How to create an Advertising Campaign on LinkedIn?

Before we start, you must know that our specialty is social media.

So if you are interested in the quote for running a profile as well as an advertising campaign on LinkedIn, click the button below, fill in a brief, and we will present you a quote within 24 hours.

But enough of this ad 😉 let’s get to the point.

Social media are no longer just platforms to maintain relationships with friends, but comprehensive advertising systems that aim to draw the attention of business customers.

These are great communities that are at your fingertips.

How to reach for them? All you have to do is use the potential of LinkedIn ads.

01. Less is not worse:

Although LinkedIn offers excellent possibilities in itself, the same cannot be said for forms of advertising.

For some, it may be a disadvantage, and others see the pros in it.

The main one is the ease of building campaigns on your own.

Lack of complexity and limited options will not overwhelm the self-taught beginner who will want to start his first campaign.

02. Learn about the types of ads on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn offers us four forms of advertising on its platform:

Sponsored entries (updates):

These are texts, graphics, carousels, and videos displayed in the feed between the posts of ordinary users. We can direct them to a specific target group and set their promotion. An important point, unlike Facebook Ads, is the fact that there is no limit on the amount of text placed in an ad on LinkedIn. Its area ultimately does not affect the decision to approve the promotion by the portal. An exciting option with sponsored updates is also the possibility of advertising the so-called dark posts, i.e., entries that are not published on the profile board.

Text ads:

are displayed to users on the right side of the browsing panel. They can contain 25 characters in the header and 75 characters in the text. For them to attract attention, it is possible to cover these few words with small graphics or a company logo with a size of 50×50 pixels. There are four types of text ads available, differing in size and shape of the graphics – square, high, horizontal, and long. Unfortunately, there is one drawback. All text ads are displayed only in computer browsers. Do not fool yourself, due to the location and small size of images, this type of advertising is hardly visible. So can they be useful? Sure! Their naturalness translates into better results in the campaign, all thanks to more informed clicks.

Sponsored InMail:

It’s nothing but messages sent to the inbox of users assigned to our target group. They have the form of information submitted from a private profile with the call to action button attached and an advertising banner.

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads:

This is a display advertisement that uses data from the user profile to personalize it appropriately.

03. First steps in the world of advertising on LinkedIn:

You need two profiles to create an ad:

• Private account
• Your company’s report.

The key is connecting them. Only then will you be able to create ads and efficiently manage your company profile? Also, don’t forget to add a credit card to your company account – otherwise, from the campaign thread.

The next step will be to set up an account in the Campaign Manager – you must link it to your company’s account.

Also, remember to set the correct currency. Unfortunately, there are no Polish zlotys on LinkedIn yet.

Think carefully about whether you prefer to pay in euros or dollars because you won’t be able to change your decision later.

Once you’ve managed to get through all the organizational steps, you can go on to create your first campaign.

04. Setting ads – start time!

Go to the campaign management panel and select your advertising account.

When you choose the option that is right for your business, enter the campaign name, and set the language.

Selecting the “I want to acquire new followers of my company page or brand” box will cause the “Follow” button to appear next to the advertisement.

In the next step, you’ll have to choose which post you want to promote. You can advertise one of those previously published or create an entirely new ad. Think carefully about the text you place and use exciting graphics.

All you have to do now is approve your target group and budget, which we’ll write about later.

05. Business target:

LinkedIn allows you to specify the recipient of your campaign.

In addition to basic categories such as gender, age, or location, you will find many other distinguishing features here, thanks to which you can accurately indicate your target group. These include:

• Company name – thanks to advertising on LinkedIn you can reach people from a specific company and exclude those with whom you have already contacted,
• Company size – are you targeting companies employing over 20 people? No problem. LinkedIn allows you to reach companies of a specific size, expressed in the number of employees,
• Position – you can narrow down your search to particular positions occupied at work,
• Industry – reduce the area of ​​your recipients to a specific field on the market. You don’t have to advertise to everyone since your TG is, e.g., the IT industry,
• Skills – that is, everything we expect from specific people,
• Discussion groups – take a moment to get to know the community. Surely the people you want to reach move in the same circles and work in similar groups,
• Thanks to targeting on LinkedIn, you can also reach people who are not directly in your target group, but who show identical activities. Maybe soon, they will enter your target circles, so let them notice now.

Do you want to narrow down your audience to the maximum?

No problem, but remember that LinkedIn will not launch your campaign when the target group does not count at least a thousand people.

However, much larger communities are recommended, i.e., 60-600,000 for text ads and 300,000 for sponsored entries.

How can you find out about how large a group you reach when setting up a campaign?

Each addition of a new criterion changes the number displayed on the right side of the panel (the so-called expected audience).

Thanks to advertising on LinkedIn, you can also track your potential customers who have already visited your website. However, this requires the prior installation of the Insight Tag on the site.

06. Costs – setting your budget:

The budget is one of the issues that most interest people are thinking about starting a campaign on LinkedIn. What does it look like?

Indeed, this platform consumes more funds than Facebook advertising. As you know, First things first.

• Daily budget – this is the maximum amount that will be spent during the day. When the funds set in this pool run out, the campaign will be stopped and will not resume until the next day.
• Total budget – these funds will be intended for the entire duration of the campaign. After the whole amount is used up, your ad will end.
• Stake – This is the amount you want to pay for each activity. You can set it automatically or manually. In the first variant, the ad bills for impressions. However, the rate you set yourself can settle for several options:
  • CPC – for each click,
  • CPM – the cost of 1000 ideas,
  • CPV – video display cost.

07. InMail – cost per message

Sponsored messages have different laws. How are they settled? Based on the value of sending principle, i.e., CPS.

The expenses you incur reflect the number of private messages delivered.

In this case, you also set the maximum stake. Initially, set a bit higher than the one suggested by the site to ensure your ad has a better bidding position.

You may also find that LinkedIn operates based on a second-price auction. What does it mean? If you win the bid, you will pay the second bid amount.

08. If you don’t know what’s going on, it’s about…?

LinkedIn sets the minimum amounts required to start a campaign. Belong to them:

• $ 10 for the daily campaign budget,
• 10 USD for the total budget of the campaign,
• USD 2 – amount for CPC and CPM campaigns or text ads.

The portal charges a fee only for the actual value generated by the ad. After the limit is used, the platform charges fees periodically for clicks or displayed ads. Y

You can turn them off manually, but if you don’t, the money will be collected until the end of the campaign.

09. Campaign goals – a new approach to advertising

LinkedIn has recently introduced a new version of ad creation based on campaign goals. You can choose from the advertising panel at the start:

• Website visit – the campaign will be focused on increasing the traffic on your website,
• Interest – advertising focused on raising awareness and reaction around your activities.

Brand awareness campaigns and website conversions will also be added in the future.

10. Action optimization

Prepare several variants of graphics and texts. By comparing, you can tell what is better received by the audience and which ad clicked more strongly.

It’s also worth playing with click rates, daily budget, or broadcasting time.

Remember to act wisely. Improper use of the campaign may lead to the situation that you spend more than you planned.

11. Monitoring:

The platform provides tools that help you measure the results of your campaigns.

Using the so-called Insight Tag that is placed on your landing page will allow you to track conversions, e.g., from purchases made on your website.

By monitoring the results, you will improve your efficiency and better match the campaign to the target group.

12. Advertising on LinkedIn – a game worth the candle?

Advertising on LinkedIn due to the specificity of the portal is a beneficial way to acquire a valuable customer.

The website is devoid of free content, which allows you to maintain the business tone and establish new industry relationships.  Even though ads on LinkedIn are up to three times more expensive compared to other social media, let us be aware that in this case, we pay for high-quality related to our recipients.

Hence, it is worth investing in a campaign.