Are you a B2B company? If so, you probably already know that LinkedIn advertising can be a great way to reach your potential customers. After all, roughly 57% of companies have a LinkedIn Company Page, and a higher number have personal member profiles.

 Because LinkedIn is a professional network, chances are that many businesses you are targeting are LinkedIn members, and you should be too! If you don’t have a personal profile or company page set up yet, this is a great time to do it! Click here for setup instructions.

Since LinkedIn is a professional network, you can reach your target audience differently than you would with other social media or PPC (pay-per-click) ads.

LinkedIn offers three self-service advertising options: sponsored content, sponsored InMail, and text ads. Today we are going focus on how to set up a sponsored content ad.

Sponsored content ads are beneficial because they appear in the main content feed rather than above the main content or in the sidebar area like the text ads, which viewers have likely learned to ignore.

Setting Up Your LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ad

The first step is to log into LinkedIn and post the content you would like to sponsor on your company page. This can be a blog post with a call-to-action, a landing page, or another type of post in which visitors will be asked to take a specified action based on your advertising goals. 

When finished, click on “Business Services” in the main navigation bar. From the dropdown list, choose “Advertise.”

Next, click the Manage Ads button in the top right corner of the page. (You will likely be asked to log in again for security purposes.)

If you haven’t already set up an account for advertising, click the yellow “Add Account” button in the top right and proceed through the process by adding your company page, company name, etc.

Then, choose “Sponsored Content” from the three advertising options that appear. You will be prompted to add a campaign name and the language you prefer.

Once that is done, you will see all of the posted content from the specified company page. At the top of the page, you can either create sponsored content or select content from the list that you would like to sponsor. Since we had already posted our content on our company page, it can just be selected from the list.

Select the post you would like to sponsor by clicking the checkbox to the left of it. Then click “Sponsor Selected” button in the top right.

The next screen is where LinkedIn advertising shines. Here you can choose your target audience by general location, company name, industry and size, job title and seniority, and a variety of member criteria like skills, degrees, age, gender, and years of experience.

In the right column, LinkedIn shows you your estimated target audience, so you can expand or shrink your criteria as needed. Click “next” when finished.

The next screen will ask you to set your bid type (cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression ), budget,  and start date. Click “Next” when finished.

Finally, you are taken to a screen to enter your payment information. Once you have done that, click the yellow button that says LAUNCH YOUR CAMPAIGN. Your campaign will begin on the date that you have chosen. You can modify your ad, audience, bid and budget at any time.

Now you know how to get started with your own LinkedIn Sponsored Ad campaign. Do you need help creating compelling calls-to-action for your content? Maybe you are looking for a unified content marketing strategy. We can help! Contact us today to learn more about any of our content and internet marketing services or GET A FREE QUOTE.