Pick the segments before you look at numbers
Decide which cuts matter for your campaign. On LinkedIn the useful ones are job function, seniority, company size and industry. On Meta they are more often age, placement and the audience itself, for example a lookalike audience against a retargeting list. Choose three or four, not all of them.
Write down in advance what you expect. For example, "Heads of sales will click more than operations managers." A guess made first shows you later when you were wrong, which is where you learn.
Export the data from the platform
In LinkedIn Campaign Manager, open the campaign and use the demographics view to see results by job function, seniority and company size. In Meta Ads, use the breakdown menu. Export to a spreadsheet with these columns:
- Segment.
- Impressions.
- Clicks.
- Click-through rate, which is clicks divided by impressions.
- Cost per click.
- Leads or conversions, if you track them.
Use the same date range for every segment. Seven to fourteen days is the minimum for a campaign with a fair amount of traffic. For a smaller campaign, use the whole run.
Remove segments that are too small to read
A segment with 300 impressions and 2 clicks has a click-through rate of 0.7 per cent, but that number means almost nothing. One more click would move it by half. As a working rule, do not read a segment until it has at least 1,000 impressions and 20 clicks. Combine small segments into a larger group, or leave them out.
Compare each segment with your own average
Calculate the overall click-through rate, then divide each segment's rate by it to get an index. Say your campaign has an overall rate of 0.6 per cent. Heads of sales click at 0.9 per cent, an index of 150. Operations managers click at 0.3 per cent, an index of 50.
Use your own average as the benchmark, not an industry figure from an article. Your market, your offer and your format decide what is normal.
Check what happens after the click
A high click-through rate is not the goal. A click is only a step. For each segment, add cost per click and cost per lead, and if you can, the share of leads that turn into meetings. Two cases come up often:
- A segment clicks a lot and never converts. Often the ad promises something the landing page does not give, or the ad attracts people who cannot buy, such as students or very junior staff.
- A segment clicks less but converts well. Do not cut it. Fewer, better clicks can be cheaper per meeting.
Decide what to do with each segment
For each segment, choose one of four actions:
- High click rate, good conversion: raise the budget and protect it.
- High click rate, poor conversion: look at the landing page and the targeting.
- Low click rate, good conversion: leave it, and test a new hook for it.
- Low click rate, poor conversion: stop spending or rewrite from scratch.
Split a segment into its own campaign only if its rate differs from the average by 30 to 50 per cent or more, and it has enough volume to read. Too many small campaigns split your budget and leave each one with too little data.
Rewrite for the weak segments, one change at a time
For a weak segment, change one thing: the hook, the image or the call to action. Follow the method in Test one variable, or you learn nothing. Write the hook in words that group uses. A head of finance cares about risk and cost. A marketing manager cares about pipeline and speed. Use the lessons from A/B test ad formats systematically when you test the format.
Repeat every two weeks
Add each export to a tab in the same sheet, dated. After a few rounds you can see which segments stay strong, and which ones tire. If a segment that used to click well starts to fall, it may be a sign of creative fatigue, covered in Run monthly creative refreshes. For the wider reporting view, use LinkedIn ad reporting and optimisation. A dashboard in Looker Studio can save you the export.
Common mistakes
- Reading segments that have almost no data.
- Judging an ad on click-through rate alone and ignoring conversion.
- Comparing your numbers with an industry average.
- Splitting every segment into its own campaign.
- Changing the ad and the audience in the same week.
- Doing the analysis once and never again.
How you know it works
You can say, for each main segment, whether its rate is above or below your average and what you did about it. The overall rate rises because weak segments got better copy or lost budget, and the cost per lead falls. Next time someone asks "who is this ad for?", you can answer with numbers.
