How to run Linkedin Ads in 2023: A Definitive Guide to Advertising on Linkedin

Unsure whether Linkedin advertising is a good fit for your business? What makes a good Linekdin ad? Well, if you’re a B2B business then you should absolutely consider Linkedin ads. 

Linkedin marketing has become an essential part of how B2B businesses grow their revenue. 

As reported by Linkedin’s newsroom, they currently have 706 Million members across 200+ countries. 

Their user base is made up of mainly professionals and decision-makers from companies of all sizes. There are also more than 50 million-plus companies on Linkedin. 

It is the most used platform by Fortune 500 companies. 

As a Marketer, what truly differentiates Linkedin advertising from other platforms is their targeting ability. 

You are able to target companies to senior decision-makers to job titles and functions. 

There’s no other platform that comes close to this targeting capabilities. Linkedin advertising is a no-brainer for B2B advertisers. 

If you want to learn how to advertise on Linkedin, then you’re in the right place! 

Over the next 8 chapters, you will learn everything from creating a Linkedin campaign, choosing the right objective and even measuring ROI. 

Ready? Let’s go! 

Why You Should Advertise on Linkedin Now

Not long ago, many thought that Linkedin was just another job site. 

The way people use Linkedin today is very different. If you go into your Linkedin feed now, you barely see others posting about jobs. 

Many users are now using Linkedin as a place to learn from leaders/experts and improve their careers. 

Just take a look at this statistic by Linkedin: 

  • 15x more engagement on content posts than jobs
  • 9 Billion content impressions a week
  • 48% increase in engaged feed time. 
15x more engagement |  9 Billion content impressions a week | 1200 posts shared each minute | +48 increase in engaged feed time | +60 YoY Growth of in feed viral actions

Linkedin has transformed from just being a “jobs portal” into a daily news destination. 

Their user base is impressive too. Here’s a breakdown of the audience size in each region. 

Out of the 690 Million members, 70% of the users are outside US.

Linkedin is also growing at more than 2 members per second. 

Although their member base is smaller than Facebook, there’s a huge difference in the mindset of the users. 

A study on Linkedin users showed that users come to Linkedin to network, learn from leaders, improve their career and search new opportunities. 

This is unlike Facebook or twitter where most people go to be entertained.

Data comparision between Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. Be entertained | Stay up to date with friends| Improve my financial status | Learn from leaders and experts | Manage my life better | Improve my career | Search for new opportunities |

A study by Millward Brown (link) showed that Linkedin users have are 1.7% times more receptive to advertising. 

This is no surprise because audiences are seeking to learn and are looking for advice. 

Linkedin users is 1.7 times more receptive to advertising

It’s also worth mentioning that Linkedin is the most trusted and brand-safe platform now. 

With all the fake news and abuse on Facebook and Instagram, this is certainly an important factor for B2B companies. 

Would you want your Webinar promotion to appear just after a scantily dressed swim-suit model on Instagram? 

I don’t think it’s a good brand image for a B2B advertiser. The audience is clearly not in the right mindset to consume your webinar content on Facebook/Instagram.

A study by Business insider showed that users believe in Linkedin’s content and ads are the least annoying. 

Linkedin is more trusted for privacy, data, reliable content, safest to post and least annoying ads

While all these sounds great, here’s the downside about Linkedin marketing – Their ads are the most expensive out of all the platform. 

So how much do Linkedin ads cost?  

It’s not unusual to find $5-6 cost per click on Linkedin. For a highly sought after audience (like decision makers), cost per click by even go as high as $15. 

Ad cost is high because of all the reasons stated earlier (Highly affluent audience, premium environment and audiences with the right mindset). 

  • Start by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value. 
  • Build your customer persona. Think about the job functions, job titles, industries and even the type of skills they might have. 
  • If you have a Customer Lifetime Value of above $5,000 and have identified the professional demographics, then Linkedin is a good fit. 

Likely, if you’re a B2B business, you would easily qualify through these pointers.

If you’re a B2C business, exercise caution to ensure that you have a good customer lifetime value. 

If you’re selling a pair of $5 ear rings, it’s unlikely you will to see ROAS with Linkedin ads. 

However, if you’re selling a luxury brand like Gucci, Prada or Cartier then Linkedin might still make sense due to it’s affluent audience. 

Linkedin members have an average household income of $83,000/year. This means they have disposable income for high-end B2C products too. 

There’s never been a more exciting time to explore Linkedin marketing and advertising. 

Pro Tip: At the very least, you should have a Linkedin company page and use their free tools (Like the Linkedin Insight tag – More on that in a while). 

Not convinced? Click here if you’re looking for deeper statistics and metrics on Linkedin that every marketer will appreciate. 

How much does Linkedin Ads Cost? 

One of the most common question with Linkedin ads is the cost. 

The rumours are true, Linkedin ads are one of the most expensive across all social media platform. That said, you are paying for higher quality traffic from the world’s biggest gathering of professionals online. 

We’ve written an in-depth guide here to break down the cost based on:

  • Objectives
  • Geographies 
  • Industries
  • Seniorities

And more. 

Read more about how much does a Linkedin ad cost you.

How does Linkedin’s ad bidding system work?  

Ad bidding is one of those things that will make or break your advertising. Do you know how Linkedin charges you? It’s quite different from Facebook or Twitter. Ever heard of “Chargeable clicks” on Linkedin?

We wrote this comprehensive bidding strategy guide to answer these questions: 

  • Are you paying too much on your Linkedin ads? 
  • Are you using the right bidding strategy? 
  • How does different Linkedin marketing objective change your bidding strategy
  • How are you being charged? What is “Chargeable clicks” on Linkedin?

Every social media platform has a different cost model. You need to know this before even putting money down on a platform. 

Read the guide on Linkedin’s Ad bidding system

How to create an effective Linkedin ad

Let’s face it. There is little room for error on Linkedin if you are on a small tight budget. With the cost being higher than other social media platforms, you’ll need to learn this first before you launch. 

In this guide, we go through end-to-end how you can create an effective Linkedin ad. Read this guide if you’d like to: 

  • Learn how to open your first Linkedin ad account
  • Select the most effective Linkedin ad objective based on your KPIs
  • Understand the best content on Linkedin
  • Which ad targeting to start with
  • Which ad format to use
  • Measure, report and optimize your campaigns.  

Complete Linkedin ad specs and banner image sizes

New ad formats and new changes pop up all the time. How are you going to stay up-to-date? 

Since we’re lucky enough to run millions of dollars of campaigns globally, we’re able to see first-hand the changes that Linkedin makes. 

We share all these latest updates in this guide about ad specs and ad sizes. Instead of combing through the internet, here’s your ad specs guide to: 

  • Single image ad
  • Message ad
  • Conversation ad
  • Carousel ad
  • Video ad
  • Text ad
  • Spotlight ad (Dynamic ad)

The ultimate Linkedin targeting guide

What’s the difference between Senior and CXO targeting? Is Business development function and sales function targeting the same? 

We breakdown in detail what each of these targeting means with examples. Mastering targeting on Linkedin is essential to see success. 

Learn the definitions and when to use: 

  • Company facet targeting
  • Forecasting tool
  • Location & Language
  • Job functions
  • Job title
  • Seniority 
  • Years of Experience
  • Member skills
  • Company name
  • Company industry
  • Company size
  • Education
  • Degrees
  • Fields of study
  • Interest targeting
  • Member trait targeting
  • Linkedin group targeting
  • Demographics
  • And more

Learn more about Linkedin targeting here

What are the latest Linkedin ad benchmarks? 

How do you know if your ads are performing well? We’ve put together all the ad benchmarks we know. You can use it to evaluate your ad performance and make optimizations. 

Read the latest ad benchmarks here

  • Click-through rate
  • Cost per click
  • Cost per impression
  • Cost per lead
  • Lead gen form fill completion rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per conversion
  • Engagement rate
  • Linkedin message ad and inmails benchmarks
  • Linkedin video ad benchmarks

How to generate leads on Linkedin? 

One of the biggest ask from our clients: We want more leads. Linkedin is the perfect place for generating high-quality leads. 

We’ve brought together everything we know about lead generation on Linkedin. 

In this guide, you’ll learn 5 Linkedin lead generation strategies, lead scoring and optimization strategies

Read the most comprehensive guide on Linkedin lead generation here

What are the best Linkedin hashtags to use

Linkedin hashtag is used to consolidate content and help audiences with similar interests find the content they like.

But there’s a lot of mystery behind the Linkedin hashtag. To complicate things, Linkedin rarely clarifies the best practices of Linkedin hashtags. 

We’ve spent countless of hours, weeks and months researching this topic through experiments. We document our findings about Linkedin hashtag here. 

You’ll learn about the best hashtags and how to use it. 

Learn from over 141+ best Linkedin ad examples

Need inspiration for your Linkedin ads? Don’t know where to start? Ever wonder what your competitors are up to? 

We’ve pulled together the 120+ best Linkedin ads globally and compiled it into this guide. 

Learning what’s working now from others will help you build ads with a higher probability of success. You will start to notice trends, patterns, and content that works extremely well on Linkedin. 

Access the 141+ best Linkedin ads here 

Want the latest updates on Linkedin advertising? 

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