Most common LinkedIn Paid Ads mistakes - Bidding & Budget

One of the most common questions out there is why LinkedIn Advertising is so expensive. True; Costs are definitely higher than other channels like Meta or Google (although one can caveat this). 

However, people often explain this away by arguing that the LinkedIn Audience deserves a premium because they are decision makers and control the budget. Or simply that Audiences convert better into opportunities and ultimately closed deals than other channels. 

While those reasons are true, it does not give you actual ways to go about these higher costs. Or to maximize whatever budget you have for such a channel. 

Discover a couple of actionable tips below. Additionally, you can find some playbooks with different budgets that we recommend. 

1. Set bidding to Manual Bidding. Still too often organizations are using Max Delivery. Using Max Delivery is essentially the same as handing over your wallet to a stranger and telling them to ‘not spend too much’. Most likely that stranger is gonna do the complete opposite. Having a Maximum Bid gives you control. And you can always increase it down the road. One of the most valuable things you get is the learnings! 

2. Don’t listen 100% to the recommendations provided. Sure they may be accurate. But you can still get a bunch of clicks by bidding 2 or 3x lower than the range LinkedIn provides. However, it is crucial that you create Ads that perform as it is that metric that LinkedIn looks at as well in the auction of various ads. 

3. Be aware of how the bidding & budget process works on LinkedIn. When launching a campaign you assign a daily budget to it. When you spend your entire daily budget you will naturally not take part in the auction anymore leading to less competition. Less competition means lower prices. Thus, advertising during the afternoon/evening could mean lower prices due to this. Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not offer the possibility of timing your ads (however there are some options here). Also; Do keep in mind that you can overspend your daily budget by 50% which will then compensate on other days. 

4. And finally, your daily budget refreshes every day at midnight. Most likely not when it’s midnight wherever you are but midnight GMT time. That means that when you’re located in the Bay Area it refreshes sometime in your afternoon. You can take advantage of that by again timing your ads on LinkedIn. For instance the Bay Area has less competition during the morning hours as some advertisers have exhausted their budget during the previous night. 

So these are some ideas to increase your Ad Performance while keeping costs down. 

And remember, results from LinkedIn take time. I know, I know; it seems like an easy excuse. But as you may know, most of the results come from the retargeting layer. 

Building up trust takes time, especially in the world of B2B and when you have some other competitors out there. By showing up consistently, with both your company and personal brand you will stay front and center. 95% of your buyers are typically out of the market. 

But you better be ready to be the first one they think of when they are in-market. LinkedIn Ads is THE perfect way to do so for any B2B company. And increasingly B2C. 

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For more insights into LinkedIn Advertising strategies for start & scale-ups, follow me @Colin!