The Complete Guide to LinkedIn Ads Everything You Need to Know About Targeting, Measurement, and Optimization Updated October 2015
Table of Contents Introduction The Power of LinkedIn Ads The Common Pitfalls of LinkedIn Ads Relevancy Score Pricing on LinkedIn Not All Network clicks are equal Campaign Structure Choose Your Desired Ad Format Append Your Ad URLs for Conversion Tracking Titling Your Campaign Name Assigning Your Campaign Content a Unique Key Target the Right Audience Bidding Strategically Tricks for Better Performance Lower CPCs with Dayparting Optimize Spend with Exclusion Targeting Save Time by Duplicating Campaign Settings About AdStage The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!2
Introduction The Power of LinkedIn Ads As far as the pay-per-click (PPC) industry goes, LinkedIn Ads is a bit underdeveloped. The features are limited and it s a bit difficult to work with at times. If you re reading this, you may have already figured that out. In short, LinkedIn Ads is like a gold mine. While it s not exactly pretty to look at from the outside, there are real nuggets of gold that you can find if you know how to mine for it. In this whitepaper, we ll teach you how to mine for that gold using LinkedIn Ads. In addition, we ll walk through simple tips that will make you more efficient in your workflow and optimize your spend. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!3
The Common Pitfalls of LinkedIn Ads Relevancy Score A very common hurdle with new ads on LinkedIn is getting traction. The reason why you may see minimal impressions is because LinkedIn uses an additional hidden metric in its algorithm when serving ads. It s called Relevancy Score and is very similar to the AdWords Quality Score in that it is heavily weighted based on click-through rate (CTR). With LinkedIn Ads, there is a lot more demand than there is inventory, so their ad server has to decide which ads will get served. In order for LinkedIn to make the most money available, they will serve ads that are more likely to get clicked. To the right is an example that describes an auction between two different ads, each with a different bid and a different CTR. As you can see, it is in LinkedIn s best interest to serve the ad that has the better CTR (or Relevancy Score), because they will make more money from those ad impressions. And, while other networks usually show your ad less often when the CTR is low, it is not uncommon for LinkedIn to stop serving impressions for your ad altogether, since the network has limited inventory slots. If you re experiencing this, try re-launching the campaign and the Relevancy Score will automatically reset itself. Advertiser A Advertiser B Bids $3.00 $4.00 CTR 0.6% 0.40% Impressions 1,000 1,000 Clicks 6 4 Spend $18.00 $16.00 The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!4
Pricing on LinkedIn New advertisers may find LinkedIn ads pricey with minimum bids set at $2. However, the competition on the network has most advertisers paying between $4 to $6 per click. Not all Network clicks are equal When comparing the LinkedIn CPC prices to other networks, these may be considered high for some verticals. However, keep in mind that the platform was created specifically for B2B companies where deals and contracts tend to be larger in size. Performance may not reveal immediate results if your company has longer sales cycles. For some industries, keywords on AdWords have CPCs upwards of $50. Reaching a business decision maker on LinkedIn for less than a tenth of that price demonstrates the possibilities that are available through LinkedIn Ads. The true value of reaching business prospects on the LinkedIn network stems from the business mindset they are in when they are using the platform. Members are looking to make connections and read about industry news and perspectives. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!5
Campaign Structure To make your workflow more efficient with campaign creation, it is recommended to build your campaigns in Excel first, then copy and paste your ad assets and campaign targeting into LinkedIn Ads when they re ready to go. This section will take a deep dive into optimizing campaign structure for the best available data and results from LinkedIn Ads. Choose Your Desired Ad Format Above is a screenshot taken from a LinkedIn account holder s home page. Sponsored Updates appear in the feed, and Text Ads appear in the right rail of internal pages. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!6
Some businesses that only have a web presence may opt to run Text Ads only. However, the CTRs may not send you a ton of traffic. Based on the LinkedIn Ad data that AdStage has access to, CPCs for both Sponsored Updates and Text Ads are typically very similar. Taking that into consideration and the variance in CTR, Sponsored Updates may be a better ad format for campaigns that are trying to gain access to more traffic. Sponsored Updates Text Ads Image Size 800x400 pixels 50x50 pixels Recommended Text 160 character intro 230 character title 160 character description 25 character headline 75 character description Average CTR ~0.3% CTRs ~.03% CTRs Mobile Delivery Available Not available Desktop Delivery Available Available Placement Appears in Feed Shown in right rail of internal pages The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!7
Append Your Ad URLs for Conversion Tracking LinkedIn Ads reports on the standard metrics such as cost per click, click-through rate, and impressions. However, unfortunately, LinkedIn Ads does not have a solution to report on the data that you actually care about like conversions and conversion rate. Without native conversion tracking built into the ad solution, your analytics solutions will not differentiate between paid traffic and organic traffic. To work around this, you ll need to set-up a tracking pixel and ensure any of the ad URLs you re using have the appropriate tracking parameters appended to your ads. There are a few recommended options: AdStage is a third-party ad platform with an easy-touse conversion tracking solution. It offers one universal conversion tracking pixel that you can use across all of your domains and web pages. The platform will automatically append your URLs with a unique click ID to track conversions and report directly on this metric directly in the platform. The most popular and cost-efficient (free) solution for ad conversion tracking is Google Analytics. The solution recognizes 5 unique query parameters in a URL by default. Parameter Source Medium Term Campaign Name Campaign Content Example LinkedIn, Google Sponsored Update, Text Ad Used for keyword targeting - not useful for LinkedIn Advertising Name of LinkedIn Campaign Differentiation between ads The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!8
Titling Your Campaign Name With content promotion campaigns, advertisers have a tendency to want to name the campaign after the content that s being promoted. However, with Google Analytics, you have a Campaign Content parameter to do that. Therefore, a recommended best practice suggests you name your campaign after the target audience. Unlike other PPC campaigns, LinkedIn Ads only has campaigns and ads. Since there are no ad groups, you do not need to worry about the naming convention for those as well. Let s say you re targeting sales professionals at different sized companies. In this case, your campaigns might be titled something like this: Sales Manager Company Size 1-500 Sales Manager Company Size 500+ Assigning Your Campaign Content a Unique Key While you may know the source, medium, and campaign name for your LinkedIn Ads, you ll need a unique tracking key to identify the Campaign Content. When building your ads in a spreadsheet, assign each ad a unique tracking key. Keep the key in your spreadsheet so you can refer back to it when you want to see how each ad performed. An example of a unique tracking key could be the following. The date the ad was launched li 090115 01 Short code for network LinkedIn Ad Variant Once you have source, medium, campaign name, and campaign content listed in a spreadsheet, you can copy and paste those into the Google URL builder to generate your URLs. Keep in mind that this only covers how to differentiate your paid from your organic traffic in Google Analytics. In order to set-up conversion tracking, you will also need to create Google Analytics goals based on the desired actions. In some cases, you may want to set up multiple tracking solutions. You can easily set up your URLs with the Google Analytics tracking parameters and automatically append the AdStage click ID so that both solutions report on conversions. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!9
Target the Right Audience For any given role, there are four ways to target on LinkedIn: The larger circle represents your Target Audience, while the colored circles represent the four types of targeting available to reach these members. Targeting Type Job title targeting Job function + seniority Skills + seniority Groups + seniority Example Sales manager title Sales job function plus manager seniority Cold calling skill plus manager seniority Sales management executives' group plus 'manager' seniority If you create a campaign targeting with any of these types, you d be hitting the same group. However, largely due to the infinite ways in which professionals can complete their profile, incorporating two or more of the above strategies does much to expand your reach. Adding a new layer of targeting allows you to capture more of your desired audience. If you start testing one targeting method and see success, continue layering the additional methods with new campaigns until you re meeting your budget or traffic goals. This means creating four separate campaigns for one audience, which will help you determine how each targeting segment performs based on the content you re promoting. In particular, Sponsored Updates has specific frequency caps preserve the user experience. Same SU can be served 1x every 2 days 1 page of organic content between SUs Up to 100 SUs per member in 24 hours Up to 4 SUs per advertiser in 48 hours Because of these frequency caps, one or more of your ads may not qualify to serve a Sponsored Update to a specific member for up to 48 hours so it s recommended to have a large enough target audience to ensure ads are getting daily impressions. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!10
Bidding Strategically There are two types of bidding strategies that you can implement: the cost conscious model or the high traffic model. Depending on your goals, you can choose the bidding strategy that works best for you. Cost Conscious High Traffic Campaign Type Performance Brand Campaign Goal Specific Action Page Views Pricing Model CPC CPC or CPM Suggested Bid Greater than the minimum bid Greater than the suggested bids based on your audience Suggested bid to reach the majority of audience is $3.72 (Other advertisers are bidding between $3.72- $7.84) Minimum Bid $2.50 Example Bid $3.00 Bid $15.00 The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!11
Tips for Better Performance Lower CPCs with Dayparting CPCs on LinkedIn are calculated with supply and demand. On the supply side, the majority of audiences in the United States use LinkedIn during the morning when they are just getting into the office, so the number of visitors is the most plentiful during this time. The demand for ad clicks, on the other hand, is somewhat fixed, because LinkedIn doesn t natively support dayparting. This means that the ad server stems cheaper clicks during the morning hours when supply is most plentiful and more expensive clicks during the times of the day when clicks and user sessions are less plentiful. If you hit your daily budgets each day, it makes a lot of sense to only run during the times that are most traffic-efficient and take advantage of lower costs. You can do this manually by pausing and unpausing your campaign every morning and afternoon, or you can automate it with Automated Rules in AdStage. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!12
Optimize Spend with Exclusion Targeting Particularly for B2B advertisers, shielding your competitors from seeing your ad campaigns is a great use-case for LinkedIn s exclusion targeting. There are two ways to exclude the competition within LinkedIn: by the individual company name or the industry in which you operate. Excluding your competitors by company name is usually the most straightforward. As long as you don t have more than 100 top competitors, the LinkedIn limit for company name targeting, you can add exclusion targeting to all of your campaigns. Doing this in LinkedIn Ads could be time consuming depending how many campaigns you have and how many competitors you have. To save time, AdStage has a bulk editor feature to make these exclusions to multiple campaigns at once. Exclusion targeting could also optimize your spend by excluding your existing client list. If you have more than 100 clients, focus on excluding the companies with the most employees to avoid spending impressions on LinkedIn users who have already converted. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!13
Save Time by Duplicating Campaign Settings With any combination of targeting in your LinkedIn campaigns, you are likely going to have to re-enter the same audience in any new campaign you create. This could be time consuming and extremely repetitive if you re targeting the same audience in a various number of campaigns. To avoid this, you can load the settings from an existing campaign directly in AdStage. The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!14
About AdStage The AdStage Platform is a self-serve cross-network online advertising platform with full management and analytics for campaigns across search, social and mobile ad networks like Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter Ads. It's an all-in-one marketing platform, complete with a suite of first- and thirdparty apps built on the AdStage API for advertisers of all sizes. Full campaign creation and reporting for both Sponsored Updates and Text Ads Interactive dashboards for analyzing and taking action on data Proprietary conversion tracking solution Google Analytics integration Multi-variate testing with bulk ad creation Bulk editing capabilities for campaign settings Campaign setting duplication Automated Rules for dayparting, bid adjustments, campaign pausing, and more Scheduled and customized reports The full AdStage platform is available now with plans starting at $199 USD per month. For a 14-day free trial or more information, visit www.adstage.io The Complete Guide to Linkedin Ads!15