LinkedIn promotions let you pay to reach a larger audience with a specific post or campaign

LinkedIn promotions work through the platform's native advertising system, which you access from your LinkedIn Page or through LinkedIn Campaign Manager. You choose a post you want to promote, set a budget, define who you want to reach, and LinkedIn displays it to those people in their feeds. The promotion runs until your budget is spent or you pause it manually.

The main difference between a regular post and a promoted one is reach: a regular post shows up for your existing followers and people who see it shared by others. A promoted post appears in the feeds of people you target by job title, company, industry, location, or other criteria — whether they follow you or not. This matters if you're trying to reach a specific audience outside your current network.

Key Takeaways

  • You can promote a post directly from your LinkedIn Page by clicking the promote button, or use LinkedIn Campaign Manager for more detailed targeting options.
  • LinkedIn promotions require a budget starting at around $10 per day, though actual costs vary based on your audience size and how many people click or engage.
  • You can target by job title, company, industry, location, skills, and other criteria to reach the specific people most likely to care about your message.
  • Promoted posts appear in the feed just like regular posts, but reach people outside your followers who match your targeting settings.

How to promote a post directly from your LinkedIn Page

The fastest way to promote a post is from the post itself. Write or find the post you want to promote on your LinkedIn Page, then look for a button labeled "Promote" below the post. Click it, and LinkedIn opens a panel where you set your daily budget, choose how long the promotion runs, and pick your target audience.

This method works well if you already have a post you like and want to give it more visibility. You don't have to create anything new — just pick an existing post and boost it. LinkedIn will show you an estimate of how many people your budget might reach based on your targeting choices.

Using LinkedIn Campaign Manager for more control

If you want more detailed targeting or plan to run multiple promotions, use LinkedIn Campaign Manager instead. Go to linkedin.com/campaignmanager, sign in with your LinkedIn account, and click "Create campaign." Choose your campaign objective — usually "Website visits" or "Engagement" depending on what you want people to do — then select the post you want to promote.

Campaign Manager lets you set more specific audience rules than the quick-promote button does. You can narrow by job title, seniority level, company size, skills, and other factors. You can also create custom audiences based on people who visited your website or engaged with past posts. This level of control helps if you're promoting to a very specific group, like software engineers at companies with over 500 employees in a particular region.

Setting your budget and timeline

LinkedIn promotions charge on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis, depending on your campaign type. You set a daily budget — the minimum is typically around $10 per day — and LinkedIn stops spending once that daily limit is reached. You can also set an end date for the promotion, or let it run until you manually pause it.

The actual cost per click or impression varies based on how competitive your audience is. If you're targeting a very specific, high-demand group (like C-level executives in finance), each click costs more than targeting a broader audience. LinkedIn shows you an estimated reach before you launch, so you can see roughly how many people your budget might reach.

Choosing your target audience

LinkedIn's targeting options let you narrow your audience by location, job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and more. You can also upload a list of company names or email addresses to target people at specific organizations. The more specific you are, the smaller your audience becomes — but the more likely those people are to care about your message.

A common approach is to start broad (like "all marketing managers in the United States") and then narrow down based on what you learn from early results. If you notice your promotion gets engagement from people at certain company sizes or in certain industries, you can adjust future promotions to focus there.

What happens after you launch a promotion

Once your promotion is live, you can track its performance in Campaign Manager. You'll see metrics like impressions (how many people saw it), clicks, engagement rate, and cost per result. LinkedIn updates these numbers throughout the day as people interact with your promoted post.

You can pause a promotion at any time if you want to stop spending, or let it run until your budget is exhausted. If a promotion performs well, you can increase the daily budget to reach more people. If it's not working, you can pause it and try a different post or audience.

Common reasons a promotion might not reach your budget

Sometimes your daily budget doesn't get fully spent, which usually means your audience is too small or too specific. If you're targeting "VP of Sales at Fortune 500 companies in San Francisco," there might only be a few hundred people matching that criteria, so LinkedIn runs out of people to show your post to before spending your full budget.

If this happens, you can broaden your targeting (remove the location restriction, or include VP-level roles more broadly) or lower your daily budget to match the actual audience size. LinkedIn will tell you if your audience is too small when you set up the promotion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I promote a post from someone else's LinkedIn Page?

No, you can only promote posts from a LinkedIn Page you manage or a personal profile you own. If you want to promote someone else's content, they would need to promote it themselves, or you could share it on your own Page and then promote your share of it.

How long does it take to see results from a promotion?

Results start appearing within a few hours of launch, though it takes a full day or two to get a clear picture of how your promotion is performing. LinkedIn's metrics update throughout the day, so check back after 24 hours to see meaningful engagement numbers.

What's the difference between promoting a post and running a LinkedIn ad?

Promoting a post boosts an existing piece of content on your Page. Running an ad through Campaign Manager lets you create new ad creative (images, headlines, descriptions) from scratch. Ads offer more design control, but promoted posts feel more native to LinkedIn's feed.

Can I promote a post to people outside LinkedIn?

No, LinkedIn promotions only reach people on LinkedIn itself. Your promoted post appears in their feed, but it doesn't show up on Facebook, Google, or other platforms. If you want to reach people across multiple platforms, you'd need to run ads through those platforms separately.

What happens to my promotion if I delete the original post?

If you delete a post while it's being promoted, the promotion stops immediately and you stop being charged. LinkedIn won't refund the money already spent, but you won't be charged for any impressions or clicks after the post is deleted.