LinkedIn ads give B2B companies of all sizes the opportunity to reach a larger, targeted audience and drive quality leads. Millions of people are on the platform every day and 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members drive business decisions, making LinkedIn the number one platform for B2B lead generation.
To make the LinkedIn ads platform work for you, we’ve got tried and true targeting best practices for you; and they really are “tried”—we test all these strategies internally before rolling them out! Check them out below:
Matched Audiences
To begin, it’s helpful to implement a LinkedIn Insight Tag. This is a piece of code on your website that will help you to retarget visitors within LinkedIn’s platform.
The LinkedIn Insight Tag is a piece of JavaScript that will help you to improve your campaign reporting and gain insights about how your LinkedIn audience is similar to (or different from) your website visitors.
In addition to targeting your current website visitors on LinkedIn, you can also integrate existing lead and email lists. These insight analytics give you in-depth information to create lookalike audiences.
Insight Tags are not your only option; however, as an advertiser, you can also include conversion tracking on your campaigns. These are triggers that will track individual actions or conversions on your site.
Audience Options
When it comes to B2B advertising, LinkedIn is the best option over other social media and PPC. While there are instances when Google AdWords or Facebook Ads might be better, for the B2B SaaS audience, LinkedIn provides the most ROI for users.
Although it has the best ROI, LinkedIn is not the cheapest option when it comes to advertising, which is why it’s crucial to ensure that you have the best audience options to ensure your ads are getting in front of the right people.
Company
Targeting by company is a great way to include a lot of decision-makers or a sales team that is pursuing multiple verticals. There are also quite a few sub-categories that will help you narrow down your desired audience.
Specific company options include:
- Company connections: First-degree connections (people you’re directly connected with)
- Company followers
- Industries
- Names
- Size
Demographics
The demographic group is an area of targeting that most advertisers understand. These are traits such as age, gender, income bracket, etc. If you haven’t established demographics for your target audiences, start by creating buyer personas and use those to guide your targeting.
Education is a demographic that has been broken out so that you can drill down further.
Job experience
Because people are likely to keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date, job experience is a unique feature within LinkedIn’s targeting options. Within job experience, you can target by:
- Functions
- Skills
- Seniorities
- Titles
- Experience
Interests
A new addition to targeting, interest-based targeting, is a way to specify users who are part of specific groups or who follow certain topics.
Top Targeting Tips
To start, go for easy wins—target visitors who have already shown interest in your company by visiting your website, lookalike audiences, current email subscribers or specific account targeting.
Use Matched Audiences to exclude your current customers, competitors and engaged audiences. Speaking of competitors, put them all on a list and exclude them from your targeting.
Make sure you fill in the following categories, as relevant, to ensure you are gathering the best quality and quantity leads:
- Company Name
- Company Industry
- Job Title
- Job Function
- Job Seniority
- Member Skills
Audience options have some of the best features for drilling down on your chosen audience. Targeting by audience will help to not only give you a more precise audience but also create spending precision.
Some tips for spending precision include:
- Job title: This is a very precise target which will lead to low volume of leads at the highest cost of these listed options
- Job function & seniority: This is a very broad target audience that will lead to a high volume of leads, but cost more money
- Skills and seniority: This is a broad targeting strategy that will produce high lead volume, but will have a medium-high cost
- Groups & seniority: This is a very precise targeting strategy that will produce a low lead volume and will have medium-high cost
Advertising on LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for your inboard marketing strategy. Incorporate these targeting strategies to ensure your ads are getting in front of the right audience and you get the best value out of your investment.
Looking for more ways to improve your overall efforts on LinkedIn? This comprehensive ebook has all you need to know.
