Late last year, LinkedIn announced that on the 15th December it would stop delivering Sponsored Messaging to European countries.
Whilst this hasn’t been ideal for some of our customers, it seems campaigns targeting the UK have not been affected by this change – presumably as a result of the UK’s recent departure from the EU. The reason for LinkedIn’s decision to stop delivering Sponsored Messaging to the EU is related to GDPR and LinkedIn’s back-end systems not meeting EU GDPR laws.
Although the ability to send Sponsored Messaging to EU countries was disabled on the 15th December, you’ll be pleased to know that Lead Gen forms are still functional for any campaigns that have already launched and hence why we’re still seeing leads being generated from some of our campaigns throughout Europe.
In case you’re unfamiliar with sponsored messaging, messages stay in a users’ Inbox, and can still be opened, clicked, and leads generated long after a campaign has finished – this also explains why disabled campaigns can continue to bring in new leads.
The hope is that LinkedIn doesn’t take too long to get this figured out and we’re up and running again as soon as we can be. They mention changes to their platform coming in 2022, which we can only hope is early 2022 rather than later!
BUT, WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW?
If Sponsored Messaging was part of your European marketing strategy, there are lots of alternatives. Unfortunately, for now you will need to lick your wounds and move on from Sponsored Messaging, but here are some other options we’re using and see great success from.
SPONSORED CONTENT
This is a LinkedIn tactic that most of us will have used. It’s a bit crowded now across Europe as everyone has suddenly made the switch. However, you can still use the same great targeting functionality, and combined with Lead Gen forms these can really pack a punch.
Focus on your CTRs and making sure your messaging is finely tuned to attract the right people. Our top tip for increased engagement, and where we see the most success with our customer campaigns, is to constantly evolve and develop your ads. A greater variety of ad messages enables you to identify what resonates with your audience and what gets the best performance.
GOOGLE RETARGETING
If you’ve got a busy website but not a lot of lead generation, retargeting is the best tactic! We use it a lot amongst our clients to help with conversion. Set these codes up on your website ASAP so they can start working for you. Even if you’ve not got plans to use them for a few months, the sooner the codes are implemented the better. Try to use these ads for lead gen, you can assume that the people who would see them know you, your website and your brand – so be more direct with the messaging you put on these small but mighty display ads to generate leads for your business.
ENGAGE SALES TEAMS
Maybe a tricky one if you don’t have a cohesive sales and marketing strategy, but social selling is a HUGE opportunity across Europe now. With LinkedIn inboxes clear of sponsored messages, sales teams can get in there, be seen and engaged with. We run social selling workshops for sales teams to help with common pain points like, ‘I don’t know what to say’, ‘I don’t have the time’, ‘I don’t get any response’. Classic push backs that can all be solved once a sales person sees the value in their efforts.
GO ORGANIC
Use some of your time or allocated budget to work on your content. Whilst the Mecca of content creation would be for a piece of content to go ‘viral’ on LinkedIn, if your content doesn’t achieve this – don’t be disheartened!
Thought Leadership pieces are extremely valuable in their own right – just ensure your content is useful, engaging and your CTA is crystal clear. If you can create content that is going to help with SEO, traffic and awareness you’re on to a good thing.
Whilst disabling Sponsored Messaging is a spanner in the works, there’s plenty of other opportunities to engage! Hopefully we’ll be back up and running soon, but in the meantime, if you need help switching up your paid social strategy, please do reach out to us.
For any questions or advice relating to your social media strategy (or any topic really, we ‘re a chatty bunch!) Just give us a call on 01256 881100 or email us at enquiries@resourceit.net.
