LinkedIn Ads Audits I have done...

When I audit LinkedIn Ads accounts, I always notice $100s, if not $1000s, in wasted ad spend.

In this post, I share quick tips to make sure your ad accounts are firing on all cylinders.

So let's dive right in.

Audiences

The first thing I like to check out in every LinkedIn Ads account is the matched audiences tab.

Simply put, if I don't see audiences created for virtually every kind of retargeting option, then I am immediately concerned that the account isn't optimized.

There need to be audiences created for website visitors, single image ad campaigns, lead form interactions, company page visits, and others.

The reason for this is that LinkedIn doesn't populate these for you after the fact.

They need to populate & build - so if you think you can go back and create these retargeting audiences later, then think again.

Conversions

Next up is conversions.

The kinds of attribution that you can measure on LinkedIn are Last Touch and Each Touch.

This means that if you have a thank you page as your conversion action - then ideally we have a last touch and each touch conversion created for that action.

Otherwise, we could be missing out on influenced conversions from ad impressions/clicks in the attribution window that is set.

Account Structure

Now it's time to dive into campaigns.

I tend to look at account structure first.

It's really helpful to have a campaign group dedicated to awareness (TOF), retargeting (MOF), and high intent (BOF) campaigns.

By structuring your account this way, you can easily create retargeting audiences, while also being able to track performance for each stage of the funnel.

Campaign Structure

Jumping inside of each campaign group and checking out the campaigns - I like to see clear campaign nomenclature.

I tend to use something like this:

Campaign Goal - Audience - Creative type - Bid Strategy - Daily Pacing

Also, I like to see variations of campaigns running alongside each other.

For example, campaigns with the same audience, but with different bidding strategies.

These AB tests at the campaign level are invaluable and although not "traditional" AB tests - they are vital to getting the best performance for the account over time.

Campaign Settings

Small things that I check for when clicking into a campaign are how the locations are being targeted and how the audience's boolean logic applies.

As a rule of thumb, it's important to target "Permanent Residence" and not "Interest in Location" for your location.

This will help keep your campaign's targeting "tight".

From here, I like to see lists / predictive (lookalike) audiences - or very refined audiences with lots of ANDs.

If I don't then usually this is where most ad spend is wasted.

This is because LinkedIn is optimizing around spending your daily budget consistently, instead of spending your budget on your ICP when they happen to be on LinkedIn.

Last, I check out bid strategies.

Generally, I like to see manual bidding - unless there is a clear AB test variant that shows Max Delivery outperforms it.

Ads

Finishing up soon, I take a look at ads in each campaign.

Generally, I like to see a clear nomenclature for these ads as well.

Variations in the ad naming conventions help quickly identify AB tests.

If there are AB tests, I check those out first to ensure that they only have 1 difference.

Oftentimes, I find that "AB tests" in client accounts tend to have different images, along with different headlines - therefore having two changed variables.

This makes it impossible to tell what truly influenced the change in performance.

Last, more of a personal preference, but I like to see only 2-4 ads active at any given time.

Having more than that makes it incredibly difficult to efficiently track which creative truly performs the best for the audiences you are targeting.

Wrapping up

I look at overall account performance and compare that to our managed client accounts.

Usually, I find lower CTR's (2-3x lower) and CPCs (3-5x higher) than my client's accounts.

Also, generally, I see very low conversions/leads on audited accounts, with CPLs in the $1000s.

The great news here is that if you reverse engineer all of the things I outline here, then you too should start to see higher CTRs, lower CPCs, and more leads.

Want me to take a look? DM me or contact us on our website to schedule a time to meet.

Until next time.