Online advertising platforms like Linkedin Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter ads are all the same, right? Well no ?.
Twitter and Facebook ad setups are relatively easy to navigate, but when it comes to Linkedin ads campaigns, I encountered some obstaclesfrankly, unexpected.
To prevent you from making the same mistakes, in this article we will reveal 5 tips and tricks to know before starting a Linkedin ads campaign.
How to run a LinkedIn Ads ad
1. A Linkedin ad is not editable
Once you have created an ad on LinkedIn, you cannot delete or edit it.
Yes. Don’t panic, this doesn’t mean you’re stuck running ads you don’t want, you can of course turn ads on and off and archive them.
This just means you’ll be stuck with unusable and unwanted content in your list that you can’t delete! Think before you create and don’t accidentally save it.
According to LinkedIn, the edition is in beta testingbut we haven’t seen it yet.
It’s actually this inability to edit your content that is the most frustrating, for example if you’ve created the perfect ad message but need to change the URL (e.g. to include your UTM parameters), you can not do that.
The only way around this currently is to create the exact same ad with your new URL, post it and sponsor it, which means you’ll end up with a duplicate ad on your business page.
Of course you can delete the first version, but you will lose all social interaction and any analytical information with it, as well as removing it from the news feeds of those who shared it, is not a good practice.
2. Limited options with Linkedin ads content
Creating an ad that won’t appear in your News Feed has its limitations.
If you want to run multiple variations of the same ad but don’t want to annoy your followers by blocking their news feed, or even your business page, there’s a simple solution to this: direct sponsored content or “Direct Sponsored Content”.
What LinkedIn doesn’t tell you is that when you select this option, you no longer get the character count that you get with a standard sponsored post, in fact, you get only 22% of the standard LinkedIn character limit with direct content and yes, that includes the URL.
Direct content must also be reviewed by the LinkedIn team, which means that creating sponsored direct content incurs a delayed upload of your Linkedin advertising campaign.
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3. Linkedin ads that use the Lead-Gen form are not as beneficial as they seem
If you create a Linkedin campaign using the lead-gen formyou set up a directly sponsored content campaign with a simple form.
The Linkedin user will first see your ad and will need to click on it before it is presented with the form.
You pay per ad click or impression, not per form fill, so we recommend sticking to a sponsored content campaign that leads to a landing page on your own website with a form.
This way you can easily configure and edit your form (yes, you guessed it, you can’t change your form once you create it in LinkedIn) what if users decide not to fill it out?
At least they’re on your website, not LinkedIn, so you can encourage them to navigate further to your site. ?
4. When your Linkedin ad is running, it doesn’t stop
LinkedIn has very limited options for broadcast parameters of your advertising.
Yes, you can set a start and end date, or ask LinkedIn to run the campaign indefinitely (until your budget is reached).
Being on a professional network, wouldn’t it be helpful to have the ability to run your content during certain hours? Not during the weekend? Not in the middle of the night if you’re targeting users in specific time zones?
If you like to hold the reins when it comes to when your Linkedin ads run, you will be disappointed.
Technically you are able to control this, but it would be a manual process, whereby you would pause the campaign, say for the weekend, and you would need to activate it again on Monday morning .
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5. Are the leads who click on your Linkedin ad really arriving on your site?
LinkedIn analyzes are limited, we advise you touse UTM parameters in Google Analytics to see where these leads end up.
LinkedIn can tell you that your ad was clicked, which ad is getting the most clicks, etc. But what good is that if you can’t tell what the clickers are doing when they come to your site?
If 100% of the clicks on your LinkedIn ad bounce, then your content is surely effective in Linkedin’s eyes but very useless, so why pay for it?
Be sure to add UTM parameters to your LinkedIn campaigns to ensure you can accurately analyze the success of your campaigns and variations.
Don’t know how to generate UTM codes? Just use this tool.
Once you’ve set up your UTM parameters to track visits to your website from LinkedIn sponsored content, you’ll notice that the numbers don’t add up.
Check out our bonus section to find out why!
We’re not at all saying that LinkedIn campaigns aren’t worth it, or that they’re too complicated to use.
Just keep in mind these 5 tips to create your Linkedin ads campaign with ease!
Beware of clicks billable by Linkedin.
When you set up your sponsored content, you will be presented with the option below:
If you are running a CPM campaign, then go ahead, check this box, it won’t cost you anything. However, if you are running a PPC campaign and your main goal is to direct people to your website or landing page then don’t check this box!
What LinkedIn doesn’t tell you here is that you will be charged for any user who clicks the “follow” button on your ad, so if you don’t want to be charged for having new followers, we advise you to leave uncheck this box.
Unfortunately, there is no way to disable unwanted billable clicks which do not result in visits to your website.
LinkedIn will charge exactly the same amount for a click on the site of your business just for a click on:
- the name of your business
- your company logo
- the LinkedIn “promoted” mention
- the number of likes/comments on your ad.
Although none of them will drive traffic to your site.
So be sure to keep this in mind when evaluating Linkedin CTR and click-through metrics versus actual clicks to your website! Don’t be surprised to see differences in GA ?.