5 Reasons Trade Show Organizers Should Be Saying Happy Birthday to LinkedIn Sponsored Updates

In July 2013, LinkedIn formally rolled out Sponsored Updates (SU), an ad product which runs in the News Feed on users’ home pages.

We have been using this product since shortly after it was launched so as SU celebrates its first birthday this month, we thought we would use this milestone to share why we think trade show organizers should be saying Happy Birthday!

(1) One of the key reasons we like LinkedIn SUs for b2b attendee acquisition is the extremely granular targeting: geo, industry, job function, title, seniority, groups, etc., which enables you to really focus dollars, and minimize waste in ad spend.  Plus SUs offer negative targeting too.

(2) We love FREE and SUs offer an added-value social layer i.e. likes, comments, shares and follows, which cost you nothing, so you can generate incremental exposure at no cost for your show… that is of course if your SU content is engaging!

(3) We see wide KPI variances in creative assets, and what we like about SUs are that we are able to optimize on-the-fly based on real-time granular data available in the reporting dashboard.  This enables us to give our winners plenty of runway, cut our under performers, and potentially identify patterns which we can use to improve future content.

(4) As we have a media buying mind set, cost efficiency in reaching and engaging the target is a key factor for us.  Based on the SU costs that we have paid, the economics are very compelling against these metrics, especially when you look at eCPA i.e. after blending in the added-value social actions.

(5) Fish where the fish are!  LinkedIn has more than 300 million members, and while the US is still the largest country in terms of membership, 67% of members are outside the US. Since LinkedIn targets professionals, this is a big pool to go fishing in for buyers and qualified visitors for b2b shows.

As with any ad product, you will need to determine for yourself whether SUs are a good solution for your specific situation but don’t let your competition get to your attendees first on LinkedIn.

Posted on July 25, 2014