Lead generation

LinkedIn Campaign Manager: How to Set Up Campaigns, Targeting and Conversion Tracking

How to use LinkedIn Campaign Manager: set up a campaign step by step, choose objectives and targeting, use matched audiences and track conversions.

By the traxy teamOct 26, 20268 min read

TL;DR: LinkedIn Campaign Manager is LinkedIn's self-serve platform for creating, targeting, budgeting and measuring LinkedIn ads. To launch a campaign you create an ad account, choose an objective, define your audience by job title, company, seniority, industry or skills, pick an ad format, set a budget (from $10 a day or $100 lifetime) and a bid strategy, then add your ads. Before you spend, install the LinkedIn Insight Tag so you can track conversions and retarget website visitors. This guide walks through each step, the targeting and matched audience options, conversion tracking and the reports that matter for B2B pipeline.

What Is LinkedIn Campaign Manager?

LinkedIn Campaign Manager (sometimes called LinkedIn Ads Manager) is the tool you use to run paid campaigns on LinkedIn. Everything happens there: creating campaigns, choosing who sees them, setting budgets and bids, uploading creative, tracking conversions and reading results. It's free to use; you pay only for the ads you run.

Campaign Manager is one part of LinkedIn Ads. Our LinkedIn Ads guide covers ad formats, costs and Lead Gen Forms; this guide covers how to use the platform itself.

How Campaign Manager is organized

LinkedIn describes Campaign Manager as a hierarchy of an ad account, campaigns, ad sets and ads (LinkedIn Help). Older accounts and many guides still use the earlier names, so you'll see both:

Level	Older name	What you set there
Ad account	Ad account	Billing, currency, user access and shared assets such as the Insight Tag and audiences
Campaign	Campaign group	A shared objective, schedule and optional total budget for related ad sets
Ad set	Campaign	Audience, ad format, placement, budget, bid strategy and schedule
Ad	Ad (creative)	The creative people see: image, video, document, message or text

How to Set Up a Campaign in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Create your ad account. Sign in at linkedin.com/campaignmanager, create an ad account, set the currency and link it to your LinkedIn Page. Ads run under your Page's name and logo.
Add billing and users. Add a payment method and give teammates the access they need, from viewer to account manager.
Install the Insight Tag. Add the tag to every page of your website before you launch, so conversions and website audiences start collecting data from day one. The next section explains how.
Choose an objective. The objective tells LinkedIn what result to optimize for and affects how you're billed. Options are grouped into awareness, consideration and conversions:

Funnel stage	Objectives	Use it when you want
Awareness	Brand awareness	Impressions among your target accounts
Consideration	Website visits, Engagement, Video views	Clicks to your site, social engagement or video views
Conversions	Lead generation, Website conversions, Talent leads, Job applicants	Form fills on LinkedIn, tracked actions on your site, or recruiting results

Define your audience. Choose location (required), then layer targeting such as job title or function, seniority, company name, industry, company size and skills. Add matched audiences to retarget site visitors or reach a list of target accounts. Exclude current customers, competitors and employees.
Pick an ad format. Sponsored Content (single image, video, carousel, document, event, Thought Leader Ads), Sponsored Messaging (Message and Conversation Ads), Dynamic Ads or Text Ads. The formats available depend on your objective.
Set budget, schedule and bid strategy. You can start with a $10 daily or $100 lifetime budget per campaign (LinkedIn). Bid strategies include maximum delivery (LinkedIn bids automatically to spend your budget), cost cap (a target cost per result) and manual bidding (a maximum you'll pay per billable event).
Add conversions and lead forms. Attach the conversions you want to track, and for the Lead generation objective, build the Lead Gen Form. Our LinkedIn Ads guide walks through Lead Gen Form setup step by step.
Create your ads and launch. Upload creative, write copy, set the destination URL with UTM parameters and submit. LinkedIn reviews new ads before they run.

LinkedIn Ad Targeting Options

Targeting type	Examples	When to use it
Job experience	Job title, function, seniority, skills, years of experience	Reaching specific roles in the buying committee
Company	Company name, industry, company size, followers	Account-based campaigns and segment tests
Demographics and education	Location, language, schools, degrees	Location is required; the rest suits niche use cases
Interests and traits	Member interests and groups	Broadening reach once role targeting works
Matched audiences	Website visitors, contact lists, company lists, Lead Gen Form openers, video viewers	Retargeting and account-based marketing
Predictive audiences	Audiences modeled on your converters, leads or contact lists	Finding more people like the ones who already converted

Start with role and company targeting that matches your ideal customer profile. Campaign Manager shows an estimated audience size as you build; very narrow audiences get little delivery and very broad ones waste budget on people outside your market.

LinkedIn matched audiences

Matched audiences let you target people based on your own data:

Website retargeting: people who visited your site or specific pages, collected through the Insight Tag. A segment needs at least 300 members before a campaign can serve to it (LinkedIn Marketing API docs).
Contact and company lists: upload a list of emails or target companies to reach specific people or accounts. This is the basis of LinkedIn account-based marketing.
Engagement retargeting: people who watched your videos, opened or submitted your Lead Gen Forms, or engaged with your Page or events.
Predictive audiences: LinkedIn retired lookalike audiences in early 2024 and pointed advertisers to predictive audiences (Social Media Today), which are built from a seed of conversions, leads or a contact list.

Our LinkedIn retargeting playbook covers how to sequence retargeting campaigns.

LinkedIn Insight Tag and Conversion Tracking

The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a piece of JavaScript you add to your website. It powers three things: conversion tracking, website retargeting audiences and website demographics (the job titles and companies of your visitors, in aggregate).

How to set up LinkedIn conversion tracking

Install the Insight Tag. In Campaign Manager, find the Insight Tag in your ad account's data settings, copy it and add it to your site's global footer or tag manager so it loads on every page.
Create a conversion. Name it, choose the type (such as lead, sign-up or demo request), set the attribution window and choose how it's tracked: a page load (for example, a thank-you page) or a specific event.
Attach it to campaigns. Select the conversion in each campaign that should be measured against it.
Add the Conversions API if you rely on CRM data. The Conversions API sends conversions from your server or CRM to LinkedIn. It helps when browsers block tags and when the result you care about, like a qualified opportunity, happens after the form fill.

Track the outcomes that matter for B2B pipeline: demo requests, qualified leads and opportunities. Our guide to measuring LinkedIn Ads ROI explains how to connect these to revenue.

Campaign Manager Reporting: What to Watch

Metric	What it tells you	What to do with it
Impressions and reach	How many people saw your ads	Check delivery against your target audience size
CTR	Whether the ad earns attention	Test new creative when CTR falls
Cost per result	What each click, lead or conversion costs	Compare across audiences and formats
Conversions and conversion rate	Whether clicks turn into actions	Fix landing pages or forms with low rates
Demographics	Job titles, companies and industries of people who saw or clicked	Confirm you're reaching your ICP and add exclusions
Pipeline from LinkedIn (in your CRM)	Whether leads turn into opportunities	Shift budget toward the audiences that create pipeline

For benchmark comparisons, see our LinkedIn B2B lead generation benchmarks.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager Tips

Name everything consistently. Include the objective, audience and format in each name so reports are readable.
Test one variable at a time. Change either the audience or the creative, so you know what moved results.
Refresh creative regularly. When frequency rises and CTR falls, rotate in new ads.
Exclude people who already converted. Use matched audiences to remove recent leads and customers from prospecting campaigns.
Retarget your organic engagers. People who engaged with your posts and video are warmer than cold audiences. LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads let you promote employees' posts to them.
Sync leads to your CRM before launch. Campaign Manager keeps Lead Gen Form leads for 90 days, so connect your CRM so nothing expires.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is LinkedIn Campaign Manager?

LinkedIn Campaign Manager is LinkedIn's self-serve advertising platform. You use it to create ad campaigns, choose an objective, target audiences by job title, company, seniority, industry and skills, set budgets and bids, upload ads, track conversions with the Insight Tag and report on results. Using it is free; you pay only for the ads you run.

How do I access LinkedIn Campaign Manager?

Sign in to LinkedIn and go to linkedin.com/campaignmanager, or open it from the For Business menu. The first time, you create an ad account, set its currency and link it to your company's LinkedIn Page. You can then add a payment method and invite teammates.

Is LinkedIn Ads Manager the same as Campaign Manager?

Yes. "LinkedIn Ads Manager" is a common name for Campaign Manager, LinkedIn's platform for creating and managing ads. LinkedIn's own name for the tool is Campaign Manager.

What is the LinkedIn Insight Tag?

The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a JavaScript snippet you install on your website. It tracks conversions from your LinkedIn ads, builds website retargeting audiences and shows aggregate demographics of your site visitors. Install it on every page before you launch campaigns so data collection starts right away.

How much does LinkedIn Campaign Manager cost?

Campaign Manager is free to use. You pay for ads through an auction, per click, per 1,000 impressions or per send depending on your objective and format. The minimum budget is $10 a day or $100 lifetime per campaign. Our LinkedIn Ads guide covers what affects cost.

The Bottom Line

Campaign Manager gives you precise B2B targeting, but results depend on the setup: install the Insight Tag first, choose the objective that matches the result you want, target your ICP by role and company, retarget people who already know you, and measure pipeline rather than clicks. Paid campaigns work best alongside organic activity. traxy shows you which people engage with your posts, your competitors' posts and the creators your buyers follow, so you can build retargeting lists of people already paying attention and follow up with the ones who fit your ICP.

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