LinkedIn Campaign Groups are an odd duck. None of the other major ad networks utilize campaign groups, and their existence may signal Microsoft is not a strong proponent of combining Bing & LinkedIn ad interfaces (as Google has done with YouTube).
Campaign Groups also don’t separate functionality much from campaigns. Both campaigns and campaign groups allow advertisers to set budget, run dates, and build reporting. They seem superfluous, but Campaign Groups offer one major advantage: they allow for improved manageability of campaigns.
Account Structure
Campaign Groups add another level to the account structure, and so advertisers can more easily segment campaigns without getting overloaded.
For example, if you currently run campaigns targeting HR roles across account-targeted campaigns, skill set campaigns, and groups across five regions, segmenting by title (e.g. HR Manager vs. Administrative Manager/Benefits Administrator) would require creating fifteen (five regions x three targeting methods) additional campaigns in one account.
This can quickly get onerous to manage. Campaign Groups allows segmentation to occur only within the group, and so you’d be adding “only” three new campaigns per group.
Ease of management encourages segmentation and personalization. Campaign Groups are best fit to specific uses cases where budget and reporting requirements are already segmented: an advertiser manages separate budgets (e.g. by region, solution) or needs to report on different campaign types (e.g. ad type, goal).
Region
Campaign Groups are a no-brainer when an advertiser needs to manage different budgets and report across multiple regions. Segmented reporting, run dates, and budgets are exactly what stakeholders in different regions need.
Before Campaign Groups, most advertisers would rely on separate accounts to manage different regions. With Campaign Groups, regions can be managed and reported out of one account. The big caveat is all regional stakeholders will need access to the same account.
Product/Pillar/Solution
Similarly, Campaign Groups make complete sense where companies have different budgets or reporting requirements by product. Campaign Groups allow large organizations to readily report on performance by product. Product stakeholders can set their own budgets, business objectives, naming conventions, and reporting requirements and quickly see performance at the group level.
Language
It’s rare that stakeholders are separated by language. For example, it’d be surprising if one stakeholder owned US, Australia, UK while another owned Spain and LATAM (minus Brazil). However, it makes perfect sense for copywriters to be responsible for ad copy by language.
Segmenting Group Campaigns by language to allow copywriters to quickly access the campaigns they are working on could work, but advertisers lose the budget control functionality (unless budgets are set at the language level).
Ad Type
Different LinkedIn ad types (e.g. Lead Gen Forms, Sponsored Content, InMail, carousel ads, video ads, text ads) perform differently on LinkedIn. Lead Gen Forms report leads while Sponsored Content reports conversions. InMail reports on sends and opens and video ads report on views.
Because different ad types have different reporting requirements, segmenting different ad types into Campaign Groups can make measuring performance easier. If all the campaigns in a given ad group are InMail, it is quicker and more intuitive to report on the success of those campaigns.
The easier it is to see performance, the more time an advertiser has to improve campaigns.
Campaign Type
Similarly, segmenting by campaign type (e.g. Awareness vs. Lead Gen) gives advertisers the power to see performance more quickly. Objectives for awareness campaigns are typically much different than for lead generation campaigns. Similarly, ABM campaigns and customer marketing campaigns have different goals. Segmentation allows advertisers to see impacts across the sales cycle. How are top of funnel and awareness campaigns performing vs. bottom of funnel retargeting and ABM campaigns?
By segmenting these different campaigns into Campaign Groups, advertisers can more readily see how the different campaign types are performing according to relevant objectives rather than looking at the campaign types holistically.
Build & Test
Ultimately, the first step is for more advertisers to use Campaign Groups. LinkedIn has gifted advertisers with a new level of segmentation. It’s time we took advantage. LinkedIn could help advertisers by providing functionality to move existing campaigns to a different Campaign Group.
Unfortunately, in the near term, advertisers are going to need to rebuild campaigns. The upfront work will pay dividends in the long run, especially for advertisers segmenting by region, product, language, ad type, or campaign type.
