Complete LinkedIn Campaign Setup Guide – From Pixels to Ads & Audience Targeting

In recent months, LinkedIn and Quora have improved their Ads and campaign management capability by a great deal. I have already covered Quora Ads Guide in a different article. In this article, I am going to completely cover the LinkedIn Ads and campaign setup guide.

1. Setup LinkedIn Insight Tag

  • Click on the drop-down menu of Account assets
  • click on Insight tag

LinkedIn Insight Tag

  • A new screen will open
  • Click on Manage insight tag drop-down menu in the right-hand corner
  • Click on See tag as shown below

See Insight Tag on LinkedIn

  • Clicking on the new tag will open a new screen as below with instructions on installing the LinkedIn insight tag with different methods
  • The new screen will look like this

Install my insight tag

  • I will usually prefer to use the third option to install the LinkedIn insight tag which is using the google tag manager. You can use this link to know more about how to install the LinkedIn insight tag using the Google tag manager.
  • You can use the same insight tag on multiple websites if they share something in common. Once you go to section 4 of this article, you will get better clarity on what I am trying to say. Most probably, this won’t be the case with you because most people will have just one website but in case, there were multiple websites from the same client, in that case, this might come very handy.

1.1 Tagged Domains

For the tagged domain, LinkedIn will wait for an associated domain or URL to load (be visited) to check if the LinkedIn Insight Tag has been placed correctly. Until the tag fires on the relevant page, domains will not appear on your Insight Tag page. Once the domain is verified it’ll be listed as Active and the chart will display the last time we received a signal from your tag on that domain. It may take up to 24 hours after loading the page for the dashboard to validate the domain or conversion.

In some cases, domain validation may take only a few minutes. Earlier, one had to submit the domain name on LinkedIn for the website tag verification but now LinkedIn has improvised it and everything is done automatically.

Tagged domain in LinkedIn ads

2. Setup LinkedIn Conversions

Conversion tracking helps you measure and optimize the actions visitors take on your website after seeing your LinkedIn ad, like filling a form or registering for an event. Attaching a conversion to a campaign will allow you to better connect your ads to results that matter to your organization.

LinkedIn uses “last touch”, which means that for each campaign, the last ad click or view before conversion is credited with that conversion. The conversion window under the conversion sets the amount of time after someone clicks or views your ad that a conversion can be counted. You can customize your windows (1, 7, or 30 days) based on your business cycle and reporting preferences. Here is how the conversion dashboard looks like. You need to follow the following steps to access the Conversions

Conversions Dashboard on LinkedIn

Conversions Dashboard on LinkedIn

  • Click on Accounts assets drop-down menu
  • Click on conversions and that will open a conversion dashboard.
  • By clicking on an existing conversion, you can modify that and by selecting that conversion, you can delete that.
  • If you already have conversions setup before, it will list in the dashboard here otherwise, you need to click “Create a conversion” in the right-hand side to create a new conversion.

2.1.1 Create a conversion on LinkedIn

For creating a conversion on LinkedIn, you will need to address the following fields as shown in the image below:

Create a conversion on LinkedIn

  • Name you conversion
  • Select a conversion type. Currently, these are the conversion types that are available on the LinkedIn ad platform
    • Add to cart
    • download
    • install
    • key page view
    • lead
    • other
    • purchase
    • signup
  • Fill in conversion value. For most of the ads that I run, there will not be any conversion value so I often leave it blank
  • In the attribution window, I usually prefer to have clicks windows as 7 days and view windows as 1 day
  • Next, you need to associate the conversion with a campaign. For which campaign, you want this conversion to track
  • Finally, it’s how do you want to track your conversion. I prefer to use the recommended method of using the insight tag
  • In the end, you need to give the URL of the thank-you or conversion page where the conversion is happening.

If you do not have a thank-you page, then, probably you need to use event-specific pixel to track button clicks. Once set up, the conversion will start showing up in the conversion dashboard as shown at the beginning of this section.

3. Matched Audience on LinkedIn

The third option which I would like you to set up is the matched audience on LinkedIn. This is basically like setting up audiences lists on LinkedIn the same way you set up RLSA audience on Google, custom visitors on Facebook and Quora audience. It can again be accessed under account assets.

Matched Audience under Account access

Once you click on it, it will open the matched audiences list dashboard as shown below:

Matched audience list on LinkedIn

You can also see that there are many filter options on the left-hand panel for filtering out your audience based on different metrics and parameters.

3.1 Create an audience on LinkedIn

If you are having a new account, there won’t be an audience here. So, you create an audience using the right-hand side menu. There will be two kinds of audience that you can create

  • Website audience
  • List upload

List upload is similar to Quora List match audience and Facebook match audience.

3.1.1 Create Website audience on LinkedIn

Website audience is the audience that you create based on your website visitors. When you first create it, it looks something like this:

Create website audience on LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides you three option to chose a page:

  • start with this URL
  • have this exact URL and,
  • have URLs that contain the specified text

all of these options are self-intuitive and obvious. Also, you can add more pages and they will get added using the OR operator which is more like either of any pages.

3.2 List upload audience

Touching this audience again, list upload audience is like the list of the email address that you upload on LinkedIn for targeting. LinkedIn has following parameters around the contact list that you upload

  • We recommend uploading at least 10,000 contacts (maximum 300,000 contacts). You can upload a list of email addresses, which will be locally hashed in your browser, or hashed emails using SHA-256 hex.
  • When uploading your CSV file, include only one account or contacts per row. At least one field must be used in each row. The maximum file upload size is 20MB.
  • After uploading, it can take up to 24 hours for your list to process and up to an additional 24 hours to start delivery. Add this audience to a campaign at any time and it will automatically start serving once ready.

3.2.1 Match rate

Once you upload a list of contacts on LinkedIn, LinkedIn will match the email list uploaded by you on its own platform and then it will give you a percentage of the match is found. This is called the match rate. You can see it under any list upload audience in your audience dashboard.

Match rate on LinkedIn

3,2.2 Share a copy of your audience on LinkedIn

You can also share a copy of your LinkedIn audience from one to another account. You can do so by clicking on the three dots at the end of the list on the right-hand side.

Share a copy of audience

Once you click on Share a copy, it will open a new window in where you need to either put the account name, ID or URL. And then you should be able to share your audience with another account on LinkedIn.

4. Campaign Groups

Campaign groups on Linkedin are just like a campaign on Google, Quora, Outbrain, Reddit or Facebook. Each campaign group can have multiple campaigns. The campaigns are equivalent to AdGroups on google and AdSets on Facebook.

By default, there will be a default campaign group on LinkedIn called “Default campaign group”. You cannot delete but edit it such as archive the default campaign group. It looks like this:

Default Campaign group on LinkedIn

You can also create your own campaign group if you do not like the default one. If you create a new campaign group, you can set the start date in the future while creating the new campaign group.

4.1 Campaign Groups structuring

Often I like to create multiple campaign groups for the same client for multiple websites. Here is an example – Let us say that the client is in real estate business and has individual websites for individual properties. The website structure looks like this:

  • examplerealeste.ca
    • exampleproperty1.ca
    • exampleproperty2.ca
    • exampleproperty3.ca

Though you might encounter this rare, I thought I should give you this context as well. In the above case, I will have just one LinkedIn ad account but I will make a separate campaign group for each of the property mentioned above. Creating a new campaign group looks like this:

Create a campaign group on LinkedIn

The fields are very obvious. One thing to notice is that you can also save the campaign as a draft under status if you plan to keep on working on it later.

5. Set up a campaign on LinkedIn

5.1 Setting up campaign objective

After creating a campaign group, the next step to follow is the setting up a campaign on LinkedIn. It starts by selecting the campaign objective. As you can see below:

  • You can edit the campaign group and campaign name as well
  • You can choose the objective as per your choice.
  • If you are not sure of your objective then, you can hover on the question mark (?) as shown below to get some idea of the objectives.

Setting up a campaign on LinkedIn

5.1.1 Current campaign objectives available on LinkedIn

Currently, the following campaign objectives are available for text ad campaigns created in the objective-based flow:

  • Website Visits – Recommended for advertisers who want to drive traffic to their company website or marketing landing pages
    • Note: During the beta phase, you may also select this objective to run Brand Awareness and Website Conversions campaigns.
      • Brand Awareness – After selecting the Website Visit objective, choose Automated bid as the campaign bid type and maximize for Impressions in the campaign set-up flow.
      • Website Conversions – After selecting the Website Visit objective, choose Automated bid as the campaign bid type and maximize for Conversions in the campaign set-up flow.
    • Engagement – Recommended for advertisers who want to increase social engagement with their ads and/or increase LinkedIn Page followers
  • Lead Generation – Recommended for advertisers who want to capture leads using a submission form that’s pre-filled with the member’s LinkedIn profile data
  • Video Views – Recommended for advertisers who want to leverage videos for social engagement

5.1.2 Upcoming campaign objectives on LinkedIn

  • Brand Awareness – Recommended for advertisers who want to gain as many impressions of their ad as possible. Note: During the beta phase, you may use the Website Visits objective to run Brand Awareness campaigns.
  • Website Conversions – Recommended for advertisers who want members to complete specific actions, like a whitepaper download or webinar registration. Note: During the beta phase, you may use the Website Visits objective to run Website Conversions campaigns.
  • Talent Leads – Recommended for Pipeline Builder customers who want job seekers to complete specific actions, like clicking through to a dedicated Pipeline Builder landing page for an open role.
  • Job Applicants – Recommended for Talent customers who want to drive clicks to job-related experiences, including LinkedIn job posts. Note: During the beta phase, you may use the Website Visits objective to run Job Applicants campaigns.

5.2 Setting up campaign audience on LinkedIn

A campaign audience set up will look something like this:

Setting up campaign audience on LinkedIn

Figure 5.2: Setting up a campaign audience on LinkedIn

If you have already noticed, LinkedIn by default named my campaign based on the campaign objective and this month. I have already covered about the objective. So, now, I will cover other points.

5.2.1 Location targeting

LinkedIn gives you the following options in terms of location targeting.

  • Recent or permanent location – People who recently visited or permanently live or work in the selected location(s)
  • Permanent location – People who permanently live or work in the selected location(s)

5.2.1.1 Adding locations

Locations are already pre-filled by LinkedIn that you have to choose from. Locations are based on the format of continent -> country -> province ->city

5.2.2 Targeting criteria on LinkedIn

By default, targeting criteria on LinkedIn look as shown below

Targeting criteria on LinkedIn

Here is a description of the targeting criteria

Company

  • Company Connections: Allows you to reach the 1st-degree connections of employees at companies you select. This is only available for companies with more than 500 employees.
  • Company Industry: The primary industry of the company where the member is employed.
  • Company Size: Allows you to reach members based on the size of the organization where they work. Company size is determined by the number of employees listed on the organization’s LinkedIn Page.
  • Company Name: The organization member lists as his or her employer. These are based on LinkedIn Pages, which are maintained by company employees.
  • Company Followers: Allows you to target your own LinkedIn Page followers. To use this targeting facet, your Ads account must be associated with your LinkedIn Page. When not utilizing this facet, by default your campaigns may reach both followers and non-followers.

Demographics

  • Member Age: An estimation of how old a member is based on their profile information.
  • Member Gender: Determination of whether a member is female or male is inferred based on member profile information.

Education

  • Fields of Study: The major or area of study within a member’s degree. Standardized from member-entered degrees.
  • Member Schools: The school, college, university, or other learning institution where a member completed a course.
  • Degrees: Recognized ranks granted by a college, university, or other learning institution.

Job Experience

  • Job Function: Based on standardized groupings of the job titles entered by LinkedIn members.
  • Job Seniority: Describes the rank and influence of a member’s current role in their organization.
  • Job Title: When members update their LinkedIn profiles with new roles, these job titles are grouped by LinkedIn’s algorithms and organized into standardized titles.
  • Member Skills: Highly relevant keywords found within a member’s profile and skills section that indicate expertise in a particular area. Member-entered skills in the Skills & Endorsements section on their profile, skills mentioned in their profile text, or inferred skills based on their listed skills.
  • Years of Experience: Allows you to reach a target audience based on the years of professional experience they’ve accumulated over their career. We exclude any gaps in experience and also do not double-count overlapping positions.

Interests

  • Member Groups: LinkedIn Groups where members who share interests or professional associations can gather, discover new information, and ask questions.
  • Member Interests: Interest categories identified by and inferred from member actions and engagement with content on LinkedIn.

Exclusion

As you can see in Figure 5.2: Setting up a campaign audience on LinkedIn, you can also exclude some audience. Excluding an audience is the same as including an audience. The process is almost the same.

5.2.3 Enable Audience Expansion

As you can see in Figure 5.2: Setting up a campaign audience on LinkedIn, enable audience expansion will allow you to increase the reach of your campaign by showing your ads to audiences with similar attributes to your target audience.

5.2.4 Save as template

Save audience as a template

Saving your audience as a template allows you to reuse your audience in any other campaign without going through all the hassles again.

Used a saved audience

Once you save your audience as a template, you can reuse the audience under the audience settings as shown in fig 5.2 at the top.

Use a saved audience on LinkedIn

5.2.5 rest of the campaign settings

After the audience part set up, the next few fields as a part of the campaign setup are obvious. It looks like this:

Campaign settings on LinkedIn

Some of the things that I would like to highlight are:

  • You should be careful about selecting “Enable the LinkedIn audience network”. I have already covered this topic in an article on LinkedIn audience optimization
  • I like to keep the bid as automated most of the times
  • Select the conversion if this campaign is a conversion-based campaign and conversion is applicable to this campaign. You can select the conversions that you have already created in section 2 of this blog or you also an option to create a new conversion. Creating a new conversion again involves the same process as of part 2.
  • Now save your campaign and create your ads.

6. Create an ad on LinkedIn

As already seen, there are a lot of different kinds of ads that are available on the LinkedIn platform. You can get to know about the ad specs for different LinkedIn ad types from this article.

  • LinkedIn allows you to reuse existing ads on any campaign and even the normal posts are available as an ad just like Facebook post boost. Or, you can create a completely new ad for your campaign.

Just as an example, a sponsored post Ad will have the following fields (First half)

First half of a sponsored content ad

  • Name of the Ad
  • Introductory text which goes above the post in the feed
  • Destination URL is the landing page URL
  • Ad image (Look for the ad specs for the ad image size. Generally, it is 1200×627 pixels)
  • Headline and,
  • Description

There is also an option to add the created Ad to the campaign or just create it. A sample sponsored post Ad looks like this:

LInkedin Ad fields

If I have some fields or if you need help with your LinkedIn campaigns, please let me know in the comments below

Have a Question? Get in Touch!



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