How to Set Up LinkedIn Ad Account
LinkedIn offers a direct line to over 800 million professionals, making it an essential platform for B2B advertising. Before you can reach that audience, you need to set up your ad account correctly. This guide will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, from creating your account in Campaign Manager to managing user permissions and setting yourself up for successful campaigns.
What You’ll Need Before You Start
Getting your LinkedIn Ad Account set up is straightforward, but you need two things in place first. Think of these as your entry ticket to the world of LinkedIn advertising.
A Personal LinkedIn Profile: You can't create an ad account or a Company Page without a personal profile. This profile acts as the administrator and is the key to accessing all of LinkedIn’s business tools. Make sure your profile is complete and professional, as it represents your connection to the business account.
A LinkedIn Company Page: Your ads need to be associated with a business entity, and on LinkedIn, that’s your Company Page. This page serves as your brand’s official presence on the platform. It's where you post updates, share your company culture, and ultimately, where users can land if they click on your company name in an ad. If you don’t have one yet, it only takes a few minutes to create from your personal profile. Your Company Page lends credibility to your ads and gives prospects a place to learn more about you.
Got both? Great. Let’s move on to the main event: Campaign Manager.
What is LinkedIn Campaign Manager?
LinkedIn Campaign Manager is your command center for all things advertising. It's the platform where you create ad accounts, build campaigns, define target audiences, design your ads, set budgets, and monitor performance. If you've ever used Facebook Ads Manager or Google Ads, the concept will feel familiar. It's a dedicated workspace, separate from your personal feed, designed exclusively for running and analyzing your advertising efforts.
Every campaign you launch and every dollar you spend will be managed through this interface. Once your account is set up, you'll be spending a lot of time here, so it's good to get familiar with its purpose from the start.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your LinkedIn Ad Account
With your personal profile and Company Page ready, you're prepared to create your ad account. Follow these steps carefully to ensure everything is configured correctly from the get-go.
Step 1: Access Campaign Manager
First, log in to your personal LinkedIn profile. In the top right corner of your homepage, you’ll see an “Advertise” icon or button. Clicking this will take you directly to the Campaign Manager landing page. If you've never created an account before, you’ll be prompted to start.
Step 2: Create a New Ad Account
Once you’re in Campaign Manager, you'll be prompted to create your new account. This involves filling out three key pieces of information:
Account Name: This is for your internal reference, so choose something clear and descriptive. If you manage multiple businesses or clients, a good naming convention is essential. For example, use "[Company Name] Ad Account" or "[Client Name] - LinkedIn."
Currency: This is a critical step. The currency you select here is permanent and cannot be changed later. All of your billing and reporting will be in this currency. If your business primarily operates in US dollars, choose USD. If you're based in the Eurozone, choose EUR. Selecting the wrong currency can create accounting headaches down the road, so double-check your choice.
Associate a Company Page: You’ll see a field to link your LinkedIn Company Page. Start typing the name of your page, and it should appear in a dropdown menu for you to select. This links your ad activities directly to your brand’s official presence on the platform. Every ad you run will display your Company Page name and logo.
After filling out this information and agreeing to the terms, click "Create account."
Step 3: Set Up Your Billing Information
Your ad account is now created, but you can’t run campaigns until you add a payment method. LinkedIn will immediately prompt you to add a credit card. You’ll need to enter the card number, expiration date, security code, and billing address associated with the card.
LinkedIn accepts most major credit and debit cards. It's important to use a payment method that can handle recurring charges and has a sufficient limit for your planned ad spend. Once your card is added and verified, your account is officially active and ready to use.
Understanding Account Roles and Permissions
Chances are, you won't be managing your LinkedIn ads alone forever. Whether you're working with a team member, a manager, or a marketing agency, you'll need to grant them access to your ad account. LinkedIn offers granular control over who can do what, which helps maintain security and ensures no one makes accidental changes.
To manage user access, navigate to your ad account and click the account name at the top left. Then, select "Manage access" from the dropdown. From here, you can add users by their LinkedIn profile and assign them one of the following roles:
Key User Roles
Account Manager: This is the highest level of access. Account Managers can do everything: create and edit campaigns, add and manage users (including other Account Managers), and edit billing details. This role should be reserved for trusted administrators.
Campaign Manager: This is the most common role for day-to-day advertisers. Campaign Managers can create and edit campaigns, view all reporting, and access audience templates. However, they cannot manage users or billing information. This is perfect for the team member who runs the campaigns.
Creative Manager: This role is designed for team members who handle the ad creatives, like copywriters or designers. They can add and edit ad creatives within campaigns but cannot adjust campaign settings like budget, schedule, or targeting. This allows them to manage their part of the process without touching the campaign structure.
Viewer: Viewers have read-only access. They can see all campaigns and performance reporting but cannot make any changes. This role is ideal for stakeholders like executives or clients who need to check on performance without having the ability to alter anything.
Billing Admin: This role has access only to the billing section. They can add or remove credit cards and manage payment details but cannot view or edit any campaigns. This is useful for finance team members who manage payments but are not involved in marketing activities.
By using these roles effectively, you can build a secure and efficient workflow for your team.
Next Steps: A Glimpse at Setting Up Your First Campaign
With your account set up, the next step is creating your first campaign. The Campaign Manager will guide you through this process, which generally breaks down into these core components. Think of it as putting together a strategy brief before launch.
1. Choose an Objective
What do you want to achieve with your ad? LinkedIn tailors the campaign settings to your goal. Common objectives include:
Brand Awareness: Getting your brand in front of as many relevant people as possible.
Website Visits: Driving traffic from LinkedIn to your website or a specific landing page.
Lead Generation: Collecting leads directly on LinkedIn using pre-filled forms.
Website Conversions: Encouraging users to take a specific action on your website, like signing up for a trial or downloading an ebook.
2. Define Your Audience
This is where LinkedIn truly shines. You can target users with incredible precision based on professional criteria like:
Job Title: e.g., "Marketing Manager," "Chief Executive Officer."
Company Size: e.g., 11-50 employees, 5001-10,000 employees.
Industry: e.g., "Computer Software," "Financial Services."
Location: Targeting users in specific countries, states, or cities.
Skills & Interests: Based on the skills listed on their profile or groups they belong to.
3. Select an Ad Format & Create Your Ad
You’ll choose the type of ad you want to run - whether it’s a single image ad, a video ad, a carousel ad with multiple images, or a text ad. Then, you'll upload your visuals and write your ad copy.
4. Set a Budget & Schedule
You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget for your campaign. You’ll also set the start and end dates. LinkedIn gives you full control over your spending to ensure you never go over budget.
Best Practices After Creating Your Account
Don't just set it and forget it! Here are a couple of things you should do immediately after creating your account to set yourself up for long-term success.
Install the LinkedIn Insight Tag
The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a small piece of JavaScript code that you place on your website. It’s absolutely essential. It unlocks three critical capabilities:
Conversion Tracking: The tag allows LinkedIn to track when someone clicks your ad and completes a desired action on your site (like filling out a form). Without it, you'll have no idea if your ad spend is actually generating results.
Website Retargeting: You can create audiences of people who have visited your website and then show them targeted ads on LinkedIn. This is a powerful way to re-engage warm prospects.
Audience Demographics: The tag provides insights into the professional demographics of your website visitors - even if they didn't come from a LinkedIn ad. You can see their job titles, industries, and company sizes, which is invaluable for refining your targeting strategy.
You can find the Insight Tag in Campaign Manager under "Account Assets." It takes a few minutes to install (or to ask your developer to do it), and the benefits are enormous.
Establish a Clear Naming Convention
As you start running multiple campaigns for different products, audiences, or regions, your account can become messy very quickly. A clean naming convention for your campaign groups, campaigns, and ads makes reporting and analysis much easier. A good structure might look like this:
[Date] - [Campaign Goal] - [Target Audience] - [Region]Example: Q423 - LeadGen - Marketing Managers - US/CAN
This kind of organization will save you countless hours when you're trying to figure out what's working and what isn't.
Final Thoughts
Setting up your LinkedIn Ad Account is the foundational step to tapping into the world’s largest professional network for B2B marketing. By following this guide, you’ve not only created an account but configured it with team access, billing, and the critical Insight Tag, positioning you to run effective and measurable campaigns from day one.
Once your ads are live, the next critical task is analyzing their performance. That often means exporting data from LinkedIn and trying to match it with data from Google Analytics, your CRM, and other platforms to see the full picture. We know firsthand that stitching this data together in spreadsheets can consume hours every week. That's why we created Graphed. You can connect your LinkedIn Ads, Salesforce, and other data sources in seconds, then ask simple questions in plain English - like "Show me our LinkedIn campaign spend vs. new leads from Salesforce this month" - and instantly get a real-time dashboard that answers your question.