LinkedIn is where you can advertise to people by their job, employer and industry, and its reports use their own vocabulary. This page explains each term simply, and why it matters to your business.
Campaign Manager is the tool inside LinkedIn where ads are built, managed and reported on. It is also where you set up conversion tracking and see audience data.
Its figures are LinkedIn's own record of what happened. We read them next to your enquiries and sales records, since the two seldom match exactly.
The ad account holds your campaigns, billing details and conversion tracking. It is linked to your LinkedIn Company Page, and several people can have different levels of access.
As with other platforms, it matters who owns it. An account opened by a previous agency under its own name is hard to take over later.
Your Company Page is your business's profile on LinkedIn. Your ads run under its name, and it is where people go to find out more about you after seeing one.
A Page with little content or no recent updates makes the ads less believable, so it is worth keeping tidy before the ads start.
For example, a payroll software firm runs ads that look credible, but a prospect who clicks the logo finds an empty Page. They are less likely to enquire than if there were a few recent posts and a clear description.
Depending on how the account is set up, LinkedIn holds these choices in a campaign, or in ad sets inside a campaign: the objective, the audience you are targeting, the budget, the bidding method and the ads. Each is reported on its own.
We test a new audience or a new goal as its own campaign or ad set, so that its results can be read separately.
Sponsored content is the family of ads that appear directly in the LinkedIn feed, looking much like ordinary posts but marked as promoted. It includes image, video, carousel, document and thought leader ads.
It is seen by people while they are browsing the feed, instead of being tucked into a sidebar.
The objective tells LinkedIn what you want from the campaign, such as awareness, website visits, engagement, video views, lead generation or website conversions. Its exact list changes, so we check it when setting up.
The objective, together with the bidding strategy you choose, decides what you are charged for, which can be impressions, clicks or video views depending on the setup. Choosing the wrong objective is a common and costly mistake.
For example, an accountancy firm that picks website visits when it wants enquiries gets plenty of clicks from people reading the blog and few form submissions. A lead generation objective would ask LinkedIn to find people who complete the form.
The lead generation objective is built to produce enquiries inside LinkedIn, normally using a Lead Gen Form. It is the usual choice for a B2B business wanting contact details in volume.
Because the form is so easy to complete, the number of leads may be high while the share worth ringing is lower, so lead quality needs tracking.
Website conversions asks LinkedIn to find people likely to complete a specific action on your own website, such as booking a demo. It needs conversion tracking installed.
It tends to bring fewer but more intentional leads than a Lead Gen Form, so we compare the two on lead quality as well as cost.
For example, a recruitment agency sends traffic to a page where employers request a call, and counts each submitted request as a conversion.
See also Conversions
The bidding strategy tells LinkedIn how to spend your budget. Maximum delivery lets LinkedIn set the bids automatically to use your whole budget, and LinkedIn recommends it as a way to see what your budget can achieve. Cost cap lets you set an average cost per result that LinkedIn tries to stay under, and manual bidding lets you set the amount you are willing to bid.
What is available depends on the objective and ad format. Manual bidding gives the most control, but LinkedIn says it might not deliver the same results as the automated strategies, so we use it only when there is enough volume to justify it.
A daily budget is the average amount you want to spend each day. On a given day LinkedIn can spend up to twice that, within a weekly limit of seven times the daily budget on a continuous schedule. A lifetime budget is the total spent across the whole schedule, from start date to end date.
What you pay is set by an auction, and LinkedIn says the cost depends on how desirable your target audience is to other advertisers. A narrow professional audience can therefore be expensive, so we need a budget big enough for the campaign to collect meaningful results.
For example, a managed IT firm with a budget of R500 a day may collect too few leads in a month to judge anything, so we would run fewer campaigns with more behind each.
Depending on the objective, bidding strategy and optimisation goal, LinkedIn charges for each click (CPC), for each thousand times the ad is shown (CPM) or, for video, for each view. It is worth checking which one your campaign is charged on.
Costs are set by an auction among advertisers trying to reach the same people, so a narrow professional audience can cost more per click than a broad one. We judge LinkedIn on the cost of an enquiry compared with what a customer is worth, not on the click price alone.
For example, if a software firm pays R100 a click and one click in twenty becomes a demo request, a demo costs R2,000. Whether that is worth it depends on what a customer is worth.
See also ClicksImpressions
LinkedIn lets you target people by their stated job title, function (such as finance or operations) and seniority. This is what makes it distinctive for B2B.
It works best when the titles are well chosen. A title list that is too narrow produces a tiny audience, and one that is too wide wastes money on the wrong people.
For example, a firm selling payroll software targets finance managers and HR managers at companies of 50 to 500 staff, not everyone with the word manager.
You can target by the industry people work in, the size of their employer and, with a list, by named companies. These can be combined with job details to describe a very specific buyer.
Combining too many filters shrinks the audience until LinkedIn cannot deliver the ads.
Matched audiences are groups you build from your own data: website visitors, contact lists, lists of target companies, and people who engaged with your LinkedIn content or forms. LinkedIn matches them to profiles.
They are used to retarget people who already know you, and to include or exclude particular companies. Using a contact list needs a lawful basis for holding that data.
For example, a commercial cleaning company uploads a list of 300 target offices and shows them a case study ad over several weeks.
See also Data protection
Account-based marketing means advertising to a chosen list of companies instead of a broad audience. It suits businesses with a small number of high-value customers.
It reaches fewer people but aims to put the spend on the companies that could actually buy.
Predictive audiences use LinkedIn's models to find people similar to those who have already converted for you. You supply a source group, such as your leads or customers.
They help when the targeting you can describe by hand is too narrow or too blunt.
Audience expansion is an option that lets LinkedIn widen your targeting to people similar to those you chose. It increases reach, and LinkedIn switches it on automatically where it is available, so it is worth checking.
It also dilutes your targeting, so we use it with care and compare results with it on and off.
The LinkedIn Audience Network is an option that extends your ads beyond the LinkedIn feed to approved partner sites and apps. LinkedIn says it can help lower the cost per result, though that is not guaranteed.
Because the ads appear off LinkedIn, the quality of the people reached can differ, so we check where the results are coming from.
A single image ad is one picture with introductory text and a headline, shown in the feed. It is simple to make and works for a clear offer.
Whether a plain graphic stating a specific benefit works better than a polished brand image is something we test rather than assume.
A carousel ad lets people swipe through several cards, each with its own image and link. It can be used to show steps or compare services.
Each card is a place for someone to click, so the figures per card tell us which message interests people.
A document ad lets people read a PDF, such as a guide or checklist, without leaving LinkedIn. You can ask for a form to be completed after the first few pages.
It suits businesses that sell on expertise, as people get a taste of your thinking before they hand over their details.
For example, a firm of employment lawyers offers a checklist for managing redundancies. The first three pages are free to read, and the rest sit behind a short form.
Thought leader ads let you promote a post written by an individual, such as your founder or a senior colleague, rather than the company. The ad appears to come from them.
People tend to trust a named person more than a logo. It needs the person's agreement and a post worth promoting.
For example, a managing director of a logistics company writes a post about delays at a port. The company promotes it to import managers, and it reads as advice from a person, not an advert.
A Lead Gen Form opens inside LinkedIn with details from the person's profile, such as their name and email, already filled in. They submit in a couple of taps and never leave the platform.
Because it takes so little effort it can bring in more leads than a form on your own website, and the details come from the profile. Where you add fields such as company and job title, they are especially useful for judging fit.
For example, a cybersecurity consultancy gets 55 form submissions in a month. Most come from IT managers at the right size of company, and the job titles tell the sales team who to call first.
Lead quality is whether a lead is a real prospect that you can sell to. LinkedIn's report shows the volume and cost, but not whether the lead was any good.
We add a qualifying question to the form where it helps, and check the leads against your own records of who became a customer.
For example, 40 leads at R1,200 looks better than 12 leads at R3,000, until you learn that 6 of the second group became clients and 1 of the first did.
See also Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn can send leads from forms straight to many CRM systems, and can receive back which leads became qualified. That lets it learn from the leads that matter.
Without that link, leads can sit in a download until someone collects them, so follow-up is slower.
The Insight Tag is a small piece of code on your website that lets LinkedIn count visits and actions from your ads, and build audiences of your visitors. It is needed for website conversion tracking and retargeting.
If it is missing or blocked, LinkedIn cannot see the results of your campaigns on the website, so the report will understate them. Where consent is required, it should only run in line with the visitor's choice.
For example, a training company installs the tag and finds that 14 course enquiries came after someone had seen a LinkedIn ad, which the ad report alone would not have shown.
See also Cookie consentConversions
The LinkedIn Conversions API sends results from your server, or your CRM, to LinkedIn, rather than relying on the visitor's browser. It can also report offline events such as a deal signed after a phone call.
LinkedIn recommends using it alongside the Insight Tag, and events sent both ways are counted once when they share the same event ID. The setup needs a developer or a supported connection.
For example, a software firm sends LinkedIn the date a lead became a paying customer, so reports show which ads led to signed contracts, not just form fills.
A conversion rule tells LinkedIn which action counts as a result, such as a thank-you page being loaded or a form completing, and which campaigns it applies to. It is created in Campaign Manager.
Too many rules, or ones that overlap, count the same enquiry more than once.
For example, a thank-you page rule and a button-click rule both set for the same enquiry would record two conversions for every one real lead.
See also Double countingKey events
A conversion window is how long after someone clicks or sees an ad LinkedIn still gives it the credit for a result. Separate windows can be set for clicks and for views.
B2B sales are slow, so a long window is reasonable. LinkedIn lets you choose 1, 7, 30 or 90 days, and for most conversions recommends a 90 day click and 90 day view window, which is the default in Campaign Manager. A long window also makes LinkedIn's numbers look bigger than a short-window system such as your analytics, so comparisons need the settings checked first.
For example, a director clicks an ad on 10 March, reads the case study and requests a demo on 2 April. A 30 day click window credits LinkedIn, while a seven day window does not.
See also Attribution
Engagement rate is the proportion of impressions that led to any interaction, including likes and comments. Click-through rate is the proportion that led to a click.
A post can attract many likes from people who will never buy, so we pay closer attention to clicks, leads and your own sales records.
For example, a thought leader ad has 6,000 impressions, 120 clicks and 20 likes. The click-through rate is 2 per cent.
See also Click-through rate