LinkedIn is one of the most popular advertising platforms, especially since it caters specifically to B2B businesses. Therefore, it makes sense to invest some of your marketing budget into LinkedIn Ads.
However, people always want to know how much to spend on LinkedIn Ads. And since I run a paid ads agency, I get asked this question a lot. However, there are a lot of factors to consider, such as the minimum budget for paid advertising.
Aside from that, you shouldn’t just be thinking about the minimum you can spend on LinkedIn Ads – you should also think about how much to spend to see actual results.
So, how do you do that?
- You need to understand the factors that influence LinkedIn advertising costs
- You need to determine the best budget for your business’s LinkedIn Ads
- You need to figure out how to make the most of that budget
1. Understanding factors that influence LinkedIn advertising costs
To determine how much you should budget for LinkedIn ads, you need to think about the following factors:
- Campaign objective: the outcome you want to achieve with your campaigns will determine how much you need to spend on them. For example, a campaign that is aimed at lead generation will cost more than one aiming to get impressions since conversions are more valuable. You may also have the marketing objective of getting more website traffic.
- Target audience: if you have a lot of competitors vying for the same target audience, you need to spend more on ads to beat them at it.
- Ad format: high-engagement ad formats like videos and message ads will naturally cost more than other options like text ads.
- Bidding strategy: since LinkedIn works as an ad auction, you need to have a good bidding strategy. If you’re not sure how this works, consider getting a LinkedIn Ads agency to manage your ads for you.
- Quality of ads: if you have a good quality score on your ads, LinkedIn will reward you with lower ad fees.
- Ad optimisation: gathering data is only the first step. You need to then use that data to optimise your ads so that you use your campaign budget more effectively.
2. How to determine your LinkedIn advertising budget
Now that you’ve spent some time considering the factors above, it’s time to actually set your budget using those guidelines. Here’s how:
- Have clear goals: since your objectives affect your budget, it makes sense to have clear goals so that you can have a budget that aligns with this.
- Know your audience: again, your audience is something that will impact your LinkedIn advertising fees, so it makes sense that the better you know your audience, the easier it will be to know how much it will cost you to target them with your ads.
Look up average costs: if you really have no idea where to start with your budget, you can look up benchmark costs for ads in your industry, and aim for a budget that more or less aligns with the average.
3. Getting the most out of your LinkedIn Ads budget
You know which factors affect your LinkedIn budget, and you know how to determine said budget, so what’s next? Making the most of your budget. Having a big budget isn’t much use if you’re wasting it.
- Run A/B tests: instead of putting all your faith into one ad, try running multiple ads and testing them against each other to see which ones perform best. Test one ad copy against another, and do the same for other factors like ad types and creatives.
- Segment your audience: you also don’t need to just target one audience. You can segment a bigger audience into smaller categories for more personalised targeting.
- Optimise your bids: this forms part of the bidding strategy mentioned earlier. Don’t be afraid to play around with different bidding strategies or test different bid amounts to see what works for you.
- Think about when to run your LinkedIn ads: you don’t need to run your ads all the time. If you notice a trend where your ads perform really well on some days and not on others, you can schedule them to only appear on certain days so that you’re using your ad spend effectively.
- Use landing pages to your benefit: instead of always sending users to your website, consider designing personalised landing pages for your ad campaigns and sending users there instead.
- Move your budget where it works: once you’ve been running ads long enough to see what type of ad format works and what doesn’t, you can shift more of your ad spend towards successful LinkedIn ad campaigns.
- Track conversions: finally, to know which ad format works, you need to track your conversions to know which ads they’re coming from.
Final words
Paid advertising can be a risky gamble. On the one hand, if you spend too much, you could stand to lose money. On the other, if you spend too little, you won’t see the results you want. That’s why it’s so important to have a good strategy. Using data as your guidance will reduce the risks and help you turn your ads into money. If you feel like you need some professional help with this, feel free to fill in the form below to get in touch with my ads agency.