LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million users worldwide. This makes it a very attractive platform for B2B companies looking to generate leads and new business through advertising. However, with limited budgets, it’s important to optimize LinkedIn ad spend to get the best possible return on investment.
Some key tactics for optimizing LinkedIn ad spend include:
Targeting the Right Audience
One of the biggest advantages of LinkedIn advertising is the ability to target users based on job title, company, industry, skills, and other professional criteria. This allows you to hone in on your ideal customers rather than wasting spend on irrelevant audiences. Take time to research your target accounts and build customized audiences to ensure your ads are being seen by people that are more likely to convert into leads and customers.
Testing Different Ad Formats
LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats including Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Text Ads, Dynamic Ads, and more. Test different ad formats to see which ones perform best for your campaigns. Sponsored InMail tends to have high engagement, while Sponsored Content feeds into the LinkedIn newsfeed for maximum visibility.
Writing Compelling Ad Copy
Regardless of ad format, the copy itself is critical. You have very limited space to capture attention and communicate what makes your offering valuable. Ensure copy is benefit-driven and aimed at pain points of your target audience. Include a strong call-to-action focused on the next step you want viewers to take.
Segmenting Ad Groups
Creating tightly themed ad groups around specific products, services, or lead magnets allows you to test messaging and creative in an agile way. Keeping ad groups small and focused on single topics also helps improve quality score.
Setting Up Conversions Tracking
To determine the true ROI of LinkedIn ads, it’s important to track conversions through pixels, goals, or CRM integrations. This allows you to see which ads and campaigns are generating the most conversions at the optimal cost.
Running A/B Ad Tests
A/B testing different versions of ads is key to optimization. Test factors like messaging, ad creative, call-to-action, and audience targeting to discover what resonates most. This enables you to double down on what works.
Monitoring Competition
Research competitors running LinkedIn campaigns in your space. This can reveal opportunities to outbid them for key placements, as well as inspiration for proven messaging and creatives.
Optimizing for Quality Score
LinkedIn grades each ad using a quality score based on expected clickthrough rate. Ads with higher scores get preferred treatment and lower costs per click. Improve quality score by focusing tightly on relevant targeting and excelling at other optimization best practices.
Retargeting With Matched Audiences
Create matched audiences in LinkedIn to retarget website visitors with ads focused on moving them further down the funnel. Retargeting leads to higher conversion rates due to advertising to users already familiar with your brand.
Analyzing Performance Data
LinkedIn Campaign Manager provides robust reporting on ad performance and audience insights. Analyze this data regularly to identify optimization opportunities and inform future ad strategy.
Adjusting Bids in Real-Time
Actively monitor campaign metrics and adjust bids accordingly to hit target cost-per-lead or cost-per-conversion. Increase bids on well-performing ads and reduce bids on poorer performers.
Leveraging LinkedIn’s Targeting Options
One of LinkedIn’s biggest advantages is the wealth of professional targeting options available. Here are some of the top ways to tap into LinkedIn targeting to optimize ad spend:
Target by Job Title and Seniority
Focus your ads on reaching specific job titles like “Vice President of Sales” or “Marketing Manager”. Seniority filters allow further refining your target audience.
Target Companies
Build lists of your ideal customer companies and target ads specifically to people who work there. This could include current clients you want to upsell or new companies you want to acquire.
Target by Groups or Skills
Join relevant LinkedIn groups and target your ads to their members. Targeting by skills, like “digital marketing” or “lead generation”, is another option for honing in on the right people.
Target Content Topics
You can target audiences reading about specific topics, enabling your ad to appear alongside relevant content.
Retarget Website Visitors
LinkedIn integrates with the LinkedIn Insight Tag to enable retargeting of people who have already visited your website. This allows tailoring messaging to leads already in the funnel.
Use Matched Audiences
Matched audiences lets you target prospects similar to your existing contacts and accounts. This helps you efficiently scale campaigns to reach more of your customer profile.
Integrate External Data
Bring in external data like CRM contacts or targeted account lists. Combined with LinkedIn data this provides a custom target audience for your campaigns.
Optimizing Ad Creative
In addition to strong targeting, compelling creative is key to maximizing LinkedIn ad performance. Here are some top tips for optimizing your ad creative:
Lead With Value Propositions
Your ad headline and imagery should immediately convey your unique value proposition. Summarize key benefits like saving time, generating leads, or increasing sales.
Emphasize Social Proof
Given the professional audience, social proof elements like customer logos, testimonials quotes, and case studies go a long way. This builds credibility and trust.
Leverage LinkedIn’s Creative Templates
Jump start your creative process by customizing one of LinkedIn’s professionally designed ad templates. Then test it against more original designs.
Make it Professional
Maintain a polished, corporate aesthetic appropriate for LinkedIn’s audience. Avoid creatives that seem too salesy, buzzwordy or consumer-focused.
Use Text Overlays
Text overlays on image ads can improve clickthrough rates by clearly summarizing your offer and call-to-action. Keep overlays short and scannable.
Showcase Visuals
For certain industries, displaying your product or technology in the creative can capture more interest. Infographics and data visualizations also work well.
Localize for Regions
Adapt creative with local language and culturally relevant messages when running globally. This improves engagement and conversions.
A/B Test Regularly
Continual A/B testing of ad creative elements like headlines, images, copy and calls-to-action will help refine your top performing version.
Managing Bidding and Budgets
To maximize LinkedIn ad ROI within budget constraints, strategically managing bids and budgets is key. Here are some top bidding strategies:
Leverage Automated Bidding
LinkedIn’s automated bid strategies use machine learning to optimize for your KPIs like cost per lead or conversion. This often performs better than manual bidding.
Set Daily Budgets
Rather than lifetime budget, use daily budgets with the flexibility to adjust up and down based on performance. Start conservatively then increase budget to higher performing campaigns.
Bid Higher for Lower Funnel
For campaigns focused on downstream conversions, bidding higher to win more auctions can make sense. Measure against conversion rate and cost per conversion.
Bid Higher to Hit Volume Goals
If your primary goal is lead or conversion volume over short timeframes, bidding above suggested bid range may be advantageous.
Adjust Bids by Daypart
When targeting businesses, increasing bids during weekday business hours when engagement is highest can improve volume and conversion rates.
Raise Bids For Competitive Keywords
If you want to outrank competitors in sought after placements, bidding higher on those placements’ suggested bid ranges will help you take the top slots.
Reduce Low Performing Bids
Eliminate waste by lowering or pausing bids on underperforming parts of your campaigns, while reallocating budget to better performers.
Factor In Audience Size
Take audience size into account when setting bids. You may need to bid higher with narrower targeting to get sufficient volume.
Use All Campaign Types
Test a mix of campaign types like awareness, consideration, and conversion focused. Set appropriate bids based on each campaign’s focus.
Conversion Tracking Strategies
To accurately evaluate LinkedIn ad ROI, implementing conversion tracking is essential. Here are some best practices to enable optimization:
| Conversion Tracking Method | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Insight Tag | – Seamless integration – Enables retargeting |
– Only works for website conversions |
| Third-party pixels | – Tracks many conversion types – Integrates with analytics platforms |
– Extra implementation required |
| CRM integration | – Complete view of funnel – Attribute leads to campaigns |
– More complex setup |
| Unique phone numbers | – Tracks offline conversions | – Costs per number add up |
| Offline imports | – Aggregates all conversion data | – Manual updates required |
Track Multiple Types of Conversions
Capture website actions, downloads, leads, signups, purchases, and any other important conversions. Get a cross-channel view.
Focus on High Intent Events
Prioritize tracking conversions that indicate advanced interest like requests for proposals, content downloads, trial signups, purchases etc.
Segment Conversions by Campaign
Properly tag conversion events so you can attribute different types of conversions to specific campaigns, ads, keywords etc.
Analyze Conversion Paths
Evaluate multi-touch attribution to see how ads are influencing the full conversion funnel and purchase journeys over time.
Optimize for Conversions
Use conversion tracking data to calculate true return on ad spend and guide budget allocation decisions.
Analyzing Campaign Performance
To fully optimize LinkedIn ads, diligently analyzing campaign performance and extracting insights is required.
Key Metrics to Track
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Impressions | How many times your ads were shown |
| Clicks | How many times people clicked your ads |
| CTR | Clickthrough rate = Clicks / Impressions |
| CPC | Average cost per click |
| CPM | Average cost per 1000 impressions |
| Leads | Number of leads generated |
| CPL | Average cost per lead |
| Conversions | Number of conversions (signups, sales etc.) |
| CPA | Average cost per conversion |
| Total Spend | Total advertising spend |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend |
Benchmark Metrics
Use benchmarks to evaluate performance for your industry, objective and budget size:
– CTR: 0.5%+
– CPC: $5-$10
– CPL: $25-$100
– CPA: 2-4x CPL
Segment Data
Break down metrics by campaign, ad set, ad creative, keyword etc. to uncover optimization opportunities.
Analyze Trends Over Time
At regular intervals, analyze trends in performance. Watch for declining returns indicating the need for creative refresh or new targeting.
Drill Into Audience Insights
Review audience demographic and company data to identify your highest converting target audiences to refine future campaigns.
Check Keyword Performance
Evaluate metrics for your bids on LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content keywords. Eliminate underperforming keywords or raise bids on winners.
Compare Timeframes
Compare daily metrics week-over-week and month-over-month. Optimal days and seasons often emerge to guide budget allocations.
Identify Quick Wins
Check for simple improvements like raising bids on high performing ads or pausing broken creatives driving low CTR.
Continual Testing
Ongoing testing and optimization is the key to perfecting your LinkedIn advertising approach over time. Here are some keys to effective testing:
Test Ad Copy
Regularly test different ad headlines, body copy, call-to-actions and display URLs to find optimal messaging.
Test Creatives
Run A/B tests of different visuals, videos, gifs, creative styles etc. to determine top performing options.
Test Ad Placements
Try different native ad placements like the LinkedIn feed vs. column ads vs. Message ads vs. dynamic ads.
Test Landing Pages
Send traffic to different landing pages and see which pages convert visitors best for future ad targeting.
Test Bids and Budgets
Try raising and lowering bids or daily budgets to find the right balance between volume and cost efficiency.
Test Audiences
Experiment with different audience targeting approaches to discover which segments drive the most conversions cost-effectively.
Test Campaign Structures
Compare using single large campaigns vs. many highly focused, smaller campaigns.
Isolate Variables
When testing, only change one variable at a time. This enables clear measurement of how each change impacted performance.
Run Relevant Tests Together
Bundle related tests into batches for efficient learning. For example, test new creatives along with copy tests.
Conclusion
Optimizing LinkedIn ad spend takes ongoing time and effort, but following the strategies above will set you on the right path to maximizing your LinkedIn advertising ROI. The keys are precise targeting, compelling creative, smart budget management, conversion tracking, and continual testing. Approach each campaign as an opportunity to learn and refine your LinkedIn marketing capabilities over time. With regular optimization best practices, you can make LinkedIn advertising an efficient customer acquisition channel that delivers significant returns on ad spend.