We often hear from clients about their hesitations with LinkedIn advertising. Yes, LinkedIn ads can be highly effective, but they can also feel like a gamble. During a panel from AJ Wilcox, Founder of B2Linked, during HubSpot’s INBOUND conference, AJ broke down some common pitfalls of LinkedIn ads and how to avoid them so you can stretch your ad dollars and feel confident.
Pitfall #1: Overpaying Due to Default Bidding Settings
LinkedIn often suggests using its “Max Delivery” bid option, which is convenient but expensive — 90% of the time, it’s the costliest choice. A better alternative? Switch to manual CPC (cost-per-click) bidding. Ignore LinkedIn’s bid recommendations and set your CPC much lower. AJ recommends a starting bid at $7 per click for a North American audience.
Testing is crucial here. AJ recommends setting a higher daily budget than planned for a few days to see how little you can bid while still spending your daily budget. After 2-4 business days, analyze whether you’re spending too much or too little, then adjust accordingly.
Pitfall #2: Ignoring Landing Page Performance
If your landing page click-through rate (CTR) is below 0.45%, something’s wrong — either your targeting or your ad assets need to be changed. The sweet spot for a CTR is between 0.45% and 1%. In this range, you can start lowering bids to reduce costs or raise them to increase traffic.
Pitfall #3: Relying on the Wrong Targeting Metrics
LinkedIn’s targeting options are powerful, but it’s easy to make mistakes that inflate costs. Many advertisers target based on age or years of experience, but these are inferred metrics and not always reliable. Instead, focus on seniority levels, which are more accurate.
Advanced tactics like targeting skills and groups are underused but can be highly effective. Competitors often have similar profiles and may even be in the same groups. Exclude job functions related to sales and marketing to avoid wasting spend on people trying to sell to your audience.Also, LinkedIn’s “Audience Expansion” is enabled by default. Turn this off — this feature uses outdated lookalike models and will likely drain your budget without improving results.
Pitfall #4: Underestimating Advanced Retargeting Options
Website retargeting is useful but has been weakened by the decline of third-party cookies. Fortunately, LinkedIn’s new engagement retargeting options are a game-changer. You can retarget users based on their interactions with your lead-gen forms, video ads, single-image ads and even event attendance. These engagement-based audiences provide more reliable data and better conversion opportunities.
Pitfall #5: Mismanaging Campaign Structures
LinkedIn’s reps often recommend larger audience sizes (300,000+). As many B2B fintech marketers know, sometimes your target audience is only a handful of firms. So AJ recommends micro-segmenting your audience into smaller groups (20,000-100,000) to gain more precise insights. For example, you could segment based on job role —operations, finance, technology, etc. This enables you to see which group responds best to your ads and adjust your strategy accordingly.
LinkedIn ads, when used properly, can yield incredible results. The key is to manage them strategically — optimize bids, improve your landing page CTR, refine your targeting, leverage new retargeting options and structure campaigns effectively. These advanced tactics will help you get the most out of every dollar spent.
