Linkedin Leads Generation Ads: Complete Guide

Many B2B advertisers and marketers still don’t like Linkedin ads despite the fact it is an advertising platform that promotes lead generation and business growth.

They’re right and I don’t fault them. The old Linkedin Ads platform was slow, unintuitive, and did not offer many benefits or control for companies. “

Linkedin has received many positive reviews.

While Linkedin ads can be a great way for business-minded people to connect, they are not suitable for all.

We created this introduction for Linkedin Ads 2021. This article will give you:

What is the truth about Linkedin Ads?
This guide will help you create and set up a campaign.
This will help you decide if your business should advertise on Linkedin.

Continue reading!

LinkedIn Ads: Why?

Maybe now is the time to revisit Linkedin Ads. LinkedIn’s Campaign manager today offers many of the same features as paid social media networks.

There are many advantages over other social media platforms.

The platform is designed for business networking. Linkedin users are more focused on their businesses than cat videos.

What is advertising relevant?

Since Linkedin users are often collar professionals, ads targeting B2B workers will be more successful. You have a unique opportunity to nurture existing leads and generate more qualified prospects

I refer to ‘high-quality leads’ as those who have the financial resources and decision-making power to engage with you in meaningful ways.

But here’s the catch.

Drawbacks to Linkedin Ads

Advertising on Linkedin offers many benefits.

1. Astronomical cost

Expect to pay $5.25 to $7.00 per click on Linkedin. These costs continue to climb.

Even though you know that the user that you are targeting has authority and a budget to buy, it can still be costly. The average conversion cost is $6.00 per click.

2. No dayparting

You have the option to choose where and when you want to place an ad or group of ads on another advertising platform like Google Ads. Your impressions will be more effective when your audience is online.

Not for Linkedin Ads. Ads that you post to Linkedin are displayed 24/7, even though you pause them. You would prefer to display your ads during business hours.

3. Retargeting restrictions

Retargeting on Linkedin Advertising is possible. While you can segment retargeting groups with on-platform engagement data and web events, it’s often difficult to meet Linkedin’s retargeting audience size requirement of >300 members.

There are many types of LinkedIn Ads

Linkedin ads have unique placements and capabilities Let’s look at the different ad formats.

Sponsored content is similar to Facebook newsfeed ads. Sponsored content ads appear on users’ desktop and mobile activity feeds.

Text ads–Text ads can appear in either one of two places: on the top of the User Profile or on the right-hand-side with a small picture

Sponsored mail – A unique alternative to LinkedIn Ads Sponsored Mail allows you to send targeted messages directly to your audience.

Dynamic Ads- These dynamic ads can be customized for each LinkedIn user. You can also include their names in your copy, for instance.

LinkedIn ads, just like other ad platforms, have guidelines that you can follow to get the best results.

Text ads

HTML ads are less expensive than other forms and can reach as many people as possible.

Text Ad Example

A few best practices:

Select a landing page that best reflects your ad message. This will increase your conversion rate and get you more quality leads.

Mobile-friendly landing pages are essential. It should contain only one call to action (CTA ).

Text ads have a low conversion ratio. Make sure to be specific in your targeting criteria. Include at least two additional criteria.

Get more information and tips about LinkedIn text ads tips.

Now we know what the ad should look like. It is now clear what the ad should look like. Targeting allows you to narrow down the Linkedin community so that you can interact with a particular audience.

Target was purchased.

Linkedin provides three options to target your campaigns:

Location targeting (required)
Audience attributes
Custom audiences using Matched Audiences.

What does each section mean in targeting? We will cover each section more fully below.

Targeting Locations

It is the only section that is required to target, so location targeting is easy. It allows you to select where your ads should appear around the world.

Audience Attributes

You can select and exclude Linkedin users based on several attributes called Audience Attributes.

Company

Category
Connectivity
Follower Company
Growth Rate
Industries
Names
Size

Demographics

Age
Gender

Education

Grad
Field of Study
Schools for Members

Work Experience

Job functions
Seniority
Title(s)
Skills
One year of experience

Interesting and defining traits

They are part of the group
Interests
Traits

Audience attributes are very detailed as active users are encouraged to keep their profiles up-to-date for networking purposes.

These attributes can be self-reported by using an open-fill form, not a drop-down menu from Linkedin.

When targeting job titles, you need to be creative. They can vary greatly between companies, even for the same job function.

Matched Audiences

Matched audiences are precisely what they sound like: they match a list with users you have on Linkedin. They can, for example, complete a conversion task for your website.

You have three options to use matched audiences.

1. Upload a List. Employees of the company can be added to your target audience. You can also exclude low-value targets later by using audience attribute targeting.

2. Submit a contact list. This is similar to company targeting. It matches prospects from company contacts and feeds through your content management software to users on Linkedin.

Segmenting a retargeting group is possible. This is achieved by using past interactions between users, your company, and your website.

Matched audiences are extremely valuable because they show interest in your company or have shown value. This guide is Linkedin targeting B2B marketers.

Now let’s learn about Linkedin Ad types and audiences, and how Campaign Manager can assist you in building them.

How to start with Linkedin’s Campaign Manager

To run ads on LinkedIn, you will need to create an Account.

Advertising on Linkedin needs a few prerequisites.

A company website is required
If you have an existing page, you must have access to it.
A Linkedin advertising account is required

These topics will all be covered in the following

Create a company webpage

You will see all organic posts from your company on your company page Enter the name of your company into the search box.

To create a company website, click the 9-squares dropdown.

Please complete the following form:

Company Email Address
Logo design for the company
Description
Employees
Company location

Easy!

To add a user to the Company Page:

Scroll to the top of your company’s page and click the Admin Tools dropdown. Choose Manage admins. Each role has a different level of permission.

Done! Now let’s go into Linkedin Campaign Manager and see how we can create or access a Linkedin Ad Account.

Access a Linkedin Ad account

Let’s begin with the Linkedin campaign manager

Click on the Advertise icon in the top-right corner of the homepage. To create an advertisement, you can also visit www.linkedin.com/ads

To create a Linkedin ad account, click the Create Account button in Linkedin Campaign Manager.

Enter the required information such as account name and currency.

To view an existing Linkedin ad account:

Click on the cog icon and choose Manage access.

You can also search for and edit user permissions.

Done! Now you can create ads or campaigns in the Linkedin campaign manager

Navigating the Linkedin Ads Hierarchy

A Linkedin account can be set up in three ways:

1. Campaign groups

2. Campaigns

3. Advertisement

I will guide you through each level, teach you how to create new ones, and tell you why they are important.

Campaign Groups

I’ll now briefly discuss campaign groups.

When you create a Linkedin Account, you will automatically be given a campaign group called “Default Campaign Group”.

Campaign groups are not required to do anything similar to a campaign in Google Ads.

You can pause multiple campaigns at the same time, but you must do so only for emergencies.

To start a new campaign team,

1. Select the Create campaign group button.

2. Fill in the required fields for the popup

It is recommended that budgets be set at the campaign level and not at the group level. Campaigns cannot be moved between groups.

How to create a Linkedin campaign

Click on the Create Campaign button at the upper right corner, or above the campaign name columns.

There are five steps to creating a new campaign:

1. Select a campaign objective

2. Target an audience

3. Select an ad format

4. Set your budget and timetable

5. Conversion tracking

I’ll show you how to create a Linkedin Campaign.

1. Select a campaign objective

Linkedin has made a shift to an objective-based campaign platform.

A goal is a goal you want a Linkedin user to achieve after viewing your ad.

Each objective may be nested within 3 Linkedin marketing goals Awareness, Consideration, & conversions.

When you create your campaign, you can choose from many objectives.

Brand Awareness – An impression-based goal that will allow you to show more people about the business.

Website visitors – This middle funnel objective is used to drive clicks to an external page, such as your website or landing pages.

Engagement: This allows you to show your ads to only those people who are most likely to click on, comment on, or follow your page.

Video views– This is the only objective with a cost-per-view (CPV); use it when you’re primarily focused on video view.

Lead generation – A bottom-funnel goal. Generate leads via Linkedin and a lead gen page.

Website conversions–website conversions optimize on-site conversions like ebook downloads or form submissions. Conversion tracking is the only way to achieve this goal.

Job applicants are the third level of conversion. This objective encourages job applicants to click on job ads.

Linkedin recommends you stick to the campaign objectives that most closely align with your marketing goals. It’s fine to make changes from time to time.

Campaign objectives will dictate which ad formats and bidding strategies can be used for your campaign. This will be covered in more detail later.

2. Target an audience

The next page is where you will build your audience.

Location, Audience attributes, and Matched Audiences Targeting.

After you have determined the location, set your targeting preferences. You can target an audience who is interested in graduate studies at your university, for example, by layering age demographics with current degrees and their field of study.

Layering Member Skills and Job titles with Member Groups like SEO Experts can help you ensure that your audience is interested.

Current customers and competitors can be excluded using the Exclude button at the bottom.

Pay attention to the audience size in the panel to the right. Your audience should be between 20,000 and 60,000 users.

Next, you can look at the Enable Audience Expansion box.

This one too.

LinkedIn will show you your ad to people closely related to those you selected when you signed up for Audience Expansion. LinkedIn may also show your ad if you target people with the skill of “online advertising”.

Audience Expanding may unintentionally include audience members that aren’t relevant to you.

Save your audience as a Template.

Save your audience with templates!

Templates let you duplicate an audience for a campaign. However, you can also test new objectives and ad types later.

It’s a time-saver.

3. Select an ad format

I’ve already mentioned that campaign objectives can limit the ad formats you can use. To save time, we have compiled a list of ad format options that are supported by Linkedin campaign goals.

As you can see, Website Conversions and Brand Awareness support text ads.

This is an important fact to keep in mind. Linkedin will display all formats available to you when you finish your campaign in LinkedinCamp Manager.

There is a variety of ad formats that can be used to promote the Website Visitors’ campaign goal.

Single-image ads are the best format for beginners.

4. Set your budget and timetable

Defining your budget and bidding options is the most important step in any advertising campaign.

It is important to understand the basics behind bidding and budgeting on Linkedin. Let’s get started with setting your daily budget.

Create a daily budget.

LinkedIn requires you to have a minimum daily spending budget.

Linkedin can spend the same amount you have set, but up to 50% more than your daily budget.

Next, select a start and end date in the Schedule.

Your bidding options will always be the last. This new feature is available in Linkedin Advertising.

Bidding Options

Linkedin has three types of bids. Target cost, Maximum delivery (Automated), or Manual bidding. By changing the bidding type, you can modify how your budget is spent and how you are billed.

Which bid type is best for you? First, let’s take a closer look at the different types of bids.

Maximum Delivery (Automated). Linkedin automatically selects the bid and modifies it using machine learning. This will ensure you get the best results within your budget.

Target Cost – Similar to maximum Delivery but within 30% of target cost per Click

Manual bidding – No adjustments by Linkedin You can manually set and adjust your bids.

This chart published by Linkedin provides more information about objective-based pricing.

Use manuals when starting a campaign.

This is where the fun starts.

Linkedin is just like Google Ads. What are the best ways to achieve this?

You can set your daily budget at a level you feel comfortable with to give your campaign a high ceiling.

As your starting bidding strategy, choose Manual bidding.

Linkedin lets you lower your bid as often and low as possible

I would place my bid at $2.00 to start a new campaign.

Keep an ear out for this campaign in the coming weeks. Increase your bid incrementally until the daily budget is reached.

At this point, you can cut your daily budget by the same amount as you spent with your lowest CPC.

Great! Next is conversion tracking.

5. Conversion tracking

Campaign tracking must be done for all Conversion-level campaign goals.

You can do this either before or during your campaign’s creation.

The Insight Tag from Linkedin is the first thing you should install. This pixel monitors users’ behavior and converts them into websites.

Once your tag is set up, verify the pages you want to track. Track conversions by using thank-you pages.

Name the campaign. To help you remember what campaign it is, add the ad format and objectives.

Your campaign is complete!

Let’s start creating our ads and save money.

How to create Linkedin ads

You can easily create ads. We’ll give you an overview of what to expect.

Create text ads

Text ads can be very simple.

Upload a 50×50 image, a 25-character ad headline, and a 75-character description. You can also add your destination URL (landing page), or Company Page to Linkedin.

InMail Ads Sponsored

Sponsored in-mail Ads let you send a message directly to a Linkedin user’s inbox

Next, fill in the message section.

This ad includes:

Subject: Be concise and only send emails about subjects that have been well-received

Message Text: Concise, short, and conversational.

Call to Action: Combine this with an exclusive, customized offer

URL to the landing page: Be sure to tailor this page to your offer.

Banner creative: A 350 x 250 JPG image 2 MB

Optimize your Offer

Last tip: Don’t be discouraged if your campaign isn’t getting noticed. Your offer can be changed at any time. This is often the key to your advertisement’s success.

Don’t get too excited about scheduling a demonstration. Then, you can create another campaign to retarget users who converted on your first offer. This will increase your chances of them converting to your core offers, such as a free demo or a consultation.

Conclusion

LinkedIn ads are less robust than other social media advertising platforms like retargeting.

Although Linkedin Advertising is not for everyone, it can be a great choice for companies with a lot of leads or a budget. B2B marketers who manage many account-based marketing campaigns.

You shouldn’t run Linkedin Ads on their own. Use other platforms, such as Facebook Ads and Google Ads, to optimize your Linkedin ads.

Please let us know if you require further assistance. Request a free proposal or leave a comment.

About

Work

Featured Work

Services

Insights