The Campainless Blog
Managing your LinkedIn ads budget effectively is a crucial part of smashing your marketing KPIs. If you can’t ensure your budgets are decently sized, pacing well or being used in the highest impact places – you risk losing out on the performance of your campaigns. Lucky for you, we’ve crafted a tell-all guide that covers all the budgeting info, tips, tools and strategies out there. With this prized possession in your hands, you won’t waste a cent of ad spend from this point forward.
Before we jump into budgeting stuff, it’s important you have got your head around LinkedIn advertising costs. Because without understanding how they’re worked out and what influences them – you don’t have a chance of nailing the art of budgeting.
So how are LinkedIn costs determined? There are a range of factors. At the most essential level, the actual cost you pay relies on “the type of activity you’re paying for and the ad auction.” You choose a budget, an objective and a compatible bid type and your ads are sold through an ad auction. There, they will compete against ads from other advertisers trying to reach your target audience.
This is how the final cost you pay is determined and might sound straightforward. However, variables like your target audience, your objective, your bidding strategy and your ad relevance score also come into it. For more information on how costs are worked out – head to our all-encompassing article on LinkedIn advertising costs.
So we’ve mentioned budgeting is a critical component of LinkedIn ads success. But, why is this the case? Let’s break it down. If your budget is too small, you basically cut yourself off at the knees. And risk being unable to get enough clicks to see results. For example, if your budget is $20 and the average CPC is $18, you’re limited to one click per day which is small margins to work with. This poor budgeting makes it very difficult to see results.
Alternatively, if you get half way through the month, and you’re not hitting 50% of your monthly budget, you risk not exhausting your media budget and missing out on hitting your goals. In another scenario: you put your budget into a campaign that isn’t driving many leads and lead volume is a KPI. Again, you’re immediately on the back foot. For each of these reasons, knowing how to budget like a pro is ESSENTIAL to guaranteeing performance.
There’s no strict rule for how much you should spend. It’s very dependent on your audience, industry, offering and available budget. However, as a general rule we’d recommend you start with a budget of no less than $3000 a campaign. That’s $100 a day. An ideal range would be between $3000-5000. Why is this our sweet spot?
By sticking to this range, you’ll be able to generate enough data to test out different approaches and actually see what works. And you’ll have the flexibility to test out other audiences if you have additional budget left over. While technically, the platform enables you to go as low as $10 a day (around $300 a month), we wouldn’t recommend you dip this low. If you do, just be aware it’ll be difficult to get enough data to see what’s truly working and act accordingly. So stay within our recommended range if you can.
You now have a rough idea of what you should be spending on LinkedIn but this is not where it ends if you want to become a seasoned, skilled budgeter. You need to make sure you’re following tips, techniques and tricks from the experts. With that being said – let’s take a look at some generic budgeting tips to help you on this quest.
Our golden rule for LinkedIn bidding is to stay away from maximum delivery bid strategy. While it is the default for LinkedIn when setting up a campaign, we find that this bidding approach only results in you spending more than you need to be for a click without giving you the results to match. For us, manual CPC is the recommended approach and allows you to maximise the number of clicks and results you can achieve with your budget.
Now that you’ve selected manual CPC, we recommend you start by bidding at the bidding floor. This means the lowest possible amount LinkedIn will let you input. By doing this, you have the best chance of getting the most clicks out of your budget. If you see you aren’t spending enough, it may be time to raise them within the recommended range.
Potentially the most important tidbit is that you need to make sure you check in with your spending regularly. We’d recommend every day if possible! This is truly one of the most impactful moves you can make when it comes to both controlling your spend and ensuring it hits the right places. Without visibility, and consistent checking in, you are lost
While monitoring is key – it’s not enough to just check in with your spend and ensure it is pacing okay. You need to be proactive and be able to act on the data you observe coming through. Seen that there’s a lot of spend on one campaign that isn’t delivering results? Seen than one ad variant has a much better engagement and CPL?
You need to be able to observe these trends and act accordingly. In the first scenario, consider redirecting the spend to another campaign, create a new ad or test a different audience. In the second, pause the poor-performing ad, and introduce a new one to see if your budget is better utilised. Understanding how to optimise effectively in all areas of LinkedIn Ads is absolutely instrumental to success.
LinkedIn has a bunch of performance tools to help you control your spend. One we love is the performance chart. All you need to do is head there and click “spend” from the drop down. Then you can easily see if your budget is pacing well and isolate where there might be issues.
Another helpful tool is the “budget and bids” view in your dashboard. Jump in there and you’ll get a percentage of the budget your spend each day. Hitting 110% for a week? Might want to reduce bids to ensure best results. Only spending 70% consistently? Consider upping your bids or changing your strategy. By checking in with these charts, you can be sure you never miss a thing!
You’ve graduated as a pro budgeter! You’re now ready to go out there and make the best LinkedIn budgeting decisions possible. Don’t feel 100% confident to go out there and master budgeting yet? We have a LinkedIn optimisation tool that can help you always ensure your budgeting choices are always on point. No matter how you’re feeling that day. How? With intelligent, AI-driven bidding recommendations and insights. Register now for early bird access to the platform once the beta version is released. Just head to the link below and fill out your details.
