LinkedIn ads provide a variety of marketing objectives to help businesses achieve their goals on the platform. The main objectives offered are awareness, consideration, conversion, engagement, video views, lead generation, and retargeting.
Awareness
Awareness campaigns are designed to get your brand, products or services in front of a broad audience. This helps increase visibility and reach. Awareness campaigns are best for:
- Introducing a new brand or product
- Promoting content or events
- Increasing followers and community building
With awareness campaigns, you pay for impressions. This allows you to maximize reach and frequency. Key metrics to track include impressions, reach and CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
Consideration
Consideration campaigns focus on moving prospects closer to a purchase. They aim to build brand affinity and preference. Consideration objectives work well when:
- Driving prospects to your website or landing pages
- Promoting whitepapers, demos or free trials
- Nurturing prospects with valuable content
With consideration campaigns, you pay for clicks. Relevant copy and creative is key. Important metrics are clicks, CTR (click-through-rate), and CPV (cost per view for video).
Conversion
Conversion campaigns optimize for conversions or sales. The goal is to drive prospects to take a specific action. Examples include:
- Signing up for a newsletter
- Downloading content
- Registering for a webinar
- Making a purchase
Conversion campaigns are ideal for ecommerce businesses or promoting special offers or discounts. You pay for conversion events, so optimization for lower cost actions can be effective. Track conversions, CPA (cost per acquisition) and conversion rate.
Engagement
Engagement campaigns build involvement between your brand and target audience. Engagement helps strengthen relationships over time. Goals of engagement campaigns include:
- Increasing social followers
- Driving shares, likes and comments
- Growing email or newsletter sign ups
- Building brand loyalty
Engagement campaigns are great for branded content, social media growth, and community building. You pay for engagement actions like follows, shares and likes. Important metrics are engagement rate, cost per engagement, and audience growth.
Video Views
Video view campaigns help promote video content to the right viewers. Objectives include:
- Increasing visibility for video ads
- Driving viewership of gated videos
- Generating interest in video series or channels
Video campaigns work well for video ads, brand stories, demos, or thought leadership. You pay for video views based on the percentage watched. Track video views, view rate, CPV and completion rate.
Lead Generation
Lead generation campaigns collect qualified leads for your sales team. Goals include:
- Capturing lead contact information
- Identifying buyers at the consideration stage
- Promoting whitepaper downloads, inquiries, demos
These campaigns optimize for converting interested prospects into leads. You pay for lead form opens or submissions. Key metrics are cost per lead, lead quality, and conversion rate.
Retargeting
Retargeting campaigns engage people who have already interacted with your brand. Goals include:
- Driving conversions from previous site visitors
- Remarketing to past prospects or customers
- Promoting offers to email subscribers or followers
Retargeting is ideal for ecommerce stores, lead nurturing, and motivating past prospects. You pay for clicks or conversions from the target audience. Track conversion rate, CPA, and ROI from retargeted groups.
Benefits of LinkedIn Ad Objectives
LinkedIn’s wide range of campaign objectives provides benefits including:
- Flexibility to achieve multiple goals from brand building to direct response
- Control over investing budget towards specific outcomes
- Alignment of objectives with buyer’s journey from awareness to conversion
- Optimization by strategic objectives instead of broad demographics
- Pay-for-performance model where you only pay when objectives are achieved
Best Practices for Success
To get the most out of LinkedIn’s marketing objectives:
- Clearly define the purpose of your campaign and expected outcomes
- Choose the objective that aligns closest to your goals
- Use detailed targeting to reach your ideal audience
- Provide relevant, valuable content in ads and landing pages
- Continuously optimize based on performance and metrics
- Leverage LinkedIn’s measurement tools to quantify impact
- Track ROI and conversion metrics beyond vanity metrics like clicks
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of businesses benefit most from LinkedIn ads?
LinkedIn ads work well for B2B companies, professional services firms, SaaS/technology, educational institutions, and organizations selling to business decision makers.
What targeting options are available?
LinkedIn provides robust demographic, job role, company, interests, group, and search retargeting options to reach your ideal buyers.
How much do LinkedIn ads cost?
Costs vary based on objectives chosen and competition. On average, CPCs are $3-$5 for awareness and traffic campaigns. Conversion campaigns range from $10-$50+ based on industry and offer.
What types of creative perform best?
Short, clear text focused on user benefits tends to work best. Images and video also attract attention. Personalized and dynamic creative can help improve performance.
Conclusion
LinkedIn’s flexible campaign objectives allow brands to achieve a wide range of marketing and sales goals. By aligning objectives to your specific business needs, you can drive meaningful results across the buyer’s journey. Advanced targeting, compelling creative, and performance-based payment models enable brands to generate strong ROI from LinkedIn ads.