to take action. LinkedIn is so good at introducing a new product or service to people that they didn't know existed.

AJ Wilcox (17:17):

And then Facebook and Google are both really amazing retargeting software and programs. What I like to do is drive the right person from LinkedIn to your landing page, and then rely on Facebook and Google's retargeting to stay in front of them until it's time for them to take action.

Crystal Heuft (17:35):

I was just going to say, I pretty sure it was you, AJ, who told me this brilliant plan, but it was you. You just mentioned it. When you told me that at Social Media Marketing World, I was like, that is so brilliant, to use LinkedIn to take who's already... send them to your landing page where you have the Facebook Pixel on. Sorry, I'm getting so excited. I'm like stumbling over my words. So send them to a landing page where you have your Facebook Pixel on and then retarget them at the lower cost of doing a custom audience with anyone who's shown up to that landing page.

Crystal Heuft (18:06):

And I was just like, mind blown. That is freaking brilliant, because then you can take advantage of some of the lower cost or by having a custom audience that you can retarget from what you've already used from LinkedIn. So talking about using them together, I mean, that's why you're an expert. I just thought that was a brilliant plan.

AJ Wilcox (18:23):

Thanks. We've used that so many times with our clients and it always works really well. The one challenge is generally the retargeting conversions end up getting attributed to Facebook. So the Facebook agency oftentimes gets a pat on the back, but we're okay just knowing that we're upping everyone's game.

Scott Martineau (18:42):

So for those listeners who don't have a clue what pixels are and maybe don't even care, I'm guessing if you don't care about pixels, you're probably not still listening to this podcast. So you care. So Facebook, what we're talking about with retargeting is essentially, there's a way with these ad platforms, they give you a little piece of code and your web developer, or you, if you manage it, stick it on your site. And it basically has a mechanism for tracking somebody and remembering who came to your site. And Facebook, you can then place ads and say, I only want to send it to people who have already come and visited my site. And you can even say, who came to this page on my site.

Crystal Heuft (19:15):

Within a certain time period, too. So if you want it to be fresh in their mind, you could say within 14 days, seven days, depending on the amount of traffic you're getting,

Scott Martineau (19:24):

So then instead of having ads that you're sending to the entire world of Facebook, you can say this particular ad is to go to people who I knew have already come to the site. And in this case, we're talking about from LinkedIn, which gives you better targeting. So great.

Crystal Heuft (19:36):

I thought that was such a brilliant plan, but really I had never heard anyone think about using it that way. And it's a way to give more life to them that you're spending on LinkedIn to grab these leads. And if you do want to get tricky and not give the Facebook ad agency the credit, you can make your own landing page for that, and then you know. Anyone who went there is actually someone I originally sent and it might get acquired in Google Analytics under Facebook, but if it was from that page, you know that's the amount. So just to geek out for a minute there for anyone following, but if you're not quite sure how to do that, the Facebook Pixel is really easy to install or to put on your page. And if not, these are the good things to spend for agency money to get some help. But I think it's so critical and it's such a brilliant idea. So thank you for sharing that with me and, and now all of our listeners.

Scott Martineau (20:24):

Crystal, I didn't know you got so excited about social and paid advertising. I mean, I knew about social, but [crosstalk 00:20:31]

Crystal Heuft (20:32):

Well, that's cause I stay in my lane around you, Scott, but you should hear how I talk to Alex and Rachel whenever I [inaudible 00:20:39] my love is definitely for organic, which I did want to share with people, some things they should have prepared on their organic page before they go to some ads. But that being said, they all work together to really funnel people through. So you have to have a presence everywhere, which just quickly, I'll tell everyone.

Crystal Heuft (20:55):

If you're doing LinkedIn Ads, you should also take the time to find a pretty consistent message on your organic page. Make sure your description of your company, your website, everything's up to date so that any traffic that doesn't come directly from the ad, can still find you and see a presence if they were sparked by the ad they see. So that's just the 2 cents I'll put in on my organic love side here. But yeah, I do geek out over all this stuff.

AJ Wilcox (21:20):

And one thing I'll even add to that is on all of your sponsored content ads, the prospects, when they see your ads, will be able to see the number of company page followers you have.

Crystal Heuft (21:30):

Totally.

AJ Wilcox (21:31):

It's totally worth spending some time giving your page some love, sharing it around and trying to get as many followers so that you have that social proof. That's just going to make all of your ads look better, too.

Crystal Heuft (21:41):

Right. And I want to make sure, AJ, we get to this question. Cause I think for someone just starting out and want to maybe test this, what metrics should they be watching to make sure they determine if that higher cost is worth it on LinkedIn?

AJ Wilcox (21:54):

Yeah. I mean, essentially you want visibility into your whole sales process. So you'll want to see all of the metrics past an initial lead. What sales reps are doing, but not everyone has that. So I'll walk you through the first couple metrics that we rely on and then kind of make mention of what you might be able to get access to if you're super sophisticated. When you very first launch ads, you're launching a combination of AMO. Your audience, your message, and your offer. And the first thing you're going to be looking for is your click-through rate. So I think most people who start using LinkedIn Ads should use one ad format. It's called single image sponsored content. And it's the simplest, shows up in your newsfeed type of ad. Just very, very versatile. And the average click-through rate on these across the network is a little bit less than half a percent.

AJ Wilcox (22:49):

It's 0.4%. So if you launch ads and you're getting a 0.2%, you know that you haven't found a good combination of your AMO to get people interested enough. But if you launch your ads and you're at a 0.8% or a 1%, then you look at it and go, "Ooh, we found the right combo. We can get people to take action here." So that's metric number one, are your ads even interesting? And then once you get people to your offer, they get to your landing page, if you have a conversion rate of 15% or higher, you've got rockstar content. You know that what you're giving people, they are so attracted to, that they're willing to give you their information for it. If you have a conversion rate less than let's say 8%, then you know you've got kind of a dog and you need to figure out, okay, do people actually want what it is I'm offering?

AJ Wilcox (23:41):

Can I sell it better? Can I put it in a better light so they understand the value here? Those are really the two. I mean, the combination of those two will give you what your cost per lead is. And if you're ever not doing well, the metric to focus on. If it's click-through rate's the problem, then you know it's what the ad says and looks like. If you're having a hard time getting people to convert, you know it's the landing page, the way you're presenting it, and the offer itself. And so if you get great click-through rates, but terrible conversion rates, then you know, I've got to work on my landing page.

Scott Martineau (24:15):

What are the upper bounds on those that you're seeing with your most successful clients and campaigns?

AJ Wilcox (24:20):

Oh, we had a client get a 65% conversion rate on a landing page offer.

Crystal Heuft (24:25):

What?

AJ Wilcox (24:26):

Yeah, it was disgustingly amazing.

Crystal Heuft (24:28):

That is disgustingly amazing. I love disgusting when it comes to that kind of conversion rate.

AJ Wilcox (24:34):

And we regularly see it. I mean, we'll have clients who have amazing offers that will stand the test of time. You could run the same offer for three months straight and people don't get sick of it. And they'll have a 30% to 40% conversion rate that's pretty regular, but I've only seen one that got 65. That's the upper bound.

Crystal Heuft (24:53):

That's amazing. Okay. Well, Scott, I think we should skip, cause we're already getting close to time here, but I really want to hear what's next for LinkedIn Ads.

Scott Martineau (25:02):

So how does this work? You're under this probably an NDA as a partner of LinkedIn, right? So you can't tell us anything.

AJ Wilcox (25:10):

Yes. But there are certain things I can. Basically, anything that they've shared, that is public. Then I can then share it. But as a partner with LinkedIn, we're privy to the roadmap and I'm under so many NDAs, it's [inaudible 00:25:21]

Scott Martineau (25:23):

What if Dusey agreed, or Derek, to mask all of our voices from this point forward in the episode? Could we just have a conversation and it wouldn't be clear? Would that work?

AJ Wilcox (25:34):

Yes. This is a new guest coming on and his voice has been disguised for secrecy.

Scott Martineau (25:38):

We're going to call this a wrap for the last episode of Small Biz Buzz. And now we're starting... No. All right, well tell us what you can. Tell us what you can.

Crystal Heuft (25:45):

It's not really AJ speaking right now. Just kidding.

AJ Wilcox (25:49):

Well, I'll make a plug for my new podcast. So episode three of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, so search LinkedIn Ads Show on whatever podcast player. Episode three is the history of LinkedIn Ads, but it also covers the upcoming roadmap. So anything you want to dive deep into or get geeky, that's a good episode for you, but I'll point out the feature that's coming that I am most excited for. So right now, I almost don't even recommend using LinkedIn's retargeting because it's reliant on a cookie being placed in your browser. And half the browsers out there don't even accept a cookie anymore. And the rest won't within two years. So I almost look at that and go, "Okay, if I'm paying LinkedIn level prices for all this retargeting and only half of my audience even gets to get a shot at it, that's not really worth my time."

AJ Wilcox (26:42):

But in October, LinkedIn says they're coming out with something called engagement retargeting, and that's essentially...

Crystal Heuft (26:49):

Oh, yes.

AJ Wilcox (26:49):

Yeah, you can start retargeting the traffic on LinkedIn. So, it's not, did they make it to my landing page? It's, did they click to visit my company page? Did they visit my personal profile? Did they open a lead generation form? Did they click on this app? And if LinkedIn pulls this off, like I think they're going to, that'll be a total game changer.

Crystal Heuft (27:10):

For real. You're going to start having conversions at 65% more often.

AJ Wilcox (27:14):

Wahoo. Count me in.

Crystal Heuft (27:17):

Count me in too. That's like amazing.

Scott Martineau (27:19):

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I think for a lot of small business owners, in my experience, there's a mentality of sort of survival mode where everything they do, they have to do themselves. We get the benefit of seeing, because we deliver automation software to business owners, and we see what happens when they get hooked on... the first time automation does something that they didn't have to invest any energy and it just started to work for them. It's like the light goes on and all of a sudden they are an addict and they can't get enough and they're trying to automate all parts of their business.

Scott Martineau (27:56):

I just think retargeting in general, this whole concept of, I can rely on another platform to essentially watch these people and I can react accordingly. It's like, finally, small businesses have advantages that, in the past, only big businesses had the ability. Pay big development teams to do, so I just think it's amazing. It's awesome.

AJ Wilcox (28:19):

Yeah, and on top of that. I mean, if you, as a small business owner, are relying, let's say wholly on email or wholly on retargeting ads to try to stay in front of people and keep top of mind, they'll kind of write it off. But if they start to see you in multiple places, then there's this feeling of legitimacy. Like, "Ah, I've heard of this company before. They're legit."

AJ Wilcox (28:39):

And so all of these channels that just kind of like wrap around them in a big hug, to confirm to them that you're worth paying attention to, and you'll watch your results across all of your channels go up.

Crystal Heuft (28:50):

Well on that note, AJ, can you believe it? Our time has already come to an end. I feel like every time I get to chat with you, I get to know you even better. And I just am so grateful that you decided to come on here and share all your expertise with our listeners. So we'll have to do it again, maybe around October.

AJ Wilcox (29:09):

Oh, count me in. I'll come and talk about engagement, retargeting.

Crystal Heuft (29:11):

Thank you so much.

Scott Martineau (29:13):

Your energy is so awesome. Our listeners don't get to see this, but we're on a Zoom call. So we got to see, we show up and AJ is on a treadmill, just pouring sweat. He wasn't actually pouring sweat.

Crystal Heuft (29:24):

He was giving it his all.

Scott Martineau (29:26):

But your energy comes through. And it's awesome. We're just so glad that you got to share that with our listeners today and for you taking the time. So thank you very much.

AJ Wilcox (29:33):

Hey, you're welcome. I came into this world pre caffeinated and I'm happy to share any of my exuberance.

Scott Martineau (29:39):

All right. Well Crystal, thank you. Thanks to our studio. Thank you AJ. And we're going to call this a wrap for this episode of Small Biz Buzz.

Speaker 4 (29:54):

Thanks for listening to Small Biz Buzz. Please take a second to subscribe to the show and leave a five-star rating. It helps keep the show going. And if you need a hand with growing your small business, head over to keap.com. That's K-E-A-P.com and get started. More business. Less work. That's Keap.

Speaker 4 (30:11):

Hey everyone. Today's show is brought to you by Beauty and the Boss by Maisha Hagan. The source for professional development for your inner boss lady. Maisha Hagan offers virtual one-on-one coaching, training, and workshop experience, gained as a multimillion dollar director and executive. And we're not being paid to say this. We just believe in what Maisha and Beauty and the Boss can do for you. Take your growth to the next level with Beauty and the Boss at bosslady.com. That's bosslady.com.



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