LinkedIn carousel ads allow advertisers on the platform to showcase numerous images in a single ad, significantly increasing the chances of scoring a conversion in the process. They’re a great way of telling a story about your brand through images.

So, in this article, we are going to go through the advantages of using carousel ads on LinkedIn, how you can create a carousel ad, and lastly, we’ll go over some of the best practices that you should follow when creating your carousel ads on LinkedIn. Stay tuned…

LinkedIn carousel ads – what are they?

Carousel ads are one of the many types of sponsored content that you can use on LinkedIn. You can use them to showcase a single offer/product or many, depending on your current needs. A LinkedIn carousel ad normally features multiple image cards, with each card having its own headline and intro text. You’ve probably seen something similar on Facebook.

Besides the standard advertising metrics, such as the number of leads, LinkedIn also gives you access to the number of both impressions and clicks for each individual card of your carousel ad. This is great because it allows you to fine-tune your ads to perfection.

Benefits of LinkedIn carousel ads

There are three main things that carousel ads offer you, things that you won’t find in other LinkedIn ad formats:

Promoting more content in one ad

The ability to include 10 different cards/images in carousel ads speaks volumes about how versatile they are in comparison to other ad formats. 10 different images can mean 10 different CTAs (calls to action). But it can also mean a complete overview of a single new product or service, with the ability to cover aspects that you pretty much can’t include in a regular ad. This takes us to the second point.

Superior storytelling

With carousel ads, you can pretty much tell a story with the different cards, allowing for a more audience-focused brand awareness campaign. Here’s a great example of a carousel ad that was recently run by Apple:

Higher CTRs

In a 2018 blog post by none other than LinkedIn themselves, it was elaborated that over 300 advertisers have beta-tested carousel ads on the platform, and 75% of them said that they would use these ads in their campaigns.

Why? You might ask.

Well, it’s because they saw a significant rise in both engagement and click-through rates compared to regular ad formats. Such a significant rise in CTR can simply be attributed to the fact that carousel ads feature more content, which presents advertisers with more than one opportunity to entice users to click through.

How to create carousel ads

1. Log into LinkedIn’s campaign manager. You need to be an admin of a LinkedIn page with user access to the campaign manager to use it
2. Click on create campaign
3. Select your objective. LinkedIn has numerous ones right now, including engagement, website visits, lead generation, etc
4. Name your campaign
5. Choose the profile language, the locations to target with your ad, and most importantly, your target audience. You have the option of creating your own audience from scratch, uploading a list of users to target, or retargeting LinkedIn users who visited your site in the past
6. Select your ad format. In this case, of course, you are going with “carousel image ad”
7. Select your schedule, bid type and amount, and budget
8. Add conversion tracking. This is optional, but we highly recommend it
9. Click on save, then next
10. Click on create a new ad from the top right corner to create an ad. If you have carousel content that you used in the past and would like to re-use, select “browse existing content” instead
11. Once you click on create a new ad, simply enter a name, the intro text, the destination link, and then create your individual cards
12. Click on create, and that’s it! You’re good to go!

Carousel ads specifications

General requirements

Before you start creating your carousel ads, you should probably pay attention to the following specs:

• A carousel ad can include a minimum of 2 cards and a maximum of 10
• For the ad as a whole, the intro text/description area is limited to 255 characters max. But it might be limited to as low as 150 characters on some mobile devices

Card requirements

As for the individual cards, they need to be:

• Not more than 10MB in size
• Have a 1:1 aspect ratio with a recommended image size being 1080 by 1080 pixels
• In JPG, PNG, or GIF (non-animated) format

Headline requirements

The headline text for each card shouldn’t pass two lines, but if we were to be more specific:

• Carousel ads that direct to a landing page have a 45-character limit
• Carousel ads that have a lead gen form CTA have a 30-character limit

Optimising LinkedIn carousel ads

Here are a few of our favourite techniques that you can rely on to get the most out of your carousel ads:

Include a clear CTA

Your audience should have an idea of what they are getting into when they click on your call to action.

Have well-written ad headlines

Your ad headlines, as well as the copy, should be clear and descriptive so that your target audience understands the message.

Target properly

You need to be specific with whom you target, but not too specific to the point of narrowing your audience to a couple of users. We recommend that you choose a location first, then add two other targeting criteria to the mixture at least and work from there.

Rely on existing content

If your past content is effective, then there isn’t really a point in scrapping it. Combine it with new content to create something interesting in those carousel cards of yours.

Start small

At first, only include 3 to 5 cards in your carousel ad, then try adding more cards and see how it goes from there.

Save the best for last

If the main goal of your carousel ad is to tell a story, make sure to save the call to action to the final card. You want to make sure that your target audience gets the most information about your business before they move on.

Use testimonials and feedback

Giving potential customers an idea of how your products or services can help them through customer testimonials or feedback is very effective. It works great for both B2B and B2C advertising.

Keep track of the numbers

The numbers rarely lie, so make sure to keep an eye on the number of impressions and clicks for each and every card to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. If something seems off, simply tune it to the ever-changing needs of your target audience.

Have a proper landing page

This concerns ads with the objective of taking audiences to a destination URL. Never, ever have users sent to your website’s homepage. Instead, make sure to create a dedicated landing page for them that includes everything they expect and need or else their “click” will be useless.

A/B Testing

This technique is so crucial to the success of your LinkedIn carousel ads to the point where we devoted a separate section for it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this concept, A/B testing refers to the act of testing two versions of your ad against each other to see which one performs better. Now, there are numerous different elements that you can change to produce a different version, including:

Order of Cards

When someone from your target audience sees your ad, the first thing that they will see is obviously the first card. Yes, the second card will be partially viewable, but the focus is still on the first one. For this reason alone, you should perhaps try different orders of your cards to see which one succeeds in capturing the most attention out of your audience.

Number of Cards

We have already mentioned above that LinkedIn recommends that you use 3 to 5 cards at first. But what they also recommend is that you use longer ads, ones containing 6 or more cards, to see which works better for you. All you need to do now is to A/B test these two variations to see which brings more impressions and clicks.

Headlines and CTAs

Companies that are faring well marketing-wise on LinkedIn are usually the ones who carefully choose their headlines and calls to action but rarely do they get them right from their first attempt. Instead, they pit different variations against each other and pick the one that works best.

Let us help you with LinkedIn Ads

Since LinkedIn is mainly used by professionals, it can be hard (and expensive) to manage LinkedIn ads. Worry not, though, as we’re here to help. Book a discovery call today, and one of our LinkedIn ads experts will reach out promptly.

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LinkedIn Carousel Ads – FAQs