How to Run Traffic from LinkedIn Ads: Step-by-Step Campaign Setup

Affiliates tend to remember LinkedIn exists when they're joining a team or looking up information about a company. Few consider the social network as a traffic source, simply because there's not much relevant content about it in the public domain. 

Today we're talking about working with LinkedIn. We'll break down the specifics of its ad account and analyze cases from marketers who successfully generated leads from the platform. 

Placement specifics

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform. It's used primarily by people looking for jobs and by companies building internal communications within their teams. 

One of the platform's key features is its high share of users from developed Western countries. These are, broadly speaking, financially capable people who can make a purchase or place a bet at a sportsbook. 

According to recent research, LinkedIn's audience stands at 930 million. On average, 3 new users register on the site every second. The platform's CEO plans to grow the audience to 3 billion in the future. 

More than 60% of the site's users are aged 25–34. In many affiliate marketing verticals, this is the core high-value audience that affiliates target. Every week, more than 61 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs.

Many consider the platform dull and niche, yet it generates serious revenue. According to statistics, in 2022 the platform earned $14 billion — 26% more than in 2021. 

How to launch a campaign step by step 

LinkedIn has an ad account that can be used to run campaigns. It has plenty of nuances, but anyone with experience running ads on FB will have no trouble navigating the settings. 

Keep in mind that advertising on this platform tends to be expensive. Metrics can vary significantly from case to case, but experienced media buyers say that $1 CPC is the floor — and that's directly tied to the high share of tier-1 country users.

CPA examples

To run ads, you need to set up a business account — a regular profile won't work. The ad profile is created in just a few clicks. The system asks you to enter an account name and link an organization page. 

Once the data is saved, the LinkedIn Ads account will open automatically, where you can manage your campaigns. Let's walk through creating an ad set step by step to see how complex it actually is. 

1. In the first step, select the desired element: campaign, campaign group, or account.

2. Next, set your objective: brand awareness, business leads, website visits, or conversions. For affiliate marketing, the last two formats are the better fit.

3. The next step is setting audience parameters. Specify the GEO and profile language. Unfortunately, Ukrainian is not available in the list. Don't forget to set demographic criteria.
   

4. In the fourth step, choose from the available ad formats: image, carousel, video, text, or conversation ad. 
5. In placements, you can disable the LinkedIn Audience Network and set exclusions for specific interest categories. 

6. In the budget settings, you can choose a daily budget, a total campaign spend limit, or both simultaneously. Optimization strategies include: maximum delivery, target cost, and manual bidding. Note that the system suggests a bid of over €4. 

After adding the creatives, you'll need to link a bank card and wait for moderation. Until the payment identifier is successfully verified, the account remains in "Hold" status.

For testing purposes, we linked a "White" Monobank card. The system accepted it without any issues, and the hold quickly changed to "Active". To avoid double conversion when funds are charged, it's better to link a foreign currency card.

For the test, we set the GEO to Ukraine and excluded a few irrelevant interest categories. The system shows a maximum monthly spend of €1,500. For that budget, we're promised up to 270,000 impressions and 1,900 clicks. The maximum CPC is €0.99, but in practice the numbers can be significantly higher.

Campaign performance depends on the quality of the funnel, creatives, and auction competition. For example, if you don't specify age and gender, irrelevant users may land on your site. We recommend setting the goal to conversions on the site rather than visits. The optimization algorithm will need some time to learn, but as a result, traffic won't be wasted.

Campaign and ad set moderation takes up to 24 hours, but they're usually reviewed faster. The policy states that gambling, 18+ content, and nutra are prohibited — but most likely, LinkedIn moderators won't be able to detect a well-configured cloaker.

The situation with first-bils on this social network is pretty relaxed. You can even get a welcome bonus of $100 via a special form. Requests are reviewed within two days and are often approved. First-bils are fraud, but the credits can be used to test different offers.

We also want to mention that for running traffic, it's better to buy aged accounts with an established contact base. Without trust, you won't be able to create a LinkedIn page — and you need one to add ad campaigns. You can purchase accounts on marketplaces like Z2U and AccsMarket.

Cases from Marketers

For classic arbitrage players, LinkedIn is not a mainstream traffic source, so very few people test it. Western marketers, however, have long mastered the platform's ad manager and regularly publish case studies. Let's take a look at a few of them.

An AI startup promoted its artificial intelligence services for businesses via LinkedIn. The company offered a free book on supply chain management (SCM). As a result of the campaign, the social network began generating 40% of qualified leads, and ROI was 3x higher than from other sources.

The next case from Kate Spade New York shows that the platform works for product promotion. They advertised a smartwatch designed to help users handle everyday tasks.

The campaign results exceeded expectations: 143,000 unique views, 2.44% engagement rate, 1.78% CTR, and the brand's follower count reached 5,000.

The last case involves Design Pickle, a graphic design services company. The creatives featured hooks like "Save $37,000 on designer fees". The CTAs performed perfectly — 463 sign-ups, 64 users purchased a premium subscription. Total profit came to $1.8M.

You can argue all day that LinkedIn Ads isn't suited for arbitrage, but it's worth remembering that beyond gambling, dating, and nutra, there are other verticals. Audiences on this source are a good fit for white-hat e-commerce, essay, real estate, info products, crypto, and bank card issuance offers.

To build an effective funnel, we recommend analyzing creative examples from SPY services. You can use ADSEARCH or PowerAdSpy. Paid plan pricing ranges from $4 for 3-day access to $40 for a monthly subscription.

LinkedIn is a niche but viable traffic source for white-hat verticals. A large portion of its audience is interested not only in work, but also in investments. So among the obvious verticals, crypto and investment offers are a natural starting point — and from there, you can expand your scope as you test.