Your LinkedIn Banner Is Prime Real Estate. Most Businesses Waste It
Scroll through LinkedIn for five minutes and count how many banners are just a logo centred on a plain colour, or a generic stock photo of a skyline, a handshake, or a laptop on a desk. Every profile and every company page gets this huge rectangle of free advertising space, and almost nobody uses it 💖 — it's prime real estate, sitting there empty, above the fold, before a single post or comment is seen.
Most businesses treat the banner as decoration, not real estate
The banner is one of the first things visible when someone lands on a profile or page — before your latest post, before your About section, sometimes before they've even read your headline properly. People make a stay-or-scroll-past decision in a couple of seconds. A logo-only banner answers "who is this", which they can usually already see from your name and photo anyway. It completely wastes the chance to answer the far more useful question: what do you actually do, who's it for, and why should I keep scrolling or hit follow?
- One short value-proposition line, under about eight words — what you help with, or who you help.
- A real visual anchor: a genuine photo of you, your work or your product — not generic stock.
- Optional small text pointing the eye toward your Featured section or About, since the banner itself can't be clickable.
- One accent colour from your actual brand palette as the background, not LinkedIn's default white or grey.
- Keep text clear of the bottom-left third on personal profiles, where your profile photo overlaps the banner.
How to design it without hiring a designer
- Start with a template built for the correct dimensions — personal profile and company page banners are different sizes, and LinkedIn does change these specs from time to time, so check current numbers before exporting.
- Write your one-line value proposition first, before touching any design software — design around the words, not the other way round.
- Pick one accent colour from your brand palette. Not five.
- Preview the export on both desktop and mobile before publishing — LinkedIn crops the same banner differently depending on the device.
- Revisit it every quarter, or whenever your core offer or call-to-action changes.
Mistakes to avoid
- Logo only, floating in otherwise empty space
- Generic stock photography — handshakes, skylines, laptops — with zero relevance to the business
- Text too small to read comfortably on a phone screen
- Important text or logo hidden behind the profile photo overlap zone
- Never updating it — the same banner for three years regardless of how the offer has changed
- Overcrowding it by trying to list every single service in tiny text
Frequently asked questions
Does redesigning the banner actually generate leads on its own?
Rarely, by itself — it's a small conversion lever, not a growth channel. It works best paired with an active posting habit and an updated About section; a great banner sitting on an otherwise inactive profile still won't do much heavy lifting.
Should personal profiles and company pages use the same banner?
No. Personal profile banners tend to work better when they feel human — your face, your specific offer. Company page banners can lean more brand- and category-led, since they're representing the whole business rather than one person.
What size should I actually use?
Current personal profile banners sit around 1584 by 396 pixels, with company pages slightly different — but check LinkedIn's current specs before exporting, since these numbers do shift over time.
Do I need a clickable CTA on the banner itself?
You can't make the banner itself clickable, so any "link" is really just pointing the eye toward your Featured section or About area. Worth being upfront with yourself about that limit rather than designing a banner that promises a destination it can't actually deliver.
Keep reading 🤍
I help Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses grow with branding, websites and marketing that actually works.
Work with me ✦