After you’ve created your ad account, you can start setting up your first ad campaign. Your ad campaign has three levels: the campaign, ad sets, and ads. Each level has settings or features that help determine the objective of your ads, who your ads are shown to, where your ads are shown, and how much your ads can spend.
Plan your marketing strategy
Before you get started with creating your ad campaign, you’ll first need a general plan for your marketing strategy. To help you decide your strategy, you might consider the following questions:
| Topic | Questions to consider | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing objective | What is the primary marketing objective for this ad campaign? Which stage of the marketing funnel are you focusing on? Do you need to build awareness of your brand, stay in your audience’s consideration, or convert prospects into clients or talent? | Marketing objectives available for your ad campaigns |
| Target audience | Who is your target audience? What location is your audience in? What language do they speak? What are the professional demographics, such as company industry or job seniority, of the audience you’d like to reach? | Best practices for LinkedIn Ads audience targeting |
| Ad placement | Where would you like your ad to appear? Do you want your ad to appear in the LinkedIn feed, messaging inbox, search results, or the right rail on various LinkedIn pages? Do you want your ads to appear on both LinkedIn and a trusted network of third-party apps and sites? | Ad placement on LinkedIn |
| Ad format | What type of ad would you like to create? What type of media would you like to use? What ad format best fits the marketing objective and placements you selected? | Ad formats for objective-based advertising |
| Budget and schedule | What’s the budget and schedule for this campaign? Do you have several audiences or different ad formats that need to share a budget and schedule? Do you want to use an automated or manual bidding strategy? | |
| Advanced reporting | Do you have advanced reporting needs for this campaign? What types of conversions or actions are meaningful to this campaign to measure your return on investment (ROI)? If you use URL parameters, what URL parameters do you need for this campaign? What level do you need to track them at? | Get started with LinkedIn Conversion Tracking URL tracking parameters in Campaign Manager |
How to structure your ad campaign on LinkedIn
Structuring your LinkedIn ad campaign effectively is the first step toward reaching the right audience and achieving your marketing goals. With various features and settings available at each level, you can structure your campaign, ad sets, and ads so they work together to reach your ideal audience.
| Level | Features and settings | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign | Set a shared objective, budget, or schedule for all ad sets within the campaign. All settings are optional. | |
| Ad set | Determine which ad set type you’d like to create: Accelerate or Classic. Select your objective, audience, ad format, placements, budget, and schedule. Optionally, you can also add conversions or URL tracking parameters. Note: If you set a shared objective and enabled budget optimization, you won’t select your objective, budget, or schedule at the ad set level. | Compare Accelerate and Classic ad sets Understanding ad set settings in Campaign Manager |
| Ad | Create or select your ads, depending on the ad format. | LinkedIn ad creative best practices |
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