Ads

Challenge • Marketing to a narrowly de�ned audience of commodities professionals

• Finding a social channel where professionals congregate

• Breaking into a market with established competitors

Solution• Launch self-service LinkedIn Ads campaigns

• Target ads by region, age, and job title

• Test ad creative to continually improve CTR

• Manage bids to ensure adequate impression and click volume

Why LinkedIn? • Ability to target by very speci�c key attributes

• Site attracts professional audience receptive to business marketing

• Easy monitoring of ad performance

Results • Average CTR of .026% (reaching a high of .035%)

• 1.7 million impressions

Financial Times Case StudyDriving event attendance with LinkedIn Ads

Our Linked Ads campaign was a brilliant success. We drew more than 400 people in finance and commodities to our summit website. That’s a huge boost for our brand-building efforts and a great pipeline for future global commodities summits.”

Paul EdgeSenior Marketing Executive, Financial Times Live

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Reaching a niche �nancial audience Financial Times Live is the London-based conferences and events division of the Financial Times, the global business news and information company. FT Live brings together the world’s foremost decision-makers, visionaries, and strategists to discuss and debate the most important topics in both industry and the public sector.

In early 2012, FT Live decided to stage its �rst event focusing on the commodities industry. “We were new to this market, and we were up against tough competition with established events in this space,” explains Paul Edge, senior marketing executive for FT Live. “We needed to market the Global Commodities Summit to commodities professionals, and do so in a way that would bring in strong leads and encourage ticket sales.”

Copyright © 2012 LinkedIn Corporation. LinkedIn, the LinkedIn logo, and InMail are registered trademarks of LinkedIn Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and names are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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However, the commodities audience was tough to pin down. In the past, FT Live typically relied on email marketing, print advertising, and partnerships with trade publications to drive attendance, but the highly de�ned audience for this new event led Edge and his colleagues to consider online marketing.

“The challenge in promoting a commodities-focused event online is that many social channels aren’t appropriate,” Edge says.

Testing and optimizing ad creativeWorking with Red Ant, FT Live’s digital strategy agency, Edge decided to launch a campaign using LinkedIn Ads, LinkedIn’s targeted self-service advertising solution that allows marketers to reach speci�c audiences and pay by clicks or impressions. “LinkedIn is where people do business, which means its members would be open to learning about the summit,” Edge explains. “We also saw the potential to drill down to the precise audience for our campaign using LinkedIn Ads’ targeting – including region and job titles.”

Elisa Harca, Red Ant’s client services director, agrees: “Our expertise lies in using digital to deliver the right kind of message to the right kind of audience. LinkedIn was the perfect match for FT Live’s audience pro�le, and through continuous review and day-to-day management of content, we were able to craft the ads with a precision that paid real dividends.”

Edge and the Red Ant team targeted their ads at LinkedIn members in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, China, and Russia – and within these countries, they focused on members over 25 years of age with commodities-related job titles. The team developed �ve ad variants in order to test creative – including graphics with the event name and the FT logo and graphics promoting a discount on the event price. The team also experimented with mentions of the event’s high-pro�le sponsors in the ad text. The ads sent quali�ed traf�c to their Global Commodities Summit landing page.

“We initially chose the suggested CPC bid, but after receiving few clicks and low impressions, we decided to both increase the CPC bid and broaden our targeting – both of which helped impressions increase right away,” Edge explains. Ads were targeted to �nance professionals as well as commodities workers in the desired countries. The team actively optimized their account by pausing the three ads with the lowest impressions and leaving two ads remaining: one with a headline and image offering a discount, and one touting Glencore, a sponsor of the event and a well-known commodities �rm.

By continually monitoring performance of its LinkedIn Ads, the FT Live team could respond quickly to changes in impressions and clickthrough rates. “The process of setting up and moderating ads is easy and �uid,” Edge says. The team increased the CPC rate from time to time to get an impression boost and paused all but its best-performing ad: the one that promoted the Glencore connection. “The combination of speci�c event-based imagery and strong sponsorship associations proved to be the winning formula,” Edge says.

Brand-building for future eventsThe four-week campaign delivered an average CTR of .026%, and its best-performing ad reached a CTR of .035%, while impressions reached 1.7 million.

“We consider the LinkedIn Ads campaign a brilliant tool to help drive traf�c to your website,” Edge says. “We drew many people in from �nance and commodities to our summit website, where they learned more about the high-level speakers we attract to our events. That’s a huge boost for our brand-building efforts for future commodities summits.”

Financial Times Live used images and texts relating to event discounts

Financial Times Live used event sponsor names to attract clicks