How to Sponsor a Post on LinkedIn

Want to get your best LinkedIn content in front of the exact professionals who need to see it? Sponsoring a post is your direct path to amplifying your message beyond your immediate network. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from picking the right content to sponsor and zeroing in on your ideal audience, to setting a budget and measuring the results that actually matter.

Why Sponsor a Post on LinkedIn? (And When You Shouldn't)

Unlike other platforms where ads can feel intrusive, sponsored content blends in naturally with the feed. It feels less like an advertisement and more like a relevant, valuable recommendation. When done right, it directs highly targeted, B2B traffic to your content, builds your authority in a specific niche, and puts your brand on the radar of key decision-makers.

The primary benefits of sponsoring a post include:

• Precision Targeting: Reach professionals based on their job title, industry, company size, seniority level, skills, and more. This is LinkedIn's superpower.
• Expanded Reach: Break free from the limitations of your own followers and get your content in front of a much larger, but still relevant, audience.
• Lead Generation: Drive qualified traffic directly to landing pages, webinar registrations, or contact forms, turning content views into tangible business leads.
• Brand Awareness: Build recognition and authority with the people whose opinions shape your industry.

However, sponsoring a post isn't a magic bullet. Don't sponsor a post if:

• The content isn't strong. Paid promotion amplifies what’s already there. If the organic version of the post received no engagement, putting money behind it likely won't fix the underlying problem.
• You don't have a clear goal. Spending money without a defined objective (like website clicks or lead conversions) makes it impossible to measure success.
• It's just a sales pitch. The best-sponsored content on LinkedIn offers value first. An article, a case study, or a helpful video will almost always outperform a post that just says "Buy our product."

Before You Begin: Pre-Campaign Checklist

A little prep work goes a long way in making your sponsored campaign a success. Before spending a single dollar, run through this quick checklist.

1. Set Clear Objectives

What do you actually want to happen when someone sees your sponsored post? Your objective will define your call-to-action (CTA), your ad format, and how you measure success. Be specific. Instead of a vague goal like "get more exposure," aim for something concrete:

• "Drive 150 downloads of our new e-book from marketing managers at tech companies."
• "Generate 50 high-quality leads for our sales team through our contact form."
• "Increase traffic to our new blog post by 2,000 unique visitors."

2. Select the Right Post to Sponsor

The best candidates for sponsorship are your organic "winners." Look through your LinkedIn Company Page feed for posts that have already generated a good amount of likes, comments, and shares. High organic engagement is a strong signal that the content resonates with your audience, making it a safer bet for a paid campaign.

Your chosen post should:

• Provide genuine value. Does it teach something, solve a problem, or offer a unique perspective?
• Have a compelling visual. Posts with a high-quality image, a custom graphic, or especially a video tend to stop the scroll and perform better.
• Include a clear call-to-action. Tell your audience exactly what to do next, whether it’s "Read the full report," "Watch the demo," or "Register for free."

3. Have Your LinkedIn Company Page and Campaign Manager Ready

You can only sponsor content from a LinkedIn Company Page, not a personal profile. You'll also need a Campaign Manager account, which is your advertising hub. If you've never run ads before, you can easily set one up by clicking the "Advertise" button in the top right corner of your LinkedIn homepage. All your campaigns, billing, and analytics will live there.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Sponsor a LinkedIn Post

Once you’ve done your prep work, launching the campaign itself is straightforward. LinkedIn provides a simple 'Boost' option directly from your page, which is perfect for sponsoring a single post.

Step 1: Navigate to Your Company Page and Choose Your Post

Go to your company's LinkedIn page and find the organic post you want to sponsor. Above the post, you'll see a blue "Boost" button. Click this to open the streamlined campaign setup window.

Step 2: Define Your Campaign Objective

The first thing LinkedIn will ask for is your goal. This directly aligns with the objectives you set in the checklist. Common options for sponsored content include:

• Brand Awareness: To get your post seen by as many people as possible in your target audience. You'll pay per impression (CPM).
• Engagement: To get more likes, comments, shares, and follows. Good for building community and social proof.
• Website Visits: To drive traffic to a blog post, landing page, or your homepage. You'll typically pay per click (CPC).
• Video Views: To get more people to watch your video content.

Choose the objective that best matches your business goal for this specific campaign.

Step 3: Build Your Target Audience

This is where LinkedIn truly shines. You can get incredibly specific to make sure your content is only shown to the most relevant professionals. Start by choosing 'Create new audience'.

Location

Start with geographical targeting. You can be as broad as a country or as specific as a metropolitan area (e.g., United States, London, San Francisco Bay Area).

Audience Attributes

This is where you build your ideal customer profile. You can mix and match from several categories. For best results, focus on two or three powerful filters rather than adding dozens, which can narrow your audience too much.

• Company: Target by industry (e.g., Computer Software), company size (e.g., 51-200 employees), or even a list of specific company names.
• Job Experience: This is the most popular and powerful filter. Target by Job Title (e.g., "Marketing Director"), Job Function (e.g., "Marketing"), or Seniority (e.g., "Director," "VP," "C-Level"). You can also filter by member skills (e.g., "SEO," "Project Management").
• Education: Target people based on the schools they attended, their degrees, or their fields of study.
• Demographics: Filter by age and gender if it's relevant to your campaign.

Example: Let's say you're promoting a guide to SaaS marketing. You might target individuals in the United States who work in the Computer Software industry at companies with 51-500 employees, and have a Job Function of Marketing and a Seniority level of Manager or above.

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 for your budget:

• Daily Budget: You set a maximum amount to spend per day. This is great for ongoing campaigns where you want a consistent presence.
• Lifetime Budget: You set a total budget for the entire duration of the campaign. This is ideal for campaigns with a fixed end date, like a promotion for an upcoming event.

If you're new to sponsoring content, start with a modest daily budget, perhaps $25-$50 per day, and run it for about a week. This gives you enough time and data to see what’s working without a huge financial commitment.

You’ll also set a start date and an optional end date for your campaign.

Step 5: Review and Launch Your Campaign

The final screen gives you a complete summary of your campaign: the post preview, your objective, audience, budget, and schedule. Double-check everything carefully. Pay attention to the 'Forecasted Results' on the right-hand side, which gives you an estimate of your potential reach and clicks based on your settings.

If everything looks good, add your payment information and hit the "Boost" button. Your sponsored post will go into a short review process with LinkedIn (usually just a few hours) and will then start running.

After You Launch: Monitoring and Optimization

Don't just set it and forget it. The key to getting a great return on your ad spend is to monitor performance and make adjustments.

Understanding Your Metrics

You can track everything in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Don't get overwhelmed by all the data, focus on these key metrics based on your objective:

• Impressions: The number of times your post was seen.
• Clicks: The number of clicks on your link, company name, or logo.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who saw your post and clicked on it. For sponsored content, a CTR above 1% is generally considered good.
• Cost Per Result (CPR): This will vary based on your objective (e.g., Cost Per Click, Cost Per Impression). It tells you how much you're paying for each desired action.
• Engagement Rate: The percentage of people who liked, commented, shared, or clicked after seeing your post.

Tips for Optimizing Your Sponsored Post

Check in on your campaign after the first 2-3 days. If performance isn't where you want it to be, here are a few things to try:

• If your CTR is low (e.g., below 0.50%): Your creative or your copy may not be compelling enough for the audience you're targeting. The headline might be weak, or the image might be generic. Consider pausing the campaign and boosting a different, higher-performing post.
• If your cost-per-result is too high: Your audience might be too narrow and competitive, or it might be too broad and irrelevant. Try tweaking your targeting filters. For instance, instead of targeting by "Job Titles," which can be expensive, try targeting by "Job Functions" combined with "Seniority."

Final Thoughts

Sponsoring a post on LinkedIn is an incredibly effective way to cut through the noise and deliver your most valuable content to a hand-picked professional audience. By setting clear goals, carefully selecting your best organic content, dialing in your targeting, and monitoring results, you can turn a small investment into a powerful engine for brand growth and lead generation.

Once your best content starts gaining organic traction, you want to act on it quickly. We built Postbase to make identifying those winning posts simple. By scheduling all your organic LinkedIn content from one visual calendar and tracking your top performers in a clean dashboard, you can instantly see which posts are worth putting a budget behind without getting lost in clunky spreadsheets or complicated report builders.