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How to Create a LinkedIn Ad

Cody Schneider•

LinkedIn ads offer a direct line to a professional audience, letting B2B businesses, consultants, and recruiters bypass the noise of other platforms. But getting started can feel intimidating with its various campaign objectives, audience targeting options, and ad formats. This guide will walk you through setting up your first LinkedIn ad campaign, step-by-step, from finding the Campaign Manager to launching and monitoring your ad.

First, Navigate to LinkedIn Campaign Manager

All LinkedIn advertising is managed through a dedicated platform called Campaign Manager. Think of it as your command center for creating, running, and analyzing all your ad campaigns.

Accessing it is simple:

  1. Log into your personal LinkedIn profile.

  2. Click the Work icon (a 3x3 grid of squares) in the top-right corner of the navigation bar.

  3. Select Advertise from the dropdown menu.

If this is your first time, LinkedIn will prompt you to create an ad account. You’ll need to associate it with an existing LinkedIn Page for your business. Once that's set up, you can start building your first campaign.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

The first question Campaign Manager will ask is, "What's your objective?" This is the most important decision you'll make because it tells LinkedIn what you want to achieve. Your choice will influence your bidding options, ad formats, and how LinkedIn's algorithm optimizes your campaign delivery.

Objectives are grouped into three familiar marketing funnel stages:

Awareness

Choose this when your primary goal is to get your brand in front of as many relevant people as possible. You're not necessarily looking for clicks or leads, just eyeballs.

  • Brand awareness: Maximizes impressions to introduce your company or product to a new audience. Ideal for top-of-funnel campaigns where name recognition is the main goal.

Consideration

This mid-funnel stage is for encouraging people to interact with your brand and learn more. You're trying to move them from being aware of you to considering you as a solution.

  • Website visits: The goal here is straightforward - drive traffic to your website, blog, or a specific landing page.

  • Engagement: A great choice for growing your page followers or promoting specific LinkedIn content like an article or event. LinkedIn will show your ad to people most likely to like, comment, or share.

  • Video views: If your ad is a video, this objective optimizes for getting the most views possible, which is perfect for product demos or brand stories.

Conversion

Select a conversion objective when you want your audience to take a specific, valuable action.

  • Lead generation: This is a powerful objective. It uses LinkedIn's pre-filled Lead Gen Forms, making it incredibly easy for users to give you their information (name, email, job title, etc.) without leaving the platform. This removes friction and typically boosts conversion rates.

  • Website conversions: Use this to track specific actions on your website, like a form submission, a free trial sign-up, or a demo request. This requires setting up the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website.

  • Job applicants: If you're using LinkedIn ads for recruiting, this objective will show your job postings to a relevant audience to drive more applications.

For your first campaign, Website visits or Lead generation are solid starting points as they offer clear, measurable outcomes.

Step 2: Define Your Target Audience

This is where LinkedIn truly shines. Its professional data allows you to create highly specific audiences, ensuring your budget is spent on reaching the right people. Take your time here - a well-defined audience is the key to a successful campaign.

You start by selecting a location and a profile language, but the real power lies in layering the detailed targeting attributes:

Targeting by Company

  • Company Industry: Target people who work in specific industries like "Computer Software," "Financial Services," or "Higher Education."

  • Company Size: Focus on companies with a certain number of employees (e.g., 11-50, 501-1000).

  • Company Name: Want to run an account-based marketing (ABM) campaign? You can target employees at a specific list of companies.

Targeting by Demographics

  • Member Age and Gender: Basic demographic information to help narrow your focus.

Targeting by Job Experience

  • Job Function: Broad categories like "Marketing," "Sales," or "Engineering."

  • Job Seniority: Reach decision-makers by targeting levels like "Director," "VP," "C-Suite," or "Owner."

  • Job Titles: Get extremely specific by targeting exact job titles, such as "Chief Marketing Officer" or "Product Manager."

  • Years of Experience: Useful for targeting professionals based on their level of experience in their field.

Pro Tip: When using job titles, think of variations. Someone you're trying to reach might list their title as "Head of Marketing" instead of "Marketing Director." Use several relevant titles to broaden your reach.

Matched Audiences

Beyond manual targeting, you can upload your own data to create powerful custom audiences:

  • Website Retargeting: Show ads to people who have already visited your website (requires the Insight Tag). This is highly effective for re-engaging warm prospects.

  • Contact List Targeting: Upload a list of email addresses from your CRM or email platform to target specific contacts with ads.

  • Lookalike Audiences: Once you have a high-performing audience (like a list of your best customers), you can ask LinkedIn to build a "lookalike" audience of members with similar characteristics.

As you add targeting criteria, check the Forecasted Results panel on the right. LinkedIn will estimate your potential audience size. Aim for an audience that’s specific but not too small - tens of thousands is a good starting point for most campaigns.

Step 3: Choose Your Ad Format

Next, you’ll pick how your ad will look. LinkedIn offers several formats, each suited for different objectives.

  • Single Image Ad: The most common ad format. It appears directly in the LinkedIn feed and features one image, a headline, body text, and a call-to-action (CTA). It's versatile and works for almost any objective.

  • Carousel Ad: This format lets you showcase multiple swipeable images or cards in a single ad. It’s perfect for telling a story, featuring multiple products, or highlighting different aspects of a service.

  • Video Ad: Video is excellent for grabbing attention in the feed. Use it for product demos, customer testimonials, or thought leadership content. Keep it short and make sure it has clear captions, as many people watch with the sound off.

  • Lead Gen Form Ad: As mentioned, these ads connect to a pre-filled LinkedIn form. They look like a regular single image or video ad but an ad click immediately opens the form, streamlining the lead collection process.

  • Message Ad: This allows you to send a direct message to your target audience's LinkedIn inbox. It feels more personal but should be used sparingly to avoid being spammy.

Step 4: Set a Budget and Schedule

Here you decide how much you want to spend and for how long. You have two main budgeting options:

  • Daily Budget: You set a maximum amount to spend per day. This is good for "always-on" campaigns where you want consistent visibility.

  • Lifetime Budget: You set a total budget for the entire duration of the campaign. This is ideal for campaigns with a fixed end date, like promoting an event or a limited-time offer.

You will also set a start and end date for your campaign. For a bidding strategy, new advertisers should start with Maximum Delivery. This option automatically optimizes your bid to get you the most results for your budget based on your chosen objective.

Step 5: Build Your Ad Creative

This is where you bring your ad to life with compelling copy and visuals.

  • Ad Name: Give your ad a specific, internal name for easy identification (e.g., "ebook_ad_marketing_directors_v1").

  • Introductory Text: This is the main body copy above your image or video. Start with a hook that addresses your audience's pain point or speaks to their goal. Keep it clear, concise, and professional.

  • Headline: This appears below your visual and is your opportunity to state a clear benefit. Make it strong and action-oriented. For example, instead of just "Marketing Software," try “Automate Your Marketing in 10 Minutes.”

  • Image or Video: Choose a high-quality, professional visual. Avoid generic stock photos. Images with real people tend to perform well, as do clean graphics with minimal text. Ensure your creative meets LinkedIn's ad specs to avoid any display issues.

  • Call-to-Action (CTA): Select a CTA from the dropdown menu that matches your goal. Popular options include "Learn More," "Download," "Sign Up," and "Request a Demo."

Step 6: Launch and Monitor Your Campaign

Once you’ve double-checked all your settings, hit the Launch Campaign button!

Your job isn't done yet. Running a successful campaign is an ongoing process of monitoring and optimizing. Let your campaign run for a few days to gather initial data, then dive into Campaign Manager to check its performance.

Key metrics to watch closely include:

  • Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown.

  • Clicks: The number of times your ad was clicked on.

  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): A good indicator of how engaging your ad creative is. A low CTR could mean your visual or copy isn’t resonating with your audience.

  • Cost Per Lead (CPL): If you're running a lead gen campaign, this tells you how much each new lead is costing you.

  • Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of people who click your ad and take the action you wanted.

Don't be afraid to test different elements. Duplicate your campaign and change just one variable - the headline, the image, or a specific targeting parameter - to see what drives the best results. Over time, these small optimizations can significantly improve your return on ad spend.

Final Thoughts

Creating a LinkedIn ad campaign is a methodical process that rewards careful planning. By aligning your objective, building a specific audience, choosing the right format, and writing clear, professional copy, you can effectively reach the people who matter most to your business. The key is in testing and continuously refining your approach based on the performance data you're collecting.

Monitoring the results inside LinkedIn Campaign Manager is a great start, but true insight comes from understanding how your LinkedIn performance impacts your overall marketing and sales funnel. That’s often a difficult task of exporting CSVs and manually connecting your ad spend to actual revenue in your CRM. That's why we built Graphed to be the easiest way to bring data from LinkedIn ads, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Shopify and all your channels together instantly. Creating a dashboard that shows your LinkedIn Ads CPL against your close rate from your CRM takes seconds. Just describe what you want to see, and our AI-analyst instantly builds a live report, cutting out hours of manual reporting work each week.