Embracing Creativity With LinkedIn Ads: Best Practices & Examples

Editor’s note: This LinkedIn Collective post was written by Tobi Demuren, Global Head of Advocacy Marketing (Agencies) at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

The opportunity for B2B creativity on LinkedIn is ripe. Business audiences are hungry for more compelling and interesting content from brands, and marketers are equipped to deliver it. 

How can you meet the moment? 

By nature, creativity is about defining and scaling your brand’s own unique style through introspection and experimentation. However, there are some proven guidelines that can help steer your LinkedIn ads toward better resonance and results.

Our new report on “The LinkedIn Creative Opportunity” outlines these best practices with specific tips and illustrative examples. If you want to engage your audience on LinkedIn in a meaningful and memorable way, here’s what the research suggests: 

7 Research-backed Rules for Designing Great Creative LinkedIn Ads

1. Brand early in video ads, but make it creative

Engagement rates increase by 16% when branding is introduced within the first two seconds of a video. Meanwhile, click-through rate rises by 50% when the brand logo is positioned at the top of the screen rather than in the middle. 

Present your brand early, but try to avoid the old cliché of opening with nothing but your brand iconography on an otherwise blank screen. Ideally, you want to give the viewer something to mentally associate your brand logo with.

2. Always use an image… but make it a good one

Stock images are played out—to the point where LinkedIn research demonstrates that, while including images significantly raise engagement rates with ads, stock images significantly decrease engagement. 

Include an image with your ad whenever you can in ad formats that support it, but make the image bespoke, and ensure it actually connects with the text content you’ve included (even if in unexpected or subtle ways). 

3. Catch their eye—not just their ear

As you probably know, videos in the LinkedIn feed automatically start playing as you scroll past… but users have to unmute them manually. This is why 79% of LinkedIn videos are watched with the sound off. In other words, if you’re relying on sound to catch your audience’s attention, you’re missing almost four of every five viewers. 

Instead, try to tell a compelling story visually using expressive motions, quick cuts, and clear graphics. Always have subtitles for spoken messages. And move quickly: those who include four or more scene changes in the first three seconds of their videos earn 19% higher click-through rates. 

Opening montage, anyone?

4. Use everything you’ve got to tell your story fast

Video ads that are 15 seconds or shorter have a 43% higher engagement rate than longer videos. Ads that are under five seconds earn a 52% increase. Try to tee up your video as much as possible with the intro copy and headline of your ad, so that your video can get right to the good part and leave an unforgettable impression.

5. Interact with your audience

Any kind of interaction you can offer—letting users click buttons, responding to questions in a conversation ad, allowing them to ask questions during a LinkedIn Live event, etc.—boosts engagement. Any interactive layers you can add to your creative will help members feel more involved and immersed. Respond to comments, create LinkedIn Live Q&As, and use your ad to start a conversation.

6. Aim for virality

To ensure fairness and a good user experience, LinkedIn carefully manages where and how frequently any ads appear on feeds. The algorithm does not manage organic shares, however: If your audience decides to repost your ad on their own feeds, all of their followers will see it as “their” content. 

When developing your ad creative, ask yourself “How can we make this as shareable as possible?” Click-driving formats like organic polls, LinkedIn Live and Carousel Ads can help this cause.

7. Shout out your audience specifically

Sponsored content and video ads that call out a specific target audience (especially through visual cues) get much higher engagement rates than more generalized ads. Personalized images in Dynamic Ads are especially attention-grabbing and effective in this regard.

Call out a specific audience as often as you can. Identify with them and their challenges, then tie it to the solutions you can offer. With the ability to target different roles, seniority levels, and other attributes on LinkedIn, it’s easy to get specific!

Get Inspired by Exemplary Creative Ads on LinkedIn

Plenty of brands on LinkedIn are putting these guiding principles into practice and experiencing awesome results with their creative execution. Let’s see some examples in action.

Each of these ads takes a non-conventional, creative approach to LinkedIn marketing.

Dropbox gets animated

Dropbox used computer-generated cartoon graphics in a quick, striking video to get their audience exc ited for the upcoming RenderATL conference. And look, they’ve got a static brand logo and title card in the video, to boot!

What3words shows and tells

What3words didn’t just claim they could make on-time deliveries anywhere in the world; they showed exactly how it works, using a visually-striking motion graphic video. One user commenter dubbed it “the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Emirates NBD revives a stone-cold classic—to send a classic message

Emirates NBD created this shockingly in-depth send-up to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” music video while reminding customers that banks never ask for sensitive personal information. And they used subtitles and eye-catching music video cuts to make sure everyone stopped scrolling and got the message.

WalkMe develops a situation you just can’t help but watch

WalkMe’s hilarious “what if life was like using software” ad opens with a man carefully balancing a cereal bowl on the leg of a table he has flipped over, and only gets more ridiculous from there. Any member who scrolls past something like a guy using a coffee maker to physically smash coffee beans is going to scroll back up if only to figure out what’s going on. 

Amdocs employees create a cultural event

First, Amdocs had Israeli artist Noga Erez create an original song and video for their “Make it Amazing” brand relaunch. Then, they had virtually all of their employees like, comment on, and share the video with status updates of their own. The result was a bonafide cultural event on LinkedIn—and one that was branded with Amdocs’ logo. This campaign really exemplifies a well-thought-out plan for shareability and momentum-building.

For more creative insights, follow LinkedIn Collective.