How to Create Successful LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

LinkedIn ads help your business with three types of marketing objectives:

• Awareness: Create more awareness of your company or brand.
• Consideration: Drive website visits, increase engagement, or encourage video views.
• Conversions: Collect leads and drive website conversions.

Audience considerations:

LinkedIn is much more business-oriented than the other social networks. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications like job title and seniority.

You can choose from several different types of LinkedIn ads.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content ads appear in the news feed on both desktop and mobile. They’re used to get your content in front of a larger audience and showcase your brand expertise.

Single images, videos, or carousel ads are all different options for sponsored content advertising on LinkedIn.

Pro tip: Headlines under 150 characters have the best engagement. Larger images get higher click-through rates. LinkedIn recommends an image size of 1200 x 627 pixels. Make sure your CTA is loud and clear.

Sponsored InMail

Sponsored InMail is similar to email marketing, except that the messages go directly to users’ LinkedIn inboxes. Like a pen pal! That you pay for.

However, Sponsored InMail has an interesting unique feature. Users only receive ad messages while they are active on LinkedIn. That means messages don’t sit around getting stale.

You can send a direct message to your audience, or create a more conversational experience—sort of a choose-your-own-adventure, super simple chat bot.

Pro tip: Short body text (under 500 characters) gets the highest click-through rate. But the sender plays a role too in setting you up for success. Ask yourself: who would my audience connect with?

Text Ads

Text ads are small ad units that appear at the top and the right of the LinkedIn news feed. They only appear to desktop users, not on mobile devices.

Despite the name, text ads can actually include a thumbnail image of 50 x 50 pixels.

Pro tip: Create two to three variations of your campaign, both for A/B testing but also to show your many sides to your audience.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads are automatically personalized specifically for each of your prospects. It’s either AI or magic at work.

Don’t be afraid to get personal! You can target users personally and directly to encourage them to follow you, read your thought leadership articles, apply for your jobs, or download content.

Pro tip: Enable your target audience’s profile photo to be featured in their own personal ad, to visually personalize the campaign. You can also pre-set templates with macros to feature every target’s name and company in the text.