10 Proven SaaS LinkedIn Ads Tips To Drive More ROI

Share
This is some text inside of a div block.
copy
Canberk Beker

Want to drive qualified pipeline and revenue from your LinkedIn Ads campaigns? 

I’ve worked with 50+ startups, and managed 7-figure LinkedIn ads budgets for B2B SaaS.

My goal with this article is to show you ten proven tips for improving your LinkedIn ads ROI. 

Irrelevant of the order, all of these tips have equal importance.

Let’s jump into it! 🚀

‍

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

‍

Tip #1: Use auto bidding for the first 7 days of a new campaign

‍

When launching a new LinkedIn Ads campaign start with automated bidding for the first week. 

The thought process behind this is it will give LinkedIn’s algorithm enough time to learn and give you an average bid of what it takes to win auctions for your target audience. 

After the first week switch to manual bidding and set the bid amount 20% lower than your average. 

This works almost 99% of the time allowing you significant cost per click reductions. 

Once you make the switch keep an eye on your daily spend over the next five days, if you set your bids too low it can negatively impact your visibility. 

The key is to find the optimal bid between cost and maximum visibility (ex: impressions, views). 

Give it a shot and send me a DM on LinkedIn with how much money you save! 🤑

This tip applies to traffic and conversion campaigns. 

Tip #2: Never use the Audience Network

‍

This one might be a bit controversial, but no matter what you LinkedIn reps say this is a no no.

If you’re not familiar, the LinkedIn audience network is a conglomerate of website partners. 

 This allows you to distribute your content outside of LinkedIn and on their websites. 

Sounds amazing in theory but in practice the problem with the audience network is:

🔴90-95% of your ENTIRE LinkedIn Ads budget is spent on websites outside of LinkedIn 

Which completely destroys the point of running LinkedIn ads in the first place 😂

The LinkedIn algorithm always prioritizes the audience network because it’s cheaper and it’s trying to optimise for the greatest number of impressions for the lowest cost with your budget. 

I’ve personally tested the audience network over multiple quarters with the same exact campaign and the only difference is one is using the audience network and other isn’t. 

The campaign using the audience network had a CTR of 0.03% compared to 1% without. 

You also have no ideas which websites placed your ads as it’s a black box. 

Save your budget and improve your ROI by turning it off.  

Tip #3: Penetrate your audience with the reach objective

‍

If you’re trying to reach a large audience (ex: target account list) and want to do so in the most cost effective way, leverage the reach campaign objective. 

Obviously if you’re trying driving the most clicks then this tip wouldn’t be applicable. 

Instead in that case you should focus on using the website visits objective. 

The caveat here is if you truly know:

  • Your ideal customer profile
  • That your content resonates with them 

Then you can make the case that these people will click through anyways regardless of objective,

Through testing I’ve found that if you have great content using reach you’ll actually serve towards more people and generate more net new clicks given the reduction in CPM costs. 

The major benefit of reach is that it is optimised for driving more unique impressions per viewer. 

Pro tip:

Contact your LinkedIn Ads rep to send you a report on audience penetration on a monthly and quarterly basis to see how many unique users you’re reaching in your target audience. 

Tip #4: Leverage exclusions for focus

‍

Most LinkedIn advertisers underestimate the power of exclusions.

It’s one of those things most  leveraged  but not to its fullest capability. 

Everyone knows you need to exclude the obvious things like competitors, students, customers, etc…

But they haven’t built the habit of checking LinkedIn Demographics Report once per week to find irrelevant titles for exclusion. 

It’s really important to be mindful of multiple current roles when excluding as you can accidentally block your ads from being visible from high value audience members. 

For example, let’s say you only help businesses with more than 1,000 employees. 

Conventional logic would be exclude people who work at companies with < 1,000 employees but what happens when your perfect prospect:

  • Volunteers at a nonprofit organization with < 100 employees 
  • Started a side hustle that only has with a size of “myself only” 

The answer is, they won’t see your ads. 

Remember that exclusions are always prioritised over inclusions.

When excluding focus on using job titles to refine your audience and prevent accidental conflicts. 

Tip #5: Job functions give you best visibility and reach

‍

This point is a bit controversial but from my own testing I’ve found job functions give you better visibility and reach than job titles. 

This doesn’t mean you should never use job title targeting, I’ve actually found for certain personas titles work better than functions but if you’re in the following scenario: 

  • Targeting a high value account list 
  • Promoting ads that speak to a general pain point/benefit
  • Your ideal audience has a million variations of the same title

Then you’re better off using job functions to reach as many relevant audience members. 

Here’s some great combinations of job function targeting to test:

  • Job functions AND seniority
  • Job functions AND  seniority AND member skills OR interest

Make sure you’re checking your demographics report on a weekly basis to find all the irrelevant job titles you’re reaching and exclude them on an ongoing basis. 

This process can take up to two and half months but the goal is to eventually get to the point where you only see relevant titles inside of the demographics report. 

Highly recommend excluding unpaid, training, and entry seniority as a starting point. 

Pro tip:

Study LinkedIn profiles of your best prospects and take note of the member skills, certifications, and schools they’ve listed to find commonalities for targeting. 

Tip #6: Always start with even rotation upon launch

When launching your new campaigns you have the option to choose how to serve your ads.

linkedin ads ad rotation options with choices for optimizing for performance or rotate ads evenly in campaigns

The thought process behind this is you want to understand which ad will perform the best by receiving enough budget for proper testing. 

Unfortunately if you start with optimising for performance LinkedIn will prematurely assign 40-50% of your budget to one variation of ad while the others only receive what’s remaining. 

In order to avoid this, start with rotating ads evenly for the first 7-14 days when launching a new campaign to serve budget equally and then switch to optimise for performance. 

Tip #7: Check your demographics report weekly

‍

I’ve hinted at this multiple times across all these tips but it’s so important to driving a return on investment with LinkedIn Ads that it deserves to be its own tip. 

You need to know what’s happening across your account. 

Review your demographics report for:

  • Ad performance
  • Campaign performance
  • Campaign group performance 
linkedin ads demographic report showing impressions by job function

This will ensure your budget is going towards reaching the right people and companies. 

Pro tip:

LinkedIn has reporting minimums when using the demographics report in platform, get around this by using a third party data connector to push the data into G-Sheet or Looker. 

Tip #8: Target mobile devices exclusively with 628 x 1200

‍

LinkedIn has a 628x1200 image ad spec that allows you to only appear on mobile devices. 

If you know that your audience performs well for you on mobile devices you can set up a campaign leveraging this specific image ad dimension to serve exclusively on LinkedIn mobile. 

The same is true for targeting desktop devices with text or spotlight ads. 

Learn more about your audiences device behaviour with Google Analytics 4: 

google analytics report showing User engagement metrics by device category, with desktop leading in users and engagement sessions.

Tip #9: Review your performance by device

‍

You can review your performance in LinkedIn by clicking on Breakdown > Impression by Device Type

The AdConversion team analysed 10,000,000+ impressions and found: 

  • 85.1% of impressions serve on Mobile App
  • 9.6% of impressions serve on Desktop Web
  • 5.3% of impressions serve on Mobile Web

That’s 90.4% of total impressions serving on mobile devices! 🤯

Pie chart showing 85.1% of impressions from mobile apps, 9.6% from desktop web, and 5.3% from mobile web.

Pro tip:

Use the LinkedIn Ads preview to see what your ad will look like when displayed on mobile and optimise your copy to best fit this device over desktop. 

Tip #10: Use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature

‍

This tip is one that even my most savvy marketing friends aren’t aware of. 

Changing bids, and creating campaigns on LinkedIn is a REAL pain. 

You don’t need to suffer this pain and instead can use LinkedIn’s bulk import and export feature. 

You can simply just export your ads, campaigns, or groups to make bulk changes. 

Voila, a task that would take hours has been cut down into minutes. 

Learn more about bulk actions  in this article by LinkedIn. 

Hope you found these 10 tips valuable! 👏

Implement the ones that resonate most with you to improve your ROI from LinkedIn Ads.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, if you have any questions or want to connect!

‍

Resources for mastering B2B advertising

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill sets in AdConversion. 

‍Here’s 4 reasons why you should consider joining. Every one of our on-demand courses are:

✅  100% free access.

✅  Taught by vetted industry experts.

✅  Have workbooks, resources, and templates.

✅  Less than 10 minutes per lesson.

We believe every marketer should know how to scale paid ads so they can:

  •  Scale their ideas
  • Level up their careers
  • Make a positive impact

Click Here to Join 1,000+ B2B Marketers Today and start leveling up your advertising skill set.

Takes < 90 seconds to sign up (seriously we timed it 😂)

Canberk Beker
Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
AdConversion was created to help B2B marketers master advertising with free courses, articles, resources, and templates created by the world best practitioners.
☝️Takes <  90 seconds
Share
This is some text inside of a div block.
copy

Join 1,000+ B2B marketers leveling up their paid advertising skill set! 🚀