{"id":1793,"date":"2025-04-11T13:30:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T13:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2025-04-28T12:45:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T12:45:35","slug":"bidding-tricks-for-slashing-linkedin-ad-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/bidding-tricks-for-slashing-linkedin-ad-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"These Bidding Tricks Helped Me Slash My LinkedIn Ad Costs By 27%"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>LinkedIn Ads were eating away at our budget ridiculously fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At first I didn&#8217;t give it much thought because It&#8217;s not my money anyway, why should I care about the bidding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Learned pretty quick company management does not share the same stance on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Upon further investigation, I managed to figure out what was decimating our ad spend and I even brought down our cost by 27%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The LinkedIn objective trap that most marketers fall into<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>First, I realized LinkedIn&#8217;s objective system was sabotaging my campaigns before they even started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>LinkedIn forces you to pick an objective that dictates your bidding options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Brand Awareness \u2013 charged by impressions<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Website Visits \u2013 charged by clicks or impressions<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Engagement \u2013 charged for every tiny interaction<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Video Views \u2013 charged per view (2+ seconds at 50% on screen)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lead Generation \u2013 charged by form fills<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Website Conversions \u2013 charged by specific actions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I was using &#8220;Maximum Delivery&#8221; for Website Visits. Big mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I switched to the right objective with manual bidding, my costs immediately dropped by 12%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The auction hack that saved me 15% more<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>LinkedIn doesn&#8217;t just give ad space to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They look at three factors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Your bid amount.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ad relevance to your audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Historical performance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I improved my relevance score by making my ads hyper-specific to my audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tighter targeting + better creative = lower costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This single change cut my costs by another <strong>15%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Four bidding types, but only one slashed my costs by 27%<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I tested all four bidding strategies LinkedIn offers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Manual bidding<\/strong>: I control exactly what I&#8217;ll pay per click or impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Maximum delivery<\/strong>: LinkedIn controls everything and spends my budget as fast as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cost cap bidding<\/strong>: I set an average cost target, LinkedIn adjusts within that range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Enhanced bidding<\/strong>: LinkedIn increases my bid up to 45% for &#8220;high-value clicks.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manual bidding won by a landslide. It was the foundation of my 27% cost reduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-style-default\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"732\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image.png\" alt=\"LinkedIn Campaign Manager bidding options\" class=\"wp-image-309\" srcset=\"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image.png 732w, https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/image-300x134.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 732px) 100vw, 732px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I went from paying $8.45 per click to just $6.17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My CPM disaster (and what I learned the hard way)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>So I got cocky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After saving so much with manual bidding, I thought I&#8217;d try CPM bidding because some LinkedIn &#8220;guru&#8221; recommended it in a YouTube video<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wow. Worst decision ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My costs shot up by $782 in the first week alone. I nearly had a heart attack checking the dashboard Monday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Turns out my CTR was garbage, only 1.8% &#8211; nowhere near high enough to make CPM work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a panicked chat with my marketing buddy who&#8217;s been doing this for years, I learned CPM only works when:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Your B2B campaigns already get 3%+ CTR (mine didn&#8217;t)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Your retargeting is crushing it with 5%+ CTR (again, nope)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>That $782 lesson was a painful one but it clarified a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>After my CPM fiasco, I developed this process through pure trial and error<\/strong>:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Start bidding 15-18% below LinkedIn&#8217;s suggested range (they always inflate it)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Check campaigns before lunch daily &#8211; if they&#8217;re spending too fast, drop bids by 5-7%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If a campaign is crawling along with no spend by 3pm, bump bids up 8%<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Weirdly, my weekend bids can be 22% lower and still perform (everyone&#8217;s offline anyway)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I track everything in a spreadsheet that only makes sense to me (don&#8217;t do that)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My boss thinks I&#8217;m a genius, but &#8216;m not telling him it&#8217;s just manual bidding and a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>My Expensive Automated Bidding Mistake<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m <strong>very <\/strong>lazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I originally just chose automated bidding because I didn&#8217;t wanna have to bother with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That laziness cost my company $4,367 in wasted spend in just under a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I finally switched to <strong>manual bidding<\/strong> (after my boss started asking questions), we not only saved money but somehow our conversion rate jumped 8.3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I just spend about 30 minutes each morning adjusting bids slightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we&#8217;re being honest, LinkedIn literally designed their platform to extract the most money out of advertisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They try their best to push automated bidding, &#8220;LinkedIn Audience Network&#8221;, and other proprietary BS. Don&#8217;t give into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, that&#8217;s my little short story, hopefully you can learn something from my mistakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LinkedIn Ads were eating away at our budget ridiculously fast. At first I didn&#8217;t give it much thought because It&#8217;s not my money anyway, why should I care about the bidding? Learned pretty quick company management does not share the same stance on it. Upon further investigation, I managed to figure out what was decimating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[28,19,12,17],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guide-articles","tag-b2b","tag-budget","tag-linkedin","tag-roi"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundervideo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}