Article updated: November 28, 2022
Create a LinkedIn ad campaign
LinkedIn ad campaigns help you build brand awareness among professionals who are likely to buy from you. LinkedIn's audience targeting tools let you narrow in on your ideal customer, so you can create ads that will get their attention.
Create your campaign, define your target audience, set a budget, choose how long you want it to run, build your ad creative, and publish the campaign to LinkedIn, all in the Hootsuite Composer.
Plans: Enterprise
Before you begin
Before you can create a LinkedIn ad campaign in Hootsuite, make sure that the ad account associated with the LinkedIn Page you’re using for your ads is connected to Hootsuite. See Manage ad accounts and advertising permissions for more information.
LinkedIn campaign creation workflow
When you create a LinkedIn ad campaign in Hootsuite, you complete a series of tasks in the Composer campaign workflow to put all of your ad campaign elements in place.
The following sections describe the steps you need to complete for each part of the campaign creation workflow. Complete the tasks in the order they appear.

To get started, select the LinkedIn Page and ad account you want to use for your campaign, choose a campaign group, and set a campaign objective.
-
Point to Composer
, and then select LinkedIn ad campaign.
- In the New LinkedIn ad campaign window, select the LinkedIn Page and ad account you want to use for your campaign.
- Select a Campaign Group. LinkedIn uses campaign groups to help you manage related ad campaigns at scale.
- Enter a name for your campaign.
- Choose an objective for your campaign. This is the business goal you want to achieve. You can choose one of the following options:
- Website visits: Drive traffic to a website or landing page
- Brand awareness: Get your ads in front of more people
- Engagement: Increase audience interaction with your content
- Lead generation: Collect contact information from potential clients
Note: You need a lead generation form in LinkedIn to create a lead generation campaign.
- Select Next: Audience and budget.

Set up a target audience for your LinkedIn ad campaign to make sure the right people see your ad.
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In the Audience section, select Edit.
- In the Build your audience window, select a language for your target audience. LinkedIn targets people whose LinkedIn profile language matches your selection.
- Under Locations, choose how you want LinkedIn to identify your audience's location.
- Select Target by recent and permanent location to reach people based on the location listed in their LinkedIn profile, and their IP address (for short-term visits to other locations).
- Select Target by permanent location to reach people based only on the location listed in their LinkedIn profile.
- Type a location in the search bar to target a geographical area. You can get specific with a city or metropolitan area, or target a broader area with a state or country. You can also select Exclude Location to specify locations to leave out.
- Under Detailed Targeting, select Include People to expand the list of categories you can choose from to target your audience by specific attributes. You can select attributes in the following categories:
- Company: company connections, followers, industry, name, and size
- Demographics: age and gender
- Education: fields of study, degrees, schools
- Job Experience: job function, title, seniority, years of experience
- Interests: LinkedIn groups and member interests
For more information on the attributes in each category, see the LinkedIn help article Targeting Options for LinkedIn Advertisements.
- Optionally, select Exclude People and specify the attributes of people you want to exclude from your audience.
- Select Save audience to save your changes.
- If you don’t want to use LinkedIn’s Audience Network feature to expand your potential reach, toggle the Enable LinkedIn Audience Network option to turn it off (this option is turned on by default).

You can set a daily or lifetime budget for your ad campaign, or set a budget for both. LinkedIn allocates your ad spend until the campaign ends or the budget runs out.
Make sure your campaign budget doesn't exceed the total budget allocated for the campaign group.
- In the Budget and duration section, select how you want LinkedIn to allocate your budget.
- Set a daily budget: Set a limit on how much to spend per day.
- Set a lifetime budget: Set a limit on how much to spend for the entire campaign.
- Set both a daily and lifetime budget: Set a limit on how much to spend per day, and for the entire campaign. Campaigns with this budget type have no end date.
- Enter the amount you want to spend.
- Select a start and end date for your campaign. Make sure your campaign end date is no later than the end date that's already set for the campaign group.
- Select Next: Create ad.

As you build your ad, Hootsuite displays a preview of what your ad will look like on mobile and desktop platforms.
- Enter a description for your ad to tell people what you’re promoting (up to 3000 characters).
- Add an image or video. Drag a media file into the box or upload a file from your computer.
- Enter a headline to get your audience’s attention.
- Enter a URL for your website or landing page.
- Select a call to action. This is the text that appears on the button that you want your audience to click or tap.
- If you want to build another ad, select Create new ad. To create a variation of an existing ad, select Copy details to new ad
and then make any necessary changes.
- Repeat step 6 to create more ads. You can include up to 50 ads in your campaign.

Once you've built your ads and checked the ad preview on mobile and desktop platforms to make sure you're happy with how they look, you're ready to publish your ad campaign.
- Select Summary to review your campaign details. You can return to previous screens to make any changes you need to.
- Select Publish campaign.
Hootsuite sends the campaign to LinkedIn for approval. LinkedIn typically approves the campaign within 24 hours.
Once your campaign is published, you can view your ads in Planner, and manage your campaign in the Advertise area of Hootsuite.
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