How to get LinkedIn ads up and running
In many cases, paid ads for a permission asset on LinkedIn generate more leads than all other channels combined.
Specifically, it’s the sponsored posts.
With all things being equal, and sponsored posts setup on all major social networks, LinkedIn sponsored posts directing traffic back to your blog or permission asset landing page can bring in 50-60% of your total paid advertising leads.
So if you’re deciding which ad network to prioritize for this type of lead generation, prioritize this one.
Here’s how you get yours up and running:
Step 1. Set up a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account:
If you don't already have a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account, you'll need to set one up. This is where you'll manage all your LinkedIn advertising. You can set up a new account by going to www.linkedin.com/ad/start. Follow the prompts to set up your account.
Step 2. Pick your LinkedIn ad objective:
Once you set up your Campaign Manager account, the next step is to create a new ad campaign. Start by clicking on the Create Campaign button.
This will bring you to a page where you can pick the objective for your campaign. There are a bunch of options, including:
- Awareness (Brand Awareness).
- Consideration (Website Visits, Engagement, Video Views).
- Conversion (Lead Generation, Website Conversions, Job Applicants).
In the context of this book, you’re going after Lead Generation.
Step 3. Choose your target audience:
After picking your campaign objective, you’re going to define your target audience. LinkedIn allows targeting based on characteristics like location, company size, industry, job title, job function, skills, education, interests and so on. Be as specific as possible to ensure your ad is shown to people who are most likely to be interested in the permission asset.
Step 4. Pick your ad format:
You can choose from a handful of ad formats, like Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, and Video Ads. Each format has its own advantages and is suited to different types of campaigns.
- Sponsored Content: These ads appear directly in the LinkedIn feeds of the professionals you're trying to reach. This is what you should do.
- Message Ads: You can send direct messages to your prospects with personalization. Hey Ben… type messages. These can also work to generate leads with your permission asset.
- Dynamic Ads: Don’t bother.
- Text Ads: These are simple, and we like simple. But we’ve seen limited success using these to generate leads with a permission asset.
- Video Ads: Most small to medium sized B2Bs think they don’t have the resources to create these. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You could find a video in Envato Elements if you opted to sign up in one of our previous blogs. You could place some simple text over the video using Canva, and you could post that as your video ad, linking to your permission asset landing page. Or you could use one of the short social media clips from your permission asset video if you already prepared those (as simple as a click using Pictory). Think of how cool that would be.
Step 5. Set your ad placement:
You can choose whether you want your ad to appear only on LinkedIn (this is the default option), or also on LinkedIn Audience Network, which are partner apps and websites where LinkedIn ads can appear. With your first permission asset, there’s no reason you can’t test the audience network. But we have seen limited results from it.
Step 6. Set your budget and schedule:
You probably already decided how much you want to spend on your campaign. Now you can choose to set a daily budget, or a total budget for the life of the campaign. You also need to choose your bid type (cost per click - it only costs budget when a user clicks - cost per impression - a lower cost, but it’s incurred every time your ad appears on a screen - or automated bidding - which mixes the two in an attempt to get you the best value) and set your bid. The higher your bid, the more likely prospects are to see your ad over competitors’.
Like your other paid ads, start with something like $10 per day and see what happens.
Here is where you also set a schedule for your campaign. You can start your campaign immediately or schedule it to start next week, or next year. You can also set an end date or let it run until you manually stop it.
Step 7. Create your ad:
Now it's time to actually create the ad. This process will vary slightly depending on the ad format you picked earlier. In general, you need to create compelling ad copy and include a strong call to action - which you already did several times before now with your permission asset. You’re an old hand at this. Use some of your preexisting messaging and pat yourself on the back for doing such an awesome job a week ago. Your sponsored content will look just like the social media posts you created earlier in this permission asset merchandising process. So use the post you think is your best.
Step 8. Review and launch your campaign:
Give your campaign a once-over. Make sure everything you set up makes sense. If everything looks good, click on the Launch Campaign button to start your campaign. It will be reviewed by LinkedIn and, assuming it meets the company’s ad policies, it will start running on the date you specified.
Step 9. The optional-but-not-really-optional step. Conversion tracking:
If you want to track conversions (like you are for your other paid campaigns), you'll need to set up conversion tracking. This involves adding a LinkedIn Insight Tag to your website. Here’s how you do that.
The tag is a piece of JavaScript code you add to your website to enable conversion tracking and website retargeting.
Start at your LinkedIn Campaign Manager and click on the Account Assets dropdown. Then choose Insight Tag.
Follow the prompts to set up your tag. You'll be asked to name your tag and add your website domain.
Once you’re done with the prompts, LinkedIn will generate some code for you. The Insight Tag code.
This code needs to be added to the thank you page for your permission asset download, ideally before the end of the </head> section.
Most website builders now have a section in the settings where you can easily add the code. If you aren’t comfortable with this, find yourself someone who is.
To verify your tag has been installed correctly, you can use LinkedIn's Insight Tag Helper browser extension. You install the extension in your browser before visiting the page where your tag is set up. The extension will indicate whether it’s working or not.
Once the Insight Tag is added to your site, you can set up conversions.
In the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, click on the Account Assets dropdown again, but this time pick Conversions.
Click on the Create a conversion button.
Name your conversion and define the conversion action (PA - Mercury Analyzers makes sense for you), and specify the conversion method - choose Event-Specific Pixel. The other option needs more work, and this works just as well.
Assign your conversion window. This determines the timeframe LinkedIn uses to track conversions after someone clicked or viewed your ad. You can choose a window anywhere from 1 to 30 days for post-click conversions and 1 to 7 days for post-view conversions.
Choose your attribution model. LinkedIn lets you select the attribution model that best suits your campaign. We like linear. It’s simple and easy to interpret.
Click save! And give the thumbs up to your closest colleague.
And there you have it. You’re now running LinkedIn paid ads. And yours are better organized than every one of your competitors. Way to go!
With the combined forces of all your new paid ads, you will be generating more leads weekly than you did last month, and that will continue to drive increased revenue for the next decade.
