How to Advertise on LinkedIn

Advertising on LinkedIn gives you direct access to a global network of professionals, but getting started with its Campaign Manager can feel a bit complex. This guide cuts through the confusion, giving you a clear, step-by-step roadmap to launch, manage, and optimize your LinkedIn ad campaigns. We’ll cover everything from building your campaign from the ground up to measuring what’s actually working.

Your Pre-Launch Checklist: Getting started with LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Before you can run ads, you need a place for them to live. All LinkedIn ads are tied to a LinkedIn Company Page. If you don't have one yet, that's your first stop. Make sure it’s completely filled out with your company's logo, a compelling banner image, and a thoughtful "About" section. A polished Company Page builds credibility and acts as a professional home base for anyone who clicks through from your ads.

Once your Page is ready, you can access the Campaign Manager. This is your command center for all things advertising. To get there:

• Log into your personal LinkedIn profile that has admin access to your Company Page.
• Click the "Advertise" icon in the top right corner of your LinkedIn homepage.

You’ll be prompted to create an ad account for your Company Page if you haven’t already. Just follow the simple on-screen instructions, link it to your Page, and add your billing information. Now you're officially ready to build your first campaign.

Building Your First LinkedIn Ad Campaign: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a campaign in LinkedIn is a structured process. The Campaign Manager walks you through it, but understanding each choice is what makes the difference between burning your budget and generating real results. Here's a breakdown of each step.

Step 1: Choose the Right Objective

The first decision you'll make is your campaign objective. This tells LinkedIn what you want to achieve, which in turn influences how it optimizes your ad delivery. The objectives are broken down into three familiar marketing funnel stages:

• Awareness: The goal here is to get your brand seen. Choose Brand awareness if you want to reach as many people in your target audience as possible to introduce your company or product. You’ll pay based on impressions (the number of times your ad is shown).
• Consideration: This stage aims to encourage people to interact with your brand.
  • Website visits: Sends traffic directly to your website or a specific landing page.
  • Engagement: Aims to increase social actions like likes, comments, shares, and clicks on your Company Page.
  • Video views: Optimizes for getting more people to watch your video ad.
• Conversion: This is where you drive specific actions that are valuable to your business.
  • Lead generation: Uses LinkedIn’s native Lead Gen forms, which pre-fill with a user's profile information, a frictionless way to collect leads without them ever leaving the platform. This is a game-changer for B2B marketers.
  • Website conversions: Encourages users to take an action on your website, like signing up for a trial, downloading a guide, or making a purchase. (Note: This requires the LinkedIn Insight Tag to be installed on your website).
  • Job applicants: Promotes a specific job posting to attract relevant candidates.

Real world example: If you’re a SaaS company launching a new feature, a "Video views" campaign could be great for an initial announcement. A few weeks later, you could run a "Lead generation" campaign offering a free demo to those who showed interest.

Step 2: Define Your Target Audience

This is where LinkedIn’s B2B power truly shines. You can get incredibly specific with who sees your ads. Go beyond basic demographics and target people based on their professional lives.

Audience Attributes

You can layer multiple attributes to build your ideal audience profile. Here are some of the most powerful options:

• Company: Target by company name, industry, size, or even how fast they're growing.
• Job Experience: This is a big one. You can target by job titles, functions (like "Marketing" or "Human Resources"), seniority (from Unpaid to CXO), and years of experience.
• Education: Zero in on people based on schools, degrees, or fields of study.
• Interests & Traits: Target based on professional interests shown on the platform or by membership in relevant LinkedIn Groups.

Actionable Advice: It's tempting to go broad, but it's often more effective to start narrow. If you sell project management software for construction companies, start by targeting "Project Managers" with "Construction" as their industry and a specific company size. You can always expand later if your audience is too small, but it’s harder to get results from an overly broad and unfocused group.

Matched Audiences

You can also use your own data to create powerful custom audiences:

• Contact Targeting: Upload a list of contacts (from your CRM or email list), and LinkedIn will match them to profiles to show them your ads.
• Website Retargeting: Using the LinkedIn Insight Tag, you can create audiences of people who have visited specific pages on your website. This is perfect for re-engaging warm prospects.
• Lookalike Audiences: Create an audience of users who are similar to an existing Matched Audience, expanding your reach to people with similar professional characteristics.

Step 3: Pick the Right Ad Format

LinkedIn offers a variety of ad formats, each suited for different objectives. Your message is important, but how you present it matters just as much.

• Single Image Ad: The most common format. It appears directly in the LinkedIn feed and features one image. Great for driving traffic with a clear, concise visual and headline.
• Video Ad: Captures attention in the feed more effectively than static images. Use it for demos, brand storytelling, or testimonials. Keep it short and ensure it makes sense even with the sound off.
• Carousel Ad: This format allows you to use multiple swipeable images in a single ad. Excellent for showcasing different product features, telling a sequential story, or highlighting speakers at an event.
• Document Ad: A format unique to LinkedIn. It allows you to promote documents like PDFs or PowerPoint presentations directly in the feed. Users can read them without leaving, and you can even set it up to capture their information before a full download, making it a powerful lead-gen tool.
• Message Ad: This sends a personalized message directly to a user's LinkedIn inbox. It feels more personal but should be used sparingly to avoid being intrusive. It’s best for high-value offers like event invitations or demo requests.
• Lead Gen Form Ad: While not a visual format on its own, this is an attachment you can add to Single Image, Video, and Carousel Ads. When a user clicks your CTA, a form pre-populated with their profile data appears, making it incredibly easy for them to become a lead.

Step 4: Set Your Budget and Schedule

Next, you’ll tell LinkedIn how much you want to spend and for how long. You have two main options:

• Daily Budget: You set a maximum amount you’re willing to spend each day. This is good for "always-on" campaigns where you want consistent visibility.
• Lifetime Budget: You set a total amount to spend over the entire duration of the campaign. This is ideal for campaigns with a fixed flight date, like promoting a webinar.

You’ll also set bidding options. For beginners, the default Maximum Delivery (or "Automated Bid") option is the easiest. It tells LinkedIn to get you the most results for your budget. As you get more advanced, you can experiment with manual bidding options like Target Cost bidding.

Beginner’s Tip: Start with a small daily budget ($25 is a good starting point) and let your campaign run for at least 7-10 days. This gives the LinkedIn algorithm enough time and data to optimize delivery and gives you enough information to see some early trends.

Step 5: Create Your Ad and Launch!

Finally, it's time to build the ad itself. This is where you combine your compelling copy with your eye-catching creative. A great ad typically has:

• Introductory text: The text above your image or video. Hook the reader immediately by speaking to a specific pain point or exciting opportunity.
• A striking visual: Use high-quality, professional images or videos. Avoid stock photos if you can. Real people or clean product graphics tend to perform best.
• A direct headline: The bold text that appears just below your visual. Make it a clear statement of value.
• A strong Call-to-Action (CTA): From the dropdown menu, choose a CTA that matches your goal (e.g., "Download," "Sign Up," "Request Demo"). Be specific!

Double-check everything, hit "Launch Campaign," and you're officially advertising on LinkedIn!

Measuring Success: KPIs That Matter

Once your campaign is live, your job has only just begun. You need to keep an eye on performance in the Campaign Manager. Don't get lost in all the columns of data. Focus on the metrics that align with your original objective.

• Impressions & Reach: Good for awareness campaigns. Shows how many times your ad was seen and by how many unique people.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked your ad after seeing it. A high CTR indicates your ad is relevant and compelling to your audience.
• Cost Per Click (CPC): How much you’re paying for each click.
• Leads & Cost Per Lead (CPL): For Lead Gen campaigns, this is your most important metric. It tells you how many leads you've captured and how much each one cost.
• Conversion Rate: For website conversion campaigns, this shows the percentage of people who took a desired action after clicking your ad. You need the LinkedIn Insight Tag for this.

Final Thoughts

Running successful LinkedIn ads is a process of learning and refinement. The platform provides a powerful toolkit to reach exactly the right professionals, your job is to use it thoughtfully by setting clear goals, crafting a relevant message, and constantly measuring what works. Start small, test different ideas, and you’ll build a solid foundation for growth.

Advertising is even more powerful when backed by a consistent organic presence on your Company Page. We designed Postbase to make building that organic foundation seamless, letting you visually plan and schedule all your content in one place. When your page is filled with valuable content, your ads perform better because they feel like a natural extension of a trusted brand, helping every dollar of your ad spend go further.