LinkedIn Campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s self-serve advertising platform that allows you to create, manage, and optimize LinkedIn ad campaigns directly on the LinkedIn website. With Campaign Manager, you can target your ideal audience based on location, job title, company, interests, and more. It provides options for different campaign objectives like website visits, video views, lead generation, and more. Using Campaign Manager effectively can help drive traffic, generate leads, and increase brand awareness for your business on LinkedIn. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to get started with LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
Getting Started with Campaign Manager
To use LinkedIn Campaign Manager, you first need to have a LinkedIn business page and advertising account set up. Here are the steps to get started:
Step 1: Create a LinkedIn Business Page
If you don’t already have one, create a LinkedIn business page for your company. This allows you to establish your business presence on LinkedIn. Go to Pages and click “Create a page” to get started. Add details like your business name, description, website, logo, and more.
Step 2: Sign Up for a LinkedIn Advertising Account
Next, you need to apply for a LinkedIn advertising account, which allows you to create and manage campaigns. On LinkedIn, go to the Advertising tab and click “Get started.” You’ll need to provide details like your business website, ad industry, and payment method to set up your account.
Step 3: Accept the Advertising Policies
Review and accept LinkedIn’s advertising policies to activate your account. This ensures you comply with LinkedIn’s guidelines around prohibited content, privacy, targeting limitations, and more.
Once your advertising account is approved and activated, you’re ready to start setting up campaigns in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
Navigating Campaign Manager
Let’s look at how to navigate LinkedIn Campaign Manager and its key features:
Dashboard
The dashboard provides an overview of your account’s campaigns, ad performance, budget status, and recommendations. Review this regularly to check your campaign progress.
Campaigns Tab
This is where you can create new campaigns, view reporting on existing campaigns, duplicate campaigns, and organize campaigns into folders.
Assets Tab
Here you can create and manage your creative assets including images, videos, and HTML5 ads. Upload and edit your assets for use in campaigns.
Billing Tab
Review account billing details, payment history, invoices, and adjust your monthly budget limits from this tab.
Tools Tab
Find additional resources to help with campaign management like campaign and creative templates, lead gen forms, and more.
Now let’s walk through the key steps of setting up a LinkedIn campaign.
How to Create a LinkedIn Campaign
Follow these steps to create your first campaign in LinkedIn Campaign Manager:
Step 1: Choose Your Objective
First, choose the objective for your campaign. Options include:
– Website visits – drive traffic to your website
– Video views – get more views for your LinkedIn video
– Lead generation – gather quality leads with LinkedIn lead gen forms
– Brand awareness – increase awareness and reach for your brand
– Job applicants – attract candidates to apply for open roles
Select the objective that aligns with your marketing goals.
Step 2: Set Your Campaign Details
Next, define the details for your campaign:
– Name your campaign something memorable.
– Set your budget and schedule – Daily, Lifetime, or custom.
– Select your target locations.
– Pick the languages you want to target.
Step 3: Configure Your Targeting
You can target your ads using precise professional targeting options:
– Job title, seniority, and company targeting lets you reach decision makers and your ideal audiences.
– Interest, skill, group, and industry targeting helps you connect with the right professionals with relevant expertise.
– Follower targeting lets you reach audiences connected to your LinkedIn Page.
– Matched audiences lets you retarget website visitors on LinkedIn.
– Contact targeting allows you to engage contacts and accounts in Sales Navigator.
Refine your targeting to ensure your ads are served to the right people.
Step 4: Set Your Bid and Budget
Next, set your bid type, bid amount, and overall budget:
– Bid Type: You can do manual bidding with CPC bidding or automate it with optimized bidding.
– Bid amount: Your max bid per click or conversion with manual bidding.
– Daily Budget: Your maximum daily spend amount.
Start conservatively to assess performance before increasing bids and budget.
Step 5: Design Your Ad Creatives
Design compelling ad creatives that will capture attention and drive clicks.
– Write clear, concise copy that highlights your offering’s value.
– Use high-quality images, logos, and videos.
– Leverage different ad formats like single image, carousel, and video ads.
– Create ads optimized for mobile and desktop viewing.
Step 6: Pick Ad Extensions and Additional Formats
Enhance your ads with extensions and additional formats:
– Lead gen forms – Capture lead contact info directly within the ad unit
– Content ads – Promote blog posts, articles, ebooks, and more
– Message ads – Drive visitors to chat with you or schedule meetings
– Follower ads – Get more followers for your LinkedIn Page
– Conversation ads – Encourage social sharing and engagement
Step 7: Review and Launch
Do a final review of campaign details, creatives, targeting, and budget. When ready, launch your campaign!
Monitor performance closely and optimize as needed. Now let’s look at tips for improving your LinkedIn campaigns.
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Campaigns
Here are some best practices for optimizing your LinkedIn ad performance:
A/B Test Your Creatives
Try out multiple ad variations with different copy, images, offers, and layouts. Test out 2-3 ad options to see which generate the most clicks and conversions.
Refine Your Targeting
Try narrowing your targeting to reduce irrelevant impressions and drive higher quality traffic. For example, add more job titles, skills, company sizes, or interests.
Adjust Your Bids and Budget
Increase bids for well-performing campaigns to gain more visibility. Reduce bids on low performers to save on costs. Expand budget on winning campaigns too.
Analyze Performance Data
Leverage LinkedIn’s reporting to understand engagement levels, CTR, conversion rates, etc. Identify opportunities to improve based on insights.
Review Top-Performing Content
See which Pages, Groups, Showcase Pages, and content your audience engages with most. Incorporate that content into ads to drive more interest.
Retarget Engaged Visitors
Create audiences to re-engage your website visitors via LinkedIn ads. Tailor messaging and offers for them.
Measure Against Marketing Goals
Evaluate performance based on your key marketing objectives around leads, traffic, engagement, etc. Make adjustments to hit your KPIs.
By continually testing, optimizing, and evolving your LinkedIn campaigns, you can maximize ROI and exceed your marketing goals.
Automating and Managing Campaigns
To manage a growing LinkedIn ad program more efficiently, you can utilize automation and tools:
LinkedIn Campaign Manager API
Leverage the API to programmatically create, manage, optimize, and report on LinkedIn campaigns. Automate more of your workflow.
LinkedIn Audience Network
Extend your LinkedIn ads to run across multiple platforms beyond LinkedIn via the Audience Network.
LinkedIn Conversation Ads
Automatically generate customized ads for each viewer based on their profile data, triggering more engagement.
3rd Party Ad Management Platforms
Use platforms like Marin, Kenshoo, or Adstage to centralize campaign management, reporting, and optimization.
Saved Audiences
Create saved target audiences to easily reuse them across multiple campaigns. Audiences auto-update.
Campaign Templates
Leverage existing campaign templates to quickly launch new initiatives instead of starting from scratch.
Automated Rules
Set up rules to automatically adjust bids, budgets, targets, and creatives based on predefined triggers.
Automation frees up time for focusing on strategy, creative, testing, and growth. But human optimization remains key – find the right balance between automation and manual tuning.
Troubleshooting Common LinkedIn Campaign Manager Issues
Here are some common troubleshooting tips for LinkedIn Campaign Manager:
Low Clicks or Conversion Rates
– Refine targeting to reach more qualified audiences
– Improve ad creative with compelling copy, visuals, and offers
– Increase bids and budget to improve visibility and traffic
– Remove low-performing keywords to reduce irrelevant reach
High Cost Per Click (CPC)
– Lower your bid amounts
– Tighten your targeting to reduce low-quality traffic
– Improve click-through rate with better performing creatives
– Use automated bidding strategies like cost cap bidding
High Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Conversion
– Optimize landing pages to improve conversion rates
– Improve lead quality with more targeted ad creative and offers
– Reduce bids and optimize for lower CPLs
– Weed out low quality placements driving irrelevant conversions
Account Holds Due to Policy Violations
– Review and properly tag your ads to comply with LinkedIn’s policies
– Remove prohibited content like sensational claims or profanity
– Contact LinkedIn support to understand what caused the violation
– Adjust targeting to comply with LinkedIn’s restrictions
Low Budget Delivery
– Increase daily budget amounts
– Expand your geographic and audience targeting
– Raise your bid amounts to be more competitive
– Add more variety in your creatives and offers
Troubleshooting issues promptly as they arise will help maximize your LinkedIn ad results over the long term.
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of ads can I run on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn supports a variety of ad formats including text, image, video, carousel, conversation ads, dynamic ads, lead gen forms, and more.
How much do LinkedIn ads cost?
LinkedIn ad costs vary based on factors like objective, targeting, bid amounts, and competition levels. Average costs range from $5 – $10+ per click and $50 – $200+ per conversion.
What’s the difference between CPC and CPM bidding?
CPC bidding charges per click while CPM bidding charges for every 1,000 impressions. CPC aligns costs with clicks while CPM focuses on maximum reach and impressions.
Can I reuse assets from my website in LinkedIn ads?
Yes, you can and should reuse creative assets like images, videos, and copy from your website and content in your LinkedIn ads.
Can I use the same ad creative across all campaigns?
It’s better to customize ad creative for each campaign objective and audience segment to maximize relevance and performance.
How often should I optimize my campaigns?
Review performance daily and optimize elements like targeting, creatives, and bidding at least 2-3 times per week to maximize results.
Conclusion
With LinkedIn’s powerful targeting capabilities and diverse ad formats, Campaign Manager provides immense opportunities to effectively reach your B2B audience. By following best practices around campaign setup, optimization, automation, and troubleshooting, you can drive tremendous value from your LinkedIn ad investments. With over 675+ million professionals, LinkedIn is too important to ignore as part of your digital marketing strategy. Invest in developing your LinkedIn advertising expertise and partner with their team to elevate your results. The platform provides unmatched solutions for lead generation, brand building, and reaching decision makers across every industry.
