Want to stretch your LinkedIn ads budget further? Of course you do!
Your bidding strategy and campaign objective can make or break your LinkedIn Ads. Get them right, and you’ll maximize results while keeping costs under control. Get them wrong, and you might end up spending more than you expect without seeing the results.
LinkedIn gives you a few different ways to bid and it’s important to understand what that means for your campaigns. Read on to learn how to pick the right bidding strategy for your goals. Let’s break it down!
Understanding LinkedIn’s Objective-Based Advertising System
Before choosing a bidding strategy, you need to align it with your campaign objective. If you’ve used LinkedIn Campaign Manager then this should be familiar –
LinkedIn offers several objectives and each objective can be charged for differently, depending on the bid you use.
- Brand Awareness – Getting your ads seen by as many people as possible. Charged by impressions.
- Website Visits – Driving traffic to your landing page. You will be charged differently based on what bidding system you choose – if you choose automated delivery, you’ll be charged by impression. Choosing manual bidding means you’ll be charged by click.
- Engagement – Encouraging interactions like likes, shares, and comments. Again, charged by CPC or CPM. And important to know that chargeable clicks include
- Member page clicks
- Linkedin page clicks
- Landing page clicks (in description text)
- Follow button
- Landing page clicks
- Social actions (Likes, Comments, and Shares)
- See more clicks
- Video Views – Maximising views of your video ads. The video views objective is charged per video view. But how does LinkedIn define a “view”? A view is based on 2 or more continuous seconds of playback while the video is at least 50% on screen.
- Lead Generation – Capturing leads through LinkedIn forms. You can pay by CPM or CPC here.
- Website Conversions – Encouraging specific actions, like sign-ups or purchases.
Your objective influences which bidding strategies are available and which will deliver the best performance. For example, if you choose engagement as an objective but select automated delivery, you’ll pay by the impression. If you select manual bidding, you’ll pay per click, and in the case of the engagement objective, every click – clicks to your website, clicks to like the post, clicks that hit “see more”.
In short, make sure you pick the objective that makes most sense to your overall campaign goal.
How LinkedIn’s Ad Auction Works
LinkedIn’s auction isn’t just about who bids the most, it’s about who delivers the best experience. The platform considers:
- Your bid – how much you’re willing to pay.
- Ad relevance – how engaging your ad is for the target audience.
- Campaign performance – historical engagement and CTRs.
Even if you bid high, a low relevance score can still hold your ad back. You need to ensure your offer is relevant to your audience and your ads are great.
LinkedIn largely evaluates this through engagement rate. Ads with a high engagement rate have higher relevance scores. Increasing your engagement rate is one step towards improving your ad costs.
Choosing the Right Bidding Type for Your Goals
LinkedIn offers advertisers several different bidding strategies. If you’re unsure what you’re doing here, it can be easy to burn through your budget fast.
Manual bidding is the best choice if you want to keep a close eye on costs. With this approach, you decide the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per click, impression, or action, allowing you to stay competitive in the auction, avoid overpaying, and manage your budget with precision. The downside? You need to check on campaigns every other day to ensure bids are where they need to be. You have the best opportunity to decrease your costs with manual bidding.
Maximum delivery (automated bidding) may seem like a convenient, hands-off option but it comes with drawbacks. Since LinkedIn is in charge of spending your budget, you lose control over bid amounts. We typically see this lead to overpaying for clicks or impressions and unpredictable cost fluctuations.
Another option is cost cap bidding which lets you set an average cost, and LinkedIn adjusts bids to keep spending within that range. It’s helpful for maintaining some level of cost control, but since LinkedIn is still making the adjustments, you don’t get the same level of precision as manual bidding.
Then there’s enhanced bidding, which optimizes bids based on the likelihood of conversion. Once you’ve selected enhanced bidding, your bid could automatically be increased up to 45% higher than the initial one to cover for what Linkedin deems high-value clicks.
So, what’s the best choice? If you want the most control, better efficiency, and less wasted spend, manual bidding (with bid adjustments disabled) is the way to go.
When to Use a CPM Bid on LinkedIn
CPM bidding can be tricky to get right. A common rule of thumb is that CPM bidding works well when your CTR is already high, so typically above 3-5%. This is because switching to a CPM model often leads to a natural drop in CTR, so your original CTR needs to be strong enough to absorb that decline. CTR tends to drop because CPM optimizes for impressions, not clicks, so LinkedIn may show ads to users less likely to engage.
We find that CPM bidding is most effective in retargeting campaigns or thought leadership ads, where engagement rates tend to be much higher. If you’re running an awareness or engagement campaign, CPM can be a good option – but only if your ads are already performing amazingly well in terms of CTR!
One way to determine if CPM is a smart choice is by checking your current CPM cost. In LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, switch your bid type to CPM and see what the estimated bid range looks like. If the CPM bid is lower than what you’re currently paying, it might be worth testing. Otherwise, sticking with CPC is often the safer bet.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Bidding
Want to squeeze the most out of your budget? Here’s how to keep costs in check while maximizing performance.
- Set a realistic budget
Start with a daily budget that gives LinkedIn enough to deliver your ads while keeping your spending under control.
- Use manual bidding
Automated bidding might seem like the easy option, but it often means overpaying. Manual bidding keeps you in control.
- Monitor CPCs & adjust bids
Keep an eye on your CPCs. If they’re high, lower your bid. If you’re not getting enough impressions, increase the bid. We can see from the screenshot below that the bid is pretty much spot on with where we want to be, we’re budgeting ~$40 spend per day and we’re coming in at just under.
- Adjust bids based on performance
Don’t just set and forget. Adjusting your bids regularly helps you find the sweet spot between cost and performance.
- Check pacing to avoid burning through your $$$
If your daily budget is gone in the first few hours of the day, that’s a sign to lower your bid to pace slower.
- Keep an eye on LinkedIn’s estimated bid range
LinkedIn suggests a bid range but we’d always recommend starting off low and increasing slightly if you’re not getting the impressions.
Final Thoughts: Crafting a Winning LinkedIn Bidding Strategy
Yes, it’s definitely a LOT of work to manage bids. But trust us, it’s worth it!
Here’s a simple bidding process you can use to get started:
- Set initial bid, slightly under low end of range.
- Did the campaign fully spend?
- If so, lower bid.
- Did the campaign significantly underspend?
- If so, raise bid.
And that’s it, you just have to be diligent to check back in every day or two! Now over to you – what’s been your experience with LinkedIn bidding? Let us know in the comments!
FAQs
Are there cases where automated bidding actually works well?
Automated bidding (Maximum Delivery) lets LinkedIn handle bid adjustments to maximize results within your budget. While it can lead to higher costs per click or impression, it can be useful in some scenarios. If you’re launching a brand-new campaign with no historical data, automated bidding can help gather initial performance insights. It allows LinkedIn’s algorithm to test different bid levels and audience responses before switching to manual bidding for tighter cost control. If your goal is maximum reach and impressions automated bidding can help ensure your ads get delivered at scale.
How reliable is LinkedIn’s estimated bid range?
When setting your bid, LinkedIn provides a suggested bid range based on what similar advertisers are paying for the same audience and objective. This estimate factors in real-time competition, meaning it fluctuates based on demand. We typically say use this as a rough-guide and start bidding under the recommended amount. If your campaign isn’t spending, you can always increase the bid incrementally.
Do costs fluctuate at certain times of the year, and how should advertisers adjust?
Yep, LinkedIn ad costs fluctuate throughout the year due to seasonality. Q4 is typically the most expensive time of the year as competition spikes with end-of-year budgets and holiday campaigns, while Q1 often sees lower costs as demand drops and people are ramping up campaigns..