LinkedIn is a must-use social network for businesses who want to target professionals. If you’re looking to increase MQLs and SQLs, using LinkedIn’s advertising platform is a powerful tool. With the ability to target ads based on job titles, seniority and company affiliation, you’re able to drive conversions by narrowing in on a specific audience.
Not familiar with LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities? We’re here to help! In this blog, we explore all the options for LinkedIn targeting so you’re prepared to launch a high-performing campaign.
Target Companies
The ability to target by company name is one of LinkedIn’s greatest advantages. When selecting the audience for your ad, you’ll have the option to choose individual companies you want to reach. This allows you to identify top prospects in your target market and ensure that they’ll be included in the campaign’s audience.
If you’re new to LinkedIn, we recommend starting with this option to run a successful campaign. Regardless of your campaign initiative , determining key companies you want to reach is the easiest way to garner qualified leads in the beginning. Keep in mind that the amount of organizations you include in your list will also play a role in your ad’s performance. For best practice, include at least 100 organizations but don’t exceed 300,000. Displaying your ad to too many people can dilute the quality of your clicks and impressions – wasting away your campaign’s budget.
If you need to further refine your audience after defining which companies you want to target,you can add in more user-specific information. By narrowing your audience, you’re further decreasing the likelihood of faulty clicks and visits by irrelevant users. Additional options to target include:
- Job Function
- Seniority
- Job Title
- Geography
- Skills
Target Individuals (List Upload)
If you already have a clearly defined audience that you’re looking to target, LinkedIn’s List Upload option in the ad’s platform might be the best solution for you. Target individual users by simply importing a custom list for your campaign. To use the list upload option, you’ll need at least one of the following:
- Email Address
- Name
- Mobile ID
- Google User ID
Though this could be the most direct solution to reach your desired audience, there are a few fall backs. For instance, it’s unlikely that every LinkedIn user will use their work email to create their profile, which is typically the email B2B companies are looking for.
Another feature within the ad’s platform is the ability to expand the reach to a similar audience allowing you to identify and target similar individuals. You won’t want to use this feature when you are utilizing Account Based Marketing, but it can really help you reach individuals with similar job titles, skill sets and more to increase your audience.
Target Lookalike Audiences
Similar to audience expansion, you can create lookalike audiences based on your target market. Your lookalike audience can be based on:
- Website Visitors
- Contacts
- Target Accounts
You can even use LinkedIn tools to automate those audience parameters if you don’t have your own prepared. Templates are available for 20 predefined B2B audience options on LinkedIn to get you started. They cover member skills, job titles and groups. However, it’s important to note that this isn’t going to be the most precise way of targeting but acts as more of a jumping off point.
It’s important to be smart with your advertising budget – don’t waste money on clicks that don’t matter! You will be able to see the impressions and clicks happening within the individual audiences you have created, showing which ones are most engaged. Using this information, you can segment the most engaged audiences into separate targeted campaign and utilize additional or remaining budget towards these contacts.
Follow Nowspeed for more information on LinkedIn advertising and stay tuned for upcoming webinars for other insightful topics. Ready to grow? Connect with us today!
