You may have heard the old adage, “Those that can’t do, teach.” Well, if you have been challenged with the task of promoting training courses online, then you know that statement is almost totally false.

There are plenty of things to “do” when you are trying to support a training course with promotion online.

Organizations around the globe invest over $360 billion annually to level up their workforce in areas such as:

• Alignment
• Analytics and Measurement (click this link to learn more about our Google Analytics services)
• Automation and Robotics
• Compliance
• Content Development
• Employee Safety
• Engineering
• IT and Technical Training
• Leadership
• Performance Management
• Sales
• Strategic Planning

Developments in high-speed internet connectivity worldwide in recent years have also provided training companies with the ability to move their teachings online. Now, in addition to building a connection with people in real life, training courses can be consumed (and re-consumed) by students on demand.

Whether your company is creating a new training course or training is what you’ve done for decades, there has never been a better time to get involved in the knowledge sharing economy.

Below, I’ve compiled 20 digital marketing ideas that are both actionable and effective for you to start promoting training courses.

1. Auditing Templates

There are many ways a company might realize their need for your training solutions. Few of those ways are more effective than by giving them a template to conduct a self-audit. Creating auditing templates for prospective clients in Google Drive, Microsoft Office, or PDF format is an excellent way to:

• Help them discover their pain points
• Introduce your methodology to alleviating those pain points
• Provide natural conversation starters for your business development team

Bonus tip: For promoting training courses, you should be willing to provide these templates at no charge to potential clients. But at the same time, you should also gate these templates behind a registration form to aid your demand generation efforts.

2. Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Employing content marketing—such as best practice guides or in-depth tutorials—allows you to showcase your organization as a thought leader.

Your potential clients likely have continuing education requirements or newly placed industry standards for which they need certification. A decision maker in HR or some other management role may not be up to speed on the new requirements.

The act of creating content serves as an educational opportunity for these people. To help them get the information they need to keep their people at the top of their craft.

Bonus tip: Embed a lot of share buttons on content like this so it can easily be bookmarked, emailed, exported, printed, or shared on enterprise communication platforms like Slack.

Are you launching a training course but also a provider of a software solution? Need more leads? We’ve got you covered with 14 more ideas just like the one above in this post… 15 Actionable Lead Generation Ideas For Software Companies

3. Blogging As A Tactic For Promoting Training Courses

Companies interested in growing their brand awareness through search engines should be creating at least one new piece of blog content per week. And yes, this applies to any company, regardless of industry.

Companies in the training industry are no different. In fact, regular blogging might be even more critical in the training industry. A higher amount of knowledge sharing should mean a more significant percentage of thought leadership.

Bonus tip: No matter your preferred communication medium, plan on creating a blog post that is at least 300 words in length once every five business days.

4. Case Studies To Promote Training Courses

Whether you provide training services to individuals or groups, what you do has an impact on the people you help level up. Let the results of your work speak for themselves by creating case studies to showcase your greatest successes.

In both personal and corporate training, people want to get the sense that you, specifically, can help them in their “unique situation.” Training companies should focus their case studies around the types of people and companies they want to attract to their business.

Are you a personal development company that wants more married businessmen as clients? Make a case study featuring one!

Do you have a leadership training course for the financial sector? Build a case study featuring employees from any of the “Big 5” accounting firms.

Bonus tip: Want to acquire visits from keyword searches to your case studies? Optimize the title tag, URL slug, and case study title in the following manner. Check out this example data set for this case study from OppenheimerFunds.

• Title: Oppenheimer Training Program: Custom Training To Identify Growth Companies
• URL: /case-studies/oppenheimerfunds/
• Case Study Title: OppenheimerFunds Improves Growth Company Identification By 80% After Training

5. Checklists and Worksheets

Checklists and worksheets are effective marketing assets to create. When they are optimized through SEO or supported through digital advertising, they can also be a high ROI item to drive sales leads into your pipeline.

One thing to remember about creating checklists and worksheets is that they can become outdated over time. This is especially true in industries where standards or regulations evolve over time. Training companies in education, government, healthcare, IT and legal will want to be mindful of this.

Bonus Tip: Create an interactive document that can be bookmarked in a browser and regularly revisited by your users. Is interactivity not possible? Host your checklist or worksheet as a branded Google Sheet for users to copy to their own Google Drive accounts.

6. Competitor Awareness

Whether you want to go toe-to-toe with an industry leader or you want to solidify your brand’s dominance, consider creating content about your competition. This is a high-value SEO and content marketing strategy for your brand if it classifies itself as a “challenger” in your industry.

Create pages of content on your site that either:

• Directly compare your training courses to the market leader and niche brands
• Identify a shortcoming of the services provided by your market leader/niche brands
• Offer an influencer the opportunity to compare you against your competitor as a guest post

Then proceed to highlight the strengths and unique value your training courses offer compared to your competition.

Bonus Tip: To promote training courses, pages like this allow your site to rank organically in keyword searches. You can also run digital advertising campaigns for keywords towards the end of the buyer’s journey like “Dale Carnegie alternatives” and “skillsoft vs mindgym.”

7. Digital Market Development Funds

“Integration and usage of technology in our day-to-day lives is at an all-time high, as we continue to shift to a ubiquitously digital world,” said Brian Fourman of Cooperate Marketing, a marketing agency in Chicago that solves complex problems for OEM’s and major service providers.

Some of the latest research by Nielsen, ComScore and other indicates that Americans spend close to 11 hours a day consuming media and nearly four hours of that consists of some form of digital across any number of platforms.

For marketers that have access to digital Market Development Funds (MDF’s), adopting a digital-first strategy can prove to be highly beneficial. Not only is a portion of your digital campaign already paid for with MDF’s, but when implemented correctly you can hyper-target your intended audience to convey the right message, at the right place, at the right time in a truly engaging and often personalized fashion. Plus, the cost of entry is significantly less than traditional media in which one is often forced to purchase the entire market (DMA).

Digital first strategy allows you to run any number of campaigns simultaneously to fulfill key marketing objectives at each level of the purchase funnel, whether to build brand awareness, familiarity, consideration, and/or to generate leads and convert them into sales. In addition, digital media allows for easy-to-implement message testing (A/B) that can be modified on the fly.

Copious amounts of readily available data further support your customized endeavor and provide quantifiable results that can easily be tracked. By knowing how to interpret and use this data, you can optimize current/future campaign creative to provide truly impactful results that guarantee the greatest ROI.”

8. Email Newsletter Sponsorship

Sponsoring email newsletters is a great way to infiltrate the inboxes of a significant number of highly targeted readers without the need to be CAN-SPAM compliant.

That doesn’t mean this tactic lacks strategic thinking. When you select an email newsletter to sponsor, here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Target professional organizations or networking groups of the industries you help train.
2. Have those organizations prove how engaged their readers are with data. You don’t want to just buy a list!
3. Create an exclusive offer to maximize engagement and conversions with your ad.

Bonus Tip: Support your exclusive offer or sponsorship of an email newsletter by creating a specific landing page for it. Extend the reach of your offer by applying SEO best practices and adding retargeting codes to the page for Bing, Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

9. Expert Roundups

You might be tired of reading “expert roundups”—but your target clients can’t get enough of them. Long list articles of helpful hacks, hints, tips, and tricks exist on nearly every business strategy out there.

Expert roundups—whether published on your site or elsewhere on the web—are a great way to improve the personal brand of your training team members. Additional benefits include:

• Increased thought leadership opportunities for your brand
• Increased visibility for your content on social networks
• Increased traffic and backlinks for expanding your SEO efforts

Bonus Tip: Need to find expert sources for your first roundup besides your own training team? Signup for a journalist/blogger account on Help A Reporter Out (HARO). HARO is a 3x per day newsletter sent to over 800K sources looking for opportunities to get media coverage.

10. Giveaways and Sweepstakes

Who doesn’t like getting something for free?!

When promoting training courses, letting potential students “try before they buy” can be an irresistible way to draw them in. Simply give them access to one session, program, or class at no cost.

Sweepstakes work in a similar fashion. However, instead of giving away your intellectual property, you will be packaging something together to entice future students to give you their contact information.

One disadvantage of this strategy is that you risk receiving a large number of registrants that may not result in quality sales opportunities.

Bonus Tip: Promote your giveaway or sweepstakes in a press release or by providing exclusive demos to bloggers and other online publishers. Don’t forget you can also shamelessly promote training courses in your outreach, too! You can tap into their follower counts and subscribers for leads while also earning high-quality backlinks to your domain.

11. Historical Optimization

Over the last few years, historical optimization has become an incredibly valuable SEO strategy for companies with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find an old blog post (published six or more months ago) on your site that either:

• Generates a lot of traffic (good idea), or
• Converts (better idea)

Then refresh the content and re-publish it with a more recent date.

Establishing your trainers as thought leaders are critical to your success in promoting training courses. Historical optimization is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

Bonus tip: Have trainers who used to blog for your organization that are no longer there? Create a general author account on your blog using your company name, like “(Company Name) Team.” Change the author of a post if they are no longer a part of your team to that author.

Historical Optimization helped Corporate Visions improve their lead generation by 37% from SEO.
Learn more here.

12. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has had a ton of hype over the last year, as well as a lot of unwanted attention. Despite that surplus of hype floating around, a dedicated influencer campaign has a lot of potential.

If your company can partner with influencers on social media to increase awareness amongst a large fan base, the CPM can be very effective compared to traditional media buying. Just make sure that any influencer you invest in actually motivates their followers and fans to act.

Creating an exclusive offer for any influencer will be vital to seeing success with a campaign of this type.

Bonus Tip: Check out this comprehensive beginner’s guide to influencer marketing if you want to learn more about how to leverage this for your organization.

13. Infographics To Promote Training Courses

Infographics still have a place in the world of digital marketing, especially since most people still do not enjoy reading online.

If your company conducts its own original research or surveys, share your best statistic or a quotable statement in this visually appealing format. Engagement with your content and the likelihood that your target students remember what you wrote will undoubtedly improve.

Bonus Tip: Create a high-resolution copy of your infographic for companies that want your content as posters for their walls. You could sell them to take advantage of a non-traditional revenue stream or offer the high-res version as a piece of gated content.

14. LinkedIn Advertising

Don’t let LinkedIn Learning’s existence (formerly Lynda.com) scare you from the possibility of leveraging the most extensive professional social network to promote your training courses.

According to a case study from LinkedIn, e-learning solution provider, CrossKnowledge launched display ads, InMail, and sponsored updates for a campaign titled “Bye Bye Boss” in 2015.

The results?

“Benchmark-beating” click-through rates and over 50 leads generated on the campaign microsite.

Bonus Tip: No matter what platform you use for your landing pages, take advantage of LinkedIn AutoFill for your form fields. With the click of a button, visitors can become leads by populating your form with their LinkedIn profile information.

15. Microsite Development

“The use of microsites provides the perfect launchpad for new services,” says Denise DeSimone, Chairperson of C-Leveled, a full-service branding strategy and marketing agency.

Update: On April 21, 2022,
we announced our
acquisition of C-Leveled.

“Microsites are quick and easy to build, so they give you the ability to target particular audiences quickly. In some cases, microsites can be as much as five times more effective in generating leads than traditional campaigns.”

Bonus Tip: Optimize your main site and microsite for similar keywords, and support each site by targeting those keywords in a PPC campaign. Doing this allows presents an opportunity to occupy a minimum of 25% of a search engine results page.

16. Podcast Interviews To Promote Training Courses

Participating in podcast interviews is another opportunity for your talent and training staff to showcase their thought leadership.

But have you ever thought about hosting your own podcast? Podcasts have low production costs and listenership is rising. Plus, podcast listeners have over four times better brand recall on ads than traditional display campaigns.

Bonus Tip: If you host your own show, invite guests on your show who could be potential sales leads. In the training industry, consider hosting executives in HR or with specialization in companies you want as clients.

17. Quora Promoted Answers

Quora Promoted Answers are a relatively new advertising option on this quickly emerging platform.

You can reach a broad group of people on Quora who are researching questions and answers related to your area of expertise with a Promoted Answer.

For training companies who are already familiar with answering questions on Quora, you might not notice anything different in how you find places to share your insights.

What changes in a Promoted Answer? Two things:

1. The label next to the answer (Promoted By).
2. The name of the person and the business promoting the answer.

Bonus Tip: Has someone unaffiliated with your company answered a question on Quora that helps in promoting training courses offered by your company? Promote that answer instead of yours to get it shown to more people in any feed.

Interested in leveraging Quora for your SEO efforts? Find out if Quora can help your SEO efforts here.

18. Research and Surveys

If you want to make the case for your training solutions to potential clients, there may not be a better way to do that than by conducting research or surveys.

Do your clients have a common pain point they need addressing when they hire you? They probably are not alone.

Survey executives in your industry related to the common pain point your clients have. Then publish the results of your survey in a whitepaper or other type of report.

Then, do a press release about your research (and promoting training courses) and share it with the trade publication media in your industry for increased visibility.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget to send the report you create to everyone who submits an answer to your survey.

19. Retargeting To Promote Training Courses

It doesn’t matter what you call this—remarketing, cyberstalking—it’s a crawesome (creepy + awesome) marketing tool.

Reach the 99% of visitors to your website that didn’t convert by retargeting them with display ads. You can use this strategy in search engines, display ads, social networks, and mobile apps.

Talk about creepy and awesome!

Bonus tip: If your training solutions require a long sales cycle, make sure you have your audience list set to as long a time period as possible prior to the start of promoting training courses.

20. Webinars To Promote Training Courses

If you are in the training business, then you likely have some comfort with public speaking. Leveraging live, web-based video conferences will be different than being in person with your clients, for sure. But it is a great way to connect with your target audience at scale, at any time they want to consume your training.

Best of all, if you host a webinar, your message can reach an audience of viewers and listeners from all over the world.

Bonus tip: It’s okay to put your webinars behind a gated form, but make sure the video content can be made available on demand. In today’s competitive business climate, you don’t want to make people wait to hear your training when there are others out there.

Key Takeaways on How to Market Training Courses Online

Develop Auditing Templates

Providing self-assessment tools helps potential clients identify their own paint points and training needs, which you are then in prime position to offer to address with your course.

Publish Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Sharing in-depth content establishes your authority and educates your audience; this also makes them more likely to invest in your training programs.​

Maintain an Active Blog

Blogging regularly is critical in the training industry to improve search engine visibility and to keep your audience engaged with topics that you cover in your courses.​

Create Detailed Case Studies

Showcasing success stories from past clients demonstrates the tangible benefits of your training.

Host Webinars

Webinars enable you to reach people across the globe—plus, they give people a concrete sample of what your training is like.

Final Thoughts On Promoting Training Courses Online

Like many lucrative industries that are both knowledge and skills-based, promoting training courses effectively in today’s marketplace requires agility, consistency, and a little bit of luck.

This is true whether you are looking to go to market with a new training course, or you are part of an established training company looking to elevate your status.

Luckily, no matter what actionable digital marketing strategy you choose to promote your training course, they all can help you accomplish the following:

• Disrupt the market leader who is slow to take action
• Generate leads for your programs and direct sales
• Improve your company’s authority and thought leadership positions in your industry
• Increase awareness of your brand and programs through more web traffic
• Provide instant and long-term value to your most coveted buyers

You already know now is the time to increase your market share of the $360 billion training industry. If you need help from an online marketing agency to decide which strategy is the best to start snagging your share, just contact us.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 14th, 2025.

The post 20 Actionable Digital Marketing Ideas for Promoting Training Courses (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Simply put, social commerce is the use of social media to drive sales.

It can be accomplished in a number of ways, including creating product pages on social networks, running ads with social media links, or even just including carousels to products on your posts. No matter how it’s done, the goal is always the same:

To get people to buy what you’re selling directly through your social media channels.

So does social commerce matter in the B2B world? The answer is a resounding yes! In fact, social commerce is becoming increasingly important for B2B companies as buyers become more reliant on social media to influence their purchasing decisions. Similar to writing in-depth blog content for your audience to bookmark or starting a digital marketing course for startups in your target industries, social commerce is another way to reach your customers on their time instead of in a place that is most convenient for you.

Here are a few examples of how social commerce can be used in B2B.

B2B Social Commerce Example 1: Create Product Pages

If you sell products that can be purchased online, creating product pages on social networks like Facebook and Instagram can help increase sales. By making it easy for potential customers to find your products and learn more about them, you can encourage more people to buy what you’re selling.

Creating product pages on sites like Facebook are just one way you can keep the train moving and carry your sales momentum online forward. Check out a few more of our best eCommerce tips for 2022.

B2B Use Case IRL: BulkBookstore

BulkBookstore.com is – you guessed it – an online retailer of bulk book orders to organizations like Duke University, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Hyatt Hotels. They keep a focus on serving the business community by not accepting orders from resellers, retailers, or individuals (unless you’re a teacher).

Their Facebook Shop is the third link across the navigation of their Facebook page. Their Facebook Shop functions almost exactly the same as the product listings on their website, featuring a product title, pricing, and description. To purchase an item, all their 10,300+ followers need to do is click the “view on website” button to be taken right to the product page on their website.

This is a high engagement platform for them to seriously boost the visibility of each new product on their site.

B2B Social Commerce Example 2: Run Ads With “Sign Up” Or “Buy” Buttons

Ads are a great way to promote your products or services on social media, and including links to your website or online store can help increase sales.

B2B Use Case IRL: Grade.us

Grade.us is a SaaS platform for online review management that was started in 2013. Today, it’s part of the Traject platform of digital marketing tools.

This may seem like a pretty standard practice today, but normally on platforms like LinkedIn you will find companies pointing the links in their ads to “Learn More” landing pages for gated resources, or to sign up for an upcoming webinar.

This tactic goes against the grain of what we would normally recommend on LinkedIn, but we are always interested in testing out new approaches to increasing free trial starts and driving down cost per acquisition.

This approach appears to do both.

Running LinkedIn Ads already? Thinking this might be a great way to get a performance boost? Before you go to “sign up” or “buy” ads, check out these 3 ways to boost your LinkedIn campaign performance.

B2B Social Commerce Example 3: Facebook Product Carousels

If you’re not ready to create product pages on social networks just yet, you can still use posts on Facebook to drive sales by creating carousels with links to your products. This makes it easy for potential customers to purchase what you’re selling with a simple click away from their social media feed.

Before you press publish on your first carousel though, make sure you know the best time to post it to Facebook.

B2B Use Case IRL: Quill’s “Fun Friday Finds”

Quill has been providing reliable service to its customers since 1956. We assume they haven’t been online that entire time. Over the past two years, they have been voted America’s Best Customer Service provider in the Office Supply Category by Newsweek and Statista.

As you can see, there are a number of ways that social commerce can be used in B2B. And as social media becomes increasingly important in the purchasing decisions of buyers, it’s only going to become more important for companies to start using social commerce. This carousel links to 9 different pages on their website – 8 products, and one to their Free Shipping page.

Over the past month, their social media team has been publishing carousels like this weekly. Prior to that, they had been creating about 1 carousel per month over the course of three months.

We don’t have an inside source at Quill to verify this was successful, but based on their increased usage, we’re willing to bet it was successful for them.

Ready To Start Trying Social Commerce For Your B2B Brand?

What do you think? Is social commerce something you’re going to start using in your B2B marketing?

Hopefully these examples were enough to get the brainstorming underway for you and your team.

Are you considering social commerce as a strategy to improve (or start) your digital marketing efforts? Unsure about whether to handle the campaigns in house or by working with an agency? Determine which marketing solution is right for you by checking out our In-House vs. Agency Partner webinar before learning more about our social media advertising services.

The post What is Social Commerce? Does It Matter In B2B? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

If passed, the bill would cause a major change in how agencies like ours and companies like yours would be able to target advertisements online. Instead of being able to use the data collected by tech companies to personalize your messages to the right customers, BSAA would limit your options to something simple, like broad location targeting.

In essence, the personalized advertising you have gotten used to in social media and search engines would be limited to a contextual advertising application, more comparable to buying a billboard on the side of the road. In other words, advertisers couldn’t target people by even the most basic demographic factors, let alone interests or habits. Suddenly the ads you see would be a lot less relevant or interesting.

BSAA would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general the ability to enforce this limited ad targeting. On top of that, users of the platforms would also be able to sue them for up to $5,000 in compensation per violation. This bill is part of an ongoing effort in Congress to regulate the tech industry’s position on things like the spread of misinformation and privacy of protected class information.

Regardless of the likelihood that the bill passes, the simple fact that it is even up for consideration this legislative session has spurred a lot of discussion here the last few days.

Before Moving Forward… Take A Look Back

So what could this actually mean?  Let’s start with a history lesson.

I haven’t been involved in digital advertising from the very beginning, but not too far from it.  My first year was 2001, back in the days of goto.com (the predecessor to the predecessor to Yahoo! Search Marketing) and the genesis of Google Ads (née AdWords).

Those times were exciting, living in the Old West of digital marketing and advertising.  No blueprint for any of the mechanics existed, even though the basic rules of marketing and human psychology remained.  Everyone involved was experimenting and learning what worked.

This was the Dot Com era where new startups popped up everywhere.  You might ride the waves to fortune or come to work one day and find the doors chained.  In this environment of chaos, you had really smart people doing some really innovative things…and some bad actors pushing limits amorally at best.

There were no such things as privacy concerns.  I would tell college classes complaining about how the government knew about them that they should be way more concerned about Facebook and Google who knew way more about them and – at least at the time – had sterling reputations.  Facebook had ~10,000 different data points on its average US user and advertisers could leverage most of those.

And there were separate networks doing even creepier things with data.

I am not a futurist.  I’m wrong all the time (ask my wife), but the one thing I warned colleagues about was that if the industry didn’t start regulating itself, governments would.  And that’s exactly what happened.  You’re familiar with GDPR, but so many other changes large and small have happened.

Some of these changes have been good, some bad, and many a mixed bag.  Often they have consolidated more power in the hands of the biggest players.  But the industry has no one to blame but itself for not self-regulating.

What the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act Would Mean

Cards on the table: my livelihood – and that of my family and DOM team members – all depend on digital advertising.  I’m not an unbiased source.  But I always try to view issues from as many sides as possible.

I believe the proposed changes would be disastrous.  Not just for the platforms, advertisers, and agencies, but for the general public.

A few years ago the US government started putting heat on the industry for targeting consumers in certain sectors.  At the time advertisers could target disadvantaged communities and groups with ads for housing, banking, employment, and a few other sectors – and these capabilities were absolutely exploited.

Worried about the legal ramifications, the major players did what they always do and made changes in an attempt to avoid the scythe that would split the cash cow.  The end result?  Well, some of the ways slimey advertisers exploited groups stopped – or at least were made more difficult.  Yay!

What it also did was make it much harder for legitimate businesses using information they know about their potential customers and employees to reach them in a cost effective way.  Boo.  We can tell you from first hand experience that advertising job openings and other career opportunities is much more difficult with Google and Facebook than it used to be.

The net effect: it’s harder for people and companies to find each other.  It also has larger economic implications.  When it costs more for companies and organizations to find customers and employees, they either have to cut costs from somewhere (e.g. in the value they offer) or raise pricing to hit their sales numbers.

What’s Going to Happen?

This bill is a huge overreaction to legitimate concerns. It’s wielding a giant battle-axe when a scalpel is appropriate.  (Geez – what is with my sharp weapon analogies in this post?)

Its potential is scary enough that the major players and data brokers will lobby and do a public relations push.  We’re already seeing that.  As an owner of one of Google’s top 200 partners around the world, I received an email Wednesday inviting our team to Privacy at Google On-Demand, a three-week series of webinars all about Google’s privacy efforts.

I also expect that Google et al will make more changes to their platforms, mainly in what levers advertisers can pull.  Because Google is really smart and good at what they do, they’ll continue to make advertising profitable for smart marketers.  The net effect won’t be to make Google weaker, but stronger as their moat will just get bigger and more alligator-infested to keep the competition out.

But if the government or the platforms go to the extreme?  It’s the advertisers and, yes, the consumers that will suffer.

Interested in having a conversation with me or one of our digital marketing experts on how this may impact your advertising based campaigns in search or social media? Please contact us.

Interested in diving a little bit deeper into issues related to digital marketing and privacy regulations? Check out one of these helpful resources:

• Digital Marketing and Privacy Laws: The GDPR and You
• Google’s Housing, Employment, and Credit Advertising Policies: What Do They Mean for You?
• Not Knowing The Letters “A-L-T” Could Cost You $6 Million

The post Should Advertisers And Consumers Worry About the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

While LinkedIn Ads was in its own special PPC category with the ability to target users based on company, job titles, and more career-based functions, it still felt like you were fishing in a really large pond of business professionals.

For marketers, the platform was falling short in its ability to target a company’s known network and really enhance an account-based marketing strategy.

The launch of LinkedIn Managed Audiences completely changed this shortcoming with three targeting opportunities available to all users.

1. Retargeting

That’s right – the paid advertising tactic to drive previous site visitors back is live and ready to roll. (5-second pause for initial shock.) This could be a game-changer for engagement and conversion rate from the LinkedIn network. Plus, it’s easy to get started.

First, add the small snippet of LinkedIn insight code to all pages on your website. Next, create audiences for specific pages on your site. Google advertising veterans will find this, well pretty much exactly the same process that they’re used to completing.

At this time, all multi-page audiences are “OR.” That means site visitors could have gone to this page or that page and be included in my example audience below.

LinkedIn has also added retargeting based on lead generation forms and retargeting audiences for LinkedIn company pages.

2. Uploaded Lists – Contacts

This is the second option that made me nerdy excited for the future of LinkedIn ads. Marketers can upload actual email addresses that are targets for a campaign. Once the contact list is uploaded and matched, the list will be available as a targeting option.

Note: Once processed by LinkedIn, the list must contain a minimum of 300 matched members.

The contact targeting function also includes a data integration option for all of the Marketo, Eloqua, or LiveRamp users out there. This will allow direct import of contact lists.

3. Uploaded Lists – Accounts

Gone are the days of only being able to target 100 company names per campaign and also won back are the countless hours it took to manually select and add each individual company. Yes, it was as monotonous as it sounds.

This process mirrors the one for email addresses and also has the same 300 matched members requirement to actually run.

Ready to try LinkedIn ads?

At the end of the day, LinkedIn Managed Audiences is a giant leap in the right direction for account-based marketing strategies. B2B advertisers should find these new targeting options especially intriguing.

If you want to learn more or talk LinkedIn strategy, contact us here. If you want to learn about LinkedIn profile optimization, click on our how to optimize your LinkedIn profile article.

The post 3 New Ways to Boost Your LinkedIn Ads Performance (updated 2020) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

If you’re anything like me, you discovered this fact while working in LinkedIn Campaign Manager and immediately announced it to the office like you just won the lottery. (To be fair, being able to see conversions in the LinkedIn advertising platform is a pretty big win, right?)

LinkedIn has been pretty hush-hush about this new feature and as of this posting has not made any major announcement about the new feature.

Good thing I’m here to break the news and help you get started. Yay!

Editor’s Note: After an online chat with a LinkedIn rep, (yes, they have online chat support now, too) I learned that conversion tracking may not currently be available on all accounts, but is slowly becoming active across all LinkedIn accounts.

Step 1:

Open LinkedIn Campaign Manager and go to your advertising account. If you see Conversion Tracking in the upper right corner, you’re ready to go!

Step 2:

Click on Conversion Tracking in the upper right corner to set up the small section of code that you’ll need to add to your website.

Simply enter your website on the next page.

Step 3:

Copy the Insight Tag that is created and add it to every page of your website before the end <body> tag.

Step 4:

Next you’ll create your first conversion. This is a lot like Google Analytics goal creation. You need to create a name for your goal, select a conversion type (download, lead, sign-up, etc.), and then enter the destination page you want to count as a conversion—this is usually a “thank you” page.

Important Note: You need to enter the full URL of the destination page. For example, if “www” appears in your URL when someone comes to the page, you need to include that in the URL box. However, you do not need to include “http” or “https.”

Step 5:

Click Finish and you’re done with setup! The next time you visit the Conversion Tracking page, you will see your conversion and its status. Active means your setup is complete and conversions will track. If your conversion status says Unverified, you may want to double check that the code is on your website correctly.

Step 6:

The last important step is to link your conversion to a campaign.

When you create a new campaign, Conversions is now on the first screen. You simply click “Select conversions” and you will see all of the available conversions on your account.

Want to add a conversion to a campaign that is currently running?

Open the campaign and click the gear icon next to your campaign name at the top of the page. Select conversion will be the last option in the dropdown.

There you have it!

LinkedIn conversion tracking is real, and it’s fairly easy to implement. Now you’ll be able to better understand the ads and audiences that are generating leads from within the LinkedIn platform. If you are still confused or have any related questions, feel free to contact us by submitting our website contact form. We offer free consultations and full implementations through our social media advertising services.

The post LinkedIn Conversion Tracking appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

With the MLB season getting underway on April 5th, millions of baseball fans are beginning to draft in their fantasy baseball leagues. Baseball is the second most popular fantasy sport behind football and has a huge following. Unlike football, baseball has a much longer season which gives fantasy owners more time to make adjustments and build a winning team.

In the sections of the below, you will see comments from Leland Reed (LR) and Stephen Hoops (SH), who happens to be the newest member of the Direct Online Marketing team writing his first post for us! All of the following opinions belong to us and none reflect the feelings of Direct Online Marketing as a whole.

We decided that it would be a fun idea to write a blog comparing 9 of the biggest online advertising platforms to 9 players that you should pay attention to when drafting your fantasy team. You’ll have a few of the fantasy superstars and maybe a few surprises, too.

Google

With Google’s advertising platforms, you know what you are getting. It’s a product that consistently works and works well. Search, Display, Video, and Retargeting are all in Google’s wheelhouse, which makes it not only the one of the best options for online advertising, but one of the most versatile, as well.

LR: It is the superstar of PPC and that’s why for my comparison, I chose Tigers 3B Miguel Cabrera.

Cabrera has received too many accolades to list here, but one thing is for sure: he is the premier hitter in the game. He won the Triple Crown and MVP in 2012 and followed that up with another MVP in 2013. 2014 was a down year for Miggy, but there is no doubt that he is one of the biggest stars in baseball and is sure to bounce back in 2015. You can’t go wrong using your first pick in your fantasy draft on him.

SH: I chose someone who has been as consistent as it gets over the past few seasons, Pablo Sandoval. Now donning a new uniform in Boston, the “Kung Fu Panda” is a solid choice. Although only ranked #9 overall amongst other third basemen, he’s got experience in spades.

Just like Google AdWords, Sandoval has got the numbers to back up his value. With 3 World Series wins under his belt, it’s clear he’s been an integral part of multiple organizations hell-bent on success.

Bing

We constantly tell our clients that Bing Ads shouldn’t be ignored because of the results we see on there. When Bing is working right, it is great and should be considered a superstar. There are times when it doesn’t work as well, and that is why it can be compared to a superstar who is often injured.

LR: I decided to compare it to one of the best players in the game, when he is healthy: Troy Tulowitski.

Before going down due to injuries in 2014, he was by far the only candidate for NL MVP, hitting .340 with 21 home runs and 52 RBIs. He only played in 91 games, and still had one of the best years of his career. When Tulo is healthy, he is one of the best in the game and is worth a high draft pick.

SH: In sports, there is nothing quite as disappointing as seeing a player with so much talent who is plagued with constant injury. There’s no doubt that Bing has gained more traction against Google, but it’s still quite not at the same level.

Albert Pujols is one of those players who when he is healthy, he’s unstoppable. With 520 home runs and over 2,500 hits, Pujols is a lock for the Hall of Fame and will be in the discussion for one of the greatest players of all time. Assuming he is healthy during the season, Pujols could really pay off especially since he will most likely remain undrafted for quite a few rounds.

Facebook

Facebook advertising is one of the best ways for small businesses to reach their target audience, especially local. It could be said that Facebook is close to the peak of what they can do with regards to advertising, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

LR: For my player comparison, I chose Clayton Kershaw. He is definitely at the peak of his career. It is hard to find a pitcher that has had a better four-year stretch than Kershaw. He won the Cy Young in 2011, finished second in Cy Young voting in 2012, and has only won the Cy Young in back to back years, with an MVP thrown in there in 2014. He is at the top of his game right now and is working his way into the conversation for not only the best pitcher of the 2010s, but one of the best of all time.

SH: Since becoming the platform that continues to dominate the social landscape, Facebook is no longer the new kid on the block.

For me, gotta go with a hometown favorite in Andrew McCutchen. Beloved by all in the City of Bridges, the outfielder is a continual part of the Pirates’ growing levels of success.

McCutchen has been one of the hottest players in the league over the last two years, winning the NL MVP in 2013. You might want to act fast seeing as how he’s ranked #2 overall. Let’s hope his new hairdo doesn’t create any bad ju-ju.

Twitter

Twitter is our personal favorite social network and it is slowly becoming the 2^nd most popular behind Facebook. The problem with Twitter lies in its advertising programs. While you can advertise on Twitter, we feel like the network is really lagging behind others when it comes to finding out ways to reach the right audiences. It has all the potential in the world, but can’t seem to live up to expectations.

LR: That brings me to my player comparison, which is Jason Heyward.

I am slightly biased with this pick because I am a Braves fan, but any baseball fan should agree that Heyward is not living up to his potential. Remember when he did this in his first major league at bat? Heyward was supposed to be the next Chipper Jones, the face of the Braves for almost 2 decades.

It hasn’t worked out like that because of a combination of injuries and lack of progression as a hitter. Heyward was sent to St. Louis as a part of the Braves’ offseason roster changes. The change of scenery may be good for him and as a Braves fan I hope the best for him.

SH: I am so torn on Twitter. It’s one of the best platforms out there and offers levels of engagement that the others simply can’t match. Not being able to prove its worth to marketers and in turn report consistent profits to their investors, it remains to be seen whether Twitter will be a homerun in the long term.

Russell Martin is a player with so much potential but not a single team he’s played for is willing to invest for much more than a few seasons. This year he’ll be playing for his hometown Toronto Blue Jays. In reality, Martin is just a .259 hitter with some occasional pop in his bat, but recent years and catcher classes have shown that’s solid for a starting fantasy catcher. Martin won’t win or lose your league for you, but he should come through as a great choice for your line-up.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals, where advertising for B2B companies can be great. It is the perfect network for a company looking to reach professionals and other companies.

LR: When I was trying to think of a player to compare to LinkedIn, all I could think of was the old baseball cliché, “he’s a true professional.” The first player that came to mind was Joey Votto, the perinnial All-Star 1B from the Cincinnati Reds.

Votto is not a flashy player, but he is one of the best in the league. He is solid defensively and one of the best hitters in the game. He is so good at the plate that Reds’ management actually asked him to change his hitting style so that he walks less (umm, what?)

He is a true professional who shows up and plays the game the right way. Votto is the LinkedIn of baseball. Nothing flashy or over the top, but gets the job done.

SH: Compared to the others, LinkedIn has power in users but lacks all the flashiness. Sometimes you just gotta go with a true professional who will get the job done. And at this point you’ll need to round out your outfield.

At 34-years-old, Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista has been around the block. Having played for 5 different MLB teams, he’s been a Toronto baseball staple since 2008. In just a few years, he has transformed from a role player to a professional hitter. When healthy, he is a top 5 power hitter. When you need a pro and you need it done now, this 5-time All-Star player is a safe bet.

So there you have it, the first five of our starting nine! We hope you enjoyed reading and hopefully this is helpful, not only with your fantasy teams, but with online advertising as well. Have suggestions or changes to either of our teams? Be sure to let us know about them in the comments! Stay tuned for part two!

The post If Online Ad Platforms Were Baseball Players—DOM’s Starting Lineup appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Target Audience

There are 300 million members in over 200 countries across the world on LinkedIn. The U.S. has the largest membership at 40 million+ members, followed by Europe, India, Canada and Australia. Of these, there are 1.3 million small business owners, 12 million small biz professionals and over 2 million c-level execs on LinkedIn. These are not just your general consumers, these are biz pros who know what they want and need.

With LinkedIn advertising, you can target based on,

• Geography
• Job Function
• Seniority
• Industry
• and actual, specific companies

Geography is pretty self-explanatory, but I will tell you it’s not for an extremely targeted, local campaign. You can target countries, states, and major metro areas, but you cannot get down to the zip code or county level. For example, West Virginia (where I’m from) and other smaller states, you can only select the whole state.

Job function and seniority can complement each other very nicely. Say you only want pros in the accounting department, but you need to get in front of the director or c-level execs- Done! Maybe you’re not looking for any specific function, but only want managers and VPs- Done! You can also target users based on a specific title. Looking to target senior software engineer- Done! Industry and company size are another couple of options advertisers have. Want to get your ad in front of pros in agriculture who work for a company larger than 500- Done! Yes, you can get that granular. And, yes, you can overlay most of these options for very refined and targeted advertising.

Let’s not forget one of the coolest features is the ability to target actual employees who work for a specific company. You can also do the reverse and exclude certain companies from seeing your ads.

Lastly, advertisers can target by:

• School name
• Field of study
• Degree
• Skills
• Groups
• Gender
• Age

See, I told you they make it easy to find your audience!

Types of Ads

LinkedIn offers two main types of advertising; Premium Display Advertising, which has a hefty minimum ad spend, and Self-Service Ads. The self-service will be the focus of everything to follow.

Text and Image Ads

These ads feature a 50×50 image, headline and short copy to entice the user. They can be found at the top of the page or on the right rail.

Pros: CPCs can be relatively low. They aid awareness.

Cons: The image is so small and we’ve not seen great results. Impressions can be high, but clicks and on-site metrics have not been outstanding.

Sponsored Updates

With LinkedIn’s Sponsored Update ads, you can choose to promote a Company Update that you’ve already pushed or create a Direct Sponsored Content which essentially creates a new update that is not pushed to your feed. The only users to see this post will be your target audience.

Pros: These ads go directly into your target audience’s feeds, can be shared, have a larger image, and typically have better results. Plus, you only pay when someone clicks into the link. Advertisers do not get charged for shares, interactions or clicks to the company’s LinkedIn page.

Cons: More expensive than Text ads. We typically see an average CPC in the $5.00-$6.00 range.

Note: LinkedIn has a minimum daily budget of $10. Depending on the type of campaign, this may only be enough for one or two clicks per day, so keep this in mind when planning your budget.

How to Bid

1. CPM: Cost per Thousand Impressions: If you’re advertising goal is awareness, CPM is best your bet.
2. CPC: Cost per Click: With CPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making impressions somewhat free.

Note: Choosing CPM or CPC is not as simple as awareness or clicks. If you have a smaller audience size, under 100k, you should consider running CPM. If you start with CPC and you’re not seeing the impressions, then switch to CPM. Once you get the impressions, you’ll find the clicks will follow.

Optimization: Similar to other social advertising, once you see impressions starting to decrease, it’s time to refresh the ads. Don’t wait for them to fall too far, though. Make sure you…..

• Test, test, test. (Have you ever noticed that marketers can never just say that once!)
• Try different images.
• Have different campaigns for different audiences, especially if they’re fairly diverse. It doesn’t make sense to target c-level execs in the same campaign as an intern, especially if the messaging should be altered.
• Have separate campaigns if your audience is too large. Perhaps you need to split it apart, strategically, to properly analyze the effects.
• Play with bidding. If it seems you’re not getting as many impressions as you should for your target audience, try increasing the bid. Or, depending on your budget, you may actually need to decrease slightly in order to get enough clicks. Regardless, you should bid at least the minimum suggested by LinkedIn.

Analysis: LinkedIn doesn’t offer its own analytics platform, but they do have some cool insight into who clicked your ads. They’ll show you clicks by job function, region, industry, seniority and company size.

In order to get full results in analytics, such as Google Analytics, make sure you’re tagging the URLs with source, medium, and campaign- at the least. If you want more granular details, tag each ad with different ad content (i.e. image, price point, copy test, etc.). This will help you have a better understanding of which campaigns/ads are actually performing well.

In the end, it’s all about targeting, testing and analyzing- same as with any advertising. But, LinkedIn certainly does make it easy to target professionals. How will you use LinkedIn advertising?

The post LinkedIn: Advertising to Professionals was Never so Easy appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.