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Our secret recipe to success
So, you’re running LinkedIn Ads for your business. A solid, carefully thought out campaign set up is all well and good. But without knowing how to optimise LinkedIn ads effectively, you might as well be shooting in the dark. After all, it’s rare that a campaign will run for the full duration with flawless results and no hiccups. If you don’t know how to analyse and pivot, you’re at risk of throwing money down the drain.
Luckily, we’re here to help. In this article, we dive into the two key optimisation areas you need to be well-versed in. With these handy tips and tricks in your back pocket – you simply have no excuse not to nail your LinkedIn campaigns. And continue to see excellent results come flowing into your dashboards. That’s enough groundwork – it’s time to get stuck in.
Your first step in learning how to optimise Linkedin ads, is to dive into your campaign data. This data is easy to access from your home dashboard in Campaign Manager, or from the “Performance Chart” for more detail. When you’re in there, look at a 30 day time frame and then put on your investigative goggles. Isolate the specific metrics that are underperforming (or performing very well).
Ask yourself: is your CTR lower than 0.35% or has it climbed through the roof in the past month? Is your CPL over $200 or is it much lower than last week? Is your daily spend lower than your daily budget? You need to know where any significant variances are, when they occurred and how big they are, before you can make meaningful tweaks accordingly.
Let’s look at an example. You’ve noticed that the CPL for one of your campaigns has increased steadily over the past month. So, a problem has been identified. It’s time to assess other related metrics (frequency, daily spend, cpcs). You see that ad frequency has climbed above the recommended range (around 3-5). So, you’ve unearthed a potential cause. It’s very possible many people in your target audience have already seen your ads, leading to creative fatigue and waning interest levels.
Now that you have a problem and potential cause. What next? Look at your options for addressing it and choose what you believe to be the most impactful. In this case, we’d suggest a creative refresh. Work on some new creatives that take learnings from the best-performing variant but incorporate something entirely new. With this approach, you can re-engage your audience with the appearance of fresh imagery and added value. Alternatively, you could consider expanding your audience so your pool of potential prospects is bigger, and new people will be shown your ads.
The long and short of it is, there’s no one method of optimizing for any given scenario. It’s more a matter of making decisions based on experience, judging impact and adjusting accordingly.
Digging into and acting on performance data is important. However, analysing your demographic charts is just as critical to becoming an optimisation guru. While many digital marketers are naturally driven by their KPIs and performance metrics, it’s foolish to neglect demographic insights. After all, audience targeting and reporting is one of the biggest drawing cards for LinkedIn Ads, and why so many advertisers use it in the first place.
So, where should you start? Navigate to your campaign, click on “demographics” from the drop down. Again, put on your investigative goggles and ask yourself: is one demographic group generating a disproportionate amount of impressions? Are there irrelevant job titles e.g. students who are seeing your ads? Are your key demographic clicking on your ads but not converting? Is there one country that has a higher cost per lead than the other or isn’t spending at the same rate?
Let’s look at an example. You see a lot of irrelevant leads are coming through to your sales team. This is a perfect sign to dig into your demographic charts and get out your optimisation tools. Where do you start? Head to “demographics” and click through job titles, job functions, company size and any other relevant filters, from the drop down. Pay close attention to any groups of people that you don’t want to see your ads, who are seeing them. And more importantly, if they’re clicking on them and converting. From here, it’s time to cross check your targeting set up, and make some changes.
It may be as simple as excluding any irrelevant job titles or functions that aren’t relevant. Or it could involve rejigging your entire targeting strategy to ensure only your target prospects see your ads. Helpful hint – it’s crucial you’re aware that inclusions / exclusions aren’t always 100% successful in keeping irrelevant prospects out. For example, if an owner of a large B2B tech company also has a side business where he is the only employee and you’ve selected only 10 employees and above – this person still may see & click on your ad. Again, there’s no singular approach to using your demographic data to fuel insights, it’s up to you to make strategic decisions based on your own experience and judgment.
There you have it! The secret recipe to becoming an expert in how to optimise LinkedIn Ads. We’ve broken down the key ingredients – demographic and performance analysis and given you examples to show you how to utilise them effectively in your own campaigns. However, the rest is up to you. As much as we liked there to be – there is ultimately no right or single way of optimising your LinkedIn campaigns. It’s more a matter of staying in touch with your demographic and performance data and making smarter decisions based on the insights you get from them. Go forth, optimise and thrive!
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