How to Run a LinkedIn Ad

Running ads on LinkedIn can feel intimidating, but it’s one of the most effective ways for businesses to reach a professional audience. If you want to connect with decision-makers, target employees at specific companies, or promote your B2B services, LinkedIn is the place to be. This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up and run your first LinkedIn ad campaign, step-by-step, without any confusing jargon.

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First, Why Should You Even Bother with LinkedIn Ads?

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, where users are casually scrolling for personal content, LinkedIn is a professional network. People are there for business, career development, and industry news. This creates a unique advertising environment where your B2B offer doesn't feel out of place - it's expected.

The real power of LinkedIn advertising lies in its targeting capabilities. You can get incredibly specific, targeting users based on:

• Job Title (e.g., "Director of Marketing")
• Company Name (e.g., employees at Google, Microsoft)
• Industry (e.g., Software & IT Services)
• Company Size (e.g., businesses with 50-200 employees)
• Skills (e.g., users who list "Project Management" on their profile)

This precision means you're not wasting your budget on a broad audience that has no interest in what you're selling. You're showing your ads directly to the people who can greenlight a purchase, making it an invaluable tool for B2B marketers, SaaS companies, consultants, and anyone selling a high-value product or service.

Before You Begin: The 3 Key Ingredients of a Successful Campaign

Jumping into LinkedIn's Campaign Manager without a plan is a quick way to waste money. Before you click "Create Campaign," take a few minutes to get these three things straight.

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1. Your Objective: What Do You Want to Achieve?

Start with the end in mind. It sounds simple, but you need to define exactly what you want this ad campaign to accomplish. Your goal determines every other decision you'll make, from the ad format you choose to the call-to-action you use.

Think about what a "win" looks like. Are you trying to:

• Drive traffic to a new blog post?
• Get professionals to register for a webinar?
• Generate leads with a downloadable ebook?
• Book demo calls for your software?
• Simply build brand awareness with a key audience?

Be specific. "Get more leads" isn't a great goal. "Generate 20 qualified leads from VPs of Sales at tech companies" is much better.

2. Your Audience: Who Are You Trying to Reach?

Who is your ideal customer? If you don't know the answer, stop right here and figure it out. Since LinkedIn's strength is its deep professional targeting, having a clear picture of your ideal customer profile (ICP) is non-negotiable.

Write it down. For a B2B SaaS company, an ICP might look like this:

• Job Title: Head of Operations, COO
• Industry: Logistics and Supply Chain
• Company Size: 201-1,000 employees
• Location: United States, Canada

3. Your Offer: What’s In It for Them?

Professionals on LinkedIn are busy. You need to give them a compelling reason to stop scrolling and click on your ad. This is your "offer." It isn't just your product or service, it's the valuable thing you're providing in your ad.

Great offers could be:

• A detailed industry report or whitepaper
• A free template or checklist
• An invitation to an exclusive webinar
• A case study showing how you helped a similar company
• A free trial or demo of your product

The offer must be relevant to the audience you’re targeting. The Head of Operations you're targeting might not care about a generic marketing guide, but they’d probably love a report on "The Top 5 Efficiency Gains in Logistics for 2024."

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your LinkedIn Ad Campaign

With your objective, audience, and offer defined, you're ready to build your campaign. Log into your LinkedIn account and navigate to the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. If you don't already have an ad account, you'll be prompted to create one.

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Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

LinkedIn organizes its objectives into three classic marketing funnel stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. Your choice here tells LinkedIn's algorithm what kind of results to optimize for.

Awareness

• Brand Awareness: Ideal for getting your name out there. LinkedIn will show your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience to build recognition.

Consideration

• Website Visits: The goal is to drive traffic to your website, blog, or a specific landing page.
• Engagement: Perfect for boosting likes, comments, shares, and follows on your LinkedIn page or a specific post.
• Video Views: Optimize for getting as many people as possible to watch your video ad.

Conversions

• Lead Generation: This is a game-changer. It uses a pre-filled LinkedIn form that opens right within the app, making it incredibly easy for users to give you their information without ever leaving the platform.
• Website Conversions: For tracking specific actions on your website, like a sign-up, download, or purchase. This requires installing the LinkedIn Insight Tag (a small piece of code) on your website.
• Job Applicants: If you're hiring, this objective will get your job posting in front of qualified candidates.

Beginner’s Tip: For most new advertisers, Lead Generation and Website Visits are the best starting points.

Step 2: Define Your Target Audience

This is where the magic happens. LinkedIn's audience building tool is detailed and powerful.

You can build your audience from scratch based on demographic and professional attributes. For our earlier B2B SaaS example, you would:

1. Set the Location to "United States" and "Canada."
2. Click "Narrow" and go to Job Experience > Job Titles. Type in "Chief Operating Officer" and "Head of Operations."
3. Click "Narrow" again and go to Company > Company Industry. Select "Logistics and Supply Chain."
4. Finally, click "Narrow" one last time and go to Company > Company Size. Select "201-500 employees" and "501-1000 employees."

As you add criteria, look at the "Forecasted Results" on the right side of the screen. This panel gives you an estimated audience size. Aim for a target audience that's not too broad (over 300,000) or too niche (under 10,000). A sweet spot is often between 20,000 and 100,000 people for a standard campaign.

A quick note on Matched Audiences

You can also create audiences by uploading a list of contacts or companies (retargeting), or by retargeting visitors from your website. These are more advanced strategies but incredibly powerful once you get a feel for the platform.

Step 3: Choose Your Ad Format

Next, you’ll choose the type of ad you want to run. LinkedIn offers several formats, but these are the most common and effective:

• Single Image Ad: The bread-and-butter of LinkedIn ads. A clean image, some compelling copy, a headline, and a call-to-action button. Hard to get wrong.
• Video Ad: Captures attention better than static images. Great for product demos, customer testimonials, or thought leadership content. Just keep it short - under 30 seconds is best.
• Carousel Ad: A swipeable-style ad with multiple images. Perfect for telling a story, showcasing different product features, or highlighting steps in a process.
• Document Ad: Lets users download a document (like a PDF of a whitepaper or a presentation) directly from the ad without visiting your website. Fantastic for lead generation.

Step 4: Set Your Budget and Schedule

You have control over how much you spend and when. Here’s what the settings mean:

• Budget: You can set either a Daily Budget (what you’re willing to spend each day) or a Lifetime Budget (a total amount for the entire campaign). For beginners, a daily budget is easier to manage. You can start with something as small as $20-$25 a day to test the waters.
• Schedule: Set a start date for your campaign. You can also set an end date, or let it run continuously until you pause it yourself.
• Bidding: This tells LinkedIn how to spend your money to get results. The simplest option is Maximum Delivery (formerly Automated Bid), which tells LinkedIn’s algorithm to get you the most results for your budget. It's the best option to start with.

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Step 5: Build and Launch Your Ad

Finally, it’s time to design the ad creative itself.

You’ll upload your image or video and fill in the text fields:

• Introductory Text: This is the main body of copy that appears above your image/video. Keep it concise. Ask a question, state a surprising fact, or directly address a pain point of your target audience.
• Headline: The bolded text that appears below the visual. Make it punchy and outcome-focused. Instead of "Try Our New Software," say "Cut Your Team's Reporting Time in Half."
• Call-to-Action (CTA): The button text. LinkedIn gives you options like "Learn More," "Download," "Sign Up," and "Request Demo." Make sure it aligns with your offer.

Once everything is filled out, click the "Create" button, and on the next page, "Launch Campaign". Your ad will go into a review process, which usually takes a few hours. Once approved, it will start running!

After Hitting 'Launch': Monitoring and Optimizing

Your job isn't done once the campaign is live. Check your dashboard every day or two to see how things are performing. Pay attention to a few key metrics:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked your ad after seeing it. A CTR below 0.50% might indicate that your creative or targeting isn't resonating.
• Cost Per Result (CPR): How much you’re paying for each result (e.g., each website click or lead).
• Conversions: The total number of leads or sales your campaign has generated.

Don't be afraid to test! You can duplicate your ad and change just one thing - the headline, the image, or the body text - to see what performs better. This process of launching, analyzing, and tweaking is how you turn a good campaign into a great one.

Final Thoughts

Running LinkedIn ads is a learnable skill. By defining a clear objective, zeroing in on a specific professional audience, and providing a valuable offer, you can effectively reach the exact people who will grow your business. Start small, monitor your results, and don't be afraid to experiment until you find what works.

Once your campaigns are up and running, analyzing performance to prove ROI becomes the next important step. Instead of flipping between LinkedIn Analytics, Google Ads, and your company's CRM to connect the dots, we built a way to simplify that. With Graphed, you can connect your data in one place and ask questions in plain English to build real-time marketing dashboards instantly, letting you see the full story without spending hours stitching data together in spreadsheets.