How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the biggest international professional network. In fact, 80% of its members drive important business decisions. It also has twice the purchasing power of typical web audiences and is the number one platform for B2B lead generation, as rated by the marketers who use it. 

Your own LinkedIn profile is important in the way that other members view you, and a great profile can lead to many connections to key players in your industry!

To get started on LinkedIn advertising, you need to create your Campaign Manager account, determine your objective, and finally launch your campaign. However, the question remains, how much does it cost to advertise on LinkedIn? 

The following article gives you all the information you need to implement successful LinkedIn campaigns.

Table of contents

Starting Your Campaign

A team discusses their LinkedIn advertising strategy.

The amount of money you have to pay to advertise on LinkedIn is based on two things: the kind of activity you’re paying for, as well as the all-important ad auction.

Ad auctions apply to many campaigns in the world of marketing, including Google Ads, as well as Facebook and Instagram Ads. For all your LinkedIn marketing needs you can contact one of our expert Digital Strategists, and they’ll be happy to assist you!

How Ad Auctions Work

When you start with your initial campaign, you’ll place a bid when you launch it.  The role of LinkedIn is to make sure that there is fairness applied with regards to the advertisers. The members of LinkedIn are served with relevant ads that apply to their interests and needs, whether they be of a marketing nature or not.

Choose Your Campaign’s Goal

A corporate team explores the benefits of advertising on LinkedIn.

Determining the main goal of your campaign is the first step towards creating a successful LinkedIn campaign. The goal of each campaign actually optimises differently to each other, so it’s vital that you choose the one that fits your marketing goal best.

Set Your Bid

Once you know what your campaign’s goal and format is, you will then need to place a bid. However, it’s important to note that your bid price is not what you end up paying, as LinkedIn utilizes a “second-price” auction.

In this type of auction, the winner will only pay the price of the bid from the second highest bidder plus one cent.

For example, if you bid $10, and the second highest bid is $8, and you win, you will only end up paying $8 and 1 cent, and not the original $10 you bid.

Through this method, you bid the most you can afford in an auction for a click or impression, however, you will never pay this price even if you win.  

Relevancy Score and Placement

A good user experience is one of the main objectives of the content and ads that LinkedIn displays. Therefore, during the ad auction, LinkedIn won’t only look at the amount you offer, but your all-important relevancy score, as well.

Relevancy scores are determined by how likely LinkedIn members will engage with your ads, and take the action you wish them to take to reach the main objective of your ads, which can often be a purchase or personal information to build up your lead generation.  

These factors include:

  • Expected CTR 
  • Historical Performance Data
  • Landing Page Experience

Whenever a member clicks on their LinkedIn feed, the auction will run immediately in the background. When a campaign wins the auction that targets a certain audience, it appears in the LinkedIn feed. 

Identify Your Target Audience

Your target audience is all the LinkedIn members you want to reach through your ad campaign. However, all target audiences are different depending on several factors, including demographics. How much you pay to win the auction also depends on the desirability of your target audience. 

LinkedIn allows you to choose your target audience based on:

  • Locations
  • Their company, education, interests, job experience and traits

Custom audiences you have created by using Matched Audiences

A group of people arrange a meeting after connecting through LinkedIn.

Billable Events

LinkedIn also offers “objective-based advertising,” which makes it easy to launch campaigns, and measure results. You start by choosing your marketing objective.

Choose Your Objective

You’ll start by selecting your objective which will either be “Awareness,” “Consideration,” or “Conversions.” You’ll then choose your audience. 

You will also see a forecasting panel that displays an estimate of results you can actually expect, based upon campaigns that are similar in nature to your own. Finally, you’ll set up your budget.

Set Up Your Ad Creative

Here you can browse new content or create a new ad. With the creation of new content, LinkedIn offers a “live at” preview. This will show you exactly what your ad will look like to other LinkedIn members.

Choose Your Ad Pricing

When advertising on LinkedIn, you’ll be able to select the kind of activity you wish to pay for. When choosing the objective of your campaign, LinkedIn will then determine which ad formats, bidding strategies, as well as optimization goals are accessible for your ad campaign. This chart shows all the objective based pricing.

The pricing is divided into the following:

AWARENESS

  • Reach
  • Impressions

CONSIDERATION

  • Website Visits
  • Engagement 
  • Video Views

CONVERSION

  • Lead Generation
  • Talent Leads
  • Website Conversions
  • Job Applicants
A happy team discusses a successful LinkedIn advertising campaign.

Conclusion

When creating a campaign on LinkedIn, be certain to bid a competitive amount, and make sure your content receives a high CTR by making it relevant and engaging.

If you need assistance in creating the best LinkedIn Ads that will attract the highest traffic, CTR and ROI, contact one of our Digital Strategists today. Our team are experts in driving new business online – helping you to expand your lead generation and maximise your conversion rate!