Putting together a LinkedIn ad campaign is A LOT of work, even more so if it is your first time. There are so many decisions to make, so many terms to understand. You want to make the most of your ad spend, right? There’s nothing worse than checking your LinkedIn Campaign Manager and seeing a huge spend with no conversions, or you discover you have targeted the wrong demographics for your product or service. We’ve put together a guide of essential terms and definitions that will help you create successful LinkedIn ad campaigns.
Awareness Campaigns maximize your brand’s share of voice through impressions.
Consideration Campaigns encourage action to find out more about your service or product. Actions are clicks leading to a landing page or other engagement, such as encouraging social actions and views.
Conversion Campaigns focus on lead generation & the ability to track actions on your website, such as white paper downloads or forms.
Maximum Delivery Bidding — LinkedIn uses previous campaign data and member information to automatically set the bid for your ad. Generally speaking, this option will provide the best results for your budget, while spending your designated budget in full. Note: Automated Bidding is charged by impression, and currently only supports Sponsored Content. This option is recommended for volume of results, delivering your full budget, and eliminating bidding guesswork.
Target Cost Bidding — This automated bidding option for CPC-CPM-CPV, is an automated bidding option that provides you an opportunity to specify your target cost. Campaigns are optimized to generate the most results, and the daily average cost per result will meet the specified target cost value or up to 30% higher. Target Cost Bidding is available only for certain campaign objectives. This is a good option for cost predictability.
Manual Bidding — LinkedIn’s manual bidding option, allows you to set the maximum bid amount you are willing to pay. The cost will not exceed that value. This option gives you the most control over your bid value.
Company Name is the organization a member lists as their employer based on LinkedIn Pages. It allows you to focus your campaign on high-value companies and reach decision makers across an organization. You can target up to 200 different companies.
Company Industry targeting lets you focus on members who work in a specific sector. This is especially effective if your offer broadly applies to an entire industry, for example, a piece of software geared towards the food industry.
Company Growth Rate targets companies by their year-over-year growth rate. This can be determined by factors such as employee growth or inferred data from other similar companies within the same location and industry.
Company Category targets a curated list from prestigious publications and thought leaders like Forbes, Fortune, and LinkedIn News Editors. Using this option, you can easily identify the world’s largest, most innovative, or fastest-growing companies.
Company Size reaches members based on the size of the organization they work for. It is determined by the number of employees listed on the organization’s Company Page.
Company Connections reaches the 1st-degree connections of employees at the companies you select. Companies will be available if they have over 500 employees.
Company Follower reaches followers of your LinkedIn Page. To utilize this option, your ads account must be associated with your Company Page.
Member Gender is a determination of whether a member is female or male and inferred based on a member’s name. Similar to Age, using Gender targeting can reduce your audience size by 50% or more. Keep in mind that LinkedIn does not require members to disclose their gender.
Member Age is an estimation of how old a member is based on their first graduation date. Not all LinkedIn members include a graduation year on their profile so keep in mind that including Age may significantly reduce your audience size.
Member Schools is based on the learning institutions where a member completed a course. For example, you can target all Harvard former students to offer them a related product. Make sure you add all subsidiary Schools (Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law, etc.) as they have separate pages.
Fields of Study is the member's major or area of study indicated by their degree. For example, members with a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) would likely have a major in either Accounting or International Business. Use it as a proxy for skills or expertise in a given field, especially for recent graduates.
Degrees is based on the degrees listed on a member's profile. This is useful if you are an education-based organization looking to reach members who might be interested in further developing their studies. For example, if you’re advertising an advanced degree program, exclude those who already have a master’s degree.
Job Functions are based on standardized groupings of the job titles listed on a LinkedIn member's profile. For example, if you want to reach doctors, nurses, veterinarians, surgeons, dentists, and other members with related occupations, you can filter by the "Medical" job field.
Job Titles are based on a member's LinkedIn profile. They are grouped by LinkedIn’s algorithms and organized into standardized titles you can use for campaign targeting. This attribute allows you to narrow your audience by a specific set of skills. For example, since engineers typically fall under the Engineering job title, you may want to target Software Engineers and Civil Engineers differently, or you may want to exclude a specific type of engineer from your campaign.
Job Seniority is determined by a member’s job title. Use it to reach those with influence over a buying decision. Consider targeting individual contributors. They typically have a large say in buying decisions.
Years of Experience lets you reach a target audience based on years of professional experience accumulated over their career. LinkedIn calculates YOE by adding together the duration of each individual job experience listed on a member's profile. Any gaps in experience are excluded and overlapping positions also are not double-counted.
Skills are based on highly relevant keywords used in a member’s profile and skills section indicating expertise in a certain area. Skills include ones added by members in their skills section and also keywords and phrases mentioned throughout their profile and summary. Skills targeting is another way to reach professionals with specialized expertise.
Member Groups allow you to target based on the groups a member is in. Groups on LinkedIn are places where members who share interests or professional associations can gather, discover new information, and ask questions. For example, if you want to reach finance professionals, you can identify relevant related groups, such as a Finance Club or Banking Careers.
Member Interests reach people based on the content members engage with on LinkedIn, the professional topics they search for on Bing, and inferred based on attributes on a member’s profile. Interest targeting is most effective for campaigns with awareness and consideration objectives and helps you reach a unique set of audiences when other targeting options are too narrow.
Member Traits reach members based on their distinguishing characteristics such as frequent traveler, job seeker, open to education, or the types of devices they use when spending time on LinkedIn. Member traits typically represent a narrower audience and may not need additional targeting criteria applied.
Setting up your LinkedIn ad campaign doesn't have to be a struggle. Our digital advertising experts can help. Click the Learn How button below to get more information on our Digital Advertising program.
Use the Download Now as a PDF option at the top of the page to print this guide to use as a handy reference when setting up your LinkedIn ad campaign.