LinkedIn ads process and ROI

So today we launched our first SEM Valet ad on LinkedIn. I was curious to go through the set-up process and know how effective these could be. 


It took about 2 minutes to set-up a new ad. In one way, the process is mimicked on Ad Words where advertisers write headline (25 characters) and two lines of text (35 characters limit). The ad also includes a display and actual URL. The major difference is the inclusion of a link to my LinkedIn profile. This is how it looks like:

When it came to targeting, LinkedIn offers fewer options than Ad Words for instance. Since this is essentially a content network, there is little information available on search queries, keywords options, expected CPC etc. 


This being said, LinkedIn has a decent set of localization and demographics targeting. I chose to focus on business owners in the US and Canada. Things like seniority, business function, age, gender etc ... were not relevant to us here. LinkedIn estimated that our targeting available market was 408,471 professionals. If 5% of them are on LinkedIn every day and 0.05% of them click on the ad (this is based on banner advertising industry's average CTR), then up to 10 people would click on the ad.  I then decided to be conservative and put it in a $2 targeted CPC and $10 daily budget. In other words, my hope is to get about 5 clicks a day. 


The LinkedIn ad settings look like this:

In a week from now, I should have preliminary data on early CPC and click results. Stay tuned!