The concrete guide to advertising on LinkedIn Ads

So there's no doubt about it: if you want to generate leads or engage an audience with your B2B brand, LinkedIn is the perfect advertising channel. However, to run effective advertising campaigns on the platform, it is crucial that you start with the right basics. That's what this article proposes to you by revealing the goals and LinkedIn Ads formats to activate and the best practices to apply throughout your campaigns.

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What goals should you pursue in your LinkedIn advertising campaigns?

Before launching your LinkedIn advertising campaigns, you need to be clear on the marketing goals you want to pursue.

LinkedIn Ads is particularly effective for branding or acquisition advertising goals. It is indeed one of the most effective social networks for generating leads.

From the LinkedIn Ads Campaign Manager, you can choose between three types of goals, which then guide the creation of your campaigns: 

• Awareness, to build your brand image and increase awareness around your brand
• Consideration, to make your targets' purchasing decisions mature
• Conversions, to convert your targets, through a dedicated Landing Page or through the LinkedIn conversion forms themselves

How to target your ads on LinkedIn?

Targeting on LinkedIn Ads is done according to several criteria: 

• Traditional targeting criteria: geolocation, profile language, socio-demographic criteria... 
• Industry-specific targeting criteria: companies, positions, roles, schools…
• Criteria related to the type of position or the seniority level of your targets
• Criteria that allow you to refine your audiences by interests or skills 
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Note that it is also possible to integrate first-party data from your CRM database, via a .csv file. With this data from your company, you can target your prospects and current customers or create lookalike audiences (audience segments that share the same characteristics as these contacts).

What formats should you choose for your LinkedIn Ads?

Through LinkedIn Ads, advertisers can choose from various ad formats that drive engagement or conversion.

Depending on the goals you set for your ad campaign, choose from the following LinkedIn ad types: 

• Text Ads. These are simple, text-based ads that appear on the right-hand column of LinkedIn or in the middle of users' feeds, with cost-per-click or cost-per-impression billing.
• Sponsored Content. Within this group of formats, you can choose Single Image Ads (an ad with a single promoted visual), Document Ads (an ad including a document, such as a PDF), Video Ads (an ad offering a video that is attractive to targets) and Carousel Ads (an ad in the form of an image carousel). You can create these ads from scratch or turn your organic posts into sponsored posts.
• Dynamic Ads. These ads feature your target's profile picture, company, and job title for a personalized advertising experience.
• Sponsored Messaging. It allows you to reach your targets directly in LinkedIn messaging (via InMails) and thus gives the targets a feeling of personalization and proximity, which generates a strong engagement.
• Lead Ads. A lead gen form is directly integrated into your LinkedIn ads, reducing the conversion tunnel to a minimum and thus increasing the conversion potential of your campaigns.
• The Lead Accelerator feature. It allows you to do lead nurturing by following your prospects (known or unknown) and retargeting them in Social Ads or display format. Use it to send them personalized content based on their experience with your brand.
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Among the best practices to emulate, remember the formats that work best. Those that catch the target audience's attention the most (like video) that are personalized (like InMail) or that keep the user on the ad for a while (like the carousel) generate the most engagement. Activate them to get the best results! 

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"To approach LinkedIn Ads, you must, of course, master the different formats and best practices for ad creation on the platform. But above all, think about rationalizing your media investments between the different levers you activate in your marketing mix. The goal? Adopt an ROI vision of digital advertising, to spend the right budget on the right channels, according to your primary goals."
Théo Ferté, Team Leader - Senior Media Trader

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Which metrics to track the performance of your campaigns?

Creating an advertising campaign on LinkedIn and letting it run is not enough: you also need to measure its performance.

To do this, the KPIs to track depend on your primary advertising goals: 

• For branding goals: track Cost Per Thousand (CPM), Cost Per Completed View (CPCV), and Click Through Rate (CTR)
• For acquisition goals: track Cost Per Visit (CPV), Cost Per Lead (CPL), and Cost Per Action (CPA)
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Report regularly on your performance so that you can continuously optimize your campaigns, both in terms of your budget spent and the results achieved.

You can access all this data on LinkedIn's Campaign Manager. Note that LinkedIn Ads also offers a dashboard directly integrated with its campaign data reporting platform.

Finally, if your advertising objective is conversion, to track the performance of your advertising campaign, be sure to embed the LinkedIn pixel on your website.

You have the basics in hand to create LinkedIn Ads that will help you achieve your marketing goals.

One last tip? Be sure to balance the different levers you activate in your media plan to streamline your advertising investments. Work by test-and-learn on the different platforms and formats to analyze the best practices at work and generate the maximum results with an optimal ROI.

Need support? Contact a Gamned! expert now, and let's talk about your LinkedIn Ads campaign project.