Top 10 LinkedIn Tips on Mastering Objectives & Bid Strategies
Looking to increase your return on ad spend (ROAS) on LinkedIn?
Your bidding strategy and campaign objective play a critical role.
Here’s my 10 tips from over $10 million investment in LinkedIn paid ads.
(In no particular order, they all matter)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Tip #1: The Power Behind Manual Bidding
- Tip #2: Fine-Tuning Your Bids
- Tip #3: Aligning Ad Type & Offer with Objectives
- Tip #4: The Optimal Objective for Thought Leader Ads
- Tip #5: When to Leverage Video Views Objective
- Tip #6: Match Your Content to the Most Suitable Objective
- Tip #7: Take Advantage of Document Ads
- Tip #8: Scale Conversions with Conversation Ads
- Tip #9: Top 3 Objectives for Single Image Ads
- Tip #10: When to Avoid Reach Objective (Brand Awareness)
- Conclusion:
- Resources for Mastering B2B Advertising
Tip #1: The Power Behind Manual Bidding
Unlike automated bidding, which leaves bid amounts at LinkedIn's discretion, manual bidding allows advertisers to set clear cost boundaries.
This ensures that your campaign expenses align with your budgetary constraints and campaign goals, offering a level of precision that automated bidding simply can't match.
By specifying the maximum amount you're willing to pay for clicks, the manual bidding places you in the driver's seat.
The LinkedIn algorithm, while powerful, may not always allocate your budget most economically when given full control.
Start collecting data quickly for your new campaign by bidding above the minimum threshold recommended by LinkedIn.
When to Consider Automated Bidding:
Automated bidding can be the best choice for specific situations, such as focused Account-Based Marketing (ABM) or retargeting campaigns with small audiences.
Once the campaign starts spending and there’s a benchmark, you can switch to manual bidding to regain full control.
Tip #2: Fine-Tuning Your Bids
A successful manual bidding requires daily checks on your spending against your budget to avoid overbidding or underbidding.
This is a straightforward yet insightful process, comparing the previous day's spend against the current daily budget to adjust your bids for optimal performance.
The Process of Bid Adjustment:
By subtracting your daily budget from the previous day's total spending, you gain clear insights into your bidding strategy's effectiveness.
A negative result suggests underbidding, where you're not fully utilizing your daily budget
While a positive result indicates overbidding, where you're potentially overspending.
“Previous day spent - allocated budget = + number indicated bid is too high
The previous day spent - allocated budget = - number indicated bid is too low”
One challenge of manual bidding is finding the sweet spot where your bid is high enough to consume your daily budget fully but not so high that it leads to inefficient spending.
Side note:
If your audience size is too small, even a high bid will not cover the campaign’s full budget.
Tip #3: Aligning Ad Type & Offer with Objectives
LinkedIn ad campaigns' success deeply depends on the alignment between the chosen ad type and the content you're promoting.
Understanding the nuances of each ad + offer and matching it to the applicable objective is key to maximizing engagement and conversion rate.
Selecting the Right Ad Type for Your Objective:
Video Ads:
When promoting video ads, gravitate towards the Video View or Engagement objectives.
These objectives are designed to maximize viewership and interaction with your video content, making them ideal for capturing and retaining audience attention.
Example of a video ad:
Document Ads:
The Engagement objective tends to yield the most success for document ads, which include PDFs, presentations, and other downloadable content.
Keeping document ads ungated and focusing on engagement allows your content to reach a broader audience, enhancing brand visibility and thought leadership.
Example of a document ad:
Single Image Ads:
Engagement and Website Traffic objectives can be effective when using single-image ads.
Your choice depends on whether your primary goal is to foster interaction with the ad or drive traffic to your website or landing page
Example of a single image ad:
Tip #4: The Optimal Objective for Thought Leader Ads
If you're looking to boost your presence and authority on LinkedIn, thought leader ads present an attractive option.
These ads turn organic content from individual profiles into sponsored messages, maintaining the authentic voice and personal touch that resonates with audiences.
These campaigns can achieve lower costs per engagement by leveraging the engagement objective, enhancing their effectiveness and reach.
Understanding Thought Leader Ads:
Personal Touch:
Unlike standard ads that originate from company pages, thought leader ads come from personal profiles, offering a humanized approach to advertising.
This method harnesses the inherent trust and relatability of individual thought leaders, amplifying their messages across targeted audiences on LinkedIn.
As of March 2024, businesses can promote content from any connected user on LinkedIn with Thought Leader posts, as opposed to just verified employees.
Seamless Integration:
To the audience, thought leader ads appear as regular posts but with the added benefit of targeted reach and visibility.
This seamless integration into the newsfeed portrays a natural engagement experience, hence fostering higher engagement rates compared to traditional ad formats.
Implementation and Best Practices
The success of thought leader ads hinges on selecting organic content that has already demonstrated shares and engagement.
By sponsoring high-performing posts, you capitalize on proven interest and ensure your ad budget is allocated to content with the highest potential return.
Pro tip:
When creating a new single-image campaign, you can click “browse existing content” to find the post by searching for the LinkedIn member and sending a request for approval.
Since these ads will not be sent to a landing page, it’s best to place the intended page link in the first comment and pin the comment.
Tip #5: When to Leverage Video Views Objective
When promoting video ads, selecting the Video View objective will increase the likelihood of getting the highest percentage of videos watched at the lowest cost.
This objective is designed to maximize the number of views your video receives, optimizing for visibility and engagement among your target audience.
Creative Specifications:
For video creatives, the recommendation is to use a square format (1080x1080 pixels) and include captions.
This format is not only visually appealing but also takes up the most space in the feed property.
Cost Efficiency and Performance:
The cost for video views on LinkedIn typically ranges from 10 to 15 cents per view.
While this might be higher compared to other platforms like YouTube, which has been gaining traction in B2B sectors for its cost-effectiveness, LinkedIn's targeted audience can justify the investment.
Best Practices for Video Campaigns on LinkedIn:
Starting with the lowest feasible cost per view (CPV) in your bidding strategy can help manage costs while assessing the content's performance.
Adjustments can be made based on initial results to find the optimal balance between reach and budget efficiency.
Tip #6: Match Your Content to the Most Suitable Objective
Understanding the type of content you're promoting determines the most effective objective and ad type for your campaign.
For event promotions, for example, certain ad formats have proven to yield higher results and drive registrations at a lower cost.
Let’s break down what type of assets yield the highest results for this example:
Lead Generation Forms (LGF):
The premier choice for driving event registrations.
Lead-gen forms provide a seamless and streamlined user experience, with pre-populated forms making the conversion process as frictionless as possible.
The convenience of instantly filling out forms within the LinkedIn platform significantly increases conversion rates for registrations.
Pro tip:
To improve the performance of LGF, it's best to keep the number of custom fields below three.
While leveraging pre-populated fields can maintain high conversion rates, adding more than two custom questions or actions can deter completions.
Event Ad Format:
This is one of the most effective ad types for event registries, but it is important to note that it cannot be combined with any of the conversion objectives.
Unique to this type of ad is the inclusion of social proof directly within the ad, such as the number of people who have shown interest or are planning to attend the event.
While its conversion rate may not match that of Lead Generation Forms, the added visibility and credibility from social proof make Event Ads a valuable tactic.
Website Conversion:
Directing users to a landing page for event registration is generally less preferred due to higher costs and lower conversion rates compared to previous tactics.
Exceptions exist, such as directing traffic to a calendar link or for specific targeting scenarios, but overall, this method is seen as less efficient for event promotion.
Design and Copy Considerations:
For campaigns opting to use landing pages, prioritizing copy over design is key.
The hero section, or above-the-fold content, is critical in capturing user interest.
Ensuring message consistency between your ads and landing page, alongside efficient conversion tracking, will set you up for success.
To learn more about landing page best practices, dive into the article below by Pedro Cortés:
10 Proven Landing Page Tips To Boost Your Conversion Rates
Pro-tip:
Streamlining Campaign Tracking with Dynamic URL Parameters:
LinkedIn's introduction of dynamic URL parameters at the campaign level presents a major leap forward in simplifying and enhancing tracking capabilities.
This feature allows marketers to set up the tracking once for the entire campaign, eliminating the tedious process of manually tagging each ad with unique UTM parameters.
Tip #7: Take Advantage of Document Ads
Document ads have proven highly effective for marketers looking to deepen engagement and build a robust retargeting pool.
They typically have impressive click-through rates, often reaching 6-7% or higher.
The best results from document ads are seen when paired with the engagement objective.
Users who interact with this ad type demonstrate a clear interest in your content, making them ideal candidates for subsequent, more targeted marketing efforts.
For more information on setting up your first document ads, check out this guide provided by LinkedIn
Tip #8: Scale Conversions with Conversation Ads
Conversation ads offer a unique, direct method of engaging with your target audience by delivering messages right into their LinkedIn inboxes.
These ads are billed on a cost-per-send basis, making it crucial to manage bids effectively to maximize both reach and budget efficiency.
Start your bid as low as possible and make adjustments depending on how well it’s pacing.
A good starting point is a $1 bid.
Due to LinkedIn’s second-price auction model for convo ads, they typically keep the actual cost close to the average historical cost per send.
This model charges you just enough to outbid the next highest bidder, not the maximum amount you're willing to pay.
Adaptation to Platform Changes:
Despite recent updates like the focus inbox change on LinkedIn, conversational ads have continued to perform well.
The direct nature of these ads keeps them effective, maintaining their status as a top-performing ad type.
Best Practices for Conversational Ads:
Because convo ads are more intrusive than other ad types, it’s important to ensure your targeting is precise. This precision prevents user annoyance and increases the likelihood of engagement.
The content of your conversation ads should be compelling and offer clear value to a specific job function.
Pro-tip:
The sender should resonate with the target audience for the highest credibility.
Choosing someone with a similar job function or an industry expert/influencer can immediately boost credibility.
For additional tips on convo ad’s best practices, check out this post by AdConversion
Tip #9: Top 3 Objectives for Single Image Ads
Single-image ads are versatile and can be tailored to meet various objectives, but understanding which objective to prioritize can have a noticeable impact on the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Lead Generation:
The primary objective for many single-image ad campaigns is lead generation.
LinkedIn’s Lead-gen focuses on gathering user information through forms that are pre-populated with LinkedIn profile data, making it easier for users to submit their information without leaving the platform.
Engagement:
The second most common objective for single-image ads is engagement.
This objective aims to maximize interactions such as likes, comments, and shares.
It's particularly useful for increasing brand visibility and engagement within your target audience.
Fostering interactions also enhances the organic reach of your ads through the network effects of user engagement.
The visual appeal and message of your single-image ad should resonate with your audience and encourage interaction.
Regular testing and adaptation of your ad creatives can help maintain high engagement levels.
Website Visits:
The third objective focuses on driving traffic to your website or specific landing pages to achieve conversions.
Whether your goal is to increase sign-ups, sales, or another conversion action, directing users to your website allows for more detailed tracking and nurturing of potential leads in your sales funnel.
Tip #10: When to Avoid Reach Objective (Brand Awareness)
Brand awareness, which prioritizes impressions and broad visibility, often comes under scrutiny due to its cost implications and lower engagement metrics compared to other objectives.
The reach objective operates on a cost-per-impression (CPM) model, where you are charged each time your ad is displayed, regardless of user interaction.
This can lead to higher expenditure without the guarantee of equivalent engagement or conversions.
The inherent nature of paying for mere visibility rather than actionable engagement makes this objective less appealing for many advertisers seeking tangible returns on their investment.
This objective is also inefficient for retargeting.
Building retargeting audiences requires not just impressions but meaningful interactions that signal interest or intent.
The reach objective's focus on maximizing views rather than fostering engagement makes it less effective for gathering a meaningful contribution toward the retargeting pool.
Conclusion:
In this article, we covered 10 actionable tips for matching the most suitable objectives and bidding strategies to your LinkedIn campaigns.
Whether it’s choosing manual bidding to control costs, aligning ad types with your marketing objectives, or understanding when to leverage specific ad formats, each tip offers a pathway to better performance.
By implementing these top 10 tips, you can navigate through the complexities of LinkedIn paid ads with greater precision and efficiency.
I hope you found this article insightful and that it leads to successful outcomes for your future campaigns.
If you’d like to reach out or get more tips, please connect with me via LinkedIn.
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 😂)
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50+ Ad Specs for The Top 10 Ad Platforms
Have you ever wondered what dimensions does that ad require? 🤔
Then started searching to find the answer? (same here lol)
To save you (and ourselves) trouble, we gathered the most popular ad specs across 10 channels in one place:
- Google Display Ad Specs
- LinkedIn Ad Specs
- Twitter (X) Ad Specs
- Quora Ad Specs
- Reddit Ad Specs
- YouTube Ad Specs
- Google Discovery / Demand Gen Ad Specs
- TikTok Ad Specs
- Meta Ad Specs
⭐️ Bookmark this article and refer back to it when you need ad specs.
Google Display Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
LinkedIn Ad Specs
Source: business.linkedin.com
Browse examples at: linkedin.com/ad-library/home
X (Twitter) Ad Specs
Source: business.twitter.com
- You can request to have video lengths increased up to 10 minutes
- Carousel can use images or videos but must be in the same aspect ratio (ex: 1:1 or 16:9)
Quora Ad Specs
Source: image ads, video ads
Reddit Ad Specs
Source: reddit.my.site.com
* Headlines will be truncated to 100 characters on mobile/mobile web for the conversation placement.
Youtube Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
Google Discovery / Demand Gen Ad Specs
Source: support.google.com
Browse examples at adstransparency.google.com
TikTok Ad Specs
Source: ads.tiktok.com
Browse examples at library.tiktok.com/ads
Meta Ad Specs (Facebook/Instagram)
Source: business.facebook.com
Browse examples at: www.facebook.com/ads/library
Resources for Mastering B2B Advertising
Hope you found this ad specs article useful!
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 I timed it 😂)
3 Powerful Strategies For Scaling SaaS Google Ads You Need To Know
Google Ads is a blessing and a curse.
You're blessed with intent and cursed with scale.
It’s a powerful channel for scaling pipeline for SaaS startups but low search volume is a challenge.
In this article you’re going to learn 3 powerful strategies for scaling your SaaS google ads further.
This won’t solve your limited search volume issues that's just the nature of your target keywords and B2B SaaS but these strategies will help you squeeze more performance from your account.
Let’s dive into it 👇
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Strategy #1: Broad Match Discovery
- Strategy #2: Advertising outside of English
- Strategy #3: Industry campaigns
Strategy #1: Broad Match Discovery
Before you click away I’m not talking about using broad match in the traditional sense.
Where you let Google show your ads for WHATEVER they think is relevant.
Broad match discovery is where you combine broad match keywords AND an audience.
It essentially means you’re giving Google the flexibility to show your ads for whatever they feel is relevant but within the confines of your targeted audience.
I would not recommend testing this approach unless you have:
- Strong negative keyword lists
- Proven converting phrase match keywords
- Significant conversion volume (> 15/month)
The benefit is you get to scale your top keywords safely past phrase match.
How to implement broad match discovery:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Review your performance across converting phrase match keywords to identify which you’re going to prioritize testing with broad match discovery.
Don’t rely on “total conversions” make sure you’re viewing performance by keyword based on the custom metrics that matter for your business (ex: Demo, Trial, SQL, SAL, Opp, etc).
Once you’ve identified some worthwhile keywords it’s time for step 2.
Step 2: Brainstorm your targeted audiences
Google has 5 audience types you can leverage for targeting in your search campaigns.
- Your data = website visitors or contact lists
- In-market = people actively researching a given topic
- Life events = people who’ve accomplished a life milestone (ex: create a business, get married)
- Detailed demographics = industries, company sizes, education level.
- Affinity = people who are interested in a certain topic
You can use a mixture of all these different types of audiences to layer on top of your broad match discovery campaigns.
If you’re dealing with < 500 searches/month for your keywords I recommend clustering a minim of 10-15 audiences on top of your campaigns to help with delivery.
Step 3: Setup a campaign experiment
The safest way you can test broad match discovery is in a 50/50 experiment alongside your top converting phrase match campaign.
You can easily AB test in Google Ads using the campaign experiments feature.
Located under Campaigns > Experiments
Using this feature build an experiment splitting the traffic by 50% for your original campaign vs the experiment version using broad match AND the targeted audiences you brainstormed in step 2.
Strategy #2: Advertising outside of English
English is the most competitive language in the world with the majority of advertisers.
We’ve seen reductions of up to 70% in our average CPC targeting other languages.
If your company has the resources to sell in multiple languages – take advantage of localization!
Localization campaigns are when you target keywords, write ad copy, and design landing pages that all are in your audience's native language (ex: Spanish, German, Portuguese).
You’ll reap the benefits of lower costs due to less competition.
The downside however with localization is search volume.
If you’re already advertising in English outside of North America and finding success, definitely recommend testing this strategy.
How to implement localized campaigns:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Review your performance across converting phrase match keywords to identify which you’re going to prioritize testing with broad match discovery.
Don’t rely on “total conversions” make sure you’re viewing performance by keyword based on the custom metrics that matter for your business (ex: Demo, Trial, SQL, SAL, Opp, etc).
Step 2: Brainstorm your targeted languages
Ask your internal team what languages your sales team is able to sell in.
Based on your options make a list of potential languages.
Next, if you’re advertising outside of North America, review the top performing countries and identify their local languages and see if you have the internal resources that can speak that language.
If you can’t sell in this language then this strategy won’t make sense.
Step 3: Hire a local translator
Don’t make the mistake of relying on Google Translate to perform the bulk of your translation.
You’ll want to hire a translator that grew up in the area in which you want to advertise.
For instance, if you’re advertising in Portuguese.
The dialect for Europeans living in Portugal and those living in Brazil is very different.
A local brazilian can tell if it’s not their dialect just like a native portuguese.
I recommend hiring locals off Upwork can be as low as $12/hour depending on the language.
These translations will make a world difference in your ad and landing page copy.
Strategy #3: Industry campaigns
Industry campaigns can be great for coverage and quality.
This is where you’re going to bid on a desired keyword and add a related industry term.
For example, let’s say bidding on the keyword “crm software” here’s how you can modify this keyword to make it industry specific:
- healthcare crm software
- crm software for fintech
- crm software for small businesses
The benefits of industry campaigns:
- Personalized ad copy that can yield greater CTRs
- Higher quality leads due to a more qualified search term
- Lower cost per click prices due to less competition
The downside however is search volume (the constant struggle of Google for SaaS 😅).
How to implement industry campaigns:
Step 1: Find proven converting phrase match keywords
Just like the other strategies we’re going to identify proven keywords first that we can create industry variations for.
Step 2: Brainstorm your target industries
Run a win rate analysis in your CRM and understand which industries have the shortest sales cycles and largest deal sizes? Based on your findings, prioritise the industries in which you want to target.
Step 3: Build and prevent keyword overlap
Once you have your keywords and target industries you’re ready to build your campaigns.
Make sure to add your industry terms as negative keywords in your generic non-brand campaigns.
Otherwise you can have people seeing your generic ads for your industry terms.
Hope you found this article helpful!
Best of luck scaling your Google Ads campaigns for your SaaS.
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 😂)