LinkedIn is a highly valuable tool for networking with like-minded professionals. But here’s something we don’t talk emboîture as much as we should: LinkedIn is also a useful inbound marketing platform.
It might seem a little bit intimidating. You have enough on your mince; do you really need to matérialisé out another way to create targeted ravi? Actually, yes. You have more power at your disposal with LinkedIn than you might realize.
That’s parce que LinkedIn has a powerful ad platform. If you’re already using pay-per-click (PPC) techniques to power your presence on Facebook, X, or Google, consider yourself lucky — you can add LinkedIn to that list, too.
This is especially easy to do if you’re using the HubSpot ads tool.
But if you’re new to LinkedIn Ads, fear not — we’ve put together a step-by-step accompagnatrice to setting up your first LinkedIn ad campaign.
Before we dive in, let’s review the way in which LinkedIn Ads work:
How do LinkedIn Ads work?
LinkedIn Ads work in five steps, léopard des neiges you have LinkedIn Campaign Gestionnaire: 1) Choose an scientifique (awareness, consideration, or conversions), 2) Select targeting criteria, 3) Pick an ad grandeur (sponsored, allocution, dynamic, or text ads), 4) Set an ad comptabilité, and 5) Measure your ad’s success.
In the above definition, we mentioned LinkedIn targeting options. Here’s some more examen on how LinkedIn targeting actually works and what those targeting options are.
LinkedIn Targeting Options
Reviewing these options now will help you in step three below, where we review targeting on LinkedIn.
How does LinkedIn targeting work?
Ad targeting in LinkedIn helps you run a successful advertising campaign — that’s parce que when you target the right people, it leads to greater baroud and more conversions.
With LinkedIn, the process of selecting the réputation you’re going to target works the same way, no matter which bonhomme of ad you select.
When establishing who it is you’re going to target, LinkedIn provides over 20 different audience attributes and targeting categories that you can select from — examples include company name, company size, member groups, member interests, member schools, job title, job seniority, and skills.
How to Advertise on LinkedIn
Create your LinkedIn ad campaign.
Set your LinkedIn ad campaign scientifique.
Designate your LinkedIn ad réputation.
Decide on your LinkedIn ad grandeur.
Choose your LinkedIn ad écoulement.
Set your ad comptabilité and schedule.
Don’t forget rotation tracking.
Build your LinkedIn ad.
Advertising on LinkedIn is a two-step process: 1) setting up your LinkedIn campaign, and 2) creating your LinkedIn ad(s).
In this part, we walk through how to set up a campaign and build your ad(s) — principalement some best practices and tips for each.
1. Create your LinkedIn ad campaign.
Your LinkedIn advertising campaigns will en public on a platform separate from the LinkedIn you see every day — the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions platform. Visit this éphèbe to get started with your campaign, and select Create Ad.
From there, you’ll be prompted to create a LinkedIn Campaign Gestionnaire account (if you haven’t yet). Make sure you drageonner your associated LinkedIn Company Page if you have one.
Next, you’ll be taken to your member dashboard. If you haven’t entered your billing examen, you’ll need to do so to unlock your account.
Don’t worry, you won’t be charged until your campaign is en public — from there, you’ll be charged periodically for ad clicks and other engagements.
On your dashboard — or « Campaign Gestionnaire, » as it’s formally called — you’ll see a Campaign tab. Click the Campaign tab, and you’ll see a Create button.
Click that button, and you’ll see options to create a campaign, campaign group, or account.
Compté: LinkedIn also has an “objective-based campaign creation experience”. We’ll cover that process in this exercice — to learn more, check out this page.
Click Campaign Group and name your campaign. Campaign Groups help you organize your campaign. You can leave the Default Campaign Group as-is or create a new Group.
As for the campaign name, these are only lumineux internally, so we recommend you choose a highly instructive name — especially if you have a few different folks working on the campaign.
For example, if I was running a compétition to determine the best bonhomme of demographic targeting, I might use the title « Unicorn Food Ad Fondement — North America, 18 to 24, Female. »
That name describes exactly who I’m targeting without having to view its details. Compare this to something like « Unicorn Food Fondement 1, » which doesn’t indicate anything emboîture who the ad is targeting.
Grain you choose your Campaign Group and name, you can start setting up your LinkedIn campaign.
2. Set your LinkedIn ad campaign scientifique.
Next, choose your campaign objective.
Your scientifique is what you want people to do when they see your ads.
According to LinkedIn, choosing an scientifique helps them « customize your campaign creation, deliver the best ROI for your stated gardien de but, and spectacle you guérissant reporting.”
There are three overarching campaign themes: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. Under those themes, some available campaign objectives are:
Website visits will drive traffic to your website and landing pages. According to LinkedIn, this bonhomme of campaign will also boost brand awareness (at least while that scientifique assortiment remains unavailable).
Conflit will increase baroud on your ravi and boost followers on your LinkedIn Company Feuille.
Video views will increase the exposure of your videos to people who are likely to engage with them.
Lead generation will spectacle a LinkedIn lead generation form with pre-filled LinkedIn profile data to those LinkedIn users most likely to engage with the form.
3. Designate your LinkedIn ad réputation.
Next, choose the parameters of your target réputation. Targeting who sees your ad can help it fulfill its campaign scientifique — the more specific and guérissant it is to your réputation, the better it’ll perform.
LinkedIn allows you to target according to a few different categories — refer to our points on targeting options that we reviewed above.
You don’t have to use all of LinkedIn’s targeting options — but the more specific the targeting criteria, the more guérissant it’s likely to be to the réputation you select.
And, therefore, the more likely you are to have a better ROI.
4. Decide on your LinkedIn ad grandeur.
Next, choose your ad grandeur. In the next part, we unpack the different types of LinkedIn Ads you can create as bout of your campaign.
When you toggle between the ad bonshommes, you’ll see that the Forecasted Results box on the right-hand side will dicton.
This feature analyzes your campaign parameters (bid, comptabilité, targeting, start/end dates, etc.) and takes into account similar campaigns and advertisers. It also stimulates the ad auction to generate the numbers displayed.
Keep an eye on this box as you choose your LinkedIn ad bonhomme. If you’re first starting out, deciding on which ad bonhomme you want to choose may come down to comptabilité.
Outline your priorities, and then you can decide which bonhomme works best for you.
Additionally, some ad bonshommes require you to link your LinkedIn Company Feuille and some tap into LinkedIn thème dettes.
5. Choose your LinkedIn ad écoulement.
Next, decide whether you want your ad to be displayed on the LinkedIn Audience Network, which gives your campaign more reach and exposure among LinkedIn’s third-party platforms and sites.
Compté: This assortiment isn’t available for every ad bonhomme.
You can also choose to exclude or block évident categories, applications, and sites in the Network if you so choose.
6. Set your ad comptabilité and schedule.
Next, set up the comptabilité, scheduling, and bidding options that work best for you.
Moyens
Set a daily comptabilité for what works best for your company’s marchéage spending. Before investing a lot into one campaign, compétition and measure the success of each campaign and ad bascule.
You don’t want to put thousands of dollars, for example, into an ad that doesn’t resonate with your target réputation.
Let’s say you’re the VP of Mercatique at a high-end floral company. You assume that most of your target market is made up of soon-to-be brides, so you carré your LinkedIn Ads to bridal groups.
But after spending thousands of dollars, you only generate 10% of the leads you were hoping for.
Your subsequent research shows this was the wrong move, and you later learn that people near your portière who are on LinkedIn are actually looking for flowers for corporate events.
It would have been nice to know that before spending a vaste amount of your comptabilité on LinkedIn Ads, right?
That said, parce que of its dilatante targeting opportunities, LinkedIn Ads can successfully target chambre markets.
But the cautionary experimentation is critique to do early on — if you observe a campaign performing well, then you can put a larger comptabilité toward it.
Schedule
Choose a étape for your campaign to start. You can indicate for your campaign to be shown continuously until an end étape.
Bid Sorte
In this part, the three options you have are:
Automated bid, which allows LinkedIn to determine what amount will maximize your campaign scientifique and whatever assortiment you choose (clicks, impressions, or conversions).
Comble cost-per-click (CPC) bid, where you’ll be charged each time someone clicks on your ad.
LinkedIn will suggest a bid range depending on your comptabilité and the competition for your ads — the more advertisers bidding on a similar campaign, the higher your bid will need to be.
This bid is the summum you will be charged. If the current perdant is lower than your max bid, you will only be charged the current perdant.
Comble pay-per-1,000 Impressions (CPM) bid, where you’ll be charged a évident amount each time your ad is viewed by every 1,000 people on LinkedIn. This assortiment is unavailable if you’re using the LinkedIn Écoute Network assortiment.
Deciding on the best summum bid can be tricky. When deciding between CPC and CPM, think emboîture your end gardien de but. Are you trying to get as many people as plausible to see your ad to help with something like a branding campaign?
If so, CPM might be your best assortiment.
On the other balle à la main, if you want more people to click on your ads to drive traffic to your website or generate new leads, CPC might be better for you.
As for your parfait summum bid, some moto and error might be necessary. LinkedIn will give you a suggested bid, which is a good affermi to start.
Then, think emboîture when your réputation is most likely online. You’ll want to bid higher during that particular time to be sure that your ads are the ones being seen.
And make sure LinkedIn is actually the best affermi to reach them, too — play around with your bids and see when you get the most return for your dollars spent.
7. Don’t forget rotation tracking.
Lastly, you have the assortiment to set up rotation tracking for your LinkedIn campaign, which will track and measure the opérations people take after clicking on your ads.
Reniement tracking is an optional bout of setting up your LinkedIn advertising campaign but is highly valuable for your négoce.
If you choose to set up rotation tracking, click + Add conversions.
A new window will pop up, where you’ll name your rotation, choose your rotation settings, and decide how you’ll track the conversions.
Compté: The examen on the right-hand side of the window is supercarburant helpful — it’ll answer any questions you have and walk you through the process.
And for more help implementing and managing your LinkedIn Conversions, visit this help page.
Ovation! You’ll officially set up your LinkedIn advertising campaign … but you’re not done yet. When you’re ready to move on, click “Save.”
Beware: Your scientifique and ad grandeur cannot be changed léopard des neiges you save, so be sure emboîture your choices before moving forward.
8. Build your LinkedIn ad.
This part corresponds to what bonhomme of LinkedIn ad you objet for your campaign.
Grain you establish the basic parameters for your ad in step one, you’ll be prompted to start immeuble it and choose how LinkedIn will display and rotate your ad variations — if you create more than one.
To get started, click Create new ad.
A screen will pop up with the title “Create a new [Your chosen ad type] for this campaign,” on which you’ll create the copy for your ad, confrère it with an parnassien, and preview the different typage options.
Of révolution, there are a few guidelines around the copy that we suggest:
Ad parnassien, which is the artwork or graphic that your réputation will see for your ad. It must be 100×100 pixels and uploaded as a .jpg or .png éclipsé that is 2MB or smaller.
Ad headline, which is the droite allocution your réputation will see. It cannot be more than 25 characters.
Ad tableau, which is the caraco of your ad. It can be up to 75 characters vaste and should be guérissant both to the person viewing the ad and the offer or éphèbe to which you’re sending them.
Orientation URL, which is where your réputation will go when they click your ad. Louche check that the URL is accurate.
Grain you input this examen, you’ll see it reflected in the Preview box to the right.
Grain you click Create, you’ll be directed back to the previous Campaign Gestionnaire screen. From there, you can create more ads and, eventually, review and submit your order.
Compté: LinkedIn does review every submitted campaign order, so don’t expect to see your ads published right away.
To see the best results for your ads, consider creating a different ad for each of your buyer personas and tweak the copy accordingly.
For example, when promoting a book to college professors, leading the title with the words « College Professor’s Dirigé to …” may generate a higher CTR than generic, un-targeted headlines and copy.
Here are a few of our best copywriting tips for LinkedIn Ads.
CTA
Including an actionable CTA within your ad copy will also help you improve your ad’s click-through perdant (CTR). Consider asking people to « Download your e-book now, » or « Click now for free samples » instead of writing copy that’s devoid of actionable next steps.
Value
Incorporate your value proposition into your ad copy — this can make people more likely to click on your ad. By boasting something like « 20% off your first purchase » or « Clearance sordide ends today — Magasin now, » you’re sending a clear incorporation of what someone will specifically assujettissement when he or she clicks your ad.
Testing
Don’t be afraid to test your ad copy. You can create plurale variations of your ad in each campaign, which allow you to compétition different images and copy within ads to find what works best for your réputation.
LinkedIn Ads is available within all HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts! Track visitor and effleurement baroud, run reports on closed-loop marchéage, sync leads from LinkedIn lead generation forms, and MORE — all within your HubSpot account.
Bonshommes of LinkedIn Ads
Sponsored Cabinet
Allocution Ads
Dynamic Ads
Text Ads
As we said above, deciding on what type of LinkedIn ad is best for your campaign can come down to many factors: comptabilité, réputation, campaign scientifique — just to name a few.
When immeuble your LinkedIn Ads, you have fourneau droite bonshommes from which to choose. Within those formats, you can choose different formats based on your ad ravi and purpose.
1. Sponsored Cabinet
Sponsored Content shows up in your audience’s news feed among organic LinkedIn content.
These ads are similar to promoted posts that blend into aimable media feeds. Sponsored Cabinet is available in three formats:
Single parnassien ads, which feature one parnassien.
Carousel ads, which feature two or more images.
Video ads, which feature one video.
This bonhomme of LinkedIn ad typically has the highest average cost-per-click (CPC).
(Learn more emboîture the advertising specifications for Sponsored Content according to LinkedIn.)
2. Allocution Ads
Message ads are delivered to your target réputation’s LinkedIn inbox.
With this bonhomme of LinkedIn ad, you can send your ravi directly to your réputation from a personal account and better measure baroud based on recipient response and instruction.
(Learn more emboîture the advertising specifications for Message Ads according to LinkedIn.)
3. Dynamic Ads
Dynamic Ads are personalized ads that dicton ravi based on which réputation member is viewing them. This bonhomme of LinkedIn ad uses member personal data to tailor its creative ravi.
(Each LinkedIn member sees his or her own personal data; data isn’t shared with other members.)
Dynamic Ads are available in three formats which are only available on the LinkedIn desktop platform:
Follower ads, which promote your LinkedIn Company Feuille.
Spotlight ads, which promote a special offering.
Job ads, which promote open jobs.
(Learn more emboîture advertising specifications for Dynamic Ads according to LinkedIn.)
4. Text Ads
Text Ads spectacle up on the right column or top of the éphèbe on LinkedIn.
They’re the simplest bonhomme of LinkedIn ad but are still positive for boosting awareness and reaching your réputation. Pay per click or per publication for Text Ads.
(Learn more emboîture advertising specifications for Text Ads according to LinkedIn.)
Sociable ad campaigns can always be improved. Remember, your réputation and ravi are always changing — as well as the platform itself. Here are some best practices to optimize your LinkedIn ad campaign.
LinkedIn Ads Best Practices
Know your réputation and the customer journey.
Groupe your customers.
Refer to your aimable ads on other platforms as well as your competitors’ LinkedIn Ads.
Carefully select the ravi you share based on the bonhomme of ad you’re creating.
Use eye-catching and attention-grabbing visuals and language.
A/B compétition your LinkedIn Ads (and tweak one ambulatoire at a time).
Create gated offers using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.
Keep your comptabilité in mind when creating LinkedIn Ads.
Determine each campaign’s click-through perdant (CTR).
Measure and analyze your LinkedIn Ad campaign’s success.
Before we dive in, here’s a quick tip: Set a reminder for yourself to analyze and optimize your campaigns each month.
1. Know your réputation and the customer journey.
As your négoce grows, your réputation also evolves and so does the customer journey.
It’s critique that you know and update your buyer personas and the customer journey map regularly — this will allow you to effectively target your personas at the right porté in time (a.k.a. when they’re most likely to convert).
You may do this on a quarterly basis.
To help with the process, check out your buyer persona guide, free buyer personas templates, free Make My Persona tool, customer journey map guide, and free customer journey map template.
You should also consider your customer journey when deciding on which bonhomme of ads (more on this best practice in step four, below) you’ll create and share — not every bonhomme of ad is ideal for every bout of the customer journey.
For juridiction, you may use a sponsored ad for réputation members who have already engaged with your brand/ravi before rather than that being their first touchpoint with you.
2. Groupe your customers.
On a similar token, segmenting your customers is a great way to prepare for positive and tailored ad targeting, whether on LinkedIn or any other platform.
You can cellule your customers so that you know exactly how you’re going to target specific audiences on LinkedIn in order to increase baroud and chances of rotation.
For juridiction, you might know that specific réputation segments are going to need a évident bonhomme of LinkedIn Ad at a évident porté in the buyer’s journey – having your customers ready in segments makes this bout of the ad targeting process easy and compétent.
3. Refer to your aimable ads on other platforms as well as your competitors’ LinkedIn Ads.
Getting some éblouissement and gleaning examen from your other aimable ads as well as the LinkedIn Ads of your competitors is a great way to help you navigate the process of creating and sharing your ads on LinkedIn.
Although LinkedIn is a exclusif platform, and your réputation may not be the same across aimable platforms — it’s still good to take some éblouissement from and, at the very least, identify which ads perform best on other aimable platforms like Google and Facebook.
Not only can this be a good starting porté when guide your LinkedIn Ads, but it can also help you save time — maybe you want to repurpose ravi that’s on a Google Ad already for LinkedIn.
Additionally, you may not have the analytics to prove which of your competitors’ LinkedIn Ads are performing best.
However, you can at least identify which bonshommes of ads are getting a lot of baroud by looking at metrics like comments and reactions.
This is a helpful reference porté when guide and creating your LinkedIn Ads since you’re likely going to have a similar réputation on the platform as your competitors do.
4. Carefully select the ravi you share based on the bonhomme of ad you’re creating.
As mentioned earlier, you’ll want to determine what ravi you’re sharing with réputation members based on the bonhomme of ad you’re creating.
Refer to your customer segments here to help you effectively tailor ravi to those réputation members and where they are in the customer journey when working through this step.
As a recap, here are the types of LinkedIn Ads you can create, along with examples of the ravi you may include:
Sponsored ravi: Single parnassien ads, video ads, carousel ads, and event ads; ideal for highly-engaged audiences in the LinkedIn Newsfeed.
Sponsored messaging: Aparté Ads, Allocution Ads; ideal for engaging réputation members in LinkedIn Messaging.
Lead generation forms: Lead generation forms; ideal for creating pre-filled forms for LinkedIn ads.
Text and dynamic ads: Text ads, spotlight ads, follower ads; ideal for running ads in the LinkedIn right train.
5. Use eye-catching and attention-grabbing visuals and language.
This ravi you’re sharing should just be selected by ensuring it works with the bonhomme of ad you’re creating, though — it also needs to bring your réputation members in and make them want to engage with it (e.g. read/ watch more, click on it, open your gated offer, etc.).
Think emboîture ad elements like:
Colors
Font
Language and text
CTA écoulement and élocution
Images
Videos
GIFs
For more éblouissement, take a image at these great LinkedIn Ad examples.
6. A/B compétition your LinkedIn Ads (and tweak one ambulatoire at a time).
Don’t be afraid to compétition different visuals, language, and text to determine what your exclusif réputation on LinkedIn finds eye-catching and attention-grabbing.
You can compétition different versions of the same ad to see what factor is contributing to or hindering its success.
For juridiction, dicton the copy in your headline, dicton your featured parnassien, tweak the target réputation attributes, or update your bids — just don’t do these all at the same time or you won’t know which one is the fix.
A/B testing makes this process easy and ensures you’re just changing one factor at a time.
7. Create gated offers using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.
Gated offers are those that require some aubaine of examen in return for that offer — for juridiction, an réputation member gets a free template or an ebook in return for sharing their email address.
To do this with your LinkedIn Ads, you’ll have to use their Lead Gen Forms.
LinkedIn allows you to create Lead Gen Forms for both Sponsored Cabinet and Allocution Ads. They come pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data so members are able to share their examen with you in seconds.
Additionally, the forms allow you to track dédaigneux metrics such as campaign cost per lead, lead form fill perdant, and how many leads you get évident réputation segments.
8. Keep your comptabilité in mind when creating LinkedIn Ads.
Like anything in négoce, you’re going to want to keep your comptabilité in mind. LinkedIn uses objective-based pricing when it comes to advertising — meaning you only pay to achieve the specific marchéage goals you have.
In other words, you’re charged based on your campaign scientifique.
You’ll select the activity you want to pay for and then the campaign scientifique you picked will determine which ad formats, bidding strategies, and optimization goals you can foyer on.
9. Determine each campaign’s click-through perdant (CTR).
Is one campaign outperforming the other(s)? If so, you may want to sursis the less successful campaign(s).
LinkedIn will automatically display less successful campaigns with lower frequency, so it makes sense to minimize any resources spent on them.
Instead, putting more resources into successful ad variations and campaigns is more likely to accomplish your marchéage goals.
10. Measure and analyze your LinkedIn Ad campaign’s success.
LinkedIn makes it easy to track your progress in the Campaign Gestionnaire dashboard (under “Campaign Réussite”), where you’ll see various charts that measure exploit like clicks, expenditures, and CTR.
You can also keep track of conversions in the graphs toward the bottom of the dashboard.
When you au finir setting up your first campaign, you’ll see a lot of « 0 »s at first. Don’t worry; that’s only parce que your campaign is new (and don’t forget that LinkedIn usually has to approve your ads before they go en public).
More advanced exploit tracking is also plausible, but you need to export data to third-party analytics programme or databases, like LinkedIn Ads to BigQuery.
Ready to try a LinkedIn Ad strategy?
With the right amount of fermeté and strategy, LinkedIn ad campaigns can be a huge factor in your company’s marchéage success.
LinkedIn has a very powerful advertising platform; don’t leave this off your aimable campaign marchéage list. A well-researched, optimized campaign has the potential to bring in thousands of new leads — and sales.
Editor’s Compté: This post was originally published in January 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
