Advertising

How to get started

Create a LinkedIn Page

First, build your company's brand and build trust with your community.

Campaign Manager

Second, create your first ad campaign on LinkedIn's ad platform.

Sign in to Campaign Manager

Ad formats

Sponsored Content

Reach and engage a professional audience in the LinkedIn feed.

Sponsored Messaging

Engage your prospects where professional conversations happen.

Dynamic Ads

Engage prospects with ads automatically personalized to them.

Text Ads

Self-service ad formats to create campaigns in minutes.

See all Ad formats

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Pricing

Discover how much it costs to advertise on LinkedIn.

Targeting

Reach the people who matter most to your business.

Lead Generation

Qualified leads come from a quality audience on LinkedIn.

Boosting

An easy way to reach new audiences by amplifying your best content.

Conversion Tracking

Measure the true impact of your LinkedIn ads.

Reporting & Analytics

Measure the ROI of your LinkedIn ads.

Objective Based Advertising

Choose your LinkedIn ad format based on your objective and customer journey.

Ad Tips & Best Practices

Why LinkedIn

LinkedIn Pages

Resources

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Create ad

How to advertise on LinkedIn

Connect your brand with the world’s largest audience of active, influential professionals.

Start advertising

Get started with Campaign Manager

To begin advertising on LinkedIn, first create an account in Campaign Manager. Follow these easy steps to get started.

Campaign Manager lets you set a budget, select goals, and have complete control over a campaign’s timeline. In addition, the platform includes several features designed to help meet advertising goals:

Step #1: Choose a marketing objective

Choose from one of the three objectives that matter most.

Choose from the following objectives to customize campaign:

  • Awareness: Brand awareness

  • Consideration: Website visits, engagement and video views

  • Conversion: Lead generation, website conversions, and job applicants

The chosen goal—impressions, clicks, or video views to name a few—will determine the rest of the campaign creation experience.

Related: Objective-Based Advertising

illustration of Campaign Manager UI

Step #2: Select targeting criteria

Selecting an audience works the same way regardless of which ad type you choose.

Reach the right audience by using LinkedIn’s targeting tools for campaign success. Choose from over 20 different audience attribute categories including:

  • Company size
  • Company name
  • Member schools
  • Member interests
  • Member groups
  • Skills
  • Job title
  • Job seniority
  • And more

 

Targeting is a foundational element of running a successful advertising campaign - Getting your targeting right leads to higher engagement, and ultimately, higher conversion rates.

 

Related: Ad Targeting

illustration of Campaign Manager UI filters

Step #3: Choose a LinkedIn ad format

Once logged in to Campaign Manager, it’s time to create and manage ad campaigns. Use Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, or a mix of all four.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content appears directly in the LinkedIn feed of professions you want to reach, and comes in three different formats: single image ads,  document ads, thought leader ads, video ads, and carousel ads.

 

Using Sponsored Content:

  • Target the most valuable audiences using accurate, profile-based first-party data

  • Reach a highly engaged audience with native ads in a professional feed across desktop and mobile

  • Drive leads, build brand awareness, and nurture key relationships at every stage of your sales cycle
Learn more Sponsored Content tips
illustration of a sponsored ad example

Dynamic Ads

Select a Dynamic Ad format to personalize your creative for each member in your target audience at scale. Dynamic Ads use LinkedIn profile data - like photo, company name, and job title - to personalize ads.

 

Increase engagement with these three formats:

 

  • Follower ad: Promote their LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page and drive members to follow their LinkedIn page with a single click on the ad from the desktop experience.

  • Spotlight ad: Drive website traffic or spark an action like event registration or showcasing a new product.

  • Jobs ad: Increase relevant applicants by personalizing ads to top talent on desktop and mobile experiences.
Learn more Dynamic Ads tips
illustration of a dynamic ad example

Text Ads

Text Ads are simple but compelling pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) ads.

 

Using Text Ads:
 

  • Easily create your own ads and launch a campaign in minutes

  • Tailor messaging to the professionals you need to reach

  • Pay for only the ads that work – per click or per impression
Learn more Text Ads tips
illustration of text ad examples

Sponsored Messaging

Sponsored Messaging lets you engage your prospects via LinkedIn messaging, where they increasingly spend most of their time - and where professional conversations happen.

 

Using Sponsored Messaging:
 

  • Send direct messages to your prospects to spark immediate action

  • Drive stronger engagement and response than traditional email marketing

  • Start quality conversations with your audience through a choose-your-own-path experience
Learn more Sponsored Messaging tips
illustration of sponsored messaging ad examples

Step #4: Set budget and schedule

Once an audience is selected, it’s time to set the campaign budget and schedule.

There are three options:

  • Cost per send (CPS) is used when running Message Ads campaigns. Pay for each message that is successfully delivered.

  • Cost per click (CPC) is often used for action-oriented campaigns like lead generation or event registration.

  • Cost per impression (CPM) model is typically a better fit when brand awareness is the goal.

 

Along with choosing the right option for a campaign, enter a suggested bid, daily budget, start date, end date, and total budget. Regardless of the end date chosen, cancel a campaign at any time. It’s also important to note that LinkedIn uses an auction system for bidding that rewards engagement, meaning you can win an auction without being the highest bidder.

 

Related: LinkedIn Ads Bidding

illustration of Campaign Manager bid UI

Step #5: Set up ad creative

The first goal of social marketing is to create a scroll-stopping moment for an audience. Ad creative is the most important aspect of grabbing their attention to convey value and convincing them to take the next step with your brand. We recommend creating 4-5 ads in the campaign to give the campaign more exposure and opportunity to optimize for the highest performance. Learn how to create up to 5 ads at one time using the media library.

There are 4 main components that should be considered when building out creative for LinkedIn:

Imagery

Be distinctive and consistent. Imagery is the most critical factor in driving engagement within the newsfeed.

icon illustration of graphic ads

Copy

Be discerning with what words are chosen and how many.

icon illustration of text copy examples

Format

Use a variety of formats to keep the audience interest piqued

icon illustration of ad formats

Testing

Test, learn and iterate to find the best performing creative combinations.

icon illustration of testing reports

Step #6: Measure and optimize campaign

Congratulations, your LinkedIn advertising campaign is live! Now it’s time to see how the ads are performing. Access your analytics by visiting Campaign Manager and selecting the campaigns to evaluate.

Track campaign’s overall impressions, clicks, social actions and budget. Social actions are initiated by LinkedIn members who interact with content – it’s organic, free engagement.

Click through to each campaign to see how each ad within the campaign is performing. Using this data, you can edit ads, refine targeting, adjust budget, and toggle ad variations on and off based on performance.

 

Related: LinkedIn Ads Measurement & Optimization

illustration of Campaign Manager report

Additional resources

Customer stories

See how other best-in-class advertisers are using LinkedIn to achieve their objectives.


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Create Your First Campaign

See how other best-in-class advertisers are using LinkedIn to achieve their objectives.


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Success hub

See how other best-in-class advertisers are using LinkedIn to achieve their objectives.


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Help center

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Get comprehensive assistance from our Help Center.


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