Thought leadership is now reaching new heights through one of LinkedIn’s newest ad types, thought leader ads. This new ad type can expand the reach of thought leaders while allowing brands to build credibility and trust with prospective & current clients. In this article we will cover everything you need to know about this exciting new ad type and share some best practices to achieve success with it.
What is thought leadership?
Let’s take a step back for a moment and discuss what thought leadership is. To put it simply, thought leadership is when an individual shares a unique perspective, insights, or thought on a particular subject. This information can be shared on blogs, at speaking engagements, or through a host of other mediums. The end result is generating positive credibility for the thought leader, positioning them as an industry expert, and first in mind when the need arises for the services they can offer. Thought leadership also comes with a variety of other benefits for the thought leader themselves such as creating a strong network in their industry, critically thinking of unique ways to approach topics or data, and new opportunities to share their thoughts, such as guest blogging & speaking engagements.
How effective is thought leadership?
People can often associate thought leadership with being a large time commitment, which is not true if you know the proper tricks and tips of the trade. However, this brings up the question of what is the return from sharing all of this valuable information. Here are some statistics from LinkedIn & Edelman’s 2024 Thought Leadership Impact Report showing the impact of thought leadership:
52% of decision makers spend an hour or more on average per week reading thought-leadership content.
Nearly 3/4 of decision makers say that an organization’s thought-leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competencies than its marketing materials and product sheets.
More than 75% of decision makers & C-suite executives say that a piece of thought leadership has led them to research a product or service they were not previously considering.
Where does LinkedIn Ads come into play?
So now that we have covered what thought leadership is, and the value it can bring to your business, it is time to accelerate the results with LinkedIn’s thought leader ads. As we mentioned previously, brands that produce thought leadership content on LinkedIn come across as credible and distinguish themselves as an industry leader. Using this content in ads produces the same result. LinkedIn has reported that Thought Leader Ads have a 1.7x higher click-through rate and 1.6x higher engagement rate compared to other single-image ad campaigns. These ads are also a win-win for the thought leader themselves because it can promote their content in a highly targeted way to individuals that might not already be familiar with them, but are in their industry or field of work.
How to get started
To start running thought leader ads you’ll need to log into the LinkedIn Ad manager and select either a brand awareness or engagement campaign objective. Once you have your audience targeting options selected, you’ll choose either a single image or video ad type based on the thought leadership post you’d like to promote.
The next step is to get approval from your thought leader in LinkedIn to promote their post. In March of this year LinkedIn expanded this option to promote the posts of users that are not direct employees of your business, enabling more options when it comes to promoting this content. Finally, you can sit back and measure the results of your ads within LinkedIn’s campaign manager. Note that the thought leader behind the post can see both the paid and organic metrics of the post giving extra insights as to how promoting their content is creating value.
What types of thought leadership should be promoted?
This new ad type opens a world of opportunity when it comes to the content you can utilize, but it is still very similar to some of what your brand might already be promoting on their pages organically. One of the more popular types of thought leader ads is the pain point post. This is a post that highlights a difficult problem or pain point that your customers commonly come across and how your services then were able to solve that issue. Another similar type of thought leader ad is the success story. Everyone loves to highlight wins and the success story is a great way to show off case studies of how your business has driven results for clients and might be able to drive similar results for prospective clients. Finally, we have a new feature post. Many businesses may have many similarities in the eyes of a prospect making it difficult to choose between options. If you have a shiny new feature that makes your business stand out from the pack, a thought leader ad is a great way to highlight it and how users might be able to use it in a creative way.
Whether you are an advertiser interested in testing a new ad type or a thought leader curious about how you can reach a new audience, thought leader ads are an exciting new ad type that should be added to your B2B marketing mix.
If you enjoyed this little piece of thought leadership be sure to check out this article and learn more about tips and tricks for B2B lead generation.
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