MarketingBeginnerPreview
LinkedIn Ads
A practical, beginner course that takes you from an empty LinkedIn Campaign Manager to a working B2B demand-and-lead engine. You learn the targeting, formats, bidding, and tracking decisions that keep cost per lead in check on the most expensive paid-social platform.
B2B marketers, founders, agency staff, and freelancers new to LinkedIn advertising who need to generate leads and pipeline without wasting an expensive budget.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into a launch-ready operating kit for your B2B LinkedIn advertising. Work through each section as you build a real campaign, filling the worksheets with your own numbers and using the checklists to verify nothing breaks before you spend on an expensive platform. The templates are editable planners for fit and break-even math, account-based targeting, a Lead Gen Form builder, and a weekly cost-per-lead optimization log.
Foundations: Fit, Account Setup, and Objective Selection
Decide whether LinkedIn fits your economics, set up Campaign Manager cleanly, and choose the right objective.
Worksheet: Platform Fit and Economics Worksheet
Establish whether your deal value can absorb LinkedIn's high floor before spending anything.
- Average deal value or customer lifetime value ($)
- Gross profit margin (%)
- Typical sales cycle length
- Target marketing cost as a percentage of revenue (%)
- Estimated lead-to-deal conversion rate (%)
- Verdict: is the deal value high enough to justify a 5 to 12 dollar click? (yes/no and why)
Checklist: Campaign Manager Setup Checklist
- Open Campaign Manager at linkedin.com/campaignmanager and create or select the ad account
- Connect or claim the LinkedIn Page (required for Sponsored Content)
- Set the account time zone and currency deliberately (they are permanent)
- Add a payment method and confirm your role can create and publish campaigns
- Create Campaign Groups by funnel stage (e.g., Cold-Awareness, Warm-Conversion)
- Adopt a naming convention: Objective_Audience_Format
- Generate the Insight Tag now, before you need retargeting and conversions
Worksheet: Objective Selection Worksheet
Define your funnel goal in one place so every campaign optimizes for the real business outcome.
- Primary business goal (in one sentence)
- Funnel stage being targeted (cold / warm / hot)
- Funnel heading (Awareness / Consideration / Conversions)
- Chosen objective (e.g., Lead Generation, Website Conversions, Brand Awareness)
- Single primary conversion action
- Why this objective matches the goal
Exercise: Lead Quality Reframe
Shift your success metric from cheap volume to the right buyer, since you will not beat Meta or Google on raw lead cost.
- What exact job function and seniority is your single best-fit buyer?
- What company size and industry should they sit in?
- What is one such well-targeted lead worth compared to ten leads of unknown quality?
- Which metric will you judge success by: cost per lead, or cost per qualified lead, and why?
Targeting: Reaching the Exact B2B Buyer
Build a precise attribute audience, run an account-based campaign, and set up retargeting pools.
Worksheet: Audience Build Worksheet
Describe your buyer with two or three attribute layers so the audience stays precise but still large enough to deliver.
- Company layer (industry / company size / named companies)
- Job Function (e.g., Finance, IT, Operations)
- Seniority (e.g., Manager, Director, VP, CXO)
- Any third layer if justified (skills / groups / years of experience)
- Forecasted audience size shown in Campaign Manager
- Exclusions applied (own company, junior seniorities, current customers)
- Audience Expansion and Audience Network: on or off (and why)
Checklist: Account-Based Targeting Checklist
- Build a Company List under Matched Audiences in the Audiences section
- Use LinkedIn's company-list template and include website domains, not just names
- Upload the list and allow roughly 24 to 48 hours for matching
- Confirm at least 300 matched accounts (build a list of several hundred companies or more)
- Layer Job Function and Seniority on top of the Company List
- Pair the campaign with creative that speaks directly to that audience
Exercise: Two-Step Retargeting Funnel Design
Plan a funnel that warms a cold audience cheaply, then closes with a conversion campaign against the warm pool.
- What cheap step-one content (video views or engagement) will build the warm pool?
- Which Matched Audiences will you retarget (video viewers, website visitors, form openers)?
- What step-two conversion offer (Lead Gen Form or demo) goes to the warm pool?
- How will you let the website and video pools clear the 300-member minimum before launching step two?
Formats, Creative, and Lead Capture
Choose the right format, write creative that earns the click, and build a high-converting native form.
Worksheet: Format and Creative Plan Worksheet
Match a format to your funnel job and write copy that survives the See more cutoff.
- Chosen format (Single Image / Video / Document / Carousel) and why
- Funnel job this format serves (awareness / consideration / conversion)
- First line of intro text (the hook before See more)
- Headline shown beneath the image
- Image or video concept and key on-image text (keep minimal)
- Lead magnet or offer being promoted
- Call to action
Checklist: Lead Gen Form Build Checklist
- Select the Lead Generation objective so the Lead Gen Form option appears
- Write the offer headline and add the required privacy-policy URL
- Collect only essential fields (each added field lowers completion)
- Add a work-email field if a personal pre-filled email is not enough
- Add at most one custom qualifying question (e.g., company size, timeframe)
- Set a thank-you screen with a clear follow-up link
- Connect the form to the CRM (native integration or Zapier) for instant delivery
- Confirm you are not relying on manual CSV export (leads retained only ~90 days)
Exercise: Inbox Format Fit Check
Decide whether a Message or Conversation Ad is justified before paying per send.
- Is this audience warm or high-value enough to justify a per-send cost?
- Is the use case a strong one (webinar invite, account-based outreach, re-engagement) rather than a cold mass pitch?
- Who is the credible named sender whose photo and name will appear?
- For a Conversation Ad, what clear next step does each button map to?
Tracking, Bidding, and Cost-Per-Lead Optimization
Verify conversion tracking, bid without overpaying, and run a weekly routine driven by cost per lead.
Checklist: Tracking Verification Checklist
- Insight Tag installed across the whole site and confirmed firing in Campaign Manager
- Conversions defined (thank-you page URL or click action) with a value and conversion window
- Relevant conversions attached to each campaign
- Conversions API connected to send server-side or CRM events
- Insight Tag and Conversions API deduplicated so conversions are not double-counted
- Offline CRM conversions uploaded so closed deals credit back to campaigns
- Funnel walked end to end to confirm the conversion registers
Worksheet: Cost Per Lead and Allowable CPL Worksheet
Work backwards from a closed deal so you judge profit, not just lead volume. Leave calculated cells for yourself to compute.
- Planned test spend ($)
- Leads expected or collected
- Cost per lead (spend divided by leads)
- Lead-to-qualified conversion rate (%)
- Qualified-to-closed conversion rate (%)
- Average revenue per deal ($)
- Target marketing cost percentage (%)
- Allowable cost per lead (your affordable maximum)
Exercise: High-CPL Diagnosis Drill
Work the fixed outside-in order on a real or hypothetical campaign with cost per lead too high.
- Are leads actually arriving in the CRM, and does the form ask only what is needed?
- Is the first line of copy earning the See more, and is the lead magnet genuinely valuable?
- Is the audience large enough to deliver, and is frequency climbing while results fall?
- Is the manual bid set too high, or the budget too thin to gather enough leads to judge?
Checklist: Weekly Optimization Routine Checklist
- Review cost per lead and click-through rate for every campaign
- Pause the clear losers and shift budget toward the lowest-CPL winners
- Refresh creative on any campaign with rising frequency and falling CTR
- Check that bids are at the lowest level that still delivers (try manual at the low end)
- Confirm new campaigns have gathered enough leads (e.g., 20 to 50) before judging
- Close the loop with sales on lead quality, not just dashboard cost
Your Action Plan
- Confirm fit: average deal value and margin can absorb a 5 to 12 dollar click before spending
- Set up Campaign Manager, connect the Page, set time zone and currency, and add billing
- Install the LinkedIn Insight Tag and confirm it is firing across the site
- Define conversions and connect the Conversions API, then deduplicate the two
- Calculate your allowable cost per lead by working backwards from a closed deal
- Build a precise attribute audience using Job Function plus Seniority, with exclusions
- Upload a target Company List with domains for an account-based campaign and layer roles
- Launch a Lead Generation campaign with a native Lead Gen Form routed to the CRM
- Give each campaign enough budget to collect 20 to 50 leads before judging, using manual bidding at the low end
- Run the weekly routine: pause losers, scale winners by CPL, refresh fatigued creative, and confirm lead quality with sales
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