LinkedIn Benchmark Results

What results can you expect from a LinkedIn Advertising campaign? The answer is basically quite simple: based on your campaign objectives, you can expect impressions, clicks, leads, or applicants. But how many and at what cost? That is a bit more complicated. Based on our LinkedIn Benchmark, we still provide you with an answer. We outline what you can expect from the various KPIs of LinkedIn campaigns, based on our campaign results.

We mainly work for B2B companies active in Western Europe. These brands primarily want to acquire new customers with LinkedIn Advertising, while a minority use LinkedIn Advertising to reach existing relationships. Our experience is that a LinkedIn Advertising strategy with 3 campaigns; brand awareness, website visits, lead generation, delivers the best results. The most leads. In this article, we therefore discuss the KPIs of these phases.

CTR LinkedIn benchmark

What percentage of your impressions leads to a click? This is called the Click Through Rate (CTR), and it is a KPI we look at in every campaign. The CTR indicates the interest in your topic, product, or service in combination with the ad. A high CTR is a good sign; with a low CTR, we first ask ourselves whether the ad appeals before looking at its content. But of course, you need to know what ‘normal’ is.

In the brand awareness phase, our campaigns have an average CTR of 0.49%. And for all brand awareness campaigns, the CTR falls between 0.23% and 0.78% in 75% of cases. The CTR in this phase is calculated based on all clicks on the campaign, so not only clicks to your landing page but also clicks to your LinkedIn profile or one of the ad’s reaction options. The actual number of clicks to the landing page is therefore often slightly lower.

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This picture changes when we look at campaigns aimed at website clicks. Here, only a click to your landing page counts. The CTR for this type of campaign is on average 0.74% according to our LinkedIn benchmark. In 50% of the campaigns, the CTR is somewhere between 0.46% and 0.90%.

For lead campaigns, we see that the CTR is on average slightly higher, namely 0.93%. Across all campaigns, the CTR falls between 0.49% and 1.02% in 50% of the campaigns.

Average CPC LinkedIn Advertising campaign

How much do you need to spend on average to generate a click on LinkedIn? We assess this based on the Cost Per Click (CPC). Here we see less difference per campaign type, which makes sense: campaign types generally cost more as the desired action is more valuable. A brand awareness campaign therefore generates many more impressions and reaches more people than a lead campaign. We have also found that the percentage of clicks increases in campaigns aimed at website clicks and leads, so the rising cost per click is relatively moderate.

On average, a click on LinkedIn for a Brand Awareness campaign costs €2.05 to €4.28. In a campaign aimed at website clicks, a click costs on average €2.13 to €5.47, and for lead campaigns, the average Cost Per Click ranges from €2.86 to €7.21.

CPM LinkedIn benchmark

Perhaps the most important cost factor to keep an eye on is your Cost Per Mille (CPM), the amount it costs to show your ad one thousand times. Cost Per Mille is a factor that allows you to easily compare the performance of different campaigns because, unlike clicks for example, it is calculated the same way for every campaign objective. Additionally, it is a commonly used (standard) bidding strategy, you can easily compare costs for different types of campaigns based on your CPM, and CPM is a reliable factor to set budgets for your next campaigns based on previous results.

LinkedIn itself uses CPM as the main tool to determine campaign costs. But what is an average CPM for a LinkedIn campaign? The difference in CPM between different campaign objectives is, in our experience, greater than the Cost Per Click. Our LinkedIn benchmark shows that the CPM is on average €15.01 for a brand awareness campaign; when the goal is website clicks, the CPM rises to €26.21, and for LinkedIn lead campaigns, the CPM averages €36.66.

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The differences are smallest when we look only at brand awareness campaigns; in 50% of the campaigns, the CPM was between €8.20 and €17.91. The number of campaigns where the CPM was higher is very limited. In campaigns for website traffic and leads, the differences are greater. In 50% of campaigns aimed at website clicks, the CPM falls between €15.82 and €30.56. For lead campaigns, this is between €22.50 and €41.91. The difference with brand awareness campaigns is that we see more extreme results in both leads and website campaigns.

LinkedIn benchmark: what results can you expect?

Now that we know the average of a number of commonly used LinkedIn KPIs, we look at the results of different types of campaigns. What results can you expect from the various LinkedIn campaigns:

• Brand awareness
• Website traffic
• Lead generation

Both reach and impressions are strongly influenced by the size of the target audience. Because our clients are active in B2B markets upfront, we work with very specific audiences, often a niche, allowing us to achieve many impressions and a significant reach with a relatively small budget. We usually aim to reach about 50% of the target audience.

LinkedIn brand awareness campaign results

When you set up a campaign for brand awareness, the most important results are the number of impressions and reach. This measures how many people have seen an ad at least once or multiple times.

On average, we achieve about 6,662 impressions for €100 campaign budget among an average of 2,750 LinkedIn members. That is an average of 2.4 impressions per LinkedIn account.

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LinkedIn website traffic results

The desired result of a website traffic campaign is obvious: to get as many people as possible to the website.

On average, we achieve 22 website visits for every €100 campaign budget. Of course, this is in addition to the people who have seen the campaign in this phase; you continue to build brand awareness. On average, this is 3,846 impressions.

LinkedIn lead generation campaign results: costs and returns

But what does a LinkedIn lead generation campaign yield on average? This question is more complex because the results vary widely and our clients’ propositions differ greatly. One targets a very specific niche, another has a much broader audience or offering. Leads in the niche market are generally more valuable, but the campaign also yields fewer leads on average.

The average cost per lead ranges from €24.55 to €99.98.

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Getting started with LinkedIn advertising

Merkelijkheid works for a variety of companies mainly in B2B markets. For many companies, we successfully use LinkedIn to build brand awareness, drive visitors to the website, and generate valuable leads.

In this post, we present the hard results of our experience, but that is not straightforward for everyone. Would you like to explore the possibilities with us or do you have a specific question or goal in mind? Then contact us and we will talk with you about the organic and paid opportunities of LinkedIn!

Want to read more? We collect all information on our page about LinkedIn advertising.