A Beginner’s Guide to Running LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 900 million users across 200 countries. This makes it a highly valuable marketing platform for brands to target potential audiences. And the best way to get started is with LinkedIn Ads. Through this, businesses can create highly targeted campaigns that deliver the right message to the right people. If you are someone who is new to LinkedIn Ad Campaigns & wants to learn more, we have covered it all in this article, let’s get started.

Types of LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

Before getting started to run your first LinkedIn ad campaign, it is important to know the LinkedIn ad types available. This allows you to find the one that works for you and your target audience. In most scenarios, the campaign chosen will depend on several factors such as the objective, cost of advertising on LinkedIn & target audience.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is ads that pop up right in the LinkedIn feed of the people you want to reach. This LinkedIn ad campaign type comes in three different formats that include single-image ads, video ads, and carousel ads. With sponsored content ads, you can target your most valuable audience using profile-based data, build brand awareness, and nurture important relationships.

Message Ads

Message ads are a great way to reach out to your prospects through messaging. With this LinkedIn ad campaign type, brands can directly message potential customers thereby increasing engagement and response.

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic LinkedIn ad campaigns are meant to personalize your ads with LinkedIn profile data. There are three different formats for dynamic ads that are follower ads, spotlight ads and job ads.

Text Ads

Text ads are simple but effective pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) ads on LinkedIn. Using this ad campaign type, you can create your ads to launch a campaign, connect with the right people and more importantly, only have to pay for the ads that work.

Running a successful LinkedIn Ad campaign

Define your objective

The first step in creating a successful LinkedIn ad campaign is to clearly define your objective. Your objective will determine the type of ad format you use and the targeting options you select. Some of the common objectives for LinkedIn ad campaigns include generating leads, driving website traffic, increasing brand awareness, and promoting a product or service.

Choose your LinkedIn ad types

LinkedIn offers several ad formats to choose from such as sponsored content, sponsored InMail, display ads, and dynamic ads. Sponsored content is the most popular format and is used to promote content such as blog posts, videos, and infographics. Sponsored InMail is a great option for reaching your audience directly in their inbox. Display ads and dynamic ads are better for driving traffic and promoting products or services.

Target your audience

LinkedIn ad targeting options to help you reach your ideal audience. You can target based on job title, company size, industry, location, and more. You can also use account-based marketing to target specific companies and decision-makers within those companies.

Set your budget & bid strategy

LinkedIn ad campaigns operate on a bidding system, which means you set a maximum bid for each click or impression. The average cost-per-click (CPC) on LinkedIn lies somewhere between $5-$6. However, the actual cost of advertising on LinkedIn depends on various factors like the type of ad, targeting, budget and the campaign’s performance. You can choose between cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding, depending on your objective. It’s important to set a budget and measure the ROI thereby ensuring your ad costs don’t add up and compromise your financial goals.

Create your ad

Once you have defined your objective, chosen from one of the LinkedIn ad types, targeting your audience, and set your budget, it’s time to create your ad. Your ad should be visually appealing and have a clear call to action. Use high-quality images or videos, and keep the text concise and to the point.

Measure and optimize the ads

Once your LinkedIn ad campaigns are up and running, it has to be monitored and appropriate adjustments have to be made as required. LinkedIn provides detailed analytics on your ad performance, including impressions, clicks, and conversions. Use this data to optimize your campaign, such as adjusting your bid, targeting, or ad creative.

Additional campaign strategies

Now that you know the tips to successfully run your first LinkedIn ad campaign, it’s time to take it to the next level. We have listed some key LinkedIn ad campaign strategies that will improve your ad campaigns.

Utilize LinkedIn Matched Audiences

This is one of the best LinkedIn ad targeting options that allow ads to reach your website visitors, email subscribers, and account lists. This feature is a great way to reach people who are already familiar with your brand and who are more likely to convert.

Try different ad formats

As explained in the earlier part, LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats. Therefore, you can try experimenting with different types of ads to see what works well for your brand. You can run sponsored content ads to promote your blog posts or use sponsored InMail to deliver personalized messages directly to your target audience’s inbox.

Maintain the correct LinkedIn ad size

Any ad you run to target your audience has to be visually impressive and stay within the right size limits. If you are creating visuals for your ads, you must follow the proper ad specs and sizes recommended by LinkedIn else your ads won’t prove useful. The LinkedIn ad size varies for each ad type, let’s see what they are:  

Single image ads

Image format: JPG or PNG.

File size: 5MB or less

Headline limit: <70 characters

Description Limit: <100 characters

Resolution: 1200 x 627 pixels

Carousel ads

Format: 2-10 cards per ad

Individual cards should not be larger than 10MB.

Individual Image Resolution & Aspect ratio: 1080 x 1080 pixels, 1:1

Video ads

Ideal limit: Under 15 seconds

File size: 75KB – 200MB

Format: MP4

Audio size:< 64KHz.

Message ads

Resolution: 300×250 pixels.

Size: < 40KB.

Format: JPG, non-animated GIF or PNG

Anchor Text limit: 70 characters

Message text limit: 1,500 characters

Tell a well-crafted story through ads

If your brand story can connect with your audience, it will sell. As we know that storytelling is an important tool in marketing, why not use it in your LinkedIn ad campaigns? This way, you can create an emotional connection with your target audience. Just remember, when you create a story, always start with your target audience in mind.

Conclusion

LinkedIn Ads offer a powerful way to reach a highly targeted B2B audience. By defining your objective, choosing relevant LinkedIn ad types, targeting your audience, setting your budget, creating your ad, and measuring and optimizing your results, you can create successful LinkedIn ad campaigns that deliver the results you need. Remember to test, optimize, and monitor your results to ensure that your campaign always performs at its best.

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