LinkedIn ADS: 7 Tips to Optimize Costs and Increase ROAS

LinkedIn ADSLinkedIn's advertising program, has among its strengths the surgical ability to profile a target in the B2B sphere, which arrives (to cite the criteria of profiling among the most common in the advertising platform) to be able to target simultaneously those who hold a certain professional role in a company of a certain size and a certain sector.

How much does LinkedIn Ad cost? CPC and CPM Costs of LinkedIn Advertising

Precisely this accuracy in profiling is considered, in the literature on the subject, as the cause of the high costs of LinkedIn ADS, also confirmed by the Adstage Q1 2020 Paid Media Benchmark Report, according to which CPC and CPM of LinkedIn ADS are up to 3-5 times higher than Facebook AdvertisingJust to remain in the sphere of advertising tools in the social sphere.

As you can see from the graphs below, an average CPC on LinkedIn ADS hovers around 3.2 $ and the CPM around $5.81 (also very optimistic in my opinion, especially without manual bidding).

Let's go deeper into the topic of LinkedIn ADS costs, with 7 operational tips to optimize costs and increase the ROAS of your LinkedIn ADS campaigns. Lead Generation on LinkedIn ADS.

#1 Switch to Manual Bid

The bid is the maximum price you are willing to pay for a key result, such as a click. LinkedIn offers bid types where you can choose manual and automatic bids: you can optimize your CPC by switching from automatic to manual bidding (there is however a minimum below which you cannot go). 

From this point of view a good strategy to test is the Floor Bidding of B2Linked, the agency of AJ Wilcox, a well-known US consultant.

It basically consists in setting the manual CPC to the minimum allowed by LinkedIn Ads (at floor level, floor, hence the name of the strategy) and raise it gradually until you can accumulate impressions, clicks and spend the whole daily budget, as well as see if performance improves. Here, let's talk about performance.

#2 Improves performance 

Another way to keep CPC in check is to optimize campaign performance by increasing CTR. Better CTRs correspond to more content CPCs.

From this point of view consider that, although the AdStage report already mentioned considers an average CTR of 0.22%, we can speak of good CTR starting from 1%.

#3 CPM high? It depends

The CPM, from my experience and from what we read in the literature on the subject, varies greatly depending on the profiled target (certain profiling criteria are more expensive, others less so, certain Audience sizes cost more, others less) and the promotional objective and format (some more expensive, others less so).

#4 Consider the ROAS

Ok, LinkedIn ADS costs money: but you use it in B2B and in industries where ROAS (return on advertising investment) is high. So if a click costs and you have a high CPL, this is offset by the fact that if the lead becomes a customer your return on advertising investment will be in the black.

#5 Consider Minimum Campaign Budget

Although by default the minimum budget for the campaign is set to 25 €, you can reduce it to the "minimum wage" of spending on a campaign of 10 € per day: this means that if you have a budget of 30 € per day, you can "run" simultaneously up to 3 campaigns. 

LinkedIn can spend more on a daily basis than the budget set for the campaign, but in some cases less, especially with certain promotional goals. So if you have a set budget consider this aspect.

#6 Choose the best optimization target

Choose the most appropriate optimization objective (function also present in Facebook Advertising): by default, it is aligned with the campaign objective, but depending on the promotional objective chosen you can have different ones, for example in the Site Visits objective next to Landing Page clicks there is a possibility to choose for an optimization by Impressions.   

#7 Choose the right type of offer

LinkedIn currently has 3 types of bidding: Maximum Delivery, Target Cost, Manual. Each has pros and cons and certain ways to use them.

  • Maximum Delivery: LinkedIn automatically sets and adjusts your offer to help you get the most results possible using your entire budget. 
  • Target Cost: LinkedIn automatically adjusts your bid to help you get the most results possible, ensuring that your average daily cost does not exceed your target cost by 30%. 
  • Manual: you determine your bidding. Depending on how other advertisers bid, your actual cost per result may vary. 

Thinking about running a campaign on LinkedIn Ads or want to optimize cost and performance of your current campaigns? Contact me for a LinkedIn Ads Consulting. Want to learn how to generate profiled B2B leads while spending less? Discover the LinkedIn Ads Video Course.

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