In this article, Andy Candler (Aprendido, ModuleMinder, and COO of L&D Free Spirits) shares what happened when he spent £50 boosting a LinkedIn post about ModuleMinder. He breaks down the results, what LinkedIn’s numbers actually mean, and what he’d do differently next time.
Last week I boosted a LinkedIn post announcing ModuleMinder, the license management tool I’ve been building for L&D content creators.
The content had just been posted, and I saw the “Promote this post to reach people who matter to you” prominently shouting at me along the top.
I spent £50, picked what I thought was a sensible audience, entered my credit card details, took a deep breath and clicked Boost. I decided not to watch the post like a hawk. I went about my business and waited for the boost to end, then looked at the dashboard.
When it ended, the results didn’t feel right, so I asked Claude to help me analyse what really happened.
Here’s what happened, in case you’re eyeing up that Boost button yourself.
The options available were “More impressions” and “More engagement”. My goal was to get people to visit the www.moduleminder.com website and sign-up their interest. So, I chose “More impressions” as I felt getting it in front of more people would mean more clicks on the URL in the post.
I targeted English-speaking members in; Europe, the UK, the US, the EU and EMEA, working in “E-Learning Providers”, in “Business Development” and “Customer Success & Support”.
LinkedIn estimated an audience of 270,000+ and predicted 1,679 to 3,358 impressions for my £50. This is based on a boost of five days.
| Paid | Whole post (including paid) | |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 12,171 | 16,230 |
| People reached | 7,819 | 9,700 |
| Reactions | 6 | 15 |
| Comments | 0 | 0 |
| Clicks | 280 | |
| Visits to my website link | 0 | |
| New followers | 7 |
On the surface, it looks like a great return. Far more impressions than forecasted, 280 clicks and a 2% click-through rate. Then I looked closer.
This was the eye-opener. On LinkedIn, a “click” includes clicks on your content, your name or your image. It doesn’t mean someone went to your website. My post was long enough to be cut off with “see more”, and it had a large logo image. So, most of those 280 clicks were people expanding the text or enlarging the logo. Not one of them clicked through to www.moduleminder.com.
Just 1% of the impressions came from my followers and connections. That’s around 160 views from the 5,486 people who know me already. The rest went to new people, and this is exactly what I wanted. It would seem crazy to pay £50 and appear in front of my current audience.
Around 4,000 organic impressions produced 9 reactions. Around 12,000 paid impressions produced 6. The people LinkedIn found for free, were roughly four times more likely to react than the people I paid to reach. I don’t actually know what to make of this statistic. My first reaction is maybe I boosted the wrong post – one that was not engaging enough.
The biggest audiences were in; Istanbul, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Cairo, Lagos, Johannesburg and Ankara. London came in at 1%, and no US city made the list at all.
At first, I couldn’t work out why Cairo and Lagos were there. I actually joked a few days into it that suddenly I had hit a rich seam of people in Nigeria – engaging with me – and I didn’t know why.
Then I remembered that my targeted choice. I’d ticked EMEA, which stands for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I’d effectively asked LinkedIn to show my post across three continents, expecting it to do it equally, but this is not what happened.
LinkedIn gave me exactly what I asked for. I chose “More impressions”, so it went looking for the cheapest impressions it could find within my target. By selecting EMEA I’d given it a huge, varied region to work with, and impressions in some of those markets cost far less than in London or New York. My goal was sign-ups, but Boost didn’t ask me for that specificity.
Then I realized that the forecasted numbers gave it away.
LinkedIn’s estimate implied a cost of around £15 per 1,000 impressions. I actually paid £4.11, and got more than three and a half times the impressions it predicted. That sounds like a bargain until you ask where those cheap impressions came from.
And critically looking at the post again. It led with the product name rather than the problem it solves, and it didn’t invite a conversation. Boosting obviously amplifies whatever you give it, and I gave it a piece of news, not a reason to engage or click.
Pick the goal that matches the outcome. If you want website visits, set that up properly in Campaign Manager rather than using the quick Boost button.
Check what your location labels actually cover. I ticked Europe, the UK, the EU and EMEA, not realising EMEA includes the Middle East and Africa and swallows the other three. Pick the specific countries you can serve.
Measure what matters. For me that’s sign-ups on the ModuleMinder list, not impressions.
And most importantly, think about Boosting a post that’s already doing well organically. Don’t boost one that’s not doing a lot, in the hope that throwing money at it will make it more important.
As a marketing exercise, not really: Each paid reaction cost me £8.33, each new follower around £7, and the website visits I was hoping for just didn’t happen.
As a marketing lesson, absolutely: I now understand what LinkedIn’s numbers mean, and I’ll spend the next £50 far more wisely – if at all.
