How to Advertise on LinkedIn (+ Research, Expert Tips)

LinkedIn ads work in five steps once you have LinkedIn Campaign Manager: 1) Choose a goal (awareness, consideration, or conversions), 2) Choose targeting criteria, 3) Choose an ad format (sponsored, news, dynamic or text ads). ), 4) Set an advertising budget and 5) Measure the success of your ad.

The definition above mentions LinkedIn targeting options. Here you can find more information about how LinkedIn targeting actually works and what targeting options there are.

LinkedIn targeting options

I would thank LinkedIn for its targeting; it’s fantastic. You can narrow your target groups to specific companies, locations, job titles and much more.

How does LinkedIn targeting work?

You can see what LinkedIn targeting looks like in the screenshot above.

To create this screenshot, I created an audience of people who live in the UK and are senior marketing executives, marketing managers and marketing directors.

Ad targeting on LinkedIn helps you run a successful advertising campaign – because targeting the right people will result in more engagement and more conversions.

With LinkedIn, choosing the audience you want to target works the same way, regardless of what type of ad you choose.

If you want to figure out who you want to target, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity 20 different audience attributes and targeting categories which you can choose from – examples of these are Company name, company size, member groups, member interests, member schools, job title, seniority and skills.

Top targeting tips from LinkedIn paid ad expert, Leigh Buttrey: “When running a customer acquisition campaign, make sure you use relevant demographics for your target audience.

Consider things like job title, industry, seniority, skills and the size of the company. The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can be very targeted; For example, there’s no point in advertising to small businesses if you don’t want to attract them.”

How to advertise on LinkedIn

1. Create your LinkedIn advertising campaign.
2. Determine the goal of your LinkedIn advertising campaign.
3. Determine the target audience of your LinkedIn ad.
4. Set your advertising budget and schedule.
5. Decide on your LinkedIn ad format.
6. Set your URL parameter if you are using one.
7. Choose your LinkedIn ad placement.
8. Don’t forget about conversion tracking.
9. Create your LinkedIn ad.

Advertising on LinkedIn is a two-step process: 1) setting up your LinkedIn campaign and 2) creating your LinkedIn ad(s).

In this section, I’ll walk you through how to set up a campaign and create your ad(s), along with some best practices and tips.

1. Create your LinkedIn advertising campaign.

Your LinkedIn advertising campaigns Live in the Campaign Manager section of LinkedIn. You can access your advertising platform through your personal LinkedIn account.

As shown below, you will see “for businesses” at the top right. Click on it and then click “Advertise on LinkedIn.”

From there, you’ll be asked to create a LinkedIn campaign. You must link your ads to a LinkedIn Company Page.

The manager account can contain multiple accounts. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have three accounts: my own and two clients.

Next, you can start creating campaigns. You just need to choose which account you want to create the campaign on.

Back to creating the campaign. On your dashboard – or “campaign manager” as it’s officially called – you’ll see Create Button. Click this button and you will see options to create a campaign or campaign group.

note: LinkedIn also has an “objective experience in creating campaigns”. I’ll cover this process in this article – to find out more, read here this page.

In most cases, I recommend setting up a campaign group as this will help you manage your campaign hierarchy. Leigh Buttrey, a LinkedIn expert, has already written one Full article on campaign groups.

She says: “Start by organizing your campaigns into logical categories or goals. Each campaign should represent a specific goal or outcome you want to achieve, e.g. B. Lead generation, brand awareness or website traffic.

“For example, you could create separate campaigns to promote different product lines, target different audience segments, or test different ad formats.”

Think of your campaign group as your category.

Then click on Campaign group and name your campaign. Campaign groups help you organize your campaign. You can leave the “Default Campaign Group” as is or create a new group.

The campaign name is only visible internally. I recommend you choose a very descriptive name, especially if several different people are working on the campaign.

For example, if I were running a test to determine the best type of demographic targeting, I might use the title “Unicorn Food Ad Test – North America, 18 to 24, Female.”

This name describes exactly who I’m targeting without having to look at the details. Compare this to something like “Unicorn Food Test 1,” which says nothing about who the ad is aimed at.

Once you’ve selected your campaign group and name, you can start setting up your LinkedIn campaign.

Note on billing: You may be asked to enter your billing information if you have not already done so. However, you can experiment with campaign setup without adding invoice details. I really like this about LinkedIn because you can feel confident playing around with the campaign manager and setting up targeting without the fear of an expensive bill.

However, once you’ve entered your billing details, there’s no need to worry because you won’t be charged until your campaign is live. From then on, you will be billed periodically for ad clicks and other interactions.

2. Determine the goal of your LinkedIn advertising campaign.

Next, Choose your campaign goal.

Your goal is what you want people to do when they see your ads.

According to LinkedIn, choosing a goal will help you “customize your campaign creation, get the best ROI for your stated goal, and show you relevant reports.”

There are three overarching campaign themes: awareness, consideration and conversions. Among these themes, some available campaign objectives are:

• Brand awareness reach more people with your contribution. It would be great if visibility and increasing brand awareness were your goal.
• Website visits will drive traffic to your website and landing pages.
• engagement increases actions on your content and increases the number of followers on your LinkedIn company page.
• Video views increases exposure of your videos to people who are likely to interact with them.
• News will interact with your audience through messaging.
• Lead generation Displays a LinkedIn lead generation form with pre-populated LinkedIn profile information to LinkedIn users who are most likely to interact with the form.
• Website conversions Capture leads and drive promotions on your website.
• Applicant will help you generate more applications.

3. Determine your LinkedIn ad audience.

Next, select the parameters of your target audience. Targeting who sees your ad can help it achieve its campaign goal: the more specific and relevant it is to your audience, the better it will perform.

LinkedIn allows you to target by a few different categories – see the points discussed above about targeting options.

You don’t have to use it all of LinkedIn’s targeting options – but the more specific the targeting criteria, the more relevant it is likely to be to your chosen audience.

And the more likely you are to get a better ROI.

4. Set your advertising budget and schedule.

Next, set up the budget, scheduling, and bidding options that work best for you.

When setting up your LinkedIn budget and schedule, you have several options.

First, let’s talk about budget optimization. I asked Leigh Buttrey about it. She said: “When you enable budget optimization, you hand control of the campaign’s group ad spend to LinkedIn’s algorithms. This gives your best-performing campaigns more budget to achieve better ROI.

“That sounds good, and in many cases it is, but I prefer more control over my paid ads. By setting budgets per campaign, I can allocate equal budgets to all campaigns, which in turn allows me to see which campaign has a lower CPC, engagement rate, or conversions.

In most cases, I would recommend leaving the Budget Optimization option disabled. Instead, you should monitor your ads closely and get a feel for what works for your business. You can turn on Budget Optimization later and compare the ROI of campaigns with the feature enabled and disabled.”

You can set schedules for:

• Continuous execution from a start date.
• Set a start and end date.
• Set a start and end date with a budget.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I clicked “Set start and end dates with budget.” LinkedIn recommends a budget of £30/day (or $40/day).

budget

Regardless of LinkedIn’s recommendations, set a daily budget that works best for your company’s marketing spend. Before investing heavily in a campaign, I recommend testing and measuring the success of each campaign and ad variant.

For example, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on an ad that won’t resonate with your target audience.

Let’s say you’re a marketing manager at a high-end floral company. You assume that the majority of your target audience is brides-to-be, so you target your LinkedIn ads to bridal groups.

But after spending thousands of dollars, you only generate 10% of the leads you hoped for.

Your subsequent research shows that this was the wrong move, and you later learn that people close to your business who are on LinkedIn are actually looking for flowers for company events.

It would have been nice to know that before spending a large portion of your budget on LinkedIn ads, right?

However, due to the extensive targeting options, LinkedIn Ads may Successfully address niche markets.

However, it’s important to experiment carefully early on – if you find that a campaign is producing good results, Then You can allocate a larger budget for it.

Top budget tips according to LinkedIn paid ad expert, Leigh: “Start your budget small and then increase it.” Your goal is to achieve ROI with a smaller budget. Once you get that ROI, you can scale with confidence.”

schedule

Choose a date to start your campaign. You can specify whether you want your campaign to display continuously until an end date.

5. Decide on your LinkedIn ad format.

Next, you need to add a campaign to your campaign group.

Once you click on it, basically repeat the steps mentioned above. You name your campaign and define your target group.

Now you can choose your ad format. In the next section, I’ll introduce the different types of LinkedIn ads you can create as part of your campaign.

As you switch between ad types, you’ll see the Predicted Results box on the right change.

This feature analyzes your campaign parameters (goal, budget, targeting, start/end date, etc.) and considers similar campaigns and advertisers. It also stimulates the advertising auction to generate the numbers shown.

Keep this field in mind when choosing your LinkedIn ad type. If you’re just starting out, deciding which ad type to choose may depend on budget.

Outline your priorities and then decide which type is best for you.

Additionally, some ad types require linking to your LinkedIn Company Page and others require the use of LinkedIn translation services.

6. Set your URL parameter if you are using one.

You can use URL parameters to track traffic capture in your analytics tools, such as GA4.

You decide what your URL parameter should look like and paste it into the campaign tracking parameter in the field as shown below.

When it comes to tracking URLs, Leigh says: “Analytics tools are good at showing you where traffic is coming from, but with this functionality you can track exactly which campaign traffic is coming from where.” This will help you analyze which campaign is getting the most engagement generates the most conversions, the greatest ROI, etc.”

7. Choose your LinkedIn ad placement.

Next, decide whether you want your ad to appear on the LinkedIn Audience Networkgiving your campaign more reach and exposure on LinkedIn’s third-party platforms and sites.

Image source

Note: This option is not available for every ad type.

You can also exclude or block specific categories, applications, and websites on the network if necessary.

8. Don’t forget about conversion tracking.

You have the option to set up conversion tracking for your LinkedIn campaign, which tracks and measures people’s actions after clicking on your ads.

Conversion tracking is an optional part of setting up your LinkedIn advertising campaign, but very valuable to your business.

If you want to set up conversion tracking, click + Add conversions.

A new window will open where you can give your conversion a name, select your conversion settings, and decide how you will track conversions.

Note: The information on the right side of the window is very helpful – it answers all your questions and guides you through the process.

If you need more help implementing and managing your LinkedIn conversions, Visit this help page.

Bravo! You’ve officially set up your LinkedIn advertising campaign… but you’re not done yet. If you’re ready to proceed, be sure to click Save.

Attention: your goal and your ad format can not changed after saving. Therefore, make sure you have made your selection before proceeding.

9. Create your LinkedIn ad.

This section corresponds to the type of LinkedIn ad you selected for your campaign.

Once you’ve set the basic parameters for your ad in step one, you’ll be asked to start creating and choose how you want LinkedIn to display and rotate your ad variations – if you’re creating more than one.

To get started, click Create new ad.

A screen will appear titled “Create a new (your chosen ad type) for this campaign” where you will create the copy for your ad, pair it with an image, and preview the various layout options.

You can see what this looks like below. I clicked on “Carousel Display” and can also add “Cards”. Each card represents a slide of my carousel.

Here are a few guidelines around copying:

• Ad image is the visual or graphic your audience will see for your ad. It must be 100 x 100 pixels and uploaded as a .jpg or .png file 2MB or smaller in size.
• Ad name is the main message your audience will see. You can write 255 characters, but I recommend 60-100.
• Introductory text for the ad is the main body of your ad. It can be up to 255 characters, but I recommend 150. The text should be relevant to both the person viewing the ad and the offer or page you’re sending them to.
• Destination URL Where your audience goes when they click on your ad. Double check that the URL is correct.

Once you have entered this information, press Saveyou can view your post.

As soon as you click CreateYou will be returned to the previous Campaign Manager screen. From there you can create more ads and finally review and submit your order.

Note: LinkedIn reviews every campaign assignment submitted. So don’t expect your ads to be published immediately.

To get the best results from your ads, consider creating a different ad for each of your buyer personas and adjusting the copy accordingly.

For example, if you’re promoting a book to college professors, introducing the title with the words “College Professor’s Guide to…” can result in a higher click-through rate (CTR) than generic, untargeted headlines and copy.

Here are a few copywriting tips for LinkedIn ads.

CTA

Including an actionable CTA in yours Ad text also helps you improve the CTR of your ad. Consider asking people to “Download your eBook now” or “Click now for free samples” instead of writing copy that doesn’t include actionable next steps.

Value

Incorporate your value proposition into your ad copy – this can increase the likelihood that users will click on your ad. By boasting something like “20% off your first purchase” or “The sale ends today – buy now,” you’re sending a clear signal about what someone will actually get if they click on your ad.

Test

Don’t be afraid to test your ad copy. You can create multiple variations of your ad in each campaign, so you can test and copy different images into ads to find what works best for your audience.

Pro tip: LinkedIn Ads is available on all HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts! Track visitor and contact engagement, report on closed-loop marketing, sync leads from LinkedIn forms for lead generation, and MORE – all in your HubSpot account.

Types of LinkedIn Ads

1. Sponsored Content
2. News ads
3. Dynamic ads
4. Text ads

As I said above, deciding which type of LinkedIn ad is best for your campaign can depend on many factors: budget, target audience, campaign goal – to name a few.

There are four main types to choose from when creating your LinkedIn ads. Within these formats, you can choose different formats depending on your ad content and purpose.

1. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content appears in your audience’s newsfeed among organic LinkedIn content.

Image source

These ads are similar to promoted posts that are integrated into social media feeds. Sponsored content is available in three formats:

• Single image ads that contain an image.
• Carousel adsthat contain two or more images.
• Video adsthat contain a video.

This type of LinkedIn ad typically has the highest average cost per click (CPC).

(Learn more about the Advertising guidelines for sponsored contentaccording to LinkedIn.)

Leigh recommends LinkedIn’s paid sponsored content ads for “increasing your brand’s visibility and engagement, generating leads, or driving traffic to valuable content.” Use these types of ads if you want to create single image, carousel, or video ads.”

2. News ads

News ads are sent to your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox.

Image source

This type of LinkedIn ad allows you to send your content directly to your audience through a personal account and better measure engagement based on the recipient’s response and action.

(Learn more about the Advertising specifications for message adsaccording to LinkedIn.)

Leigh recommends LinkedIn’s paid sponsored messaging ads (or Conversation Show) to “deliver personalized, direct messages to targeted audiences.” You can use these when you are on the go for event registrations, product demos or time-sensitive offers.”

3. Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are personalized ads whose content changes depending on which audience member is viewing them. This type of LinkedIn ad uses members’ personal data to customize the creative content.

Image source

(Each LinkedIn member sees their own personal information; the information is not shared with other members.)

Dynamic Ads are available in three formats that are only available on the LinkedIn desktop platform:

• Follower ads that promote your LinkedIn Company Page.
• Spotlight ads that promote a special offer.
• Job advertisements that advertise open positions.

(Learn more about Advertising specifications for Dynamic Adsaccording to LinkedIn.)

Leigh recommends LinkedIn Paid Dynamic Ads for “offering hyper-personalized ad creation that automatically adjusts the ad for each viewer based on their profile details such as name, photo, company or job title.” These are ideal for campaigns focused on brand awareness, event promotion, content downloads or focus on gaining followers.”

4. Text ads

Text ads appear in the right column or at the top of the page on LinkedIn.

Image source

They are the simplest type of LinkedIn ads, but are still effective for increasing awareness and reaching your audience. Pay per click or per impression for text ads.

(Learn more about Advertising preferences for text adsaccording to LinkedIn.)

Leigh recommends LinkedIn paid text ads as a “simple and cost-effective approach to driving traffic, increasing brand awareness, or generating leads.” These ads consist of a headline, a description and a small image. They usually appear in the right sidebar.”

Social ad campaigns can always be improved. Remember that your audience and content are constantly changing – as is the platform itself. Here are some best practices for optimizing your LinkedIn advertising campaign.

(list excerpt)

Before we get started, here’s a quick tip: remind yourself every month to analyze and optimize your campaigns.

1. Know your audience and the customer journey.

As your company grows, your audience evolves and so does the customer journey.

It’s crucial that you know and update your buyer personas and customer journey map regularly – this way you can effectively target your personas at the right time (i.e. when they are most likely to convert).

You can do this quarterly.

To help you with this process, check out our Buyer Persona Guide, Free buyer personas templates, free “Make My Persona” toolCustomer Journey Map Guide and Free customer journey map template.

I also recommend considering your customer journey when deciding what type of ads to create and share (more on this best practice in #4 below). Not every type of ad is ideal for every part of the customer journey.

For example, you can use a sponsored ad to target audiences who have previously engaged with your brand/content, rather than it being their first point of contact with you.

2. Segment your customers.

Similarly, segmenting your customers is a great way to prepare for effective and tailored ad targeting, whether on LinkedIn or another platform.

You can segment your customers so you know exactly how to target specific audiences on LinkedIn to increase engagement and chances of conversion.

For example, you may know that certain audience segments need a specific type of LinkedIn ad at a certain point in the buyer’s journey. Having your customers ready in segments makes this part of the ad targeting process easy and efficient.

3. Refer to your social ads on other platforms as well as your competitors’ LinkedIn ads.

Taking inspiration and gathering information from your other social ads as well as your competitors’ LinkedIn ads is a great way to guide the process of creating and sharing your ads on LinkedIn.

Although LinkedIn is a unique platform and your target audience may not be the same across all social platforms, it is still good to take inspiration from other social platforms like Google and Facebook and at least find out which ads work best.

Not only can this be a good starting point for planning your LinkedIn ads, but it can also help you save time – you may want to repurpose content that’s already in a Google ad for LinkedIn.

Additionally, you may not have the analytics capabilities to prove which of your competitors’ LinkedIn ads are performing best.

However, you can at least see which types of ads are getting the most attention based on metrics like comments and reactions.

I think this is a helpful reference point when planning and creating your LinkedIn paid ads, as you will likely have a similar audience on the platform as your competitors.

4. Choose the content you share carefully based on the type of ad you are creating.

As I mentioned earlier, you want to determine what content you share with audiences based on the type of ad you create.

Refer to your customer segments here to effectively tailor content to these audiences and their position in the customer journey as you work through this step.

As a summary, here is it Types of LinkedIn Ads You can create, along with examples of the content you might include:

• Sponsored Content: Single image ads, video ads, carousel ads and event ads; Ideal for highly interested target groups in the LinkedIn news feed.
• Sponsored News: conversation ads, message ads; Ideal for engaging viewers in LinkedIn messaging.
• Lead generation forms: lead generation forms; Ideal for creating pre-filled forms for LinkedIn ads.
• Text and dynamic ads: Text Ads, Spotlight Ads, Follower Ads; Ideal for running ads in the right LinkedIn rail.

5. Use eye-catching and attention-grabbing images and language.

However, the content you share shouldn’t be chosen just by making sure it works with the type of ad you’re creating.

It also needs to engage your audience and create a desire to engage with it (e.g. read/watch more, click on it, open your gated offer, etc.).

Think about ad elements like:

• Colors
• font
• Language and text
• CTA placement and style
• Pictures
• videos
• GIFs

For more inspiration, check out these great LinkedIn ad examples.

6. A/B test your LinkedIn ads (and optimize one variable at a time).

Don’t be afraid to test different visuals, languages, and copy to find out what your unique audience finds eye-catching and attention-grabbing on LinkedIn.

You can test different versions of the same ad to see which factor contributes or hinders success.

For example, change the text in your headline, change your featured image, or tweak audience attributes – but don’t do these all at once or you won’t know which one is the solution.

I find that A/B testing simplifies this process and ensures that you only change one factor at a time.

7. Create gated offers with LinkedIn lead gen forms.

Protected offers are offers that require certain information in exchange for the offer. For example, an audience member receives a free template or eBook in exchange for sharing their email address.

To do this with your LinkedIn ads, you need to use them Lead Gen Forms.

LinkedIn allows you to create lead gen forms for both sponsored content and news ads. They’re pre-populated with LinkedIn profile information so members can share their information with you in seconds.

Additionally, I like that the forms allow you to track key metrics like campaign cost per lead, lead form fill rate, and the number of leads you receive for specific audience segments.

8. Consider your budget when creating LinkedIn ads.

As with anything in business, you should keep an eye on your budget. LinkedIn used objective pricing when it comes to advertising – meaning you only pay to achieve the specific marketing goals you have.

In other words, you will be charged based on your campaign goal.

You select the activity you want to pay for, and then the campaign objective you select determines which ad formats and optimization goals you can focus on.

9. Determine the click-through rate (CTR) of each campaign.

Does one campaign outperform the others? If so, you may want to pause the less successful campaign(s).

LinkedIn automatically displays less successful campaigns with lower frequency, so it makes sense to minimize the resources spent on them.

Instead, you’re more likely to achieve your marketing goals when you put more resources into successful ad variations and campaigns.

10. Measure and analyze the success of your LinkedIn advertising campaign.

With LinkedIn, you can easily track your progress in the Campaign Manager dashboard (under “Chart”). There you will see various charts that measure performance such as clicks, spend, and CTR.

You can also track conversions in the charts at the bottom of the dashboard.

When you’re done setting up your first campaign, you’ll initially see a lot of “0s.” Don’t worry; That’s only because your campaign is new (and don’t forget that LinkedIn usually has to approve your ads before they go live).

Advanced performance tracking is also possible, but you will need to export the data to third-party analytics software or databases, for example LinkedIn ads for BigQuery.

Ready to try a LinkedIn ad strategy?

Now that you’re armed with a complete guide to how LinkedIn advertising works, you can start implementing your own LinkedIn Ads strategy.

Remember: It doesn’t hurt to explore campaign options, set up groups, and create ads. Nothing happens until the ad is live and you have complete control over it.

Unlike Leigh, I don’t run LinkedIn campaigns on a daily basis, but with her advice I even feel comfortable using LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager! It’s really good.

LinkedIn has a very powerful advertising platform; Don’t leave this off your social campaign marketing list. A well-researched, optimized campaign has the potential to generate thousands of new leads – and sales.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.