LinkedIn is the ultimate place for advertisers targeting other businesses or potential employees. It offers great advertising formats that aren’t intrusive to the viewer and you only pay when your message is delivered.
Considering this is an all professional setting, does it mean LinkedIn advertising is going to cost you a considerable more amount of money? Not necessarily. It depends on how you bid and who you’re targeting. Read on to get a deeper look into how it all comes together to understand how much LinkedIn advertising costs.
Related: The complete list of LinkedIn ad specs
LinkedIn bidding options
For each of the different ad types offered through LinkedIn, you have different bidding options available. Sponsored Content and Text Ads fall together in their bidding strategies while Sponsored InMail follows different rules.
- Sponsored Content and Text Ads – You can choose between cost-per-click (CPC) and cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM). You set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for the action you’ve specified — clicks or impressions. CPM is good if you’re only worried about the number of times your ad is viewed rather than the number of clicks it actually receives.
- Sponsored InMail – You will be charged based on the cost per send (CPS), which means you will pay for each message that is delivered. As with CPC and CPM, you select the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each message sent.
A perk of the LinkedIn Campaign Manager is that it offers a suggested bid amount. This amount is based off estimates of currently competing bids by advertisers who are targeting the same audience as you.
You are required to commit to a $2 minimum CPC or CPM bid on text campaigns, while the minimum bid requirement for Sponsored Content varies based on your target audience.
How to set up your budget
As with many of the other platforms, LinkedIn gives you the option of a total or daily budget. Daily budgets tell LinkedIn how much you want to spend each day and a total budget tells how much you want to spend over the duration of your campaign. Total budget is currently only available for Sponsored Content campaigns.
Once a daily budget is met, the ads will stop running for that day and pick up the next. This cycle will continue until the total budget is spent or the end date is met, whichever comes first. After the budget is spent, your campaign is switched from “On” to “Completed.”
LinkedIn requires a $10 minimum for both a daily and total budget, whichever you opt to use. To set a daily budget, multiply your bid by the number of impressions or clicks you’d like to receive each day.
Related: Discover if LinkedIn advertising is right for you and what options are available
Creating your LinkedIn advertising costs
Keep in mind the actual amount of your LinkedIn advertising costs is determined by the amount of activity your campaign receives and the second-highest bidder’s price. All in all, worth the investment when your business is B2B.
