LinkedIn clearly stands out from other social networks thanks to its pronounced professional character. Its creators position LinkedIn as a network to find and establish business connections. Many people refuse to advertise on this platform, considering that it is designed exclusively for recruiters and job seekers. However, with 63 million businesses listed here, the network may become the best solution for promoting B2B services, especially when you know the best times to post for maximum engagement.
LinkedIn users come to the platform to exchange experiences and search for up-to-date professional information. At the same time, their profiles look like an online resume, allowing you an exclusive opportunity to reach qualified and targeted audiences. Without this step, your advertising campaign will be useless and unprofitable. Keep reading to learn how to target your ideal customers using ads on this network. LinkedIn audience has 2X the buying power compared to other web platforms.
Targeting attributes on LinkedIn
Before you launch LinkedIn ads, you need to clearly define your goals. It can be increasing the number of followers on your page, generating leads, or promoting a specific product or service. Once your goals are clear, the next step is defining a target audience. The basic algorithm of LinkedIn matches other platforms. However, targeted advertising here opens up a wider range of audience segment choices covering not only demographics and interests but also professional parameters. You can use the following filters:
- Sociodemographic information. You can reach customers in over 200 countries by specifying a region and city. Gender and age can also be stated – there are four age categories: 18-24, 25-34, 35-54, and over 55.
- Education. It is a choice by place of study, specialization, and degree (bachelor, master, etc.).
- Job experience. The scale allows you to choose from one year to more than 12 years.
- Position. You can select a specific position, job responsibilities or job level.
- Skills. In a broad sense, these include hard skills and soft skills, but for greater convenience, LinkedIn ranks them in four categories: Basic, Industry, Interpersonal, and Other.
- Companies. It is possible to select the name of a specific company, the industry as a whole and the size of the company.
- Groups. Targeting the audience of specified communities can be very effective. To get into some communities, you should undergo moderation. It significantly improves the quality of the communities’ audience (and, consequently, the quality of your audience).
Whenever you are going through these criteria, you are free to add or exclude parameters. The more targeting options you choose, the less audience your ads will reach. However, this refinement enhances the targeting precision, increasing potential conversions from the most relevant audience.
Additional ways to find relevant audience on LinkedIn
The above attributes, including the Net Promoter Score, will help you refine your customers, but it is not the only approach to reach the desired audience on this platform. There are other efficient ways to enable your ads to reach the right addressees.
Audience Templates.
This is a convenient starting point for advertisers to create a campaign. These templates help streamline the process of audience selection and targeting. They are ready-made forms that represent the most frequently used combinations of various targeting criteria (education, skills groups). You will easily find templates for different marketing objectives – for job seekers or for small business owners. Moreover, you can further customize them by adding more attributes to make your ads resonate with targeted LinkedIn users.
LinkedIn Audience Network.
This feature can boost the reach of your ads by a fantastic 25%. It allows you to show your advertisements on other platforms, including LinkedIn Groups. This way, you will get in touch with a stunning number of users who are not active on LinkedIn. Audience Network comes with brand safety measures that enable you to monitor where your ads should not be displayed. The tool supports only three ad formats at the moment – single-image ads, carousel ads, and video ads. Audience Network is a rapid channel to expand your advertising campaign and can be a valuable option if your goal is to quickly reach a large audience.
Matched audiences.
This feature will empower you to engage with those customers who already have experience with your brand. These audiences encompass various categories, such as your website visitors, email subscribers, or a particular market segment you intend to reach. There are three primary methods to use Matched Audiences: simple retargeting, company targeting, and contact targeting.
With retargeting, you can efficiently study your existing audience and deliver more tailored content based on their previous interactions with your brand. This tool enables you to securely interact with up to 300,000 specific users or companies you wish to target.
Lookalike audiences.
Sooner or later, you will use all available databases and contact lists. Lookalike audiences will help expand your reach further. This tool takes into account various factors, such as industry, company size, job roles, and interests, to help you discover ideal audiences. Notably, it does not rely on demographic attributes like gender or age range for matching. If initial Lookalike Audiences settings seem too broad, you can manually fine-tune specific elements for a more precise match.
The feature does not reach the original matched list, avoiding oversaturating your existing followers with the same ad. And even if you delete the original campaign, your Lookalike campaigns will continue to operate as usual, albeit without further live updates.
Measure the effectiveness of LinkedIn ads.
After launching any advertising campaign, it is a must to properly evaluate its performance. The platform offers plenty of reports and indicators for this purpose. Campaign Manager is the most informative report. It operates with the following indicators:
- Amount spent on an advertising campaign (Total Spent);
- Impressions: how many times your ads were shown to users during the reporting period;
- Number of ad clicks;
- Click-through rate;
- Average cost per 1000 impressions;
- Engagement: the number of social reactions to your ads;
- Cost per Lead;
- Reach: how many people saw your ads.
The report can be downloaded as a CSV file for further in-depth analysis or adding to CRM.
Summary
LinkedIn offers a variety of audience targeting options, providing ample opportunities to connect with diverse user segments. However, like any advertising approach, you should elaborate a thoughtful and adaptable strategy to enjoy the best outcomes for your business.
Effective marketing on LinkedIn demands professional campaign management and optimization, akin to managing campaigns on other social media platforms. Addressing the right audience is just a part of this complicated process that also involves precise targeting adjustments, budget management, and scrupulous performance monitoring. The LinkedIn landscape is constantly evolving, with existing members changing jobs and new members joining the network. So, you must stay up-to-date on these changes and amend your marketing campaign accordingly.