THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

LINKEDIN ADVERTISING
Strategies, Insights, and Best Practices for
Performance Marketers
TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CASE FOR LINKEDIN ADS 3

LINKEDIN ADS CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE 4

AUDIENCE TARGETING 6
Targeting for your First Campaign
LinkedIn Matched Audiences

AD UNITS 9

BIDDING OPTIONS 13

AD CREATIVE STRATEGY 15
Design Considerations
Text Overlays
Utilizing Video for Brand Awareness
Testing Your Creative

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING 18

PERFORMANCE ANALYTICS 20
Attribution Challenges
Analyzing Performance and Optimization

INSIDER LINKEDIN ADS TIPS 23

LINKEDIN SUCCESS STORY 24

NEED HELP GETTING STARTED? 25

TALK TO METRIC THEORY
 THE CASE FOR
LINKEDIN ADS

Key Information When Proposing Launching

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is most well-known as a hub for professionals to

network and forge business connections. A comprehensive
set of business stakeholders use LinkedIn with new
opportunities in mind, from practitioners to managers, and
all the way up to the C-suite. With the unique ad products,
targeting, and personalization available on LinkedIn, it offers
unparalleled opportunity to reach exactly who you want to
with the perfect message and offer.

LinkedIn has an extensive amount of audience data that’s

exclusive to them and perfect for targeting your ideal
customer. That’s because the audience data on LinkedIn
is declarative, meaning individual users provide it willingly.
It’s also updated frequently and highly specific. Because
LinkedIn is a platform for work and professionals, users
provide information they aren’t as motivated to share
or update on other platforms, like role changes and
professional interests.

With this guide, we’ll take you through the best practices
with targeting, ad formats for your message and audience,
creative tests to run, opportunities with ABM, how to run
performance analytics and more. Everything you’ll need to
launch your first campaign, and get it to perform for your
business, is right here.

3 3
LinkedIn Ads Campaign Structure 4

LINKEDIN ADS CAMPAIGN

STRUCTURE
Campaigns: There are several types of
Before we jump into launching and managing campaigns you can run using LinkedIn Ads.
LinkedIn campaigns, here are some basics. This guide primarily focuses on the Website
The first thing you’ll want to do after creating Conversions and Lead Generation campaign
your LinkedIn Ads account is to add the types, for direct response outcomes. LinkedIn
Insights Tag to your website. Even if you says Website Visits campaigns will “be shown
never end up running ads on LinkedIn, doing to people most likely to click on your ads” while
that will give you tons of great “insights” on Website Conversions campaigns do the same
the audience profile of your website visitors. for conversions. In reality, you can typically
For advertising, this tag is how you’ll create change what campaigns optimize toward using
site visitor remarketing audiences, which is a other campaign settings. Since this guide is
core targeting method. intended for marketers, we will not cover Job
Applicants campaigns at all. The main thing
Second, conversion tracking has a unique to know about campaign type is that Lead
setup in LinkedIn Ads. You must not only add Generation campaigns are the only ones that
the Insights Tag, but also create conversion offer lead collection directly in the LinkedIn
events and assign them to each individual environment. We cover that in more detail later.
campaign in order for conversions to track
and report. This is a very common missed
first step we see in LinkedIn Ads accounts. CAMPAIGN TYPES
Now, a quick rundown of how LinkedIn
1 BRAND AWARENESS
campaigns work to make everything else
easier to explain.
2 WEBSITE VISITS
Campaign Groups: This function is exactly
what it sounds like. You can choose to 3 ENGAGEMENT
group campaigns together for organization
purposes in a number of ways. Some ways
you might decide to do it are by targeted
4 VIDEO VIEWS
region, by campaign goal, or by intended
audience. You can see overall data at the 5 LEAD GENERATION
campaign group level, so it is a tidy way
to quickly check performance on a set of 6 WEBSITE CONVERSIONS
campaigns.

7 JOB APPLICANTS
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Ads
Ads Campaign
Campaign Structure
Structure 55

In LinkedIn Ads, nearly everything is set at the

campaign level. Below are the major items you’ll • Budget & Schedule. You can choose a daily spend
define there. or lifetime spend level, and whether you want to
set a start date and end date to the campaign.
• Audiences. We go in depth on audiences in the
next section. You’ll also set your geographic and • Bid Type. You’ll set your bidding method at the
language targeting here. campaign level, and options include CPC, CPM,
and Automated. We also dive into bidding later.
• Ad Format. We also describe available ad formats
in this guide and when to use them. A campaign By-and-large, campaigns on LinkedIn are a
can only have one ad format. combination of audience and ad format - who you
want to show ads to, and what kind of ad. You can
• Placement. All campaigns run on LinkedIn, but here target more than one audience in a campaign, but you
you can also specify if you want specific campaigns cannot bid or budget them separately. You can target
to run on the LinkedIn Audience Network (other both video ads and image ads to the same audience,
websites that can serve your LinkedIn ads). but you have to do so in separate campaigns.
Audience Targeting 6

AUDIENCE Once live, use demographic insights to optimize

TARGETING targeting. Start by excluding specific job titles

that underperform, or separate them into a
new campaign if you want to continue testing.
Once you’ve tested relevant job functions, other
options to expand your reach are Job Title +
Targeting for Your First Campaign Company Size or Job Title + Groups. There are
15+ different demographic and detail targeting
When getting started with targeting on a new
options to choose from. Job Function is a great
platform, it’s common to be paralyzed by choice.
starting point for almost any use case, but if
How do you know what you should use first?
you don’t find a good fit in your target market,
Here’s a simple way to think about starting out
you should explore LinkedIn’s other options.
with audience targeting for LinkedIn.

Start with Job Function targeting for prospecting.

This is based on the standardized groupings
of the job titles entered by LinkedIn members,
and includes areas like Finance, IT, Operations,
Sales, and Support. Job Function targeting allows
us to cast a broader net than specific job titles
and takes into consideration that titles vary from
organization to organization.

Then, you will want to layer on audience filters.

If you’re promoting something like enterprise
software to business decision-makers, you’ll
probably want to narrow that targeting by layering
on Seniority Level (such as managers or higher)
to further qualify the audience. Consider what
size company your product or service is geared
toward, and add a Company Size audience
layer. Industry segments or account list overlays
can also be used for more specificity. You may
also test a Job Titles campaign alongside a Job Audience Targeting Options with LinkedIn Ads

Function campaign if you feel you have a good

handle on what titles fit your most common
buyers. If not, LinkedIn will show you over time
what titles are the best targets for you.
 Audience Targeting 7

LINKEDIN MATCHED AUDIENCES

In addition to broad targeting, LinkedIn also offers highly specific “matched”
audiences, some of which you might already be familiar with if you’re running
Google or Facebook ads. Below are the three main types of matched audiences:

Uploaded Lists (email addresses)

1
Target only LinkedIn users that match an uploaded email list of leads or current customers.
This is similar to Custom Audiences (CA) in Facebook or Customer Match in Google, though
LinkedIn requires email address for the match. Syncing is available1 with select CRM and
Marketing Automation partners, so that lists can be selected and updated in real-time.

USE FOR >> Messaging that moves leads toward the next stage of qualification, re-engaging
lapsed customers or free users, or upselling/cross-selling existing customers.

Website Audiences (Insights Tag website audiences)

2
Otherwise known as remarketing, it’s equivalent to Website Custom Audiences (WCA’s)
in Facebook or Remarketing lists in Google. It’s URL-based, not event-based, so you can
only create them using URL rules like contains /thank-you/ rather than choosing a past
converters list.

USE FOR >> Targeting past visitors to specific product pages, pricing pages, signup
abandoners, or for B2C advertisers, cart abandoners. Exclude past visitors from campaigns
for pure prospecting where you are more likely to introduce them to the brand for the first
time.

3 Uploaded Lists (Company names and websites)

Upload a list of companies and/or website URLs to target only LinkedIn users associated with
those specific companies. This is the primary lever to launch account-based marketing (ABM)
campaigns.

USE FOR >> Serving ads to target accounts at various stages of consideration, or excluding
employees of specific companies from campaigns.

1 Getting Started with Data Integrations for LinkedIn Ads

7
 Audience Targeting 8

There are a few additional LinkedIn targeting options which you can consider for
expansion purposes if you monitor performance.

Lookalike (LaL) Targeting: Like Facebook, LinkedIn can use an uploaded audience (email addresses of 300
or more users) or website audiences to find other users on the platform with the most similar characteristics.
Unlike Facebook, you cannot build lookalikes of various percentages of similarity. At the time of this writing,
Lookalike targeting is very new and the technology is still developing, so we only recommend testing as an
incremental option once core platform targeting options (like Job Functions and Titles) have been exhausted.

Audience Network: Activating the Audience Network will show your LinkedIn ads on partner sites, similar to
the Facebook Audience Network. At the time of this writing, there is little control over where these ads are
placed or for the bids and budgets allocated to this inventory. Given the lack of transparency and levers to
improve performance, we generally do not recommend it at this time.

Audience Expansion: Similar to lookalike targeting, this is a tool that gives you the option to advertise to
people outside of your targeting pool that may be relevant. Unlike lookalikes, this can expand targeting
based on LinkedIn platform audiences instead of using your email list or website audiences as the starting
point. Because it expands beyond your chosen targeting on its own terms, performance-minded advertisers
should be very cautious with testing.
Ad Units 9

AD UNITS

LinkedIn Ads offers a variety of ad types to optimize your message and delivery to
your target audiences. Below is a breakdown of each ad type, how to best use it, and
what to consider to drive results.

SPONSORED CONTENT to your website. The forms also pre-populate with

the users profile information to reduce friction, and
Sponsored content, which appears directly in the typically convert at a higher rate, though there are
LinkedIn newsfeed, is the most popular LinkedIn corresponding challenges. For more, see the next
ad format. With sponsored content, you’re creating page.
an ad with a similar look and feel to other content
in the feed - some intro copy, a featured image, While sponsored content is one of the more
and a call to action, leading to a landing page. expensive ad types on LinkedIn, it’s the top
Sponsored video can also be a great way to catch performer and the right place to start. And don’t
a user’s eye and stop a scroll on your ad. It’s also ignore the brand value of the impressions you will get
possible to repurpose past organic content to in the feed. LinkedIn Ads offer very strong share-of-
boost interest. If you’re collecting leads, be sure voice on a feed screen, particularly on mobile where
to test lead gen forms using the Lead Generation an ad occupies most of the screen. We cover more
campaign type, which will collect leads directly in on how to best brand your ads and how to best track
the LinkedIn interface rather than forcing the user total performance in later sections.

Sponsored Content:
Specs - Image Size: 1200x627 px, Intro Text: 600 characters

Recommended: 150 characters for Intro, 70 characters max for Headline

Ad Units 10

LEAD GENERATION CAMPAIGNS

This campaign type allows your ads to use lead forms on
LinkedIn rather than your website. These forms pre-load
LinkedIn profile information for name, title, contact info, and
more. While this typically increases submissions, there are
other considerations before using this feature.

• Lead Transfer: Leads are captured in the LinkedIn platform

rather than your CRM. You can port leads in real-time if you
use one of LinkedIn’s technology partners1, but without that,
you’ll have to collect leads manually. Plan for this before
launching to avoid cold leads and wasted spend.

• Email Addresses: If you use the Email field, LinkedIn pre-

populates a personal email address, the primary email
account for most LinkedIn users. We recommend using
the Work Email field, which should reduce personal email
leads. Conversion rates will very likely be lower, though the
change in lead quality could well be worth it.

• Lead Quality: Beyond email type, you may find the lead
quality of Lead Generation campaigns is lower than
campaigns directed to your website. Why? For one, your
website form may allow for validation steps that LinkedIn
doesn’t. Also, visiting a landing page offers another
opportunity for the user to question their readiness to
submit. Some may find the extra qualification is more
valuable, others the added lead volume. Testing is key.

• Customer Journey: If you’re introducing your brand to

someone for the first time, there is value in sending them
to your website. Retargeting is one benefit, and if you have
more sophisticated website tracking, you can learn a lot
more about who was interested, even if there isn’t a form
fill.

1 Integrating Lead Gen Forms with Your Marketing Automation/CRM

System
 11

Sponsored InMail:

Specs: Image Size: 300x250 px, Subject Line: 60 characters, Body: 1,500 characters

Recommended: 1,000 characters or less

SPONSORED INMAIL
the best result. Because message length
Sponsored InMail delivers ad messages will be longer than other formats, it’s great
and optional banner images directly for already engaged leads who are warm
into users’ LinkedIn inboxes and allows and/or further down the funnel. Finally, you
for more messaging to promote your should add the optional banner image if at
offer. Sponsored InMail can be sent from all possible to maximize engagement.
the LinkedIn profiles of people at your
company and can address users by Sponsored InMail can be very effective, but
name for a highly personalized feel. Be it is expensive compared to other options
thoughtful about what user you choose from an impression standpoint. Heads up:
to send from - a company leader with a You’ll be charged for each sent InMail, even
professional LinkedIn profile image will get if the user chooses not to open it.
TEXT ADS 12

Text ads are easy to create and a relatively inexpensive option compared
to other ad types, since you only pay based on clicks or impressions.
Text ads display on the right-hand side of the desktop interface, and they
have great viewability - they actually stay on the user’s screen even as
they scroll down the LinkedIn newsfeed. For those who want to keep
their messaging in front of their audience while saving on cost, text ads
are an efficient option, though the branding impact pales in comparison
to the larger and media-rich Sponsored Content ads. Text ads often work
best as companion ads to broader campaigns involving LinkedIn’s more
immersive ad types. Try them as a remarketing campaign or in support of
higher budget Sponsored Content campaigns.

Specs: 100x100 px optional image, Headline: 25 characters, Body: 75 characters

Recommended: Always include image, max out character count

DYNAMIC ADS
Tailoring the customer journey can be a powerful strategy to engage
with your audience. With dynamic ads, businesses can customize
their messaging by incorporating user profile information such as the
user’s own photo, company, title, and more. You can have that content
displayed in the ad unit to make it look like the offer is personalized to
them. Like Text ads, Dynamic ads appear on the right side of the desktop
interface and also remain on a user’s screen as they scroll through their
feed.

Specs: Various formats and limits

Recommended: Use all available imagery, maximize character space, and include a
CTA button

CAROUSEL ADS
Similar to Facebook’s ad product of the same name, the core of this ad
type is a string of image-based cards. You can use the cards to either go
in-depth in one offer or advertise multiple offers. Each card can lead to its
own landing page, or you can use carousel ads with the Lead Gen Form,
in which case all cards populate the same form. Like with sponsored
video, this option is useful for telling a visual story, great for both brand
awareness or conversions. If using carousel ads, we advise running a few
different tests, such as adjusting the number or cards or the order of the
visuals.

Specs: 1080x1080 px, up to 10 cards, Text:

150 characters, Card Headline: 45 characters
Recommended: 3-6 cards, maximize characters
Bidding Options 13

or lower than your specified bid if they believe an

BIDDING OPTIONS impression has a higher likelihood to convert. It
works similarly to Google’s Enhanced CPC, and we
recommend testing on higher volume campaigns
once they reach stable performance. As with
MANUAL BIDDING Google’s Enhanced CPC, we would anticipate
LinkedIn’s deviation from the specified bid will
Manual bidding is conducted as either cost per increase as the logic becomes even stronger.
click (CPC) or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM).
Generally, campaigns with goals of leads, sales, or AUTOMATED BIDDING
other conversion events should use CPC bidding,
while campaigns with awareness-building goals At the time of this writing, automated bidding
should use CPM. on LinkedIn has a limited form compared to
more developed platforms like Facebook and
Depending primarily on audience choice, LinkedIn Google. The available options are to maximize
offers a suggested starting bid. We’ve found that for impressions, clicks, or conversions in a given
starting at the recommended bid and adjusting campaign budget.
up or down from there based on performance is
the best way to launch. Bidding on LinkedIn can We find that LinkedIn automated bidding is best
be more expensive than other major ad channels, used for testing on campaigns that have strong
and the more specific or senior an audience is, the performance where you’re looking for new ways to
higher the recommended bid will be. maximize volume, typically remarketing campaigns.
We plan to continue testing LinkedIn automated
Enhanced CPC is an option available for Lead bidding, and as with all major platforms, expect the
Generation or Website Conversion campaign types data modeling to continue to improve to the point
that gives LinkedIn license to bid up to 20% higher that it eventually supplants most manual bidding.

A Note On Sponsored InMail Bidding

This works differently than bidding on Sponsored Content, Text
and Dynamic Ads. It’s set on a cost-per-send model only. The
audience targeting will largely determine the cost, and there
will be a minimum cost-per-send to launch. Bidding above the
minimum determines your delivery volume, or impression count,
if you choose to think of it that way.

13
Bidding Options 14

BIDDING QUICK TIPS

Try CPM bidding on top direct response campaigns. While

1 CPM bidding is typically not the best place to start for direct
response, it is worth testing if you have a high relative CTR
and are looking to get more reach.

Your choice of campaign type will influence what clicks

2 you pay for. Website Click and Conversion campaigns are
only charged for clicks resulting in a visit to your landing
page, but Engagement and Lead Generation campaigns will
be charged for clicks to the company LinkedIn profile and
social actions in addition to clicks to the website.

Give bids two-to-three weeks on new campaigns before

3 assessing performance. The range is dependent on data
velocity. Build this into your expectation of performance when
launching. It’s likely you can slowly move bids down after this
phase.

Consider cross-device, view-through value, and the quality

4 of conversions when setting your bids. LinkedIn Ads
won’t deliver you the lowest CPM or CPC, but can be really
great at driving quality leads and sales. Your best bet to be
competitive is to understand and acknowledge the value
beyond direct click cost/conversion.

Cut your bids when launching Text Ads. With Text Ads on
5 LinkedIn, you can start your bids much lower than Sponsored
Content Ads, often around $1 to $3.
Ad Creative Strategy 15

AD CREATIVE
STRATEGY

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
When choosing images,

• Look for bright backgrounds to grab attention as users

scroll

• Keep colors simple to generate interest while not

overwhelming the user

• Settle on a consistent color set and creative theme across

campaigns for more repeatability and brand recall

Aim to break out of conventional and overused imagery in

your creative. High quality illustrations (as opposed to clip
art) can stand out next to the multitude of stock imagery and
text-heavy posts in a user feed. Also, imagery with people
interacting with your product or advertised asset has proven
to be more successful than an image of the product or asset
on its own.

TEXT OVERLAYS
Whereas Facebook limits text overlays on ad images to
20% or less of total pixels, LinkedIn doesn’t. You don’t have
to include them, but doing so can improve ad recall and
engagement. Many ads and user posts contain just an image,
so adding an overlay can be a key way to differentiate your
image or offering from other posts in the feed.

• Simplify overlays to 5-15 words with a size large enough to

still be legible and impactful on mobile device image size

• Color-contrasted “button” with call-to-action copy is

recommended

• Set clear expectations as to what action a user will take on

the landing page
Ad Creative Strategy 16

UTILIZING VIDEO FOR BRAND

AWARENESS
• With video advertising on LinkedIn Ads, you’re
trying to stop a user’s scroll through the feed.
Keep videos to less than 30 seconds, and There are two main approaches we’ve seen work
include a call to action. with video sponsored content ads: short loop
or full length. Short loop videos act as a GIF-like
• Videos autoplay once a user gets to the ad, so moving picture to draw attention and are great
start with something eye-catching in the first 3 for direct response goals. Simple actions like
seconds. scrolling a mobile interface or repetitive ones like
flipping through the pages of a guide are good
• Many will be viewing in an environment where examples. Add static message overlays to create
sound isn’t possible, so where the video has a a promotional image come to life, or have a call to
voice track, captioning is recommended. You action appear at the end of the loop. Full length
can upload video captions via an SRT file. videos should run 15-30 seconds and are typically
best used for brand awareness, and engagement
• Include a static logo somewhere unobtrusive in like comments, shares, and likes. These can be
the video, like in one of the corners. great for introducing new products or promoting
Ad Creative Strategy 17

TESTING YOUR CREATIVE

It’s possible to have limited success on LinkedIn Ads without consistent design help for new ad variants and
offers, but it’s not likely to be a successful long-term strategy. Why?

• Users will tune out the same ad image seen too often
• Refreshing and rotating creative has a huge impact on engagement and performance
• Plan campaigns with at least 12 pieces of creative to start - three different sets of four, with each having a
different base creative idea or core image.

Though there is limited control for creative testing on LinkedIn, there is still a lot to be learned by doing it.
• Run bigger tests to start a campaign and refine down to more nuanced tests as the campaign runs. For
example:
• Test 1: Compare digital illustration versus photography involving people
• Test 2: Add or modify the CTA button on the image
• Test 3: Change copy overlays and/or the intro copy

Don’t forget to record outcomes for cumulative learning across tests and campaigns. This will help you
make better assumptions and begin with more worthwhile tests in future campaigns.

As of this writing, LinkedIn will only show 4 unique ads to a single user from
any given ad account in a 48-hour period. If you only have one ad targeted to
an audience, you’ll be able to show the ad to any given user once per 48-hour
period, for two ads you’ll be able to show both of those once per 48 hours, and
so on. So, to maximize your impression frequency, you will want to have at least
4 unique ads running to a given audience or campaign. Once you find top
performing offers and creative, you likely can pull back that number for “always-on”
or “evergreen” campaigns since frequency isn’t as much of an imperative.
ACCOUNT-BASED
MARKETING Target Account Management
The Matched Audience feature will help you reach your
target account list, and you have a number of options to get
started.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a
marketing discipline that involves sales
1. Directly upload your target accounts using email lists or
and marketing teams targeting specific
website URLs
businesses to turn them into customers
through a coordinated strategy. Adopting 2. Use a marketing automation suite like Hubspot or Marketo
ABM goes well beyond what we’ll cover
3. Use a data management platform like LiveRamp
here, but LinkedIn’s ad targeting makes
it an indispensable tool for marketing to 4. Use ABM platforms like Terminus
target accounts in ABM. Though many of
the more advanced tactics and analysis in Updating lists can be cumbersome in LinkedIn directly,
ABM will require a software partner, you depending on list size and update frequency. LinkedIn’s
can use LinkedIn Ads immediately to begin audience integration partners will update list membership
advertising to a list of target accounts with automatically in each campaign. Their partner list is changing
ads that match the company’s industry and all the time; check with your platform’s support to find out if
use case, and offers that match their point in they are a LinkedIn integration partner.
the buying process.

18
Account-Based Marketing 19

MANAGING ABM CAMPAIGNS

One-to-Many: Group target account lists by funnel stage, industry vertical, or other unifying characteristic that
you’ll use to match to your offer and ad creative. Each of those will be a separate LinkedIn Ads campaign.
Tailor your message to maximize customer experience and ad engagement. You can layer on LinkedIn
platform targeting to further improve personalization, though it will require more campaigns.

One-to-One: If you’re hoping to get fully personalized by naming the targeted company in your ad creative, it’s
possible to do, but requires a campaign for every company. For that reason, unless you have only a handful
of companies you want to target in that fashion, LinkedIn Ads is best activated for one-to-few or one-to-many
ABM campaigns.

ABM PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

LinkedIn’s measurement capabilities are limited, but you will be able to see the top 25 accounts by
impressions served in the native ad engagement report for each campaign. You can also see conversions,
though it’s unlikely an ABM campaign will drive enough for that to really be instructive. If you need to get this
insight on every account in your target account list, you have to limit campaigns to sets of 25 target accounts.
Select ABM platforms have integrations that allow for more powerful insight. LinkedIn provides a full list of
technology partners on the advertising portal of their Marketing Solutions website.
 20

PERFORMANCE
ANALYTICS

Like most social ad channels, LinkedIn Ads has impact

both in driving direct conversions and also improving
brand awareness through rich, powerful impressions
even when a prospect doesn’t click through on an ad.
So, when evaluating performance, it’s important to look
beyond just last-click attribution to account for the full
value that your ad spend is returning.

DIRECT RESPONSE METRICS

• LinkedIn Ads reports both click-through and
view-through conversions, and we recommend
evaluating both when it comes to assigning value to
your spend
• The default conversion attribution is to count
conversions for 30 days post-click for click-through
conversions and 7 days post-impression for view-
through conversions
• You can modify conversion windows to fit the
unique needs of your business

There isn’t a “perfect” mix of conversions to attribute

and windows to apply, but if you can agree that there
are instances of users being influenced and even
moved to action by seeing an ad without clicking on
it, then applying no value to impressions isn’t truly
accurate. With testing, you can develop a closer
understanding of impression value, but a good and
conservative starting point to attributing value to
impressions is to count click-through conversions
on a 30-day window, and view-through conversions
on a 1-day window. If you also currently run Facebook
advertising, another approach would be to match your
conversion counting strategy between the two for the
sake of parity and data consistency.
Performance Analytics 21

ATTRIBUTION CHALLENGES
LinkedIn Ads have similar challenges as other but then actually converts on another. Like with
social channels when it comes to evaluating its Facebook ads, that type of connection can only
true impact, just perhaps not to the same extent. be made by LinkedIn and is only reported in their
We touched on accounting for impressions in the conversion data. Unlike Facebook, at the time of this
above section, and how accounting for LinkedIn writing, LinkedIn does not provide insight into the
Ads purely off of click-based conversions in all amount of cross-device conversions they’re tracking
likelihood is undercounting its value. So when in reported totals. This makes it nearly impossible to
evaluating LinkedIn using click-based attribution estimate its true value in third-party tools. Here’s a tip:
in tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, • Mobile has an 80% share of traffic for feed ads,
or even point solutions for marketing attribution, compared to over 90% for Facebook
you should always consider whether LinkedIn
• If you also run Facebook ads, you could estimate
Ads is being valued appropriately for budgeting
a 15-20% lower cross-device multiplier for
decisions.
LinkedIn than what you typically account for with
Facebook ads
CROSS-DEVICE ATTRIBUTION
• If not running Facebook ads, you may need to
Because users are logged in, LinkedIn has the look for other sources of cross-device conversion
unique ability to report on conversions that occur data to approximate an adjustment.
when a user sees or clicks an ad on one device,
 Add ValueTrack Parameters Before Launching
Web analytics software like Google Analytics will by default classify LinkedIn
Ads traffic as organic or referral social network traffic. To keep organic and
paid LinkedIn traffic separate when evaluating it, you will want to add utm_
source=linkedin and utm_medium=cpc parameters to your URLs (these may
differ if you have unique, custom source and medium values already in place).
Additionally, for Google Analytics, you may have to adjust Default Channel
Groupings rules to reclassify “linkedin/cpc” traffic as Paid Social if you haven’t
previously adjusted rules for other paid social channels.

OPTIMIZING
Visit the Website Demographics interface
routinely to know how your LinkedIn
audiences are performing. Consider ways
to increase penetration for those that are
performing best, and identify which audiences
perform poorly to either exclude or reconsider
messaging and offers.

For B2B lead generation, lead quality should

play a central role in analyzing performance
and optimizing. Beyond that it is coming
from LinkedIn as a source and that the traffic
is paid, you’ll want to track at least what
campaign the traffic came from. Doing so will
help you to learn more about the cost per
qualified lead of each audience target as
you optimize audience choices over time, or
the relative quality of click-to-website leads
against those generated off of lead gen form-
style ads.

22
 23

INSIDER LINKEDIN ADS TIPS

It wouldn’t be a complete guide without filling you in on some of our favorite tips from managing LinkedIn
Ads for so long! Here are a few things that should help make your first LinkedIn Ads experience a
successful one for your team and your business.

Video Ads
1 A click on a video pauses the video instead of directing to your landing page. Include a Call-to-Action
button in the ad, and always add a shortened link at the end of body text for easier navigation to the page.

Minimum Audiences
LinkedIn Ads’ minimum audience size per campaign is 300 users. An audience that small might make
2
sense for uploaded lists or remarketing, but for prospecting, we generally recommend a minimum size of
200,000 using LinkedIn’s audiences.

High CPC
3 Advertisers are often surprised by LinkedIn traffic cost, but it matches the quality of the audience
targeting. If you follow the other advice in this guide and compare lead sources to one another, you’ll
often find that the lead quality justifies it.

Consider the Whole Buying Committee

4 In B2B marketing, making an impact with decision-makers is critical. But limiting your audience to just
top brass is restrictive and expensive, and they will almost never be the first ones to evaluate partners or
initiate a trial. Lower your threshold to get in front of managers who will be key influencers.

UTC Time
5 The date and time in the LinkedIn Ads interface is UTC/GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), so if you’re located
on the West Coast of the US, consider that when monitoring spend or scheduling campaign launch and
end timing.

The Weekend Lull

6 LinkedIn is a business network, so usage - and therefore ad service, clicks, and spend - all decrease
significantly on the weekends. Expect to see spend decrease around 25%, with some campaigns seeing
an even larger drop.

Budget Sensitivity
7 Budget adjustments on LinkedIn can be felt far faster than other ad channels you might be running now.
If you crank up budget in a campaign and check in a couple hours later, don’t be surprised to see a big
spike in volume.

Sponsored InMail Images

8 Banner images aren’t just better for performance. If you don’t include one, it’s possible a competitor
banner might serve if they’re targeting some of the same users. This is something we’re hopeful LinkedIn
changes, but there is one sure way to prevent that from happening - add an image!
 24

LINKEDIN SUCCESS STORY:

SERVICEMAX

THE GOAL
When Metric Theory first partnered with ServiceMax, they had recently moved away from SMB marketing
and were targeting larger enterprise-level deals. To shift focus to enterprise deals, Metric Theory knew that
accurate end-to-end lead quality tracking would be essential. Once comprehensive ad tracking parameters,
Salesforce dashboard access, and lead quality reporting were in place, Metric Theory & ServiceMax set the
following goals:

• Increase lead & AQL (automated qualified lead) volume

• Decrease cost per AQL
• Increase AQL revenue pipeline

THE LINKEDIN GROWTH STRATEGY

ServiceMax had aggressive growth targets, and advertising was the primary driver to achieve those ambitious
targets quickly while maintaining lead quality. Metric Theory aimed to scale investment in every stage of
the funnel to acquire new customers and pull them through to conversion. The addition of LinkedIn to the
advertising mix was a crucial investment geared toward reaching targets.

Thanks to its high-quality audience data, LinkedIn Ads is very effective at reaching and closing the target
audience profile. Since activating LinkedIn, 85% of ServiceMax’s sales opportunities have been sent by
LinkedIn retargeting as the last touch. While LinkedIn is typically used to prospect and create awareness for
ideal professionals and companies, ServiceMax and Metric Theory have also taken advantage of the platform
to remain top-of-mind and close enterprise leads. In the case of ServiceMax. Search creates the awareness,
then LinkedIn retargeting drives leads for effective pipeline growth.

RESULTS
ServiceMax is a leading software company that
provides field service software to enterprise
businesses. They focus on industries related to

231% 536% 243% the industrial internet of things (ex: renewables,

oil & gas, manufacturing & power).

INCREASE IN OVERALL INCREASE IN INCREASE IN PIPELINE

LEAD VOLUME AQL VOLUME REVENUE YEAR OVER
YEAR
 NEED HELP GETTING STARTED?
We can tell you everything we know about LinkedIn Ads,
but none of that matters if you don’t have the time or
expertise to manage it. If you’re in that boat, consider
talking to the agency that wrote the book on it. We’ll help
make it successful for you, cover-to-cover.

CONTACT US