How to waste money on LinkedIn Ads

If you work in B2B marketing, LinkedIn ads are one of the most solid ways of getting in front of your audience and building pipeline. The targeting is unmatched… Where else can you reach people using a combo of job titles, company names, seniority, and skills? LinkedIn’s various ad formats also provide interesting ways of getting your message in front of the right audience. 

But while LinkedIn advertising is generally pretty cost-effective, it’s also easy to accidentally waste your money on this platform. 

The biggest culprit for high LinkedIn Ad costs? Bad targeting. 

If you don’t have a well-defined target, you’ll burn your money faster and see depressing results. At the very least, you need the following:

• Job titles

• Company size OR company revenue 

• Country

(Side note: Doing the opposite and having too tight of a criteria could also result to underwhelming results… but let’s save that for a future conversation. 😀) 

Even with solid targeting in place, however, some simple mistakes could still result to wasted marketing money on LinkedIn. 

3 (avoidable) money-wasting mistakes on LinkedIn Ads

• Not excluding your competitors

• Expanding your audience

• Showing your ads via LinkedIn Audience Network

Let’s dive in into each one below.

Mistake 1: Not excluding your competitors

There’s no reason why your competitors should be seeing your ads. I mean, sure, it’s possible that they don’t qualify to see your ads to begin with based on your targeting… but what if there are players in your space who accidentally fit your ICP’s demographics? 

The fix is simple: under exclusions, manually type your competitors’ names. It takes just a few seconds, and it guarantees that you’re not accidentally paying to show your ads to your competitors.

Mistake 2: Expanding your audience

Audience expansion — LinkedIn’s version of Lookalike Audiences — is only worth the money if you have no idea who your ICP is.

But, honestly, if your ICP is not well defined, then WHY ARE YOU EVEN RUNNING LINKEDIN ADS? 

Turning on LinkedIn Audience Expansion reverses the hard work you do in defining your audience.

Annoyingly, audience expansion is automatically turned on when you create a new campaign on LinkedIn. So double check that you have this turned off before putting campaigns live. 

Mistake 3: Showing your ads via the LinkedIn Audience Network 

When you’re creating your campaigns, LinkedIn will often recommend placing your ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network.

The idea here is simple: show your ads outside of LinkedIn so, theoretically, you can increase the chances of getting in front of your audience. 

There are a couple of issues with LinkedIn’s Audience Network though:

1. Lack of control: You don’t know which sites your ads will appear in or how they will appear. Sure, LinkedIn promises that the websites are vetted, but honestly you still don’t know. 

2. Banner blindness: People don’t pay attention to ads when they’re just browsing the web. At least on LinkedIn, you know that your prospects are somewhat in the “business” mindframe.

Some research also suggest that clicks that come from LinkedIn Audience Network and other audience expansion networks are fraudulent.

This may sound harsh, but the LinkedIn Audience Network is essentially a scam—a way for LinkedIn to increase your CPM.

Extra tip: Ensuring LinkedIn is working for you… 

The mistakes I shared above are pretty easy to fix. But here’s an extra tip that can help you make the most out of LinkedIn advertising… 

Check your analytics regularly! LinkedIn’s built-in analytics is pretty decent. It shows you who saw or engaged with your ads, including their job titles and company names. 

Dive into your analytics at least once a week. When you see anomalies — for example, if titles outside your ICP are showing up — you may need to do some extra exclusions. 

LinkedIn advertising is powerful, but you also need to be vigilant about your campaigns. That’s the best way to maximize your investments and see better results over time.