Maybe you’ve run a few campaigns on LinkedIn and want to find ways to make your campaigns more efficient.
Or, maybe you’ve heard about how effective it is to run campaigns on LinkedIn and are here to learn more.
Whichever one you are, you’re in the right place.
Utilizing different audience targeting techniques are a step in the right direction when making sure your LinkedIn campaigns hit the right audience at the right time.
Read on to discover five targeting tips that will make your campaigns unbelievably successful.
Try Stacking Your Parameters
Have you ever noticed how certain numbers tend to have some sort of magic? Like the number three, for example. Most things seem to happen in threes.
Weird, huh?
Targeting for LinkedIn campaigns are no exception. Basically, when setting up your targeting you’ll select your location (parameter #1), and then have room to add two other targeting parameters, meaning three total. Ideally you should have no less than one additional parameter, but no more than three to avoid hyper-targeting.
It may seem like a great idea to use every targeting feature when setting up your campaign, but in actuality you could be hindering your ads performance by limiting it’s reach. You should set up with a wider target audience, then see what works and what doesn’t and correct.
Expand your targeted reach through audience expansion and lookalike audiences
Regardless of how well researched you are on your ideal audience, it’s practically impossible to create targeting parameters that reach everyone. LinkedIn does have scary accurate professional data, but even then there are variables that may cause members of your ideal audience to be excluded.
When you use Audience Expansion and lookalike audiences, you’re creating a broad enough targeted audience that people in similar demographics or interests will also see your campaigns. Because of that, your campaign will reach the widest relevant audience possible, which in turn means a more effective campaign.
Utilize Interest Targeting
Interest Targeting is exactly what it sounds like – targeting LinkedIn members based on their interests.
While there may be some obvious interests already, you may be able to reach a more relevant audience with hidden interests in a truly creative way.
How can you discover these interests?
?Content Suggestions
?Groups
You can find Content Suggestions built in the admin of your LinkedIn page. This brings up content that your audience members have shown previous interest in. This tool helps you engage with your target audience throughout the platform, and helps give insight into your audience’s interests that you otherwise may not have ever known.
Groups can be utilized a few different ways. First, groups can be selected as a targeting parameter. So if you wanted to reach small business owners, you’d have the option to select from several small business oriented groups. You can also look at the type of content shared, liked, and clicked on within each group to find new interests that you otherwise wouldn’t have known.
For example, the majority of your audience may be interested in a new software for small business owners that came out, so they’ve really been talking, clicking, and sharing about it. You could create a campaign that relates both the small business owners and the software, and choose a targeting parameter with the softwares name, as well as relevant targeting interests.
Use Account-Based Marketing For Your LinkedIn Targeting
Using account-based marketing raises brand awareness and share of voice with key contacts at specific companies you have on your list.
This becomes even more strategic once you make contact with key executives and decision-makers of the companies.
If you have a list of accounts, you can use Account Targeting and run ABM campaigns to make a more successful campaign and bring in leads. If you aren’t sure where to start when making your list, Account Targeting will help you find new prospects by matching your target companies to over 13 millions LinkedIn pages.
Utilize A/B Testing
As a marketer, you know that you should always be testing your campaigns. When you find what works and what doesn’t work with your audience, you’re able to create more effective ads down the road.
When you A/B test, you run two similar campaigns with one difference, and see which one does the best with your audience. If you do more than one variation, you won’t know which one was more effective, which can complicate the results.
Use Audience Testing
As we mentioned above, testing is an important part of creating campaigns. Every audience has a different sweet spot – and you want to find that. You’ll have to use different tactics to find the perfect fit for your accounts, but once you find what works you’ll experience unbelievable success.
LinkedIn’s ad platform lets you test in various ways.
?As long as your campaign’s ad type is the same, like video, single image, or carousel, you can test different copy, banner images, CTAs, subject lines, or senders to see which one relates best to your audience.
?Test your ad type by taking two separate campaigns and sending them to the same target audience. Establish the same daily budget and total, and make sure your messaging and creative are as similar as possible.
?You can also test your audiences by duplicating an ad and changing the target audience on one of them. Make sure you’re only changing one targeting option at a time so you know what specifically is or isn’t working.
?Take advantage of LinkedIn’s Demographics Reporting tool. Once you have a matched audience, LinkedIn will activate the website demographics. However, this feature won’t turn on until the ad is delivered to 300 or more users. With this tool, you’ll have access to different targeting options, like job function, industry, and company, and the option to view who engaged more or less.
As a marketer, you should invest a good amount of time and energy into testing your ad campaigns and strategy.
You won’t regret it!