With 3.07 billion monthly active users (as of 2025), Facebook continues to be one of the most popular social media platforms. When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook’s massive reach makes it a valuable tool. This Facebook ads checklist 2025 provides step-by-step guidance to launch, monitor, and analyze your campaigns for success.

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How to Set Up a Facebook Ad Account

Before diving into our complete Facebook ads checklist 2025, you need to make sure a few key tools are set up properly.

Business Portfolios

Doing this allows you to easily schedule posts, find insights, receive notifications, and reply to messages. Additionally, your Business Portfolio is where you’ll manage datasets, payments, permissions, etc. (we’ll dive deeper into these details later in the blog). Creating a Business Portfolio is simple:

1. Go to business.facebook.com
2. Click Create Account in the upper right corner.

Next, you’ll need to provide your business name, real name, and email address. After you confirm your email, your account will be set up.

Facebook Ads Manager

Found in the Meta Business Portfolio, the Facebook Ads Manager tool is what you use to create your ad account and monitor campaigns. Once your portfolio is set up, you can go to Business Settings and begin creating your Facebook Ads Manager account.

Each Ads Manager account has a unique ID, which is important for setting up Datasets or sharing your ad account with others. To create an add account:

1. Ad Accounts under the Accounts tab.
2. Click Add and provide an account name, currency, and time zone.
3. Enter the billing information for the ad account.

Facebook will also ask if you’re running the ad for the business account you set up or for another company. If you’re working with an agency to help improve your social media marketing, you’ll want to add agencies and third-party groups as ‘partners’ to your portfolio. For security reasons, we recommend only adding employees of your business as ‘people.’

Facebook will need your company’s address and payment information in order to create your account. To check to see if you have successfully created your ads account, go to Ads Manager to see if you can build your first campaign!

Datasets

Having a dataset (formerly called Pixel) set up is valuable for many reasons, but this will help you optimize your ads for desired results (landing page visits, form submissions, etc.) and create retargeting campaigns.

You can set this up later in the process, but having it ready to go before creating your first campaign is important because it tracks key data that will help your ads perform better.

Next, to add a dataset, go to Meta Events Manager:

• Click the Data Sources icon in the left menu on the page.
• Select the name and ID of your data.
• Click Set up dataset.

Facebook gives you the choice to create a Dataset manually or use a partner integration (such as WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Google Tag Manager, etc.).

Creating your Dataset manually will require some basic coding knowledge, but a web developer can set it up with little difficulty. During this process, you’ll have to verify your domain and create web events to track using the Event Setup Tool. (You can always go back and edit these if needed.)

If you wish to use one of the partner integrations, Facebook will walk you through the setup step by step with helpful prompts. (No coding knowledge required.)

Facebook Ads Checklist 2025

Now that we’ve covered the basics of how to set up a Facebook ads account, you’re ready to start creating ads. Use our Facebook Ads checklist for 2025 to ensure your campaigns are set up for success.

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Step 1: Create Your Facebook Ad Campaign

The Facebook ads hierarchy begins with a campaign, then an ad set, and finally an ad.
To create your ad campaign, go into Ads Manager and click Create.

Step 2: Select Your Campaign Objective

Meta campaign objectives are the foundation of your ads. Once you create your campaign, Facebook will prompt you to choose from one of their six Meta campaign objectives, including:

Awareness: Show your ads to the users most likely to be interested in your brand, business, or products. This objective is good for generating brand awareness and boosting your online reach or video views.

Traffic: Increase traffic to a specific destination (website, e-commerce store, app, Instagram profile, or Facebook event). One of the most popular objectives, this is best suited for gaining link clicks, landing page views, or profile visits.

Engagement: Target users who are most likely to take desired actions on your ad or destination page. Consider choosing this objective if your goal is user engagement, conversions, video views, or calls.

Leads: Collect leads through messages, phone calls, or signups. This objective is ideal for Facebook Messenger, Instagram, instant forms, conversions, or calls.

App promotion: Encourage users on mobile devices to install an app, try a new feature, or make an in-app purchase.

Sales: Find users who are more likely to purchase your products or services. This objective is good for increasing conversions, catalog sales, and calls.

Depending on your industry or what you’re advertising, Facebook may ask you to choose a special ad category. These are not required, but if chosen, your campaign will need to be reviewed to ensure it adheres to all Meta advertising policies. Special ad categories Facebook offers include:

• Financial products and services: Offering credit cards or long-term finances.
• Employment: Hiring ads, job opportunities, or professional certification programs.
• Housing: Real estate listings, homeowners insurance, or mortgage loans.
• Social issues, elections, or politics: Awareness for economic, civil, or social rights as well as political campaigns.

It’s also important to know that some of the special ad categories won’t allow you to use certain interests or demographics (we will cover these in the target audience section of the blog).

Step 3: Set Your Ad Budget & Duration

After selecting your Meta campaign objective, you’ll be sent to the ad set level. Here, you need to decide the duration of your campaign as well as your ad budget. It’s important to know that you can also set your ad budget at the campaign level if you use the Advantage campaign budget tool. This tool allows you to distribute and control your budget across all ad sets. You have two options for your ad budget: daily or lifetime.

Daily budgets are more suitable for Facebook ad campaigns running over extended periods. If your overall budget is flexible, you can adjust spending day by day as needed. Lifetime budgets allow you to capitalize on high-performing days.

This means if your ad does well, the platform will spend more to maximize results. With a daily budget, spending is capped, preventing you from fully leveraging those high-performance periods.

Step 4: Find Your Target Audience

Next, it’s time to create your target audience. Finding the right audience helps ensure Facebook is showing your ads to users likely to engage with them, respond to your call to action, and explore your business further.

Facebook Ads Manager offers a wide range of targeting options, including interests, demographics, and behaviors, to help you reach the right audience. There are three types of audiences you can use to get started:

• Core audiences: Facebook’s default selection that attracts a new audience based on location, demographics, and interests. (We recommend starting with this.)
• Custom audiences: Specifically designed for retargeting, this audience reconnects with users who previously engaged with your content, website, profile, or app. This audience requires a dataset.
• Lookalike audiences: Allow Facebook to identify new users based on interests similar to those of your existing customers.

Step 5: Choose Your Ad Type

Finally, you’re at the ad level of creating your Facebook ad campaign. Here is where you’ll define your ad creative. You have the option to choose one of five ad formats:

• Image: Add a single image.
• Video: Upload a single video (up to three minutes in length).
• Image slideshow: Create a small slideshow with 2-15 images.
• Carousel: Use image cards with up to 10 images.
• Collection: Display your product catalog.

When creating your ad, you can choose between standard enhancements and a full-screen mobile experience (Instant Experience).

• Standard enhancements: Provide multiple text options and an image or video. Facebook will combine these based on audience interaction and may also apply visual enhancements like filters, templates, or labels to optimize performance.
• Instant experience: Create a full-screen mobile landing page that opens instantly upon ad interaction.

Step 6: Create Your Ad

There are a few tips to remember when creating your ad that will help maximize its performance.

• Find your hook: You want to ensure you grab users’ attention immediately. Facebook shortens ad copy, so your first sentence is crucial.
• Keep experimenting: A/B testing is the best way to experiment with different images, copies, calls to action, and targeting.
• Utilize what’s offered: Browse all available tools Facebook offers and use them when appropriate for optimal performance.

After you create your ad, Facebook will provide a preview of how it will look in different placements, such as in Marketplace, search results, feeds, stories, and more.

Step 7: Launch Your Campaign

Before launching your campaign, double-check all settings, copy, and visuals to ensure everything is perfect. If you’re satisfied, click Publish and confirm your date range and budget is accurate.

Your campaign will go through a brief review process to ensure it follows all Facebook ad guidelines. Once approved, your campaign, ad set, and ad will launch according to your schedule.

Our team thrives on solving unique marketing challenges. Whether you need to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, or encourage reviews, your social ads need to capture the attention of potential customers. Together, we can improve your social media marketing strategy.

Deciding between Pinterest or Facebook advertising can be a daunting task. You’re limited on time. You’ve got a limited budget. And maybe this is your first time doing social ads and the pressure is on trying to figure out the right social platform to focus on.

Working in an agency, I encounter plenty of clients struggling to determine which platform will help them get the most out of their marketing budget. (You’re not alone, it’s hard!) And the reality is that this is probably only one of many responsibilities you’re juggling.

So I’ve made this guide to give you the background you need to pick and get started. It’ll also provide real-world examples from the work Tower does, so you can see what businesses on both platforms are experiencing.

Pinterest Demographics vs Facebook Demographics

Below we’ll touch on how users engage on each platform (because the intent is different) as well as some fast facts about user demographics.

Pinterest Users

How are they using the platform?
The behavior of its community mimics those using search engines. People browse Pinterest for ideas, information inspiration, and products. They do this using unbranded keywords and long-tail search phrases. There is a social aspect (users can follow other users, leave comments, and interact with others) but that’s a secondary focus.

Fast facts: who are they?

• According to Pinterest user data, in the US they reach:
  • 46% of adults ages 18-24
  • 40% of adults ages 25-34
  • 39% of adults ages 35-44%
• Their global audience skews 70% female and 30% male.
• Gen Z is their fastest-growing audience, making up 42% of the platform.
• Pinterest reaches about 40% of households that have an annual income of $150K or more.

An Example From Our Own Clients’ Advertising

Across different ad accounts we’re running, our team sees users ages 18-65 on Pinterest. We generally see a trend of the largest concentration of users being ages 25-44 and 55-64. We also do see more female users. Below are examples of two different ad accounts targeting different interests.

Client A: Pinterest Demographics

Client B: Pinterest Demographics

Facebook Users

How are they using the platform?

Users’ primary goal is social connection. Unique content is the currency that people use on Facebook to connect with friends, family, local businesses, and community groups. Some of the top activities according to 2024 research include messaging others, interacting/sharing posts, keeping up with current events, and researching brands. 

Fast facts: who are they?

• Pew research on Facebook shows that 7 in 10 (or 68%) of U.S. adults use it.
• More women generally use Facebook, about 76%.
• 3 out of 10 Americans are getting their news from it.
• Oberlo’s research found that the majority of users fall between 18-44 years of age.

An Example From Our Own Clients’ Advertising

At Tower, our results for clients vary widely because many of them fall into different industries and serve vastly different target areas. That said, we often see a wide range of users on Facebook because it’s still such a popular platform. Below are two examples of different industries. 

The first represents a product that was targeting anyone ages 25-65. The second shows a client we were working with who was going after older, high-net-income individuals. These give you an idea of just how many users you can reach.

Client A: Facebook Demographics

Client B: Facebook Demographics

Pinterest Ad vs Facebook Ad Formats

Pinterest Ad Types

Let’s start by looking at campaign objectives. On Pinterest, you can choose from:

• Brand awareness
• Video views
• Consideration
• Conversions
• Catalog sales

If you’re new to understanding these, Pinterest has a great guide to them here. The ad objective you choose will dictate what kind of ad formats you can run. (For example, shopping pins require a catalog sales objective.)

Next, let’s look at the ad types you can run on Pinterest:

• Standard image ads – feature 1 photo
• Carousel ads – features 2 to 5 photos
• Standard/max width video ads – 4 seconds to 15 minutes
• Shopping ads – 1 image at a time
• Collection ads – 1 image above 3 smaller ones on mobile
• Idea ads – videos, images, lists, and custom text in a pin
• Showcase ads – multiple cards with up to 3 features
• Quiz ads – multiple choice style

If you want to find information about sizing, character limits, and other specs, visit Pinterest’s ad-type resource here.

Facebook Ad Types

Now let’s look at the Facebook campaign objectives you can choose from:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Leads
• App promotion
• Sales

Please note that Meta recently updated this list to simplify it. If you’re familiar with their prior ad objectives, I’d recommend reviewing this detailed breakdown of Facebook ad objectives.

• Single image ads – features 1 photo
• Carousel ads – features 2+ photos or videos
• Video ads – length requirements vary by placement
• Collection ads – show a video or image with product images underneath
• Flexible creative – upload up to 10 images/videos and let the delivery system create ads

For more specs on different ad types, visit Facebook’s ad resource here.

Let’s Talk About Ad Costs

To understand which platform is more costly, marketers will look at ‘cost per result.’ This is calculated with the following formula:

total budget spent ÷ key result* = cost per result

*Key results can be clicks, video views, impressions conversion, etc. depending on the type of campaign you’re running.

Determining this across all your digital ad platforms can help you strategize how much money you need to allocate. Plus, it can help you understand how efficiently your advertising spend is working.

In our experience running social ads, both Pinterest and Facebook offer relatively cheap opportunities for online advertising compared to other digital channels. While we can’t tell you exactly what your ad costs will be, we can give you an idea of some averages for the platforms.

Pinterest Ads vs Facebook Ads Cost Comparison

*cost per conversion varies widely based on industry, product, or service, and the typical length of your sales cycle.

Managing Your Costs: Bidding For Ad Placements

It’s key to note that bidding strategies will further affect your costs on Pinterest or Facebook. Each platform uses a bidding process to determine which ad wins and shows to users.

On Facebook, their bidding process determines a winner based on your bid, ad relevance, and estimated action results. Having the highest budget doesn’t guarantee you win, but having a competitive bid and good quality ad creative and headlines can.

On Pinterest, their bidding process works similarly, choosing the best ad for that placement based on the likelihood the user will take action. They also like to see that your creative and landing page are good quality, along with a competitive bidding price.

With both platforms, you can set a bid cap specifying what you’ll pay up to. Or you can use their automatic bidding systems, in which the platforms will aim to get you the most results at the lowest possible cost while staying within your total budget.

If you’re new to social advertising, we recommend starting with automatic bidding so you can first learn what a competitive bid is. If you start by setting bid caps too low without understanding what’s competitive for reaching your audience, your ads will be hindered in their performance from the start.

Performance Metrics: What Does Each Platform Deliver?

The answer to whether one platform is delivering better than the other comes down to what you value. The best way to answer this is to start by running a campaign on each platform with the same budget. Then, measure their performance against each other by looking at these shared KPIs:

• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per result (CPR)
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Impressions

For a specific breakdown of averages for these metrics between Pinterest and Facebook, skip down to our cheat sheet below.

Use them to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. But don’t stop there. 

Once you’re running ads, make sure you also consider the full context of what your campaigns are doing by using a tool like Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Look At Indirect Results Too

Dark social is a real marketing pain point that’s not talked about enough. You may realize that since starting Pinterest ads, your direct traffic in Google Analytics has increased. Or you may be seeing more users find you in organic searches after running a Facebook ad campaign.

The way users interact with paid social media isn’t linear. It’s often complex, as our social ads catch them while they’re doing something else on the platform. Even if we pique their interest, those who don’t convert directly from the ad are likely hitting other channels afterward.

An Example of Direct vs Indirect Results

Above, we pulled examples of two different users who converted on our client’s website and requested a quote. The first one shows a direct conversion attributed to paid social. Interestingly, that user interacted with our paid social ads 5 times before directly converting. And, it took them 24 days to do so.

The second user however wasn’t a direct conversion and needed more time. They interacted with multiple channels including organic search, organic social, paid social, etc. While paid social wasn’t the direct point of their conversion, it did play a role in earning it.

Pinterest Ads vs Facebook Ads Cheat Sheet

Ultimately, there’s no one answer as to which platform is better for you. If you’re stuck picking between Pinterest and Facebook we recommend:

• Studying which platform your target audience is using (do some digging on the platform to see if they’re active)
• Splitting your budget and running an A/B test between the platforms
• Running your campaign(s) for at least 14 days (because the first 7 days are the learning period for social ads)
• Assessing both direct and indirect performance KPIs of your ads in GA4

Grab your free guide here. No email required. No gimmicks.

Grab Your Cheat Sheet

We’ve already created a Facebook Ads Checklist, but that’s not the only great social media platform to advertise on. LinkedIn can be an exceptional tool to target the right audience and move users through the customer journey. 

LinkedIn can also be overwhelming and intricate until you really nail down your audience, ad formats, and campaign objectives. This is why we’ve created this LinkedIn Ads Guide, so you can feel a little more confident as you start the process.

Before Starting Your Campaign

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of your LinkedIn ads guide, you’ll first want to set up a LinkedIn business account. Once the page is made, you’ll know it was successful if you have an “advertise” icon on the top right page of your personal LinkedIn page.

Your campaigns will only improve the more you post organically on your business page. This is the same across all platforms. As you start to advertise on LinkedIn, your profile will be gaining more traffic, so you want to make sure there is credible and beneficial content on your page.

Step 1: Set Up Your Campaign Group

There are three levels in LinkedIn Ads Manager that are listed below. We’ll go through each level and give you insight into how to succeed at each step. 

1. Campaign Group
2. Campaign
3. Ads

If you’re familiar with Facebook advertising, think of your LinkedIn Campaign Group as a Campaign in Ads Manager. It’s the first step and the shell that will hold all of your individual campaigns. 

You can organize your campaign groups however you feel fit. At Tower, we create monthly campaigns, so we organize our campaign groups annually. Meaning, we create a new campaign group once every year. 

By organizing your campaign groups in an easy way, either annually or bi-annually, you’ll easily be able to look back at previous campaigns and consider running the same ones again.

Step 2: Add Your Campaign

The next few steps in this LinkedIn ads guide are all under level 2, or the campaign level. You will choose a campaign objective, audience, ad format, budget, and schedule. Under each step, we’ll cover LinkedIn ads’ best practices so you can create a successful campaign. 

When you initially create your campaign, you have to put it under a campaign group. This is why it’s important to accurately name and organize your campaign group.

Create a Campaign Objective

When comparing Facebook ads vs LinkedIn ads, you’ll notice there are similar campaign objectives to choose from. Below is the list of each available LinkedIn campaign objective.

• Brand Awareness. This will get your advertisement out to as many people as possible, showing them your product or service. This would be a good campaign objective for a newer LinkedIn business profile. The main objective in this campaign will to be increase impressions.

• Website Visits. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, then we suggest using the website visits objective. You can choose to take consumers to a contact page or a specific landing page related to your advertisement. 

• Engagement. Creating engaging content should be a goal for your campaign no matter what, but this objective will show your advertisement to users that are likely to follow your page and engage with your content.

• Video Views. If you’ve created a great promotional video, then this LinkedIn campaign objective is for you! If you choose this as your campaign objective, you must use the LinkedIn video ad format. Your ad will be shown to users that are most likely to watch your entire video. 

• Lead Generation. LinkedIn lead gen ads allow the user to fill out a form directly from your ad. This information can then be found under “Assets” and then “Lead Gen Forms”. 

• Talent Leads. This LinkedIn campaign objective is used for your company to engage with potential employees for your organization. You’ll likely want to send users to your career page so they can learn more information about your company. 

• Website Conversions. Linkedin conversion ads are only available if you have conversion tracking set up. If these are set up, LinkedIn has the ability to track conversions from your advertisement. 
  
  You are able to track conversions within that window between a determined time period (usually up to 90 days) after the ad runs.  So if a user doesn’t immediately take action, don’t worry! LinkedIn will still be able to track the conversion. 

• Job Applicants. This is similar to talent lead ads. LinkedIn will show your job opportunity to users. Your audience is a crucial part of this ad objective because you want to receive views and engagement from qualified candidates.

Note: Once you click “save and exit” at the bottom of the page, you will not be able to change your campaign objective without starting over!

Step 3: Craft Your Audience

Throughout this entire LinkedIn Ads Guide, you’ll find expert insight into best practices, but we believe that the most crucial step is crafting your audience. LinkedIn gives your company the ability to specify a variety of characteristics.

These audiences are very intricate and granular, which at first glance, can be overwhelming when you first start. Don’t worry, sometimes it takes months to craft an audience where you see high click-through rates and engagement. 

In your LinkedIn audience, you can specify the following: 

• Location
• Job title
• Job functions
• Age
• Years of experience
• Company names

The characteristics above can be excluded from your audience as well. For example, you won’t want to show your advertisement to competing companies. Or if you’re restricted to a certain location, you’ll want to exclude outside areas.

This helps you get the most out of your budget, which we will talk about more in step 5. However, with these specific characteristics, comes finicky rules. Sometimes, you can’t include something in your audience and then exclude another thing. 

At first, this can be confusing and perhaps a little annoying. But here’s an example: you cannot include Job Titles in your audience and then exclude Job Functions. LinkedIn will give you are warning message and grey out the attribute.

As you are building your audience, you’ll see “Forecasted Results” on the right-hand side. This is a great indicator of the size and segmentation of your drafted audience. It helps you get an idea of who will be seeing and engaging with your audience. So, if it’s not exactly the right fit, you can adjust the audience before the campaign goes live.

Retargeting Audiences

In addition to the audiences above, another benefit of LinkedIn ads is the ability to retarget specific contacts or companies. This technique enables you to pull together an audience very specific to your ideal market.

Another type of retargeting audience on LinkedIn is pulling information on who has visited your profile, or website, or filled out a lead generation form. This type of audience typically has a higher click-through rate because there are fewer barriers if they’ve already interacted with your site. In time, this could lead the customer to convert further down the consumer funnel.

These functions can be found under “Assets” in your Linkedin ads manager.

Step 4: Choose Your Ad Format

It’s finally time to review the different LinkedIn ad types you can choose from within your campaign. We’ll provide an overview of each type here, but you can find more information on LinkedIn’s support page. 

The options you have for your ad format will change depending on what you choose for your campaign objective.

• LinkedIn Single Image Ad. Simple enough, this ad will show one photo with ad copy. 

• LinkedIn Carousel Image Ad. Give users multiple photos and headlines in one ad. The call to action will have to be the same across each image card. 

• LinkedIn Video Ad. Highlight your promotional video through a LinkedIn video ad. You must provide a headline for this type of ad, but additional ad copy, or introductory text, is optional. 
  
  Your video can be used with a variety of campaign objectives depending on your company’s marketing strategy. For example, if you want to use your promotional video to drive traffic to your site, you can use the website visits campaign objective. 

• LinkedIn Text Ad. This ad is shown on the right-hand side of your LinkedIn desktop feed. You’ll have a limited character count to capture your audience, so this ad format needs to truly stand out. 

• LinkedIn Spotlight Ad. Spotlight and Follower Ads are personalized to a LinkedIn profile. Spotlight ads show a specific offering that aligns with your target audience. 

• LinkedIn Follower Ad. On the other hand, Follower Ads are also personalized but are used to promote a company page rather than an offering. 

• LinkedIn Document Ad. This is a relatively new ad format that LinkedIn has introduced. You can now let users read and download documents directly from the advertisement. This is beneficial for sharing high-quality content with your targeted audience. 

• LinkedIn Message Ad. We’re sure you have received a message ad in your LinkedIn inbox. These are a more personalized way to reach your target audience. Be wary, a user can get annoyed by the overload of ads in their inbox, so you want to make sure yours stands out from the rest.

• LinkedIn Conversation Ad. These are similar to message ads but you can include multiple call-to-action buttons rather than a single call-to-action. This means you can link users to a landing page and a lead gen form, all in one message.  

• LinkedIn Event Ad. Advertise your LinkedIn event that will show in your target audience’s feed. 

LinkedIn is a very effective way to target your audience and bring awareness to your brand but all of these options can make for a puzzling start. Our specialists are here to help you through the trial process and onto being successful with your LinkedIn campaigns.

Step 5: Set a Budget and Schedule

Similar to Facebook ads, you can decide either to set up a daily budget or a lifetime budget for your campaign. LinkedIn ads’ minimum budgets are $10 a day, or a lifetime budget of $100. 

When you set up your schedule and budget, LinkedIn may warn you that the budget you’ve allocated is not enough for the entire duration of your ad. If this warning pops up, you must either shorten the duration of your advertisement or add more to your budget.

Step 6: Create Your Ads

Set up is complete! It’s now time to create your ads. LinkedIn has made it really easy to reuse photos and videos from previous campaigns through a recently added tool, LinkedIn ads library. 

When creating your ad, you want to name each ad to easily identify them. This is especially important if you are creating multiple ad variants. LinkedIn has recently stated that campaigns with up to 5 ad variants can receive a 12% higher click-through rate. 

LinkedIn ad specs suggest vertical images with a size of 1200 by 627 pixels. These best practices can also help increase your campaign’s click-through rate.

Writing Your Headline and Introductory Text

Something positively different about LinkedIn ads vs Facebook ads is the character count for the headline and introductory text. You have a lot more breathing room on LinkedIn compared to Facebook. 

Your character count can be up to 200 characters long and your introductory text can be up to 600 characters. LinkedIn best practices suggest having a headline of up to 150 characters so it’s concise for better engagement. 

Introductory text that is over 100 characters risks being truncated on the desktop. In order to avoid this, you’ll want to keep the copy around 75 characters. However, sometimes it is necessary to add more text, and there are times these ads perform very well. 

In that case, keep in mind where your text will truncate so you can complete a clear thought before the copy is cut off. Just in case a user doesn’t take the action of clicking to see the entire ad copy. 

The final step in the actual creation of your LinkedIn ad will be choosing a clear call to action. LinkedIn has a predetermined list for you to choose from. It’s important to select a call-to-action that represents what you want your audience to do with the ad.

Step 7: Launch your Campaign!

Once you’ve finalized steps 1 through 6, it’s time to launch your campaign! LinkedIn strives to review ads within 24 hours of submission, so you should know pretty quickly if something isn’t approved. 

Under each of the three levels, campaign groups, campaigns, and ads, you will be able to see the “status”. As you’re working through the campaign, the status should be “draft”. This means you can still edit the campaign and launch it. 

Most commonly, if everything is approved, it will either say “active running” or “active not started”. Active running means the campaign is currently running and being shown to your target audience. Whereas active not started means the campaign is ready but scheduled to run in the future. 

When the status of your campaign or ad is “active not running” it means there is further action you need to take because it can run. You can learn more about why you received this status by going to the LinkedIn help site.

Step 8: Monitor Your Ads

With any marketing tactic, it’s important to analyze and report what’s happening once the campaign is launched. There are a lot of moving factors within LinkedIn Ads Manager so it may take some trial and error for you to find the sweet spot in LinkedIn campaigns. 

If you aren’t immediately seeing the results you hope for, try adjusting your audience size. It’s possible it’s either too niche where not enough people are seeing it or it’s too broad where the correct people aren’t seeing your ad. 

Once a LinkedIn ad launches, you’re able to “chart” it to get more demographical information. This will help you further define who is interacting with your ad, what industry they’re in, where they’re located, and even the company they work for. 

Currently, LinkedIn ads’ best practices suggest that your cost per click should be below $6 and your click-through rate should sit around .4%. These results can vary depending on your industry as well as the campaign objective you selected. 

For example, if your campaign objective is video views, LinkedIn isn’t showing your ad to users that are likely to click through to your landing page, hence lowering your click-through rate. 

As we finish up our LinkedIn Ads Guide, it’s okay if you haven’t mastered the platform. But you should feel confident in starting your first LinkedIn campaign. And if you’re thinking: “I want to do this, but I don’t have time,” well, that’s why we’re here.