Developing a social media presence and trying organic marketing tactics can help you grow your digital business. However, that’s not always the quickest way to sell online courses – especially if you’re trying to appeal to certain people. Instead, paid advertising is the solution for you. 

LinkedIn is a powerful channel for promoting and selling your courses. Its ad platform is quite user-friendly, yet it offers robust capabilities for creators. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn focuses on professional social networking. Therefore, the platform is best suited for course creators who offer content that helps others succeed or grow professionally.  

Let’s explore why and how you should use LinkedIn ads to sell your online courses. 

Why should you advertise on LinkedIn? 

When you think of LinkedIn, you’re probably picturing businesses. However, the platform isn’t exclusive to large enterprises. Many users on LinkedIn are searching for jobs or looking to grow and expand their skill set, which presents a unique opportunity to introduce your course and share your expertise. 

In addition, the platform is quite large. While it doesn’t meet the same monthly active users as other platforms, LinkedIn still has over one billion users. It’s large yet has a distinct user base, so you’ll be able to find and reach your audience much faster. 

Besides directly promoting your course to sell it, LinkedIn helps you connect with others. These professionals can be industry leaders, subject matter experts, or other partners who can help you with awareness and engagement. The collaboration opportunities can be useful when you want to host a webinar or develop unique course content. 

Types of LinkedIn ads 

Before you can start promoting your brand and courses on LinkedIn, it’s important to understand what formats and objectives it has to offer. There are many ad formats to choose from, including: 

• Carousel Ads: Show multiple images in a row. Ideal for storytelling and an interactive experience. 
• Event Ads: Promote a LinkedIn event to gain more attendees. The event could be in-person, hybrid, or virtual. 
• Message Ads: Send direct messages to users. This message could entice them to sign up for your course, offer an exclusive discount, or share a valuable resource.  
• Single Image Ads: Share a single image that’s delivered in the LinkedIn feed. This image could be a quick tip from your course, a coupon or offer, or a graphic that mirrors your course landing page. 
• Video Ads: Showcase a video that’s delivered in the LinkedIn feed. The video could be a 30-second snippet of your course, a microlearning lesson, or behind-the-scenes footage.
• Lead Gen Forms: Add a compelling call to action on your ads that opens up to a pre-filled form. Users can simply click two buttons and become leads.  

There are also additional ad formats, but creators would most likely benefit from the formats above. 

Like other advertising platforms, LinkedIn offers objective-based targeting. There are three objective pillars to choose from: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversation. Each is tailored to your specific goals.  

Objective	What it can do
Awareness: Brand Awareness	Expand your reach and build your brand
Consideration: Website Visits	Get more people to visit your website
Consideration: Engagement	Increase your social media engagement and followers
Consideration: Video Views	Get more people to watch your video
Conversion: Lead Generation	Get more leads
Conversion: Website Conversions	Drive action on your website

The most versatile ad formats that can assist with any of these objectives include Carousel Ads and Single Image Ads. 

How to create your first ad

Once you have your objective in mind and an idea of what format you’d like to go with, you can set up your first campaign. But before you do, you’ll need the following:

• A LinkedIn account 
• A LinkedIn Page
• An ad account in Campaign Manager 
• A payment method 

Similarly to other platforms, LinkedIn uses a dedicated tool, Campaign Manager, to create and manage ads. Within Campaign Manager, you can also manage your account, like users and payments, plus Campaign Groups, Campaigns, and Ads, which operate as a hierarchy: 

Now, you’re ready to create your first Campaign Group. 

Create a Campaign Group 

To create a Campaign Group, head to Campaign Manager and select a relevant account. You should see this screen:

Then, click the Create dropdown button, select Campaign Group, and give it a name:

In the next section, you’ll see Group Objective, which can be turned on or off. If you leave it on, all Campaigns in this Campaign Group will have the same objective. You’ll also be able to leverage Dynamic Group Budget, which allocates your budget to the best-performing campaigns. For simplicity, we’ll leave it on. (Remember: You can create more than one Campaign Group.)

Here, you’ll select the objective that best fits your needs. Hover over the options to quickly learn more about each objective. 

Next, decide how and when you plan to spend across your campaigns in the Group Budget & Schedule Section. You can turn on Budget Optimization, set a start date, and set an end date if you choose. 

If Budget Optimization is turned on, you’ll need to set a daily or lifetime budget and select a bidding strategy. 

After configuring these options, click Create at the bottom right of the page. Your Campaign Group is now set up! 

Create a Campaign 

To create a Campaign, click on the new Campaign Group you just created in Campaign Manager. You should see this screen: 

Then, click the Create dropdown button below Campaign groups and select Campaign. 

LinkedIn offers two ways to create Campaigns: Quick and Advanced. For the purpose of this article, we’ll cover the Advanced creation method. (Be sure Advanced is selected.) You should see the Campaign Group you just created: 

If everything looks good here, click Next. 

Now, set up the Campaign and give it a name. Then, build out your audience. You have a lot of options here, so you can select a pre-filled LinkedIn Audience if you prefer. Otherwise, here’s what you’ll need to consider:

• Geography: Select locations where your target audience is. You can also exclude locations. 
• Language: Select the language your target audience speaks. If you select English, keep in mind that it will target all members regardless of location. 
• Audiences: This section applies to those with existing audience data, such as website visitors and contact lists, which LinkedIn refers to as matched audiences. You can use this area to target or exclude those contacts.
• Audience attributes: This section allows you to target or exclude users based on specific attributes, including job function, years of experience, joined groups, education level, and more. 

For more information, learn about targeting options to build your audience. Once your audience is built out, click Save Audience. 

Next, pick your ad format. These formats are available based on the objective you selected in your Campaign Group settings. Keep in mind that a campaign can only have one ad format. So, if you select the video format, you can only have video ads for this campaign.

You can also add URL tracking parameters and edit placements, which includes unchecking LinkedIn Audience Network and setting Brand Safety options. 

Next, review your budget and schedule. If you set this up at the group level, you’ll need to visit the group settings to make changes. 

Lastly, you have the option to add conversion tracking. 

Once these settings are good to go, it’s time to set up your Ads. Click Next to be taken to Step 3. 

Create an Ad

To create an ad, simply click Create new ad(s) on the next screen after creating a Campaign. Alternatively, you can visit Campaign Manager, click the Create dropdown button, and select Ad. 

On this screen, you’ll see all the required fields to create the ad, including text and creative elements.

As you start filling out information, you’ll see a preview of your ad on the right side of the screen. Once you’re done adding the ad content, you can select Save Ad on the bottom right of the screen. Your ad will go through a quick review, but it shouldn’t take long. 

At this step, you can also create additional ads for the campaign. When you’re done, select Next at the bottom of the screen. Here, you can review all final details, including your budget, audience, ad format, schedule, and ads in the campaign. 

Now, you’re ready to go live!

LinkedIn advertising tips for course creators 

After learning why and how to advertise on LinkedIn, here are some extra tips to make it easier and more effective:

• Monitor your metrics. LinkedIn offers robust reporting so you can easily view your ads’ performance. You may find that a certain ad creative performs better than others, or your targeting could be refined. 
• Try different ad types. There are many ad formats and objectives to choose from. Depending on your audience, there may be certain formats that are more effective or objectives that give you better results. 
• Remember your audience. Unlike other social media platforms, the users on LinkedIn are going to be professionally driven. They may value educational content over entertaining content. 
• Boost posts. If you’re already promoting your brand or course on LinkedIn organically, you can boost a post, like high-performing content, to expand its reach. Boosting may be an easier way to test advertising on LinkedIn. 
• Review best practices. LinkedIn has a hub of best practices and tips to create successful campaigns and ads. 

Build on LearnDash to advertise on LinkedIn 

Advertising is a great way to sell more online courses. And if you offer courses in professional skills, advertising on LinkedIn can be a profitable solution. So, try it out and see what it can do for you!  

Do you have a great course to advertise? Are you looking for a new platform? Check out LearnDash LMS. It’s the ultimate learning management system for WordPress, and it has everything you need to build and manage courses. If you don’t have a WordPress website, get StellarSites Learning. It gives you a turnkey, fully-hosted website loaded with LearnDash LMS and more premium plugins. 

Try the LearnDash LMS demo for free today!