Advertising on LinkedIn: A Beginner's Guide
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LinkedIn is a unique social platform founded back in 2002. Today, it has over 260 million monthly active users, and a total of 760 million users across more than 200 countries, according to Kinsa statistics. For B2B outreach and professional networking, the opportunities here are huge. On average, users spend 17 minutes a day on the platform. Among active users, 40 million search for jobs here every month.
The evolution of paid marketing.
Paid marketing has been available on LinkedIn for ten years. Advertising is a budget-friendly way to reach beyond your current followers and find new potential customers. Social media ads have opened up new business opportunities, driving e-commerce growth and offering companies fresh ways to recruit top talent.
Opportunities with LinkedIn advertising.
As an employer, you can target the exact roles you want to hire through recruitment ads. The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can tap into your network to find the right skills for open positions, even if those people aren't actively job hunting. You can also create ads that generate leads, win new customers, boost brand awareness, or get people to sign up for your webinars.
How to get started - Advertising on LinkedIn.
To advertise on LinkedIn, you first need a personal account. From there, you can setup an ad account in Campaign Manager, which is LinkedIn's ad platform. You also need a Company Page to get started.
LinkedIn Insight Tag.
To measure your ads and analyze your audience, we recommend setting up your technical tracking before your campaign goes live. Just like Facebook's pixel, you can install a LinkedIn Insight Tag to keep track of your audience helper.
Strategy - Advertising on LinkedIn
This is a basic strategy for your platform ads. Below, we step through what to keep in mind when getting started.
Goals
You need a goal for your campaign based on where your audience is in their customer journey. Choose from these goals:
Brand awareness
Consideration
Conversion
Target Audience.
LinkedIn's ad platform stands out because you can reach specific professional roles using real employee and company data. Choosing the right audience is key to your campaign's success—if you don't reach the right people, your campaign won't pay off.
Ad Formats.
LinkedIn offers seven different formats designed for images and video. Choose your format based on the content you want to use and where it fits best. We will cover formats and placements in more detail below.
Budgets.
LinkedIn ads work on an auction system, meaning you bid against other advertisers trying to reach the same audience. You can choose to pay via CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Impression).
Step by step - Advertising on LinkedIn.
You can create your first ads in Campaign Manager. Here is how to do it, step-by-step:
STEP 1 – CHOOSE A CAMPAIGN GOAL
Brand awareness: Choose this to reach a broad audience of new potential customers who don't know your brand yet.
Consideration: Choose website visits, engagement, or video views to target people who have already interacted with your brand in some way.
Conversions: Choose lead generation, website conversions, or job applicants to get your audience to take action—like applying for a job or filling out a contact form.
STEP 2 – CHOOSE YOUR AUDIENCE
As mentioned, this is the most important step. You can build your audience based on:
Company
Demographics
Education
Work Experience
Interests and qualifications
If you aren't sure how to build your audience, you can start with LinkedIn's pre-made audiences and customize them. LinkedIn will suggest categories (like "Finance"), and you can choose to include or exclude audiences—for example, excluding people who already work at your company.
STEP 3 - FORMATS AND PLACEMENTS
Choose a format that aligns with your goal. Available formats include:
Sponsored Content - Boost posts from your Company Page, including photos, videos, and links. When these appear in the feed, you can add a call-to-action like a Lead Gen Form to collect high-quality leads.
Single Image Ads – A simple, static image.
Video Ads – A video that autoplay in the user's feed.
Lead Gen Ads – Ads with built-in forms to help you share resources, like reports, and collect lead info seamlessly.
Carousel Ads – Show multiple images in a swipeable format, with the option to attach a lead gen form.
Dynamic Ads – Personalized ads tailored to specific audiences, such as Follower ads, Job ads, or Spotlight ads.
Text Ads – Small ads that appear on the right side of the desktop feed designed to drive traffic. With a catchy headline and image, they work great for generating leads.
Message Ads – Deliver a direct message straight to user inboxes. Since they feel less like traditional ads and more like direct outreach, they offer a premium feel.
STEP 4 - BUDGET
Advertising on LinkedIn is more expensive than on other platforms due to high competition. To keep your ads cost-effective, use LinkedIn's automated bidding system. It optimizes your spend without exceeding your maximum budget.
You can manage your spend in two ways:
Daily Budget - Decide the maximum amount you want to spend per day.
Bidding:
Maximum Cost Bid – The highest amount you are willing to pay per CPC, CPM, or CPS.
Automated Bidding – LinkedIn uses its data to automatically set and adjust your bids to optimize for your campaign goals.
STEP 5 - MEASURE YOUR RESULTS
Just like with Facebook ads, you can track several metrics:
Reach – How many people saw your ads?
Click-Through Rate (CTR) – How many people clicked your ad?
Cost Per Click (CPC) – How much does each click cost?
Frequency – How often does your audience see your ad in a week?
Video Engagement – How long are people watching your video ads?
Traffic – How many leads is your website getting from your ads?
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) – What is your financial return on ad spend?
Conversions – How many people completed your desired action?
Cost Per Action (CPA) – What is your cost per lead?
These metrics help you monitor whether your campaign is hitting its targets so you can optimize your ads on the go.
A/B Testing: Like on Facebook, you can run A/B tests to see what your audience likes best. Create two similar ads, change one detail (like tone, text, or color), and see which one performs better.
In Summary.
Like all social media marketing, getting results takes time. Keep in mind that while LinkedIn allows for very narrow targeting, you shouldn't get too stuck on hyper-specific job titles. Keep your focus broad enough to ensure good reach.
Set aside a healthy marketing budget. LinkedIn costs more than Facebook because of competition for the same professional audiences. Invest a bit more to win placement bids, and adjust your budget during the campaign to optimize performance.
Success is about trial and error. There are guidelines, but no absolute formulas. Test, learn by doing, and keep OPTIMIZING!
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