LinkedIn Ad Mastery: Choose the Right Campaign Objective & Supercharge Your Marketing Success

In this article, we will talk about the various campaign objectives offered by LinkedIn and provide valuable insights to help you maximise the effectiveness of your B2B marketing efforts. From increasing brand awareness to generating high-quality leads, we will guide you through selecting and optimising your LinkedIn campaign objectives for the best results.

By understanding the nuances of each objective, you can create targeted and impactful advertising campaigns that drive growth and success for your business.‍

What Are Campaign Objectives?‍

LinkedIn campaign objectives are your primary marketing goals for your advertising campaigns on the platform. They help you align your marketing efforts with your overall business objectives and optimise your ads for the desired outcome.

When creating a campaign on LinkedIn, your first step is to choose your campaign objective from seven options. LinkedIn then tailors the ad formats, targeting options, and bidding strategies to suit your specified goal.

By selecting the right objective, you can significantly improve the performance of your campaigns and your budget, resulting in a higher return on investment and more effective B2B lead generation. Additionally, it enables LinkedIn to optimise your campaigns based on specific metrics, such as click-through rates, conversions, or engagement, depending on your chosen objective.

Next, I will explain the different campaign objectives available and give an example of their use.‍

What Are The 7 Campaign Objectives Available?‍

Brand Awareness

The Brand Awareness campaign objective helps businesses increase their reach and visibility among a highly targeted professional audience. By focusing on impressions, this objective aims to maximise the number of times your ads are seen by your target audience, ultimately raising brand recognition and recall.

This campaign objective is ideal for businesses that want to establish a strong presence in their industry, create a buzz around new products or services, or expand their market reach.

Optimisation Goals Available:

1. Impressions: This is the number of times your ad is displayed on LinkedIn, regardless of whether it's clicked on. By optimising for impressions, you aim to maximise the number of times your ad is shown to users. This can increase your ad's visibility and boost your brand's awareness among a larger audience.
2. Reach: Reach is the total number of unique users who see your ad on LinkedIn. Optimising for reach focuses on increasing the number of individual users exposed to your ad rather than the total number of times your ad is displayed. This approach ensures that your brand awareness campaign reaches a more diverse audience, exposing your brand to a wider range of potential customers.
   

Bid Strategies Available:

1. Maximum Delivery (Automated): With this bidding type, LinkedIn automatically optimises your bid to maximise the number of impressions your ads receive within your budget. You pay on a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis, and LinkedIn ensures the best possible delivery of your ads.
2. Target Cost: This bidding type allows you to set a target cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) you'd like to achieve. LinkedIn will adjust your bids to reach your target cost while maintaining efficient ad delivery. This option balances control and optimisation for your brand awareness campaigns.
3. Manual Bidding: This option gives you complete control over your bid, allowing you to set a maximum cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) you're willing to pay. LinkedIn will show your ads as much as possible without exceeding the CPM you've set. Still, you won't benefit from automatic optimisation. This bidding type is suitable when you want the most control over your ad spend while focusing on maximising impressions for your brand awareness campaign.
   

Ad Formats Available:

• Single image ads
• Carousel image ads
• Video ads
• Event ads
• Text ads
• Follower ads
• Spotlight ads
• Document ads
• Conversation ads

Example Scenario:

A FinTech company, FinTechPro, has recently launched a cutting-edge payment processing solution for businesses. They want to create a brand awareness campaign on LinkedIn to showcase their innovative product and reach potential clients in their target industries.

FinTechPro chooses to optimise its campaign for reach, ensuring its ads are shown to a diverse audience of unique users within its target market. This strategy helps them establish brand recognition among various professionals in the finance industry.

They opt for a target cost bidding strategy to achieve their goal, allowing them to set a desired average cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) while maintaining control over their ad spend. This approach ensures that their budget is used efficiently while maximising their ad's exposure to relevant audiences.

FinTechPro leverages several ad formats, such as Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Display Ads, to showcase their innovative payment solutions and attract the attention of their target audience. Using a mix of ad formats, they can engage users across different touchpoints on LinkedIn and create a strong brand presence.

Through the Brand Awareness Campaign Objective, FinTechpro successfully increases its brand recognition among finance professionals. This lays the groundwork for future business opportunities and long-term growth.

Website Visits

This objective focuses on driving traffic to your website or landing page by enticing LinkedIn users to click on your ads. This objective is ideal for businesses looking to increase their online presence, promote specific products or services, or generate traffic for the top of their sales funnel.

Optimisation Goals Available:

• Landing page clicks: This strategy focuses on driving traffic to your website and is the default goal for the website visits objective.
• Impressions

Bid Strategies Available:

• Maximum delivery (automated)
• Cost cap: With this strategy, you can set a maximum cost per click (CPC) that you're willing to pay. At the same time, LinkedIn optimises your campaign to achieve the lowest possible CPC.
• Manual bidding: This gives you complete control over your bids, allowing you to set a specific CPC or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM).

Ad Formats Available:

• Single image ads
• Carousel image ads
• Video ads
• Event ads
• Text ads
• Message ads
• Conversation ads
• Spotlight ads

Example Scenario: DigitalMarketingCo, a digital marketing agency, wants to increase website traffic to showcase their latest case studies and service offerings. They decide to run a LinkedIn campaign with the website visits objective.

To achieve their goal, DigitalMarketingCo optimises their campaign for landing page clicks, ensuring they get the most clicks within their budget. They opt for a cost-cap bidding strategy to maximise their return on investment while controlling their ad spend.

DigitalMarketingCo utilises ad formats, such as Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Display Ads, to present their case studies and services engagingly and appealingly. Using different ad formats, they can effectively reach their target audience and drive them to their website.

DigitalMarketingCo successfully increases website traffic through this targeted approach, raising awareness of their services and generating potential leads.

Engagement

The engagement campaign aims to boost interactions with your content and increase your brand's presence on LinkedIn. By encouraging likes, comments, shares, and follows, this objective helps you create a stronger connection with your target audience and foster meaningful conversations around your brand.

Optimisation Goals Available:

• Engagement: This includes likes, comments, shares, and follows.
• Impressions

Bid Strategies Available:

• Maximum delivery (automated): Get the most engagement within your budget.
• Cost cap: Set a maximum cost you're willing to pay per engagement (CPE) or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
• Manual bidding

Ad Formats Available:

• Single image ads
• Carousel image ads
• Video ads
• Event ads
• Message ads
• Follower ads
• Document ads
• Conversation ads

Example Scenario: Let's say that BusinessInfluencerXYZ, a well-known business thought leader, wants to increase engagement with their content on LinkedIn to grow their personal brand and expand their network. They decide to run a LinkedIn campaign with the engagement objective.

To achieve their goal, BusinessInfluencerXYZ optimises their campaign for engagement, ensuring they get the most interactions within their budget. They opt for a cost-cap bidding strategy to maximise their return on investment while controlling their ad spend.

BusinessInfluencerXYZ utilises Sponsored Content to promote their thought-provoking articles, insightful webinars, and informative podcasts in the LinkedIn feed. They also use Sponsored InMail to personally invite members of their target audience to engage with their content and join the conversation.

Through this targeted approach, they successfully increase engagement with their content, strengthening their personal brand and broadening their network on LinkedIn.

Video Views

This campaign objective is ideal for businesses and professionals looking to increase the visibility of their video content on LinkedIn. Optimising for video views can effectively reach your target audience and encourage them to watch and interact with your videos, ultimately boosting your brand's presence and authority on the platform.

Optimisation Goals Available:

• Video views: A view is counted when your video is visible on the screen for 2 seconds or more.
• Impressions

Bid Strategies Available:

• Maximum delivery (automated): LinkedIn automatically adjusts your bids to get the most video views within your budget.
• Cost cap: Set a maximum cost per view (CPV) or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
• Manual bidding: Set a specific Cost Per Video View (CPV) or CPM.

Ad Formats Available:

• Video ads

Example Scenario: BCSolutions, an experienced business consultant, wants to showcase their expertise and generate interest in their consulting services by sharing informative and engaging video content on LinkedIn. They decide to run a LinkedIn campaign with the video views objective.

BCSolutions choose to optimise their campaign for video views to achieve their goal, ensuring they get the most views within their budget. They opt for a cost-cap bidding strategy to maximise their return on investment while controlling their ad spend.

They create high-quality videos covering market analysis, business strategy, and performance improvement. They use LinkedIn's targeting options to reach their ideal audience, including professionals in their target industries, decision-makers, and potential clients.

Through this targeted approach, BCSolutions successfully increased the visibility and engagement of their video content, positioning themselves as an authority and thought leader in their industry and attracting new clients to their consulting services.

Lead Generation

The lead generation campaign objective is designed for businesses to collect valuable contact information from potential customers. By using this objective, companies can effectively capture leads directly within the LinkedIn platform, streamlining the process and increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Optimisation goals available:

1. Leads (optimised focusing on generation leads. This is the default goal)
2. Clicks
3. Impressions

Bid strategies available:

1. Maximum delivery (automated): Maximise the number of leads, clicks or impressions you can generate with your budget
2. Cost cap: The maximum you're willing to pay for a lead, a click or per 1000 impressions.
3. Manual bidding

Ad formats available:

• Single image ads
• Carousel image ads
• Video ads
• Document ads
• Message ads
• Conversation ads

Example Scenario:

TechRevolution Solutions" is a cutting-edge software development agency specialising in custom software solutions for various industries. They have recently developed an innovative project management tool specifically designed for remote teams and are looking to generate leads for a free product trial.

To achieve this, they create a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn, targeting IT managers, CTOs, and project managers in mid-sized companies within specific industries. They make a compelling sponsored content piece that highlights the unique features of their project management tool and explains how it can improve productivity and collaboration for remote teams.

TechRevolution Solutions optimises their campaign for leads, ensuring that their ads drive users to fill out a lead generation form directly on LinkedIn, making it easy for potential customers to express their interest in the free trial. They choose a cost-cap bidding strategy to control advertising costs, focusing on acquiring leads within a specific budget.

After launching their lead generation campaign, TechRevolution Solutions monitors the results closely, using LinkedIn's analytics to track the number of leads collected, conversion rates, and overall engagement.

By continually refining their targeting, ad creatives, and bid strategies, TechRevolution Solutions successfully generates high-quality leads, resulting in increased product trials and, ultimately, more customers for their innovative project management tool.

Website Conversions

The Website Conversions campaign objective is designed to help businesses drive valuable website actions, such as form submissions, sign-ups, or purchases.

This campaign objective is perfect for companies looking to track and optimise for specific conversion events, allowing them to gain better insights into the effectiveness of their advertising efforts and ultimately achieve a higher return on their advertising spend.

Optimisation Goals:

• Website Conversions: Optimise for valuable actions on your website.
• Landing Page Clicks
• Impressions
  

Bid Strategies:

1. Maximum Delivery (Automated): LinkedIn optimises to get the most website conversions within your budget.
2. Cost Cap
3. Manual Bidding
   

Ad Formats Available:

• Single image ads
• Carousel image ads
• Video ads
• Text ads
• Spotlight ads
• Message ads
• Conversation ads

Example Scenario: CoffeeCorp is a corporate coffee machine provider offering high-quality coffee solutions for businesses of all sizes. They have recently launched a new line of eco-friendly, energy-efficient coffee machines and are looking to drive sales and inquiries.

CoffeeCorp creates a website conversions campaign to drive potential clients to a dedicated landing page where they can learn more about their eco-friendly coffee machines and request a quote. They carefully craft their target audience, focusing on facility managers, office managers, and procurement professionals within specific industries and locations.

To track the success of their campaign, CoffeeCorp sets up a conversion event for the quote requests, allowing them to measure the number of inquiries generated directly from their LinkedIn ads. They choose a cost-cap bidding strategy to control advertising costs while driving the desired outcome of generating quote requests.

After launching their website conversions campaign, CoffeeCorp continuously monitors the campaign's performance, using LinkedIn's analytics to track the number of conversions, cost per conversion, and overall return on ad spend.

By making data-driven decisions and optimising their targeting, ad creatives, and bid strategies, CoffeeCorp successfully generates a significant number of quote requests, contributing to the overall growth and success of their new eco-friendly coffee machine line.

Job Applicants

The Job Applicants campaign objective helps companies attract qualified candidates and drive them to apply for job openings on their website. It allows businesses to showcase their job opportunities to a targeted audience of professionals, making it easier to find the right candidate for the position.

Optimisation Goals Available

• Landing Page Clicks
• Impressions

Ad Formats Available

• Jobs Ad
• Single Jobs Ad
• Spotlight Ad
• Single Image Ad

Example Scenario: Suppose "ConstructCo," a leading construction company, is looking for a qualified Quantity Surveyor to join their team. They run a Job Applicants campaign on LinkedIn to reach out to suitable candidates.

ConstructCo optimises their campaign for landing page clicks to drive more potential applicants to their website's job application page. They decide to use the Single Jobs Ad format, creating a customised ad with an eye-catching image, a compelling headline, and a clear call-to-action, encouraging users to apply for the Quantity Surveyor position.

To target the right audience, ConstructCo sets their targeting parameters to focus on professionals with experience in the construction industry, a background in quantity surveying, and relevant qualifications.

After launching their campaign, ConstructCo closely monitors the performance of their ads, using LinkedIn's analytics to track the number of landing page clicks, impressions, and completed job applications.

By making data-driven decisions and optimising their targeting, ad creatives, and bid strategies, ConstructCo successfully attracts many qualified applicants for the Quantity Surveyor position, ultimately finding the ideal candidate.

In conclusion, selecting the right campaign objective is crucial for LinkedIn advertising success. Each objective serves a unique purpose: raising brand awareness, driving website traffic, increasing engagement, generating leads, or promoting job opportunities. By aligning your campaign objective with your marketing goals, you can ensure that your ads reach the right audience and deliver results.

Are you interested in generating more business on LinkedIn? Let's discuss how we can help you optimise your LinkedIn advertising strategy and unlock new growth opportunities for your business.

Contact me today for a free consultation.