A lot of B2B companies are turning to LinkedIn Sponsored Updates for lead generation and brand awareness.

If you’re not sure what a LinkedIn Sponsored Update is, it’s basically the same things as the updates you already post to your LinkedIn company page, except you pay to have them appear in the feed of your targeted audience (pay per click or impressions).

The problem is, like any digital advertising platform, you can go through a lot of money quickly.

To help ensure you don’t do this, first check out check out my tips for creating LinkedIn sponsored updates here.

But one thing I didn’t mention in that previous post…

Set your bid price to the minimum (not to LinkedIn’s suggested bid)

LinkedIn Sponsored Updates have two bidding options: pay per click and pay per 1000 impressions.

I’d definitely recommend using pay per click because you only want to pay when people take action.  As well, from what I’ve seen pay per click is more cost effective than pay per 1000 impressions.

And when you choose pay per click, LinkedIn will give you a “recommended” cost per click (CPC) that you should target (e.g. between $8-$11 per click).

And it’s nonsense.

Unlike Google AdWords, you’re not bidding on a keyword that you want to rank for, so what your competitors are setting their CPC at is irrelevant.

Thus, bid the minimum amount (which is usually about $5 per click)

Bidding the minimum means you’ll get less impressions, but you’ll still likely get enough clicks to meet your daily budget.

Only if you’re getting zero clicks (a problem I’ve never had running LinkedIn campaigns) would you want to raise your CPC target.

Happy bidding, and if you need help with your LinkedIn campaigns, please send me an email.

Robert