How to Use LinkedIn Ads for Customer Marketing

It’s no secret every company massively focuses on acquiring new customers. However, it’s equally important to focus on customer retention because acquiring new customers is five times more expensive than retaining existing ones.  

But what’s the best way to drive customer retention and generate upselling opportunities? While most marketers would vouch for emails, we believe it’s LinkedIn ads 👀

Scroll ahead to learn how LinkedIn could be a valuable asset for your customer marketing initiatives ⬇️

Why use LinkedIn for customer marketing?

We know using LinkedIn ads might seem unusual, especially when it’s easier and more feasible just to send emails to your existing customer base. But we’ve identified a few shortcomings with this approach:

• For starters, your emails would only reach 1-2 contacts in an account instead of the entire buying committee. If you want to encourage your customer to consider upgrading their plan, targeting the relevant folks via your ads would be easier. 
• Even when you do send emails to your customers, there’s a high chance your emails will remain unopened and they’ll be unaware of the content within. 

LinkedIn is a surefire way to reach your stakeholders without cluttering their inboxes and ensuring they’re aware of your latest features. Now, let’s look at how you can use ads to reach them. 

Measure product usage data 

Every customer uses your product differently. While some see your tool as a holy grail in their tech stack, others might not be as dependent on it. You need to analyze product usage to understand how frequently customers use your product in their daily activities. You can also leverage NPS surveys to gauge their satisfaction with your tool. 

We recommend running LinkedIn ads based on their probability of churn and the number of days to contract expiry. For example, if you notice low product usage for a specific set of accounts, you can increase the frequency at which you show them ads. 

You can also prioritize showing ads to customers based on how they rate your tool on your NPS surveys. If customers rate your tool as 7 or below on NPS surveys, you can target these accounts with ads that showcase your product’s differentiators. 

Phew, that sounds like a lot of conditions for running ads. Imagine manually creating multiple audience lists for each campaign goal and tracking their ROI. Seems exhausting 🥱

What if we told you that we have a solution that makes running and optimizing LinkedIn ads a breeze? 

Presenting: AdPilot by Factors, your one-stop solution to supercharging LinkedIn ads ROI.

Here’s how you can use AdPilot to increase upselling opportunities:

Audience Builder can help you target the right customers with your preferred criteria. For example, if you want to target all accounts that have logged in less than five times you can create a segment on Factors and import it to Campaign Manager.

But remember, not all customers are equal – you’d naturally want to show more ads based on churn propensity. *sigh* If only you could control how your ads are shown, right?

Well, with Smart Reach you can!

Marketers can use Smart Reach, to control ad exposure across their target account list. You can show your ads based on the number of days till contract renewal and churn score, which is calculated by analyzing NPS scores and product usage. Here’s a visual explanation of the same:

Let’s dive deep into how we use Smart Reach at Factors to control exposure to our ad campaigns:

1. Currently, all our customers are capped at 500 impressions per month 

2. For customers where renewal is less than 3 months but churn probability is low - we increase to 1000 impressions to keep them aware of our new product upgrades

3. Regarding customers where renewal is less than 3 months and churn probability is medium, we raise the cap to 1500 impressions to further drive home the point about how our product is the ideal solution for all their pain points

4. For customers whose renewal is less than 3 months and whose churn probability is high, we increase the cap to 3000 impressions and run ads based on our customers' success stories to boost credibility. 

We follow a similar pattern when showing ads based on the number of days till contract expiry, wherein we increase the number of impressions for accounts as they get closer to their contract end date.

As we adjust the frequency cap for all these accounts, we ensure that ads are only shown to relevant customers without causing ad fatigue. 

If you want to measure how customers take action after viewing your ads, you can use True ROI. With view-through attribution, you can clearly see how seeing an ad impacts their decision to use the product. 

Here’s a report that shows how many people decided to log in after viewing an ad: 

With our CAPI integration, you can optimize your ad efforts by only showing your ads to customers at churn risk or reaching contract expiry. Here’s how you can set up CAPI to target your ads to customers who have not logged in for more than a month:

When running ads for customers, we recommend showcasing your best testimonials and case studies case studies to boost credibility for your product. Here’s an example of how Gong uses customer reviews in their ads:

Wrapping up

Customer marketing should be a critical part of your marketing strategy, but many marketers neglect it or send a couple of emails occasionally. Leveraging LinkedIn ads is a great way to keep your customers aware about how they can make the most of your product. Speak to our team today to learn how AdPilot can 2x your LinkedIn ROI.