Running your first LinkedIn ad campaign can seem daunting, but with some preparation and planning, you can set yourself up for success. Here are some tips on how to get ready for your initial foray into LinkedIn advertising.
Define Your Goals and Target Audience
Before you start building ads and choosing targeting options, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish with your LinkedIn campaign. Some common goals include:
- Generating leads
- Driving traffic to your website
- Raising brand awareness
- Promoting content
Once you know your objectives, you can identify your target audience – the specific people you want to reach with your ads. Get as detailed as possible about their job titles, company sizes, locations, and interests. This will allow you to tailor your messaging and use LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities effectively.
Set Your Budget
One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is how much you want to spend on your LinkedIn ad campaign. LinkedIn offers flexible budget options to accommodate businesses large and small.
Things to consider when setting your budget:
- Daily vs. monthly spending – With daily budgets, you control costs by capping how much you spend each day. Monthly budgets allow you to spend up to a fixed amount per month.
- Bidding – The bid amount determines your ad placement. Higher bids increase the chance of your ads being shown.
- Duration – How long do you want your campaign to run – weeks, months, indefinitely?
- Benchmarks – Research typical LinkedIn advertising costs for your industry.
- Results – Weigh budget against expected outcomes – more spend may be warranted for high-value objectives.
Start conservatively and leave room to adjust once you have performance data.
Develop Relevant Ad Creative
Your ad creative includes the visuals, copy, and messaging that will be shown to your target audience. To make a strong first impression:
- Highlight benefits – Focus on how your product or service can help prospects.
- Keep copy concise – Get your message across in minimal text.
- Use eye-catching assets – Include relevant images, videos, or graphics.
- Craft different variants – Test different combinations of creative elements.
- Call to action – Use an urgent, compelling CTA to drive clicks.
Tailor your creative to the platform – text-heavy copy may work better on LinkedIn than distracting graphics. Write in a professional tone aligned with LinkedIn’s audience.
Choose Your Ad Formats
LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats, each with unique benefits.
Ad Format | Description | Best For |
---|---|---|
Sponsored Content | Native, in-feed ads that match the look and feel of organic posts | Brand awareness, content views, engagement |
Text Ads | Text-based ads displayed on the sidelines | Clicks to website, lead generation |
Dynamic Ads | Scrollable carousel ads that can showcase multiple assets | Promoting products, services, content |
Message Ads | Customizable messages sent directly to prospects’ inboxes | Personalized outreach, lead nurturing |
For your first campaign, start with one or two formats that align closest with your goals and audience. You can diversify later on.
Refine Your Targeting
Using LinkedIn’s extensive targeting options, you can zero in on the exact audience you want to reach.
Ways to target your ads include:
- Job title, seniority level, and company
- Industry, skills, and experience
- Groups and interests
- Location
- Age and gender
- Engagement with content and pages
The more precise your targeting, the better your ads can resonate with your ideal audience. Avoid being overly narrow at first – cast a wider net and refine over time.
Negative Targeting
Equally important is using negative targeting to exclude irrelevant or unqualified prospects. This improves your ad performance.
For example, you can use negative targeting to filter out people who:
- Work for your competitors
- Are below a certain seniority level
- Are located in regions you don’t service
- Have already engaged with your ads or content
Measure Results and Optimize
Once your first campaign launches, closely monitor its performance. LinkedIn’s analytics give data on:
- Impressions
- Clicks and clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Engagement rate
- Leads generated
- Website visits
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
Study these metrics to identify high-performing elements to optimize. You can A/B test ads, reallocate budget to better-performing formats and targeting, adjust bids, and improve poor performers.
Ongoing optimization lets you maximize results over the course of your campaign.
Conclusion
The work doesn’t stop once your LinkedIn campaign starts running. Set aside time regularly to check analytics, refresh creative, expand targeting, and control spend. Use what you learn to refine your strategy.
While there’s a learning curve, taking a methodical approach to your first LinkedIn ad campaign sets you up for delivering impactful results. Define success, research best practices, start small, iterate quickly. With experience, you’ll gain the confidence and expertise to scale up your efforts and become a LinkedIn advertising pro.