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LinkedIn Ads Beginner’s Guide for 2022

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Linkedin ads

Linkedin Ads

Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn Ads in 2022

What’s the biggest benefit of LinkedIn as a social networking platform? LinkedIn users are on the platform for a specific purpose. 

They want to find solutions, form connections and share their information with others. If you can provide the answers they’re looking for, you’ll achieve a significant return on your ad campaigns.

But what makes LinkedIn ads any different from ads on other social platforms? In other words, what can you do with LinkedIn ads, and how do you get started creating them? 

We’ve compiled a complete guide that walks you through the various LinkedIn ads and how to use them. Let’s get started.

What Are LinkedIn Ads?

LinkedIn ads are the best way to reach a professional network. By using these paid marketing tools, you can access the entire LinkedIn social network through sponsored posts, dynamic content, video ads, and more. 

Is your goal to build meaningful leads, share valuable content, and grow your B2B community organically? If so, using LinkedIn ads should form a critical component of your marketing strategy. 

More than ever, LinkedIn is becoming an essential part of how companies do business. In addition to being one of the best recruiting tools on the market, LinkedIn’s platform can help increase sales and establish a professional social media presence within any industry. 

LinkedIn Ads vs. Facebook/Twitter Ads

In a nutshell, LinkedIn is the best platform to run ads targeted at businesses and working professionals. That’s because the platform was specifically created as a corporate recruiting tool. Therefore, while it has grown into a social media platform in its own right, it still primarily serves businesses and professionals. 

Here is a basic comparison of the differences between running ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. 

PlatformActive Monthly UsersTargeted UsersAverage Ad Cost (Cost per click)ProsCons
LinkedIn310 millionBusinesses, Working professionals$5.26Good for highly-specific B2B marketing, thought leadershipExpensive, smaller user base
Facebook2.91 billionEveryone$0.96High reach, proven ROINot the best for B2B marketing
Twitter330 millionEveryone, mostly 18-49 year-olds$0.38Good for engaging with community, low-costDifficult to target a specific audience

Why Are LinkedIn Ads Important?

If connecting to other businesses and professionals is your aim, then running ads on LinkedIn will offer you the greatest return on your investment. 

That’s because you can do far more than run paid marketing campaigns on the platform. You can furthermore share industry news, spark discussions with peers, and form connections that may lead to future collaboration. In fact, by populating your page with valuable content, you can also complement your advertising strategy and achieve organic growth. 

Here are some stats that should convince you to take LinkedIn ads seriously:

Here are two of the most significant advantages to LinkedIn ads:

To build a trusted brand online, you need a robust social presence. Notably, LinkedIn ads can help grow your brand visibility in the B2B marketplace. Not only will advertisements directly reach targeted profiles, increasing your LinkedIn presence will lead to more organic traffic from search engines and shared content.

Use lead gen forms to drive qualified leads to your company. Evidently, these are pre-filled forms attached to your LinkedIn ad campaigns and improve conversion rates. Whether you want to send traffic to specific pages or downloadable content, using lead gen forms allows you to track insightful metrics. As a result, you can then use these metrics to build more effective marketing campaigns down the line.

But Aren’t LinkedIn Ads Really Expensive?

Indeed, the cost per click for LinkedIn ads ($5.26) is higher than other platforms like Facebook ($0.96) and Twitter ($0.38). However, keep in mind your target audience. Since you’re focusing on increasing your reach to top companies and professionals, the value you receive from any successful conversions is likely to be high as well. 

Advertising on LinkedIn has proven to be cost-effective for many businesses. However, you must identify your target audience before launching your campaign. Mainly, it will ensure you get the most return on your investment. 

LinkedIn’s advertising costs are not as simple as a set cost-per-click. So let’s dive deeper into the pricing structure.

Pricing Overview

On LinkedIn, you pay based on the activity you’re targeting as well as the outcome of your ad auction. Ads are sold through an auction where you compete with other advertisers who want to reach the same target audience. So, the overall cost depends on your bid and the desirability of your target audience.

Your bid type determines the type of activity you’re targeting for your campaign. There are three main types:

You can find a full breakdown of how individual objectives are charged here.

In addition to selecting the bid type, you must enter your start dates, end dates, and total budget. Despite setting an end date, you’re free to cancel your campaign at any time. 

LinkedIn Budgets

Types of LinkedIn Ads

Below are the main types of LinkedIn Ads you can purchase for your campaigns. 

Sponsored Content Ads

These types of ads come up on your target audience’s home feed. Therefore, it’s one of the best ways to engage audiences with attention-grabbing content.

What can you do with Sponsored Content ads?

Format options:

Sponsored Messaging Ads

Sponsored messaging ads go directly to your target audience’s inbox or chatbox. Increasingly, this is where a large percentage of LinkedIn users spend their time. It allows you to form a personal relationship with your audience and encourages more meaningful engagement. 

Message campaigns are better suited to messages with a single call-to-action. In contrast, conversation ads offer multiple calls to action through an interactive choose-your-path format. 

Source: LinkedIn

To prevent this type of campaign from becoming too intrusive, LinkedIn caps the number of members who receive a Sponsored Messaging ad per month. For example, a target individual won’t receive your ad more than twice within a short period.

What can you do with Sponsored Messaging ads?

Format options:

Text Ads

Text Ads are placed along the right column of the desktop feed. Essentially, they’re a great option if your concern is value-for-money and a broad reach. While they’re a more affordable option, you can still fine-tune your campaign to connect with targeted audiences and gain meaningful insights through engagement analytics.

What can you do with Text ads?

Format options:

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads run on the right column and allow you to engage with your targeted audience through content that is automatically personalized based on their profile. This will enable you to create scalable marketing campaigns quickly and easily. In a moment, you can select your targeted audience and objectives and let the automated process customize each ad for individual members. 

Source: LinkedIn

What can you do with Dynamic ads?

Format options:

Video Ads

On pages dominated by text, video ads stand out. Simply, they show instead of tell. Once you create your video, you can deploy it via a Sponsored Content campaign and target your specific audience. Then, keep track of its performance like views, completion rate, and other data via your campaign dashboard. 

What can you do with Video ads?

Format options:

LinkedIn Ad Objectives

To streamline ad campaign creation, LinkedIn breaks down advertisements into different categories of objectives. Consequently, this allows you to deploy the right type of ad to fit your specific business goals. 

There are three main ad objectives:

Awareness 

When you want to get people talking, go with an ad suited to increasing publicity. These are perfect for building buzz and spreading the word about new products, services, or events. 

Therefore, as impression-based campaigns, these ads will help you gain followers, increase views, and boost engagement.

Recommended ad formats:

Consideration

If you’re targeting audiences already familiar with your brand and want them to engage further, use an ad optimized for the consideration stage. 

Ultimately, these ads are built to help advertisers meet action-based goals such as increasing website visits, prompting social media engagement, and watching videos. 

Recommended ad formats:

Conversion 

Opt for a conversion ad when your goal is to convert views into sales or generate new leads. For example, you can get leads to submit forms already pre-filled with their information. In addition, you can drive traffic to specific actions on your website or even prompt job applicants to submit applications to your company.

Recommended ad formats:

LinkedIn Ad Formats

To help you achieve your ad objectives, LinkedIn offers ten different formats to choose from. We’ll break down each format below to help you understand what each ad is designed to achieve. 

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads use a row of swipeable image cards. They allow you to build brand awareness, tell your story, or provide helpful insights. You can either showcase multiple products and services or take a close look at one thing. 

Overall, you should use bold, eye-catching imagery to encourage your audience to swipe all the way through.

Source: LinkedIn

Carousel Ad Specifications

Conversation Ads

Conversation ads allow you to connect directly with your target audience through LinkedIn Messaging. Set up various call-to-action buttons to guide your clients through a decision-making or knowledge-gaining journey. 

As a result of detailed analytics and click reports, you can analyze your customers’ behavior to improve your CTAs for the next campaign.

Source: LinkedIn

Conversation Ad Specifications

Follower Ads

Follower ads are dynamic ads that automatically customize themselves to match the target audience. For example, when members interact with your organic content, they may see a dynamic follower ad that prompts them to follow your page for more info.

Follower Ad Specifications:

Spotlight Ads

Spotlight ads are another type of dynamic ad that personalizes your content to the individual reader. With this in mind, you can use spotlight ads to highlight products, services, thoughtful content, and more. They’re best for creating brand awareness, generating leads, and directing traffic to your pages.

Spotlight Ad specifications

Job Ads

LinkedIn job ads are highly targeted recruitment tools that can be personalized to match each individual’s interests and personal profile. As well, they’re placed on profiles your audience visits to get more engagement than typical ads. 

An additional benefit for companies is that LinkedIn blocks ads from your competitors from showing up on your employees’ profiles.

Source: LinkedIn

Job Ad specifications:

Single Job Ads

If you’re having a hard time finding job candidates or always have recruiting needs, single job ads are the best option. Unlike regular Job Ads, which show up in the sidebar on specific pages, Single Job Ads are promoted in the newsfeed like other Sponsored Content to ensure high visibility. 

Furthermore, these ads result in a 25% increase in the average click to apply rate!

Single Job Ad specifications:

Lead Gen Forms

Lead generation forms are one of the best ways to find and develop qualified leads. They’re available for both message ads and sponsored content. Therefore, you should add a call-to-action or take advantage of pre-filled forms that allow your targeted profiles to submit their information quickly and seamlessly with a single click. After they click submit, they’ll see a thank you message that directs them to additional content.

Source: LinkedIn

Lead Gen ad specifications:

Message Ads

Message ads offer a particularly high return on investment. Over 50% of prospects open a message ad, so there’s a good chance that your message will reach its target. In addition, since they’re delivered in a focused environment like LinkedIn, message ads will be opened where email messages may go unnoticed. 

There’s a higher character limit to message ads, so you can give a brief overview of your products and services. While the body text limit is 1,500 characters, keep your message under 500 characters for the best effect.

Message Ad specifications:

Single Image Ads

Single image ads appear as regular content posts on LinkedIn’s home feed. The only thing distinguishing them from other content is their “promoted” tag. Accordingly, these ads include one image and are best for pushing your advertisements to a high-view area as a general marketing tactic. 

Source: LinkedIn

Single Image Ad specifications:

Text Ads

Text ads are the easiest to implement and allow you to get the most out of your budget. In fact, they’re best for quick-launch B2B campaigns where you want to cast a wide net but still need precise targeting to generate quality leads.

Text Ad specifications:

Video Ads

Video ads are an excellent option for attracting interest and standing out from text or photo-based posts. They’re best suited for giving a visual insight into your company culture, promoting new products, sharing thought leadership, or forming the basis of a creative new marketing strategy you come up with.

While you’re able to post videos up to 30 minutes long, most ads should be kept short and sweet. For example, the highest performing video ads were just 15 seconds or less.

Video Ad specifications:

How to Create LinkedIn Ads in 6 Simple Steps

Before getting started, make sure you have a valid LinkedIn account and have created a Campaign Manager account. If you need help setting up a Campaign Manager account, read this.

1. Choose your ad objective.

As outlined in an earlier section, LinkedIn ads are built around your specific objectives. This helps the platform determine the best way to show your ads to your target audiences. 

Ad objectives are broken down into three main categories, with more specific options for each category. 

3 LinkedIn Ad Categories

Source: LinkedIn

2. Select your target audience.

This is one of the most crucial steps in creating an effective ad campaign. Without choosing an appropriate audience, your ad is unlikely to make the kind of impact that will benefit your company. 

There are a lot of criteria to choose from. This allows you to get really specific in your targeted audience. But try not to narrow your choices down too much. This can stifle your reach and won’t give you as much helpful information to use for your next campaign. 

LinkedIn recommends that you start by targeting a broad audience. Then, analyze your metrics and narrow them down for the next campaign. It’s also better to focus more on business identifiers than demographics like age and gender. You can add in these additional criteria when you’ve learned more about how your audience responds to your content.

Source: LinkedIn

Here are some of the main targeting options for LinkedIn ads:

3. Choose an ad format.

Read through the guide to the different ad types and formats that we’ve provided above to determine what kind of ad will best suit your campaign.

You can always repurpose your ad content to use in another ad format if your initial results aren’t quite hitting the mark.

4. Set your budget and schedule.

In Campaign Manager, you’ll see a suggested bid range to reach most of your audience. This is based on other competing bids for the same audience. While the final bid amount is up to you, it must be above the listed minimum.

In fact, a daily budget of $100, or a monthly budget of at least $5000, is recommended for the initial testing phase.

In this step, you’ll set your start and end dates as well as the bid type.

Source: LinkedIn

5. Build your ad.

Now, you’re ready to start building your ad and preparing for launch. This process depends on the chosen ad format. Now, you’ll be able to share previews with your team and send yourself test messages before releasing them to your target audiences.

Once you’re ready to launch your campaign, insert your payment details to start your campaign schedule.

6. Measure performance and optimize your campaign.

When you log in to Campaign Manager, you’ll be presented with the reporting dashboard. This contains all the crucial metrics regarding your ad campaign.

Here, you can review various analytics, explore charts, and export your data in CSV format. This is the place to go when you’re planning your next campaign. 

Source: LinkedIn 

What Metrics Are Provided in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager?

It’s essential to understand the different analytics available to you in the Campaign Manager. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get the most out of your ad campaigns. 

If you’re just starting, try launching a smaller campaign first. Then, take a look at the ad performance. What stands out? What metric could be improved? 

Go back to the drawing board with this information and craft a better ad for your next campaign. Afterwards, use the Campaign Manager to keep track of your progress and determine if you’re heading in the right direction.

Here are some of the primary metrics available to you in the Campaign Manager:

Best Practices for Creating Successful LinkedIn Ads

The analysts at LinkedIn have spent a lot of time studying what works well on their platform. Below, you’ll find a quick summary of their findings. 

Here are three things that should be your top priorities when crafting LinkedIn ads.

  1. Find your target audience. Start small and keep tweaking your targeted audience objectives until you’ve found the sweet spot. This process can take weeks or months, so don’t get impatient. 
  1. Have a clear call to action. Always end ads with a CTA, often in the form of a button. Your readers might only see your ad for a second or two while scrolling past, so they need to know precisely what it is they should do with your content. 
  1. Choose the right content. The way you present your content matters. For example, some content is best suited to image carousels. Other content may be perfect for messaging ads. Below, we’ll go into further detail regarding recommended techniques for different ad formats.

Wondering how to fine-tune your message for different ad types? Here are some of the recommendations for best practices in each ad format. 

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Messaging

Text Ads

Video Ads

Dynamic Ads