LinkedIn’s advertising business surpassed £1 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2021. And this number is only going to increase in years to come. This comes as no surprise as the professional social media platform is home to over 830 million members. Running ads on LinkedIn can be straightforward if done properly. And of course, it can get you incredible results.
In order to help you create winning ads, we’ve put together a checklist of the different bases that you should cover on LinkedIn. Let’s get started.
LinkedIn ads checklist: Account set-up
☑️Do you have the insight tag up and running?
The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a lightweight JavaScript tag that is used to power conversion tracking, website audiences, and website demographics. It’s basically the key connection between your LinkedIn ads and your website.
As such, this tag is considered a standard component of your website’s pages, and is a necessity to power up some of the solutions we just mentioned.
- To install the Insight Tag on your website, you’ll first need to access it. Simply sign in to your Campaign Manager, click on Analyse, then click on Conversion Tracking
- There, click on Data Sources and then on the Install my Insight Tag button. Now, in order to view and copy the tag, simply click on I will install the tag myself
- Once you have it, head to your website, then add the JavaScript code to every page on your domain. It is preferable that you add it right before the end of the <body> tag in the global folder
- Once done, your domain should now appear under the Insight Tag window
☑️Are you using your website demographics?
Assuming you have your insight tag up and running, you should definitely pay attention to your LinkedIn Website Demographics. This free reporting tool provides marketers with demographic information about the LinkedIn members that visit their website(s).
The tool allows you to view and compare metrics of two different audience segments. Basically, the idea here is to create two different audience segments using these demographics. Then you compare and contrast the performance of two identical ads running on these segments to see which one performs better.
It also enables you to further filter the data using a range of options, including:
- Job Title, seniority, and function
- Company
- Industry
- Company size
- Location
- Country
With this data, you can have an accurate insight into the behaviour of your website visitors. This can tell you whether you’re actually reaching the right audience or not.
☑️Have you set up conversion tracking?
Conversion tracking, as the name suggests, refers to additional reporting that helps you better understand the actions people take after clicking on your ad. As we’ve mentioned above, this feature requires you to (mainly) have an Insight Tag set up on your website.
When creating an Online Conversion to be tracked, you can define it using the following:
- Insight Tag: Conversions that rely on the Insight Tag can either be Page load or Event-specific. The former is counted when a LinkedIn member visits a page on your website. The latter refers to when a member takes action on your website. LinkedIn allows you to add event-specific code to a link or button on your website to keep track
- Image Pixel: This refers to installing an event-specific image that loads when the action is taken
LinkedIn ads checklist: Campaign set-up
☑️Are you using a naming structure for your campaigns?
Having a naming structure for your LinkedIn ad campaigns can help to organise them. It also makes it a lot easier to find, search, and repeat campaigns in the future.
Here are some attributes that you can use in your naming process:
- Line of business
- Marketing campaign title
- Campaign type (Webinar, for example)
- Targeting parameters (geo region, industry, etc.)
- The date range for the campaign
- Etc
Your campaign name should be something like this:
LOB_Initiative_Campaign Product_Manchester_FY23.
☑️Have you selected the correct campaign objective?
Selecting the right objective for your campaign helps LinkedIn to better streamline and customise your campaign creation process. It usually refers to the action you want people to take after seeing and clicking your ads.
The objectives offered on LinkedIn are divided into 3 main categories:
- Awareness campaigns are used to maximise your brand’s presence online. This is usually done with impressions
- Consideration campaigns are used to encourage customers to take action and find out more about your brand. Of course, this is based on generating clicks as well as other engagement metrics such as social actions and views
- Conversion campaigns, as the name suggests, are focused on generating leads and tracking actions on your website, such as downloads and lead generation capture
We know that there is this temptation to choose your objective right away. However, as we have discussed in our previous point, make sure to properly name your campaign first.
Then, think twice about any objective you want to go with. Why? You might wonder. Well, for the mere fact that you can’t update your campaign objective once it’s launched.
LinkedIn ads checklist: Audience set-up
☑️Do you want to enable audience expansion?
Audience expansion allows advertisers to increase the reach of their campaigns by, you’ve guessed it, expanding their audiences.
This works by trying to reach audiences with similar attributes to your target audience. For instance, you’re currently targeting people in the IT industry with the skill “Online Advertising”.
Using audience expansion, you can reach people who have the skill “Interactive Marketing” listed instead. These two skills are two sides of the same coin, so you would end up discovering more quality prospects and expanding your funnel.
There’s no right or wrong answer here, but we generally don’t advise using this feature and spending time selecting the audience you want to target instead.
☑️Are you retargeting?
This one is pretty straightforward. LinkedIn has retargeting ads which allow you to reach LinkedIn users who may have previously interacted with your brand. In the eyes of LinkedIn, these users may have some level of interest in your brand. Yet, they haven’t made a purchase or become a lead.
LinkedIn retargeting is quite easy to do, so if you haven’t done it yet, here is how it goes:
- Users see an ad of yours on their LinkedIn feed
- They click on the ad
- They are then taken to your website
- There, they interact in some way or another with your website, perhaps filling out a form or something
- Boom! They are now certified leads in your system. However, they don’t go on with their journey and make a purchase
- The data of their interaction is stored and sent to LinkedIn
- And poof! Just like that, your retargeting ads will probably reach said users
This time, chances are, this user(s) will probably commit till the end of the journey and perform a sale. And as we’ve mentioned before, this effective measure is also only functional if you have your Insight Tag (again).
The beauty of LinkedIn retargeting campaigns is the fact that they will reach otherwise lost leads, thus increasing your conversion rate in the process. This will subsequently lower your average cost-per-leader (CPL). Too good of a deal to miss out on, eh?
☑️Do you want to use the LinkedIn Audience Network?
The LinkedIn Audience Network is a feature that enables marketers to extend the reach of their campaigns by delivering their ads to members on third-party apps and sites. In other words, your ads would be reaching LinkedIn members somewhere other than LinkedIn itself.
Anyway, when you have LinkedIn Audience Network properly set up, the same targeting parameters, bid type, and budget will be used. The Network has a catch, though, it’s currently only limited to campaigns containing single image, carousel, and video formats.
Once it’s been up and running, you can view the results in relation to the Audience Network by heading over to the Campaign Manager and checking the On/Off Network breakdown. Again, generally, we advise against using this feature.
LinkedIn ads checklist: Bid and budget
☑️Are you bidding properly?
Having the right bidding approach is key to driving efficient results with your LinkedIn ad campaigns. You see, since space on LinkedIn can be limited, ads will compete against one another through the bidding system.
Unfortunately, bidding on LinkedIn can be quite expensive, especially if you’re bidding at the higher end of the spectrum. What we recommend is that you start at the lower end of the recommended bid by LinkedIn. Then, analyse the number of clicks and conversions you’re getting, and if it all seems a tad bit too low, start upping your bid.
You could also leverage autobid if you want. It can be quite effective if used properly. However, as a small business owner who’s just starting to advertise on LinkedIn, we recommend that you avoid it at first since it can be costly.
☑️Do you have your daily and lifetime budgets set up?
The LinkedIn Campaign Manager gives you control over your ad campaign budgets. All budget options use lifetime pacing, which manages how your budget will be spent throughout the duration of your campaign.
In order to achieve better results for your campaign, lifetime pacing predicts activity on the platform and optimises your budget accordingly.
Now, your daily budget refers to the amount of money you’d like to spend per day for your campaign. Your lifetime budget, on the other hand, is the total amount that you’ll spend for the campaign from start to finish.
LinkedIn allows you to combine both on one condition, a continuous campaign schedule. This means that your campaign has no end date and will end the moment your lifetime budget is reached. As for your daily budget, it can go up to 50% higher than the set amount whenever there is an opportunity knocking.
In other words, you can have a daily budget of £100 and a lifetime budget of £1200. Whilst you might end up spending £150 on a day of advertising, your campaign will never exceed £1200. The moment it reaches that amount, it’ll stop.
LinkedIn ads checklist: Creatives
☑️Are you using 4 creatives per campaign?
It’s usually a good idea to maximise the number of creatives you use per campaign. Our recommendation is 4. This allows your campaigns to expand their reach in a frequency that doesn’t feel repetitive to the average customer or prospect.
☑️Are your images relevant to the content?
You’ve heard this phrase a thousand times already. Your ad’s image should be relevant to your content and compelling. However, have you stopped and asked yourself this question recently? Like yes, you can have an image that is very much related to what’s in the ad. However, it doesn’t work well with what you have on the landing page.
We know that sounds all confusing and pretty basic, but some people do miss out on the most basic of stuff sometimes.
☑️Are you using compelling CTAs?
Click-to-action or CTAs act as incentives for people to click on your ad. It’s highly recommended to use strong phrases such as Try, Download, Sign up, or Request a Quote. People shouldn’t just be given a reason to notice and click on your ad.
You should also incentivise them further to do so. That way, they can reap the benefits of your offer.
☑️Is your ad content optimised according to the ad format?
When advertising on LinkedIn, it is important to try and leverage your content according to the ad formats you’re using.
For instance, the lines of copy and CTAs that you might use for a single-image ad can differ greatly from those in a carousel ad. Since the latter format usually delivers ads in a story-like way, you can reference that in the ad’s copy or the creatives used themselves.
If you want a more detailed idea of this point, simply check LinkedIn’s numerous best practices with each ad format.
Let’s talk business and LinkedIn
Even with this checklist, you may still find it hard to tackle LinkedIn ads and get them right without spending a fortune. Here’s the thing; you don’t have to, because we can handle all your LinkedIn ads needs. Book a discovery call with us today!
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