Top 10 Tips: A Complete Guide to LinkedIn Ads Bidding Strategy
Social media and social network platforms have become more than just platforms for people to socialize and network. Due to the huge numbers of people on there, they have become great advertising platforms as well, with advertisers and businesses alike all getting great results from these platforms. There are of course a number to choose from when it comes to advertising from the mainstream ones such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, all of which are great options to have. However, in recent times LinkedIn, due to a number of great updates, has become a prominent player in this field with LinkedIn Ads. Given also that it is primarily a platform for professionals, including business professionals, to connect, has made it a great advertising platform, as conversions are very likely here. Setting up a LinkedIn Ads campaign involves many of the steps that are there in other ad campaigns for other platforms in that you will have to set up an account, set up targeting, create and build your ads and then come up with a budget. However, after all this is in place and you are almost ready to roll, you will still need to square your bidding strategy. Given that there are a number of options here, this article will look to highlight 10 tips that should come in handy when looking to select your LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies.
Our very first tip as far as LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies go is you should always first decide on billing and how you want to be billed. You can either choose to go the cost per click, CPC, way where you will be billed for every click, or you could decide to go with cost per thousand impressions, CPM, where you will be billed on the basis of the number of users who see your ad but haven’t necessarily clicked on it as far as your bidding is concerned.
The next tip we have for you as far as LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies go is when you should go for CPC billing for your bids. As per the subject matter experts over at runrex.com, you should choose CPC billing most often than not as it will give you as an advertiser more control over performance of your campaign especially if you know the rate at which users convert post-click, information that you can use to select an appropriate CPC bid that will take you to your goal using the methodology; CPC Bid = Historical Conversion Rate * CPA Goal.
However, there are instances when you should go for CPM bidding, which is our next tip. If for instance your campaign has a CTR that is well above LinkedIn’s average, which is anything above 1%, then going with CPM bidding would be more effective while also resulting in more clicks and conversions as well.
Apart from the above instance, the gurus over at runrex.com also recommend that, as our next tip, if your campaign is focused on brand awareness, then you should also go for CPM bidding. This is because these campaigns are normally less concerned with clicks and CPA goals as their main concern is trying to reach the maximum number of people in their audience they possibly can.
With LinkedIn, there are two bidding avenues one can go with; manual or automatic bidding. Our next tip concerns when one should look to go with manual bidding., and the simple answer here is, you should look to do so 9 times out of 10. This is due to the fact that LinkedIn usually overcharge on clicks and as such going manual allows you to rein in on the spending.
However, while you should go for manual bidding more often than not, there are situations where you should go with automatic bidding, which is our next tip. The subject matter experts over at runrex.com recommend that if you are targeting a LinkedIn audience that is a very qualified list of opportunities and you want to stay on top of them so as to make sure you close them, an automatic bid is the sure way to ensure you capture the lion’s share of this audience.
The next tip we have for you as far as LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies are concerned is on where you should start your bid. It is always recommended, when launching a new campaign, that you start with the suggested bid level. You can then be able to check, after a couple of weeks of performance, how consistently you are capping out on budgets and make the necessary changes.
Another tip we have for you here is concerns whether you should optimize for clicks or for conversions. As per the gurus over at runrex.com, you should always optimize for clicks to start with, when launching a new campaign from where you can move to enable optimization for conversion for that given campaign if it records a significant number of conversions within any one week period, for at least 15 weeks.
The next tip we have for you relates to when you should look to keep conversion optimization disabled, and here it is recommended that you should do so if you happen not to have any significant conversion volume in any one-week period. This will ensure that you are not overcharged by LinkedIn for clicks that are not of high quality.
Last but not least, as far as tips of LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies go, you should also ensure that you make use of the relevance score, which is calculated based on factors such as click-through rate, comments, user feedback, sharing activity among others. Always monitor and optimize your campaign so as you get a boost as far as this score is concerned to ensure you get the best out of your bidding strategies.
It is our hope that the tips above will help you get the best out of your LinkedIn Ads bidding strategies and hence your campaigns, whether you choose to go with CPC or CPM or you decide to go with automatic or manual bidding, with there being a lot more information to be uncovered on this and other related topics over at the ever reliable runrex.com.