LinkedIn advertising can be a powerful tool for reaching a professional audience, but many businesses struggle to generate results from their LinkedIn ads. There are several common reasons LinkedIn ads underperform or fail entirely:
Poor Targeting
With over 722 million members, LinkedIn has a massive audience. But not everyone on LinkedIn will be interested in your product or service. The key is narrowing down your target audience into a specific niche or personas. Targeting the wrong audience is one of the biggest mistakes brands make with LinkedIn ads.
Here are some common LinkedIn advertising targeting mistakes:
- Casting too wide of a net instead of focused targeting
- Failing to analyze audience demographics and interests
- Not aligning ad targeting with ideal customer profiles
- Focusing too much on job titles over skills and interests
- Relying on LinkedIn’s general audience templates instead of customized targeting
The best way to avoid poor targeting is to put time into defining your ideal customers and core audience(s). Analyze any existing customer data to identify common demographics, interests, behaviors, and needs. Use this profile as a guide for ad targeting, bidding strategies, and creative messaging.
Irrelevant Messaging
Even if you nail the targeting, your LinkedIn ads will flop if the messaging isn’t dialed in. LinkedIn members come to the platform to network, build their professional brands, and further their careers. They aren’t there to be sold to randomly.
To make an impact, your LinkedIn ad messaging needs to:
- Offer value and appeal to their needs
- Feel personalized and human
- Avoid overly salesly or promotional language
Test different ad copy approaches to see what resonates best with your audience. Use insights from any existing customer data or audience research. Align the copy and creative assets with what motivates your audience rather than solely pitching your product.
Ad Blindness
On platforms like LinkedIn where users see frequent ads, ad blindness becomes a risk. Your audiences get adept at tuning out anything that looks like an ad.
Some ways to combat ad blindness on LinkedIn include:
- Using premium ad formats like video ads or Sponsored Content that mimic organic posts
- Testing different variations of creative to find what catches attention
- Adjusting placement targeting to appear in less ad-heavy areas of LinkedIn
- Using retargeting tactics to reach people who have already engaged your brand
The more your ads look like natural content instead of promotional material, the less likely they’ll fall victim to ad blindness.
Competing Against Yourself
Running multiple ad campaigns with overlapping audiences and messaging can backfire. You end up driving up costs by forcing your own ads to compete against each other.
If you want to test different ad variations or offers, make sure to:
- Establish specific goals and KPIs for each campaign
- Segment your audiences into discrete lists for targeting
- Monitor performance data to identify your best combination of message and audience
Continually refine your top performing campaign while pausing or eliminating those that can’t compete.
Ignoring Niches Within Audiences
Broad audiences like “IT managers” or “marketing professionals” contain diverse subsets. Your messaging likely won’t work evenly across such a wide spectrum.
Improving relevance often comes down to identifying the niches within your audience pools. Examples for IT managers could be:
- IT managers at mid-size retailers
- IT managers at financial service firms
- IT managers focused on cloud solutions
Targeting by seniority, industry, job function, and other filters lets you hone in on the subsets most likely to convert.
Underbidding
Bidding too conservatively is a common mistake on LinkedIn advertising. With any ad platform, you need to bid competitively to get results. But many advertisers are wary of LinkedIn’s reputation for high CPCs and skimp on their bids.
The danger is you either end up at the bottom of the auction or limited to poor impressions. Don’t rely solely on LinkedIn’s suggested bid range. Research typical costs for your target industry and audiences. Analyze whether there’s opportunity to scale up bids and still maintain positive ROAS.
Not Optimizing for Conversions
Many advertisers put too much focus on vanity metrics like clicks and impressions over real business impact. But what matters most is conversions and ROI.
Make sure to:
- Set up conversion tracking for key goals
- Structure campaigns around conversion objectives
- Analyze conversion and cost data to optimize targeting, bids, creative
- Build retargeting pools based on conversion activity
Continuously optimize your LinkedIn ads based on performance data—not guesses. Add third-party tracking where helpful to expand data collection.
Ignoring the Post-Click Experience
Your job isn’t over once someone clicks your LinkedIn ad. The experience on your landing pages and website is crucial for driving conversions.
Typical post-click issues include:
- Landing pages that don’t align with your ads
- Slow or unoptimized landing pages
- Complicated navigation and conversion flows
- Weak calls-to-action and value propositions
Analyze your ad-to-conversion process end-to-end. Identify and fix any sticking points where people fall out of the funnel. This helps maximize the value from your LinkedIn advertising spend.
Not Monitoring Closely Enough
The only way to address underperforming LinkedIn ads is to monitor them closely. Set up real-time reporting and alerts tied to your key success metrics. Dive into the data and performance trends each week.
Dig into essential details like:
- Click-through rates
- Bounce rates
- Conversion rates
- Cost-per-click
- Cost-per-conversion
- ROI
Continual optimization and improvement depends on having current and actionable performance data.
Failing to Test and Iterate
No ad campaign gets it perfectly right out of the gate. You need an iterative process of continual testing and improvement.
Ways to boost testing and iteration include:
- Starting small to validate assumptions before scaling up spend
- Trying different combinations of creative, audiences, placements, etc.
- Launching new tests while continuing top performers
- Using A/B testing approaches on landing pages
- Optimizing based on empirical data vs. guesses
Expect failures and dead ends—they’re integral to eventually hitting on what works.
How can you avoid these LinkedIn ad mistakes?
Here are some best practices for maximizing success with your LinkedIn ads:
- Research your audience thoroughly and align targeting and messaging.
- Use premium ad units and focus on quality over quantity of impressions.
- Set specific conversion and ROI goals then configure campaigns to optimize towards those KPIs.
- Test different combinations of targeting and creative to find your high-converting niche.
- Bid strategically based on benchmarks for your industry and audience.
- Obsess over continual testing, optimization, and improvement.
With over 15 million monthly active advertisers, competition is intense on LinkedIn. Standing out takes focus, persistence, and failing fast. But the high commercial intent of the LinkedIn audience also presents major opportunities to connect with qualified prospects.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most important LinkedIn advertising metrics?
The most important LinkedIn ad metrics to track are:
- Impression Rate – The number of times your ads are shown.
- Click-through Rate – Clicks divided by impressions.
- Cost-per-Click (CPC) – How much you pay for each click.
- CTR – The % of impressions that result in a click.
- Cost-per-Lead (CPL) – How much you pay for each lead conversion.
- Conversion Rate – The % of clicks or impressions that convert.
- ROI – The revenue generated compared to cost.
What is a good CTR for LinkedIn ads?
The average CTR for LinkedIn Sponsored Content ads is around 0.9%. However, anything above 1% can be considered a good CTR. The CTR can vary significantly based on your targeting, ad content, etc. Typically CTRs between 1-3% are respectable.
How can I get more impressions on my LinkedIn ads?
To increase LinkedIn ad impressions focus on:
- Broadening your targeting to make more users eligible
- Increasing your daily ad budget
- Improving your ad’s relevance score through testing
- Using Follower Targeting to reach your existing audience
- Creating more ad variations and sets
Just increasing impressions shouldn’t be the goal though. Focus on quality over quantity of traffic.
What are the most effective types of LinkedIn ads?
The most effective LinkedIn ad formats are usually:
- Sponsored Content – Appear in the newsfeed like organic posts
- Sponsored InMail – Reach members via direct message
- Text Ads – Simple PPC ads for quick targeting and testing
- Message Ads – Combine text, image, and call-to-action
Video Ads also see strong performance but have much higher production effort. Test different options to see what resonates best with your audiences.
Conclusion
Despite the challenges, LinkedIn advertising can deliver tremendous value when executed strategically. Avoiding common mistakes around targeting, optimization, and testing is key. LinkedIn requires an iterative approach focused on continual improvement through data analysis. With proper effort and commitment, LinkedIn ads can become a core component of your lead generation and brand building.
