If you’re advertising on LinkedIn without a strong optimisation strategy, you may as well be throwing your money away.
To make the most of your advertising budget, you need to set goals for your campaign that align with your business goals, target the right people, design creatives that grab the attention and allocate your spend correctly. During the campaign, you should be analysing results and testing creatives. Then, post-campaign, it’s all about looking for ways to improve results in the future.
In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about optimising your LinkedIn ads. Whether you’re a marketing agency or an individual in a business running LinkedIn advertising campaigns, if you follow these steps, you’re sure to achieve better targeting, higher levels of engagement and improved ROI. Let’s get started.
Understanding LinkedIn Ads
First, let’s examine how advertising works on the LinkedIn social network.
LinkedIn as an Advertising Platform
LinkedIn is like any other social media platform. You’re not likely to see any crazy cat videos or political hot takes; LinkedIn is strictly business. It’s where you go to build your professional network, interact with business content and possibly plot your next career move.
This makes the LinkedIn advertising platform a powerful tool for marketers. You can reach a professional audience (including micro-targeting) when they’re thinking about work rather than their personal lives. If you can grab their attention with an engaging message, it can deliver excellent results and ROI.
Setting your Objectives
The hub of the LinkedIn advertising platform is the Campaign Manager screen. Campaign Manager walks you through the entire LinkedIn advertising process, starting at the beginning, where you set your objectives.
Setting an objective for your LinkedIn ad campaign is essential, as it will help you decide who to target, the best ad formats to use and how much to spend.
Here are the objectives available in Campaign Manager:
● Brand awareness – Get more people to know about your business
● Website visits – Direct people to your site (or LinkedIn page)
● Engagement – Get more people to interact with your LinkedIn content
● Video views – Get more eyeballs on your videos
● Messaging – Ask people to message your business via LinkedIn Messaging
● Lead generation – Deliver leads that match your target customer
● Website conversions – Get people to complete an action on your website
● Job applicants – Generate qualified candidate applications for a role in your organisation
Select the option most suitable for your business and you’ll find the rest of the process much easier.
Diverse Ad Formats and Their Optimisation
LinkedIn offers nine different ad formats for you to utilise. Each has strengths and weaknesses; some work better than others, depending on your objectives. Let’s look at each in turn:
● Single image – The basic LinkedIn ad, one image, with an intro text at the top, a headline and a call to action. It’s great for brand awareness as you have the space to show your audience who you are, why you’re different and what they should do next. With single images, use vertical orientation to take up as much of the user’s screen as possible. You’re paying for it, so you may as well use it.
● Carousel image – Multiple image ads that the user can scroll through. It’s good if you have a range of products you want to advertise, but many users won’t bother scrolling through.
● Video – Video ads on LinkedIn (with intro text and a call to action) are a great way to grab attention and show the human side of your business. Just ensure you hook them in the first few seconds, otherwise they’ll scroll away.
● Text – These are small text-based ads displayed at the top or right-hand side of the user’s LinkedIn feed. You get a thumbnail image, around 15 words and a URL. They’re effective for hitting people who already know you are with a specific message.
● Spotlight – A small rectangular ad displayed on the right of the target user’s LinkedIn feed. A great thing about Spotlight is that you can customise it with the user’s name and really grab their attention.
● Follower – This ad is designed to encourage viewers to follow your company LinkedIn page. Like Spotlight, you can personalise this ad with the user’s name.
● Document – Effective for lead generation, Document ads allow the viewer to read or download a piece of your content, such as an eBook or whitepaper.
● Conversation – This ad appears in the user’s LinkedIn inbox, starting a conversation. An advantage is you can get super personal. A disadvantage is that you cannot use these ads in the EU for privacy reasons.
● Event – Promote your event on your target audience’s LinkedIn feeds. Add a link so they can book their place directly from LinkedIn. The ad displays the number of people already attending, which acts as social proof for your event
Put some thought into choosing the ad format for your LinkedIn advertising campaign. Consider the point on the customer journey your target audience sits on, as well as your Cost Per Click. Keep an eye on the forecasted results section of your campaign screen as you tweak your campaign, as these estimates are often quite accurate.
Setting Up Your LinkedIn Ad Campaign
You’ve decided on your objectives and the ad format you will use. Now it’s time to dive into Campaign Manager and set up your campaign. Each stage of the process is an opportunity to optimise.
Defining Campaign Goals
Setting clear, measurable goals for your LinkedIn ad campaign is essential. If you don’t, how will you know if your campaign has worked?
The goals you set at this stage should be your North Star when you think about your strategy and content later in the process. For example, think about where the people you want to target sit in your marketing funnel, then pick an ad format that supports that goal. For users at the top of your funnel, the objective should be brand awareness, and the format you choose should support that (e.g. single image, carousel, video). For targets in the middle of your funnel, it’s all about building the relationship and displaying social proof, so an event ad may be more appropriate. At the bottom of the funnel, whatever you choose, it’s all about the call to action.
Audience Insights: The Foundation of LinkedIn Ads Optimisation
Who do you want to see your LinkedIn ads? It’s the essential question and perhaps the most important part of optimising your LinkedIn ad campaign. Let’s dive into basic and advanced targeting strategies.
Target Audience Identification
LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager gives you the power to segment LinkedIn’s universe of over one billion professionals by a wide range of criteria.
When you create a new campaign, you have two options for identifying your target audience:
● Create your own target audience via LinkedIn’s segmentation criteria based on demographic and professional data (e.g. location, job title, industry, company size)
● Upload your own list of targets, including retargeting from other campaigns
Most of the time, it’s better to use your own list incorporating retargeting (which we’ll cover in a future section). However, if you’re running a bespoke campaign, you should create a new audience and save it for the future.
Advanced Targeting: A Tactical Approach to LinkedIn Ads Optimisation
LinkedIn allows you to get more sophisticated with your targeting. Take the time to get to know the targeting options so you can make your campaign work even harder for you.
For example, tweak your targeting as your campaign runs by monitoring who is engaging with your ads. The data LinkedIn provides on audience engagement is highly detailed, giving you more levers to pull, such as:
● Excluding people who you don’t want to target even though they may be on your list (e.g. too junior to be a decision maker, companies that don’t match your ICP)
● Making a new campaign for people who engage with your ads on a large scale (and people like them) to show bottom-of-funnel ads
● Setting up new audiences of people who engage with your ads, visit your website, etc.
The Art of Retargeting and ABM on LinkedIn
LinkedIn records every user that engages with your ads and how they interact with them. You can bring these users into your campaign target audience and reach them with more ads to build frequency and show different messages.
Retargeting is tremendously powerful because you’ve got people here who have shown some intent to find out more about you (by visiting your website, for example). By bringing them into a new target audience, you can focus on them more aggressively and get them to take action.
Retargeting on LinkedIn is key if you’re engaging in Account-Based Marketing (ABM). LinkedIn allows you to see the companies of people who view and click your ads, allowing you to either include or exclude them from retargeting or create new campaigns with content relevant to that specific company.
Conversion Tracking
One thing many advertisers on LinkedIn don’t bother with is conversion tracking. In my opinion, this is criminal as it causes them to miss out on valuable data that they can use to optimise future campaigns.
While conversion tracking is only optional on Campaign Manager, it’s always worth doing. For example, you can use it to determine whether you won a new customer within 90 days of clicking your ad, or 30 days since they viewed an ad.
Even if your campaign is solely brand awareness, conversion tracking helps you discover if something you did early on in the customer journey made an impact further down the line.
Crafting Your Ad
Running a successful ad campaign is an art as well as a science. You need to get the numbers right on the back end, but you also need a creative ad that grabs the viewer’s attention and pushes them to act the way you want.
Let’s look at the creative side of LinkedIn advertising.
Designing Engaging Ad Creatives
Whatever ad format you choose, your LinkedIn ad creative should grab your target’s attention, generate emotion, and display credibility. You should incorporate other elements, like storytelling and empathy, but attention, emotion, and credibility should be non-negotiable.
The opportunity for you here is that many LinkedIn advertisers get this wrong. When you scroll through your LinkedIn feed, you’ll see generic and bland ads that don’t make you want to stop scrolling. So many LinkedIn ads are too complex, and they don’t urge you to want to find out more. Others are simply not relevant to you, so you scroll past without a second thought. If you design an ad that is attention-grabbing, simple and gives the user a clear call to action, you can win on LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn Ad Library is a repository of every ad that’s ever been on LinkedIn. It’s searchable by advertiser, keyword, country and date. It’s a fantastic resource when coming up with creative ideas for LinkedIn ads. Spend time there to get inspired about what (and what not) to do when creating your ad.
You can also check out my ads breakdown videos on YouTube and LinkedIn, where I take an ad and break it down so you can see what works and what could be improved:
A/B Testing Ad Creatives
Another thing most advertisers on LinkedIn don’t do is A/B testing.
Don’t just design one piece of ad creative. Instead, create multiple ad treatments. They don’t need to all be 100% different. You can vary them around an overarching theme if you prefer.
Once your campaign is up and running and generating results, you should regularly go into Campaign Manager and examine the ads that aren’t performing well against your chosen metrics. Take the worst performers out of your campaign and replace them with something else. Keep evaluating, rinse and repeat.
Budgeting and Bidding Strategies
LinkedIn runs an auction system for ads on its platform. The amount you’re willing to bid for spots determines when your ad will be displayed and how much you’ll pay for it. However, if you’re not careful, you can exhaust your budget quickly with little to show for it. Let’s examine budgeting and bidding in LinkedIn advertising.
Budgeting Wisely: A Pillar of LinkedIn Ads Optimisation
The first rule of budgeting for LinkedIn ad campaigns is that you need to actually have a budget. Don’t just go in with an open-ended amount of money, or the amount you spend will get out of hand (or you may not spend enough to be effective).
Once you have a budget set out, work on how you will allocate it depending on your organisation’s status, your objective and the stage of the funnel your target audience sits at. For example, if you’re a startup, you should focus on brand awareness and nothing else. More established brands should allocate budget across the customer journey (if they can afford it), as people already know who they are.
Bidding Techniques for Optimal Performance
LinkedIn offers automated bidding, so you can set your budget and off you go. However, you won’t always get the best results working this way. You’re much better off taking matters into your own hands, getting granular and handling your own LinkedIn ad bidding.
When you go with manual bidding, LinkedIn will recommend a specific price and a range to give you a steer on what to bid. In my experience, the best results come when you bid slightly above the recommended price (usually towards the bottom half of the range).
Manual bidding can involve some trial and error, and it’s the kind of thing that you get better at with experience. However, keep monitoring your bids and results, test different bidding strategies and discover what works for you.
Analysing and Optimising Campaigns
LinkedIn offers a suite of tools to help you monitor your campaign while it’s running and once it’s ended. By closely monitoring your numbers, you can find ways to get better results in future campaigns.
Utilising LinkedIn Analytics
Use LinkedIn’s analytics tools to track and measure ad performance. When you monitor your campaign closely, you’ll always discover ways to iterate and improve.
For example, you can use the demographic breakdown of users who view and click your ad to determine if the campaign is working how you hoped. You can get super granular, breaking your audience down by job title, company size, company name and more. If you’re getting views from people who aren’t in your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), you may need to tweak your targeting. It’s a belt and braces approach, as sometimes things can slip through the net at the initial stages of your campaign.
Continuous Improvement – The Essence of LinkedIn Ads Optimisation
You don’t solely use LinkedIn analytics to fight fires, as in the example illustrated above. You can also use it to discover ways to improve.
The campaign data you discover on LinkedIn could lead you to create new campaigns that target specific job titles (with new messaging), go ABM on specific companies or even tweak your ICP altogether.
LinkedIn is a market – and the market often sends you messages you weren’t expecting.
Conclusion
To sum up, optimising your LinkedIn advertising campaign is all about:
● Choosing the correct ad format for your objectives
● Setting up a target audience that aligns with your goal, including conversion tracking
● Designing a set of ads that grab the viewer’s attention and demand action
● Budgeting and bidding for ad placements efficiently
● Monitoring the data to find ways to improve your campaign while it’s running and in the future
Follow these steps, and you’re sure to see better outcomes from your LinkedIn ads. Good luck!
FAQs: LinkedIn Ads Optimization Guide
Effective targeting in LinkedIn Ads involves more than just basic demographics. Start by combining job titles, skills, and group affiliations to create a highly relevant audience. Use ‘Lookalike Audiences’ to expand reach while maintaining relevance. Test different combinations and refine based on performance data, adhering to best practices like maintaining minimum audience sizes. Include interests and location to tailor your approach. For instance, targeting ‘Marketing Managers’ with specific ‘Digital Advertising Skills’ in ‘Technology Groups’ can yield a more engaged audience. Remember, the key is to align your targeting strategy with your campaign goals, whether it’s for clicks, conversions, or awareness.
To boost your LinkedIn Ad’s CTR, start by A/B testing ad headlines and descriptions, incorporating relevant keywords. Craft concise ad copy with a clear call-to-action. Experiment with various ad formats, like single image, carousel, and video, to see which resonates best. Use analytics to dive deeper into audience behavior and refine your targeting. Employ eye-catching creatives and relevant imagery, continually testing minor changes for impact. Also, adjusting placement and bid strategies can optimize ad visibility. Remember, a relevant and well-targeted ad significantly enhances CTR, so focus on tailoring your message to your audience’s interests and needs.
Selecting the right LinkedIn ad format hinges on your campaign’s goals and content. Test different formats to gauge engagement and conversion rates. Use single image ads for straightforward messages, carousel ads for more detailed information, and video ads for dynamic storytelling. Align the ad format with your content’s nature; complex messages might require the depth of a video. For instance, a detailed product demonstration could be more effective as a video ad. Compare formats using A/B testing and analyze metrics like CTR and conversion rate. The ideal format marries content, audience behavior, and your campaign objectives for maximum impact.
Effective budgeting in LinkedIn Ads is driven by understanding your targets for reach, engagement, and conversions. Allocate your budget based on expected ROI, using historical data as a guide. Consider campaign scale, duration, and minimum budget requirements for different ad formats and placements. Experiment with audience sizes and adjust bids based on performance metrics. Track your spend pacing and focus on allocating budget towards campaigns that yield the best results, whether for brand awareness or direct response. The key is to remain flexible, allowing for budget reallocation to high-performing campaigns and ensuring continuous testing and optimization for an efficient and impactful ad spend.
To enhance your LinkedIn Ads’ performance, utilize the platform’s analytics to monitor key metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversions. Set clear goals and use conversion tracking for detailed insights. Analyze performance across various parameters, including ad types, audiences, and placements. Implement A/B testing for ad elements and targeting strategies, and iterate based on the results. Map your ads’ performance against the customer journey to identify the most effective touchpoints. Utilize audience expansion and optimize ad schedules based on peak performance times. Regularly review and adjust your campaigns based on these insights to continuously improve CTR, conversion rates, and reduce cost per acquisition.
