This guide will walk you through setting up a LinkedIn Ad Campaign in LinkedIn using the audience generated by Propensity. While you can launch a LinkedIn Ad Campaign in Propensity without having to go through these steps in LinkedIn directly, this is an alternative way of launching an ad campaign and linking it to your Propensity account, where you can monitor its metrics directly. 

Before launching your first campaign, you will need a LinkedIn Page and a Campaign Manager account. Visit LinkedIn for more information on how to create a LinkedIn Page and Campaign Manager account. 

👀 Important Tip: LinkedIn's Campaign Manager can take up to 72 hours to select the approved audience. Therefore, it's best that you set up your ad at least three days before it's set to run on LinkedIn.

You should download your buying circles (contacts) from the Launch tab of your Propensity campaign and upload it to the LinkedIn Campaign Manager for audience building. This will allow you to select and target the correct audience for your ABM campaign. 

Setting Up Your Campaign

LinkedIn requires you to fully set up your ads in the Campaign Manager before you can run them and connect the metrics to your Propensity account. This is the typical process you'll take.

Step 1: Create a Campaign Manager Account

To start creating ads on LinkedIn, you must have a Campaign Manager account. If you don't have one already, click this link to create one.

Once you have your account ready, sign in. 

Step 2: Create a Campaign Group

LinkedIn's Campaign Manager typically groups various campaigns into a campaign group with a few global attributes. These attributes and settings will be essential to manage each campaign's multiple aspects, such as budget and objective. 

👀 Note: If you already have a campaign group set up, you can proceed to step 3. We recommend checking that the "Group Objective" is not "Lead Generation" for reasons outlined in number 4 below. We also recommend you set a "Lifetime Budget" to limit LinkedIn's burn rate of your campaign's funds.

If it's your first campaign, you can create a new campaign group as follows:

1. Click on "Create" then "Campaign Group."
2. Provide a suitable descriptive name for the campaign group, such as 'ABM Campaign - Warehousing.'
3. Select the "Status" dropdown to "Active."
4. Select the "Group Objective" under the provided list.

👀 Note: The "Group Objective" cannot be changed once the campaign group has been created. Therefore, make sure you make the right selection here.

We don't recommend selecting "Lead Generation" because LinkedIn's Campaign Manager currently mandates you create a LinkedIn lead generation form for all campaigns under such a group. Instead, you can choose "Brand Awareness" and link the action to your form's URL, giving you better control over your forms and conversion metrics.

5. Under "Group Budget and Schedule," select "Set a start and end date with a budget." 
6. Provide your "Lifetime budget." This is the maximum amount the campaign group can spend for the campaigns. Doing this is crucial to ensure you don't burn excess cash on the campaigns more than your total budget allows. You can always increase this number as you get comfortable with the campaign's spending and performance.
7. Hit "Create."

Step 3: Select a Campaign Group

Click on the campaign group you've just created or one you wish to create your campaign on. Then select "Create" and then "Campaign." This will take you to the campaign creation page.

In the first screen, you can edit the campaign group if you want to update anything based on the recommendations in Step 2. Otherwise, hit "Next."

Step 4: Provide the Campaign Details

Name

First, provide a descriptive "Campaign name." This can be "Propensity – Cyber Security – October 2023." The example given uses the convention "Propensity – [Name of the campaign] – [launch date month]," which we recommend to make things a little bit easier to track and remember.

Audience

Fill in your audience details as provided by Propensity and its audience insights. Typically, this includes location and an optional exclusion list. Learn how to export your Propensity in-market account list and buying circles for easy upload to LinkedIn. 

Exclusion lists are often only used to block competitors from seeing your campaign or for other unique reasons. 

Under "Who is your audience?" select "List upload" then "Contact list." From the list of uploaded audiences, select the buyer persona or account list you downloaded from Propensity.

👀 Important Tip: Ensure you uncheck the "Enable Audience Expansion" box. This will prevent you from spending more than your budget targeting an expanded audience that doesn't fit your marketing scope 

Proceed without clicking on "Save audience" unless you have a unique exclusion list. 

Ad Format

Propensity currently only supports "Single image" ads, so have that as your selection. 

Placement

We recommend not selecting "LinkedIn Audience Network" since it has a similar effect to the "Enable Audience Expansion" box under "Audience," which might overrun your budget. 

Budget and Schedule

Considering the lifetime budget you set for the campaign group, you can select your budget, bidding strategy, and schedule that suits your campaign.

You can start with a small initial budget to control costs and validate the marketing strategy before committing more resources.

👀 Tip: For bidding, we recommend selecting manual bidding and testing what value gives the best return to control the overall spending of your campaign. You can adjust accordingly as the metrics come in, allowing you to judge your campaign's performance vis-a-vis spending.

The ideal bidding amount will depend on how competitive audience targeting is for your space or sector.

Conversion Tracking (Optional)

You can skip this step and hit "Create" if you don't have a link you want to track that your audience follows to convert.

However, to track conversions to a URL based on your CTA, you can follow the following steps to create one. Otherwise, you can skip these steps, select from the list of conversions you've already made, and hit "Create" to finish setting up your campaign.

How to Create a Conversion Tracking 

1. Hit "save and exit" to ensure all the information you've provided so far has been saved.
2. Go to the left panel, and under "Analyze," select "Conversion tracking."
3. Select "Create Conversion," then "Online Conversion."
4. Fill in the details required on the first page, then hit "Next."
5. On the next page, select the campaign you've created as the one you want to track, then select "Next."
6. On the next page, provide the details required, including the URL to the landing page or form success, then hit "Create." 

👀 Tip: Under "Match a URL that…" we recommend selecting "contains" to get better matches instead of "starts with."

It will take a while for the status to change and conversion tracking to be enabled.

7. Return to the campaign, select "edit," scroll down to conversion tracking, choose the conversion you've just created under the list, and then hit "Create."

Step 5: Set Up Ads

You'll be directed to a page where you can set up your ads. The steps are typically as follows:

Upload Your Graphic

Export your desired graphic and upload it to the Campaign Manager. This is what your target audience will see on LinkedIn. 

We recommend a PNG file of size 1200 x 627. You can reference LinkedIn's Single Image Ads specs for more info.

Enter Ad Headline 

This is the main message your audience will see next to your ad. You can copy it from the Propensity copy generator.

Enter Ad Description 

This is the secondary message for your audience to learn more about your offering. You can also copy it from the Propensity copy generator. 

Add Destination URL 

This is where your audience will go when they click your ad, such as a landing page. Copy your desired link and paste it there. 

Create a Call to Action 

Choose a call to action to entice your audience to click on your ad.

Connect Your LinkedIn Campaign to Propensity

You can connect your LinkedIn ad to Propensity and tie your campaign to the full scope of our ABM campaign platform. To do this, take the following steps:

1. Sign in to your Propensity account. Ensure you have connected your LinkedIn account to the platform
2. Go to "ABM Tools" then "LinkedIn Campaign data." 
3. Select "Connect ABM Campaign" 
4. On the new page, hit "Select" under "ABM Campaigns."
5. Then, under "Choose Play," hit "Select."

Once connected, your LinkedIn campaign data will be available in Propensity.