No Time? No Money? No Problem! How You Can Get The Beginner's Guide To LinkedIn Ads: A Step-By-Step Tutorial With A Zero-Dollar Budget

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If you have a business, LinkedIn is an essential tool for staying connected. The professional network has over 400 million users and continues to grow. Businesses of every size can benefit from a presence on the site; for example, research indicates that users are willing to buy from businesses they follow on LinkedIn. 

In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll walk you through creating your first LinkedIn advertising campaign as a brand new marketer. If you’re reading this, it means you have zero experience with paid ads and are intimidated by the idea of trying something new. 

That’s why we’ve written this article just for you! Don’t worry, we won’t be asking you to set up your own Google AdWords account or anything like that. Instead, we will take you through the essentials of getting started with a LinkedIn Ads account, including:

Step 1: Create A LinkedIn Ads Account

The first step in launching your LinkedIn Ads campaign is to create an account on the platform. You’ll need to be logged in to your existing LinkedIn account to do this. From there, click “Advertising” and then “Advertise on LinkedIn”. 

You’ll be asked to enter a few details, such as your name and the website you want to drive traffic to. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to move onto the next step. As you set up your account, keep in mind that you will be billed on a recurring basis each month. 

If you don’t have the budget to pay for an advertising campaign, there’s no reason to set up an account. It’s okay to start small; in fact, we recommend it. There’s no sense in spending a ton of money on ads if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead, start out with a low daily budget and see what happens. You can adjust your spending at any time.

Step 2: Set Your Marketing Goals

Before you start creating ads, you need to decide what your goals are for the campaign. Do you want to increase website traffic? Do you want to sell more products? Do you want to generate leads? Whatever your goals are, you need to write them down and keep them in mind as you create your ads. 

This will help you stay focused and make sure that all of your ads are laser-targeted towards a specific goal. This will also help you measure the effectiveness of your ads; in other words, you’ll know whether or not they’re working. 

There are several key metrics you can use to measure the success of your LinkedIn Ads campaign. Of course, the ultimate goal of any campaign is to make sales. But how do you know how many sales to expect? What’s the average number of sales per lead? If you’re using LinkedIn to drive sales, you want to track the number of clicks your ad gets and the number of leads it generates.

Step 3: Define Your Target Audience

Before you start creating ads, you need to know who you’re targeting. This will help you create better ads that are more likely to convert. You can also use this information to create a targeted personas. Some of the information you need to define your target audience includes: 

• Job Title - What type of job do they have? What industry do they work in? What are their responsibilities at work? 
• Education - Where do they go to school? What degrees do they have? 
• Location - Where do they live? What city/state? What country? 
• Age - How old are they? What’s their average age? 
• Gender - What is their gender? Male? Female? Transgender? 
• Behavioral - What type of activities do they enjoy? What do they like to do when they’re not at work? How do they spend their free time? You can also create a persona based on your existing customer base. Start by looking at your sales data. What do your customers have in common? What can you glean from their purchase history?

Step 4: Decide On An Advertising Package

Before you get started with creating ads, you have to select an advertising package. There are 3 main options to choose from: 

• Sponsored content - This is a way to promote your business by publishing native ads (ads that are posted on the site as regular content). Sponsored content is a great way to get your content seen by more people because it gets added to relevant LinkedIn feeds. 
• Display ads - These are regular ads that appear in the right rail of the site. Compared to sponsored content, display ads are less personalized. They don’t appear in feeds or next to member’s content. 
• In-mail ads - These are emails that are sent directly to your leads. They include a hyperlink that leads to your website.

Step 5: Write Your Ad Copy

When you’re writing your ads, keep these 3 things in mind: 

• Be specific - Be as specific as possible. The more specific you are, the more likely it is your ad will convert. 
• Be relevant - Your ads need to be relevant to your target audience. If they’re not, you’ll drive people away. 
• Be engaging - Your ads need to be engaging. If they’re not, no one will click on them. You also need to keep LinkedIn’s rules in mind when writing your ads. These rules are in place to make sure that everyone is treated fairly on the platform. You can view these rules here. If you break any of these rules, your ads will be flagged and removed from the site.

Step 6: Review And Run Your Campaign

Once you’ve created your ads, published them, and selected a start date, you’re ready to sit back and wait for the results to roll in. Keep an eye on your dashboard to see how your campaigns are performing. You can use the data in your dashboard to make adjustments to your campaign. 

If one campaign isn’t performing as well as another, you can pause the under-performer and boost the other one. Keep testing and optimizing your ads until you find the campaigns that work best for your business. Once your campaign is running, it’s important to monitor performance and make adjustments as needed. 

It may take a few weeks or even months before you start seeing results from your ads, so be patient and make adjustments as needed. If you follow these 6 steps, you’ll have no trouble setting up your first LinkedIn Ads campaign. Keep in mind that creating successful ads takes time and practice. Don’t get discouraged if your campaigns aren’t performing as well as you’d like. Keep tweaking your campaigns and you’ll find what works best for your business.