With 830 million users, LinkedIn has the unique selling point of being the largest social network for working professionals. As a result, SMBs and enterprises, especially those working on SaaS products, rely on the platform to increase brand awareness, audience engagement, website traffic, conversions, and actual revenue.
By using member-generated demographic data, including job type, industry, seniority, and more, you can easily reach and market to your ideal customer base. You can also take things a step further by investing in LinkedIn Ads which, compared to Google Ads, has a 3x higher conversion rate. However, LinkedIn’s many self-service, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising options can be a little daunting if you’re still testing the waters.
Each ad serves a distinct purpose — the different ad formats and specifications are designed to help you achieve specific business goals. You can choose from 8 LinkedIn ad types to tell an interactive brand story that inspires action. You can run account-based marketing campaigns to target key decision-makers, upload your contact IDs to target known contacts, or segment your audience to deliver content that aligns with a user’s previous interactions with your brand.
To help you get started, we compiled (and responded to) a comprehensive list of FAQs people have about LinkedIn ads. Let’s get started.
Pricing
Can you advertise on LinkedIn for free?
You can advertise on LinkedIn for free but not with LinkedIn ads.
Here’re some ways of availing free promotion on LinkedIn:
- Post organically on your LinkedIn company page and from your LinkedIn personal account.
- Some LinkedIn ad formats essentially let you advertise for free. For example, when you run text ads, spotlight ads, or follower ads, you can set the budget to $10 a day. Often, it’ll only spend $1 or $2 and still get thousands of impressions.
What is the minimum budget for LinkedIn ads?
I recommended a minimum budget of $500 a month for LinkedIn ads.
During my first month of running LinkedIn ads for Impactable, I spent $300 a month. It took me 6 months to carve out a profitable ROI from the channel and we slowly walked our ad spend up to $500/month, $1,000/month, and then today spend around $10,000/month on Linkedin Ads.
A straightforward way to get started with a minimal budget is running retargeting ads to drive website traffic. You’d be spending no more than $10-$20 a day and still be able to reap the advertising benefits of LinkedIn Ads.
What is a good budget for LinkedIn ads?
Most LinkedIn experts usually say that a good budget for LinkedIn ads is $3,000 a month because of the amount of data you get. But it really depends on your budget and current marketing ecosystem. If you are a startup, you can get started with $500 a month, and it will just take you longer to get profitable.
How much should you spend on LinkedIn ads per month?
It depends on your overall marketing budget. As little as $500 a month can be a good starting point. I personally have found reasonable success with $2,000 to $3,000 a month. We spend almost 50% of our monthly marketing budget on LinkedIn ads as it’s our biggest acquisition channel.
Why are LinkedIn ads so expensive?
LinkedIn ads cost more than other major ad platforms because they generate better traffic quality and more valuable leads. The platform also offers better, more-detailed audience targeting options. For example, the Cost-per-click (CPC) and the Cost-per-lead (CPL) on Facebook are lower, but LinkedIn leads are more likely to book a meeting and have a more significant deal size.
How do I lower my Cost-per-thousand (CPM) for LinkedIn ads?
Here are a few tips that will help you to lower your CPM for LinkedIn ads:
- Optimize the campaign to run top-performing ads
- Pause lowest-performing ads
- Duplicate top-performing ads and test new copy
LinkedIn Retargeting
Can you do retargeting with LinkedIn ads?
Yes, you can retarget all website traffic with LI ads. You can not only drive traffic to your website with LinkedIn ads and then retarget that specific traffic, but you can retarget all website traffic, no matter what channel it came from, with LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn Ad Formats
What type of LinkedIn ads work best?
LinkedIn Single-image ads are the most popular, but other LinkedIn ad types, such as text and spotlight ads, are underused and powerful for driving traffic and creating conversions.
Which LinkedIn ad format is best?
Different ads work for different companies, and I recommend taking them all out for a spin (budget permitting) to see which ones yield the best ROI. However, I’d say single-image ads are the top preference for many, as they show up on my feed more than the others. They are very versatile and easy to set up.
Are LinkedIn carousel ads effective?
LinkedIn carousel ads effectively capture attention and are perfect for showcasing different products or capabilities. However, they are often better suited for B2C campaigns and have a lower CPC and CTR.
Can you run LinkedIn video ads?
Yes, you can run video ads on LinkedIn and retarget your audience based on the percentage of the video watched. LinkedIn video ads have come a long way over the last year or so. For example, you can segment your target audience into people who watched the video ad for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and so on. Later, you serve different ad campaigns to different audience groups.
You can also use the video ads to redirect people to a landing page or a pre-filled lead generation form.
Do LinkedIn video ads autoplay?
By default, yes, LinkedIn video ads autoplay, but each user can change their settings of whether they want videos in their feed to auto play or not.
Remember, you have a better chance at capturing the prospects’ attention when a video ad autoplays when the user is scrolling through their feed.
What is LinkedIn Sponsored InMail?
LinkedIn InMail is an ad delivered as a direct message to your prospects’ inbox. It looks like it’s coming from a personal profile and is more likely to receive a response.
How to create LinkedIn display ads?
To create a LinkedIn display ad, you should turn on the LinkedIn audience network and turn any single image into a display ad that shows on their trusted network of sites.
How to launch a LinkedIn Follow Ad campaign?
To run a Follower Ad campaign on LinkedIn, you should choose the follower ad type, create a new ad, upload your logo, customize two lines of text, and launch your campaign.
LinkedIn Target Audience
How to find your target audience on LinkedIn?
To find your target audience on LinkedIn, leverage LinkedIn’s targeting filters. The most used would be geography, industry, position, title, and company size.
Learn more about finding your ideal target LinkedIn audience in the video below.
Lead Generation
How to find sales leads on LinkedIn?
You can find sales leads on LinkedIn by building retargeting campaigns: gain interest with a cold campaign > drive traffic to the website > retarget website visitors who show interest > convert them.
How to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation?
The best way to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation is to build trust and credibility by positioning your brand as the expert in a specific industry. With the help of LinkedIn ads, you can also take appropriate retargeting measures because the B2B sales cycle is longer than in B2C.
What types of companies do LinkedIn ads work best for?
Advertising on LinkedIn can be very profitable for companies with higher LifeTime values (LTVs), i.e. companies that sell things at a higher price point like software companies, marketing agencies, and financial service companies.
LinkedIn Ad Scheduling
Can you sequence and schedule ads on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn does not allow you to sequence ads in the app, but some custom-built tools use the existing LinkedIn API to sequence, schedule, and rotate campaigns with LinkedIn ads.
Learn more about how to sequence your ads on LinkedIn.
How often should you advertise on LinkedIn?
Most people run LinkedIn ads all day every day, because they don’t have access to ad scheduling.
With ad scheduling features, we see the most success running ads during work hours during the work week. Tuesday through Friday, between 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM, is the best time to advertise on LinkedIn. Monday is usually a catch-up day for everyone, and people are busy preparing a task list for the rest of the week. They are less receptive to ads during this time, so the campaign performance is very unpredictable.
How do I set up LinkedIn ad Scheduling?
To set up ad scheduling on LinkedIn, you must have access to a custom-built tool that uses LinkedIn’s API, like the one Impactable developed.
LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks
What is a good CTR for LinkedIn ads?
A good CTR for LinkedIn ads would be 0.4% or above for a cold ad, and anything above 1% is really good for a retargeting ad.
What is the average CPC on LinkedIn?
The average cost per click on LinkedIn really depends on three things:
- Audience size – larger the audience, lower the CPC.
- Seniority – lower the seniority level, lower the CPC.
- Activity Frequency – more active a user group, lower the CPC.
So, the average CPC on LinkedIn could be anywhere from $10 to $30.
LinkedIn Connection Requests
How many connection requests can I send on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn currently limits users to 100 connection requests per week. You can, however, send free InMails to those with open profiles if you wish to message on a larger scale.
Is there a maximum number of connections on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn limits users to a maximum of 30,000 connections but an unlimited amount of followers.
Others
Are LinkedIn ads effective?
In my opinion, LinkedIn ads are effective for two reasons:
- The audience targeting is very precise and sets it apart from other platforms.
- Users log in to LinkedIn with a ‘work mindset’ and want to see what’s new in their professional network, including the tools and software other people and companies are using. People are open to being influenced, which makes the platform a prime place to advertise.
What does ‘Industry’ mean on LinkedIn?
The industry is the type of business or space the company works in (a business category in which the business operates, such as financial services, marketing, or software). For example, a marketing agency will come under the marketing industry, and a tax advisor will come under the financial services industry.
How long does it take LinkedIn to review ads?
Usually, Linkedin takes a few hours to review and approve your ads.
How to download leads from LinkedIn ads?
Suppose you are running lead generation forms (as part of your ad campaign) and would like to download the list of leads you collected. In that case, you can navigate to the Assets section of your LinkedIn ad account and select Lead Generation Forms, where you’ll find an option to download all of the leads associated with your form.
How to optimize LinkedIn ads?
Improve your audience targeting so your ads resonate with people you want to convert. You can also pause the lowest-performing ads and duplicate and test variations of your top-performing ads.
How to see competitors’ LinkedIn ads?
To see your competitors’ LinkedIn ads, visit their company page, click on posts, then click on ads. You’ll be able to see all ads your competitor is running or has run.
How to stop ads on LinkedIn?
To stop your ads on LinkedIn, navigate to your LinkedIn ad account, click on your LinkedIn ad campaign, and either pause the whole campaign or select the campaign and pause the individual ads you would like to stop.
How to target ads on LinkedIn?
When creating a LinkedIn ad campaign, you can select your target audience based on geography, industry, seniority level, title, and company size.
Read more about how LinkedIn Audiences work in the video below.
How to track LinkedIn ads in google analytics?
To track LinkedIn ads in Google Analytics, add a UTM to your destination URL to allow Google Analytics to see the source of your website traffic. Using UTMs, Google analytics can see all the traffic to your website and where it came from, and the UTM would describe what source it came from and what campaign and give it all that information.
Learn more about UTMs in the context of LinkedIn Ads in the video below.
What are ‘Impressions’ of LinkedIn ads?
LinkedIn ad impressions show the number of times your ad appeared on the screen or feed of the prospect. All it means is that it just was placed and showed up on their screen, and it doesn’t mean that they saw it, clicked on it, or did anything else.
Here’s a helpful refresher below.
Can I see who clicked on my LinkedIn ads?
Yes, you can…if you send your clicks to a website or landing page. The best way to find out who clicked your ads would be to use a website visitor identification tool and to uncover your website’s visitors.
Conclusion
In the absence of strategic planning, LinkedIn ads, much like other forms of advertising, can feel like screaming into the void. To ensure your brand’s voice reaches the right audience, you must plan your sponsored content based on the short-term and long-term business goals you’re trying to achieve.
Whether you are looking to drive traffic to your website, raise brand awareness or push sales, LinkedIn offers a portfolio of ads that has something for everyone. We hope this post helps clarify doubts about running and managing LinkedIn ad campaigns, including pricing, retargeting, target audience and more.
Did we miss out on addressing a question you have? Schedule a demo call with an Impactable representative for further discussion.
One Response
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