Set campaign group details: Name your campaign group, set a start date, and choose if you want an optional end date or budget optimization. This will distribute group budget based on bid strategy and best performing campaigns.
Set your targeting criteria: LinkedIn’s targeting is unmatched. You can target users by location, job title, industry, skills, and more. You can also set exclusionary audiences to hone in on your ideal customer, and use retargeting and lookalike audiences to reach users similar to your ideal customer profiles. Keep in mind that you can stack different audience targeting options to get super specific about your audience if you want.
Choose ad formats and placements: Select how your ad will appear and decide if you want to use third-party tracking parameters. You may have the option to further define your placements. Website clicks with a single-image ad, for example, must have LinkedIn selected as a placement, but you can choose to enable or disable audience network targeting (which places your ad on third-party publishers where LinkedIn audiences engage).
Set your budget: Choose between a daily or lifetime budget. Daily budgets can help you pace your campaigns, while lifetime budgets are a good option if you aren’t as concerned about when the budget runs out. You'll also set bidding options — we’ll talk more about bidding strategies (and specifically manual bidding) in our tips section.
Create your ads: Add your copy, images, CTAs, and destination URLs. Preview your ad on desktop and mobile, then save and submit it for review.
7 tips for running effective LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn ads operate differently from most platforms, and the best practices for success reflect this difference.
Fortunately, many of these practices are straightforward. John and AJ shared several key tips for optimizing your LinkedIn ad campaigns.
Your campaign objective tells LinkedIn what user action to prioritize and it impacts both cost and performance, so it’s crucial to choose wisely. For example, if you want engaged video views, avoid selecting the "website traffic" objective.
Say you're creating a video ad — consider if you want to drive clicks to your site, or if what you really want is engaged views that help you build awareness. If that's the case, you won’t want to select the “website traffic” objective.
“LinkedIn charges differently based on the objective you choose,” AJ explains, and certain objectives can drive up your costs.
2. Don't default to LinkedIn Audience Expansion
LinkedIn’s Audience Expansion tool uses AI and demographic targeting to broaden the audience who sees your ads. It sounds good in theory, but AJ cautions against it.
