Linkedin Course Episode Five

Heey there,

Today is the 5th edition of our 6(+) week, Linkedin Ads Junior Academy newsletter version. 

Today we'll be learning about monitoring & optimising ad campaigns.

We'll start today with a random fun fact.

Did you know that carrots can strengthen concrete?
I'll let you know why at the end of today's course.

However, if you find these insights valuable, the best way to support our work is by inviting your friends to become Dot Connecters and learn more about Connecting The Dots between marketing activities and financial goals.

Topic Of Today

• 📊 Understanding Campaign Manager Metrics

• 🔧 Basic Campaign Optimisation

• 🔍 Troubleshooting Common Issues

• 💬 Nurturing & Engagement Strategies

• 📌 Actionable Tips

• 📚 Homework

• 💡 Pro Tip

🎉 Week 4: Monitoring, Optimising & Engaging
in Your Ad Campaign 🎉

1. 📊 Understanding Campaign Manager Metrics

LinkedIn's Campaign Manager is a valuable tool with a bunch of metrics to help you understand how your campaigns are performing. These metrics include impressions, clicks, social actions, and conversions.

Understanding these metrics is a crucial part of developing better ads, so let’s run through each of them:

Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown to LinkedIn members.
A high number of impressions indicates that your ad is being seen by a large number of people.

However, impressions alone do not indicate engagement or effectiveness. It's important to look at impressions in conjunction with other metrics to get a more complete picture of your ad's performance

Clicks: The number of clicks on your ads. This is a direct measure of engagement. If your ad is compelling and relevant to the audience, it will generate more clicks.

A high click-through rate (CTR), which is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, indicates that your ad is resonating with your audience and compelling them to take action.

Of course, these clicks don’t necessarily mean a high number of conversions, but they reflect that your ad at least is working. If these don’t translate to conversions, then there is an issue lower down in the funnel, where the ad leads.

Social Actions: The number of likes, shares, comments, follows, and other social actions taken on your ads. These actions indicate a deeper level of engagement than clicks. They show that your audience is not only interested in your content but also wants to interact with it and share it with their network.

A high number of social actions can help increase the reach of your ads beyond your initial target audience.

Conversions: The number of desired actions taken by LinkedIn members after clicking on your ad. This could be anything from downloading an asset, signing up for an event, or making a purchase.

This metric is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your campaign in driving your desired outcomes. A high conversion rate indicates that your ad is not only attracting attention and engagement but also compelling users to take the action you want.

In addition to these basic metrics, LinkedIn's Campaign Manager has seen some updates and additions as of 2023:

A/B Test Function: This feature allows you to launch A/B tests to compare the performance of different aspects of your campaigns, such as Ad A/B Testing, Audience A/B Testing, and Placement A/B Testing. This can help you optimise your campaigns based on what works best for your target audience.

Email Work Validation in Lead Gen Forms: This feature validates that the user's email is not from a personal account such as Gmail or Hotmail. This can help ensure that you're reaching out to people on a relevant, professional channel rather than their personal ones.

Creation of Company Segments: This feature allows you to create a segment of companies based on their level of interaction with your ads. This can help you tailor your campaigns to target companies that have shown interest in your ads.

New Ad Formats: LinkedIn has introduced new ad formats such as Document Ads and In-stream Video Advertisements. However, it's worth noting that InMail Ads are being discontinued starting in June 2023.

LAN Publisher Report: This report shows you where your LinkedIn ads have been displayed if you have selected the option of LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN). This can help you understand where your ads are being seen and potentially optimise your ad placements.

These metrics and features are tools to help you understand and optimise your campaign. The key to running successful LinkedIn ad campaigns is continuous learning and optimisation.

2. 🔧 Basic Campaign Optimisation

Optimising your LinkedIn campaign is all about keeping a close eye on each element and its performance. This could involve refining your targeting, adjusting your bid strategy, or testing different ad creatives.

Remember, optimisation is an ongoing process and requires regular monitoring and adjustments.

Here are some key steps to optimise your LinkedIn campaigns:

Define & Regularly Update Your Target Audience: Identify your target market and create detailed profiles of your ideal customers.

Regularly review and update your target audience to ensure that your ad campaigns stay relevant and effective. LinkedIn allows you to target your ads based on job title, company size, industry, location, interests, groups, company growth rate, and more.

Create Great Ads: I know, how innovative... but really: your ads need to stand out for all the right reasons. Use compelling headlines and visuals to capture the attention of your target audience.

Make sure your ad looks good on both desktop and mobile devices. Keep the ad copy clear & to the point, and make sure the ad is easy to read structurally. Regularly review and optimise your headlines and visuals to make sure they’re effective at driving conversions.

Test, Test, and Then Test Some More: Testing different ad variations allows you to make data-driven decisions & optimise your LinkedIn ad performance.

Test different versions of your ad copy, visuals, targeting options, audience sizes, and ad formats to select and scale the winners. Make sure to only change one aspect at a time and to set your campaign to rotate ads evenly to begin with, as this will give each ad a fair chance.

Use LinkedIn’s Targeting Options: LinkedIn’s audience targeting options allow you to narrow down your audience and show your ads to specific groups of people on the platform.

This can be an effective way to reach the right audience and improve the performance of your ads. If you want to maintain strict control over who sees your ads, you might choose to disable the LinkedIn audience expansion from your campaigns as it can show your ads to irrelevant audiences.

Use LinkedIn’s Conversion Tracking: To set up conversion tracking on LinkedIn, you’ll need to install a small piece of code, called the LinkedIn Insight Tag, on your site. T

his will allow you to track a variety of conversion actions like form submissions, page views, clicks on a specific link, and more. Regularly tracking and analysing your conversions can help you make data-driven decisions to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Use LinkedIn’s Insights & Analytics: LinkedIn offers advanced analytics such as demographic data, interests, and job functions.

This data is extremely useful to help you understand who is interacting with your ads and how they are engaging with your content. Regularly track and analyse your data over time to get the most out of your LinkedIn budget.

Optimise for Mobile: Most people use LinkedIn on their mobile devices. Therefore, make sure your ads (copy structure too) and landing pages look great on mobile.

3. 🔍 Troubleshooting Common Issues

Running a LinkedIn ad campaign is not without its challenges. You might encounter issues with ad approvals, budgeting, or targeting.

When troubleshooting, it's important to understand the potential causes and know how to resolve them. For example, if your ad is not being shown, it could be due to a low bid, narrow audience targeting, or issues with your ad content/offer.

4. 💬 Nurturing and Engagement Strategies

Engagement is key to building relationships with your target buyers. This involves not only responding to comments and messages but also proactively reaching out to your audience. Consider using Sponsored InMail to send personalised messages or Conversation Ads to guide prospects through specific paths.

Based on Fullfunnel, continuous nurturing can be broken down into several key strategies:

• Thought Leadership and Expertise Content: Regularly share content that showcases your expertise and provides value to your audience. This could be blog posts, white papers, case studies, or even short tips and insights. The goal is to position your brand as a trusted advisor and go-to expert in your field.

• Engage with your audience by leaving thoughtful comments on their posts. This not only shows that you're actively involved in the community but also gives you a chance to showcase your expertise and insights.

• Engagement-Based Outreach: Reach out to individuals who have shown engagement with your content. This could be people who have liked, commented on or shared your posts. The outreach should be personalised and aim to start a conversation rather than push for a sale.

• Non-Sales Touches: Keep in touch with your audience without always trying to sell something. This could be sending them a relevant article, asking for their opinion on a topic, or simply wishing them well on a holiday (90-10 is a good mix between valuable content & well wishes). These non-sales touches help to build a relationship and keep your brand top of your mind.

• Thoughtful Follow-Ups and Social Selling: After the initial contact, it's essential to follow up in a thoughtful and personalised manner. This could involve sharing additional resources, answering questions, or providing further insights. Social selling involves using social media to find and engage with potential customers, providing them with value, and nurturing them through the sales process.

Remember, the goal of these strategies is to build relationships and nurture your audience. It's not about making a quick sale, but rather about establishing trust and credibility. By consistently providing value and engaging with your audience, you'll be able to build strong relationships that can eventually lead to sales opportunities.

5. 📌 Actionable Tips

Monitor Your Campaign Regularly: Keep an eye on your campaign metrics to understand how your campaign is performing. Use this information to make necessary adjustments.

Optimise for Performance: Make small adjustments to improve your campaign performance. This could involve tweaking your targeting, adjusting your bid strategy, or testing different ad creatives.

Troubleshoot Proactively: Understand the common issues that can arise during a campaign and how to resolve them. This will help you keep your campaign running smoothly.

Engage with Your Audience: Don't just wait for your audience to come to you. Reach out to them proactively and engage in meaningful conversations.

6. 📚 Homework:

Review Your Campaign Metrics: Spend some time in LinkedIn's Campaign Manager reviewing your campaign metrics. Try to understand what these metrics are telling you about your campaign performance.

Optimise Your Campaign: Based on your review of the campaign metrics, make one adjustment to improve your campaign performance. This could be a change in targeting, bid strategy, or ad creative.

Troubleshoot an Issue: Think of a hypothetical issue that could arise during your campaign. How would you resolve it?
Plan an Engagement Strategy: Plan a strategy for engaging with your audience. This could involve sending personalised messages via Sponsored InMail or guiding prospects through specific paths with Conversation Ads.

7. 💡 Pro Tip:

Remember, optimisation is an ongoing process.

Don't be afraid to test different strategies and make adjustments as needed.
The key to a successful LinkedIn ad campaign is continuous learning and optimisation.

We love Justin Rowe's emphasis on the importance of not just blindly using someone else's playbook, but rather building on great foundations and with time creating your own strategies based on your unique strengths.

Try & go deep on one platform and commit to consistency and engagement.

That’s a wrap for Week 4.

We’ve had week 1 & week 1 part 2, week 2 & 3 and week 4 today.

Fun fact answer: The cellulose of carrots, stated as nanoplatelets are used as an additive for cement to alter its strength properties. These cellulose are fibrous-like materials that alter the way water behaves during cement hydration

Isn't that just fun?

Stay tuned for next week, when we will talk about Reporting and Analysis of your Ad Campaigns.

Keep learning and growing! 🚀 ❤️

New episodes of Connecting The Dots & Business Companion are coming out each week, so stay tuned.

Subscribe to our podcast and keep an eye on your inbox for the next edition of our newsletter as well.

LinkedIn posts worth reading this week:


1. More Money » Worse Results
Why dumping more money on an audience might ruin it.

2. 1 ad » $200.000 in Revenue
A 5-step research process called ‘SCARF’.

3. What is a "good" number of video views in B2B?
How to redefine video performance in B2B.