This is Part 1 of our 6-part series on how to set up, run and download leads for LinkedIn Sponsored Content ad campaigns. Since Saratoga B2b specializes in LinkedIn lead generation services for our clients, we wanted to share some of the behind-the-scenes operations we provide for LinkedIn ad campaigns. This first installment is intended to give you a working knowledge of how to perform the set up of a LinkedIn ad campaign.

Step 1: Assuming you already have a LinkedIn personal account set up for yourself, and have admin privileges for a Company Page, log in to your personal LinkedIn page.

Step 2: Log in to LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager (for Ads) by clicking on the “Work” icon at the top of your personal LinkedIn page:

Step 3: Click on “Advertise” in the pop-up box

Step 4: Click on “Create Ad”

You should now see LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager logo at the top of this page. You are now in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, where all your activity related to ads will be performed :

Step 5: To begin using Campaign Manager for paid ads, you need to create an account. Accounts are where your ad campaigns are stored. Click on the “Account” button at the top left corner of your screen. Then create an account on the next screen. For this tutorial the account is named “IT firm account #1.”

Step 6: Create a Campaign Group (for Ads), or use the automatically created default campaign group, Default Campaign Group. For this tutorial, we’ve created a second Campaign Group named “Software engineers,” which is the target job title for the ad campaign.

We’re now ready to set up our first segmented campaign targeting software engineers. We’ll further segment our target to include engineers who work in California for Fortune 500 companies, for a hypothetical campaign to support your California sales territory.

Step 7: Now we’re ready to create a specific Campaign within the Campaign Group. The value of a Campaign Group is that you can have multiple, similar campaigns under the Campaign Group umbrella. So for software engineers, you could have the Fortune 500 campaign and another for SMBs.

Step 8: After clicking on the “Create Campaign” button, name your campaign “Fortune 500.” Also, be sure to place your campaign in the “Software engineers” Campaign Group, rather than the “Default Campaign” group.

That’s it. We’ve now set up the campaign for the LinkedIn ads targeting software engineers at Fortune 500 firms. In the next sections of this tutorial (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6), we’re going to configure the campaign to target Fortune 500 software engineers who are based in California, using LinkedIn’s geo-location filter for the California target and the “Matched Audiences” function to limit targets to those who work at Fortune 500 companies.