Unleashing LinkedIn’s

Targeting Capabilities

Jeff Weiner

Chief Executive Officer

Ray Hwang

Product Marketing Manager

Cassandra Clark

Senior Marketing Manager

We’ll cover…

1. What are the basics of targeting

on LinkedIn?

2. What are Matched Audiences and how do I

use them?

3. What are best practices to

optimize my target strategy?

4. How does LinkedIn do targeting

on LinkedIn?

2

Be the most effective platform for marketers to engage

with professionals

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions’ mission

Be the most effective platform for marketers to engage

with professionals

4

What makes LinkedIn targeting unique?

LinkedIn has 500M+ registered members, and gains a new member every 2 seconds.

A member’s LinkedIn profile contains relevant professional data points.

LinkedIn ads targeting is based on member-declared data.

Accuracy is fueled by the member value exchange

Reach & Scale User-Provided, Accurate Data

• 8.2MM+ C-level execs

• 14.4MM+ Opinion leaders

• 45MM+ Decision makers

• 73MM+ Senior-level influencers

LinkedIn’s members bring a professional mindset -

an important context for advertisers

A Professional Audience

Brand loyal professionals with

more purchasing power than

other social platforms

In an Aspirational Mindset

Opportunity for marketers to

align their brands with member’s

with member’s professional

success

Influenced by Their

Professional Networks

Opinions from their professional

peers impact personal

buying decision

LinkedIn Targeting 101

User-provided targeting fields

Title

Company

Member-specified location

Group Membership

Company Following

SchoolField of Study

Graduation Year

Danie

Seattle, Washington USA

Boston University

Communication

Bachelor of Science

2011, 25-34

Simply Measured

51-200 employees

Internet

Senior Marketing Manager

Marketing, Senior IC

CMA, LEWIS, Social Tools

SEO, Social Media,

Digital Marketing,

Blogging

LinkedIn’s Targeting facets

As of 5/30/2017

Targeting by Function and Title

User-entered Title

↓

Standardized Title

↓ ↓

Seniority Function

Inferred from user-entered title

Targeting by Seniority

1

1

Focus on hands-on influencers

• Target senior individual contributors (ICs) as

part of your audience

• Senior ICs test products and influence the

purchase

• Senior ICs represent a much bigger

audience than the person that will ultimately

sign the contract

TIP

Craft different messages for

ICs versus Owners/Partners/CXOs.

Manager

Senior

Entry

Director

VP

Owner

CXO

Partner

Training

Unpaid

*Entry and Senior are Individual contributor (IC) which include highly skilled professionals e.g. engineer, teacher, doctor, lawyer, etc

Targeting by Company Name, Industry, SizeMember industry is directly inferred from their current experience

12

Company Entered Name

↓

Company Entered Industry

↓

Company Entered # of employees

Sample:

Company Name → LinkedIn

Company Industry → Internet

Company Size → 5,000-10,000

Large companies may span several industries but

can only choose one. Spot-check company pages to

ensure you are targeting the correct industry.

Targeting by Professional Skills

Reach experts in their fields who

have:

• Explicitly added their skills into

the skills section

• Have skills mentioned on their

profile text

• Have inferred skills based on

the explicit skills and mentioned

skills in their profile

LinkedIn Matched Audiences

Reach decision makers at

your target accounts

Combine the power of

demographic targeting on

LinkedIn with your target

account list

Re-engage your

website visitors

Use one tag for

website retargeting

and conversion tracking

Website Retargeting Account Targeting

15

Import or integrate your

contact email lists

Connect to your contact

management platform(s) or

upload a list of

email addresses

Contact Targeting

Matched Audiences

Introducing a new way to reach audiences that matter most to your business on LinkedIn

Re-engage your

website visitors

Website Retargeting

• Exclude converters from your net-

new campaigns

• Exclude website visitors from

awareness campaigns

• Retarget converters of offer 1 with

offer 2 to move them through the

funnel

• Retarget your LP visitors who

have yet to convert

Reach decision makers at

your target accounts

Account Targeting

• Align with sales on high-priority

accounts and personalize content

• Reach the buying committee at

high-priority accounts

• Target customers to show them

product updates or cross-sell opps

• Exclude competitors by adding

them to a list to exclude

Import or integrate your

contact email lists

Contact Targeting

• Exclude a list of customers from

prospecting campaigns

• Add a list of customers to show

product updates and cross-sell

opps

• Add a list of leads to remain top of

mind during their buying journey

• Integrate your contact

management platforms

19

Targeting Best Practices

Guiding Targeting Principles

• Lump all of your buyer personas into one

campaign

• Use the same content & targeting tactics

regardless of product

• Hyper-target your campaigns

Don’t Do

• Make sure your buyer personas are clear and

well-defined

• Tailor your content to your audience

• Add two or fewer targeting facets in addition

to Location

Utilize Campaign

Demographics

Best Practices

Understand who your ads

resonate with, then focus on

your best audiences

Experiment and A/B test your targetingUse multiple targeting combinations in order to reach your ideal audiences

Our approach to targeting

on LinkedIn

Three Audience Objectives

Top Funnel Engagement

● Branding

● Thought leadership

● Filling our marketing funnel

with net new contacts

Engaging our known

audiences

● Account targeting

● Customer marketing

● Website retargeting

Persona Targeting

● Industry marketing

● Agencies

● SMB Marketers

Job functions: Marketing, PR and

communications

Seniority: Senior, Entry, Manager,

Director, VP, CXO, Owner,

Founder

Region: North America

Exclude: Customers (csv upload)

How we use LinkedIn targeting to engage net new prospects

Account list: Company names

Job functions: Marketing, PR and

communication

Seniority: Senior, Entry,

Manager, Director, VP, CXO,

Owner, Founder

How we use LinkedIn to nurture target sales accounts

How we use LinkedIn for customer engagement

Leverage email contact

targeting to reach our

customers on LinkedIn for

ongoing product education

How we use LinkedIn to retarget website visitors

Segment website

visitors based on the

pages that they visit.

Example #1:

Product and pricing

visits receive a $50

promo code to try

LinkedIn ads

How we use LinkedIn to retarget website visitors

Segment website visitors

based on the pages that

they visit.

Example #2

Home page visits receive the

Sophisticated Marketer’s

Guide to LinkedIn

How we use LinkedIn to build personas

Technology Marketers

Industries: Computer

Hardware, Computer

Software, Computer

Networking, Internet,

Semiconductors,

Telecommunications,

Information Technology and

Services, Computer and

Network Security, Wireless

Job Functions: Marketing,

Media and Communication

Seniority: Manager, Senior,

VP, Partner, CXO, Director

Region: Canada, United

States

LinkedIn targeting examples and

tips by product

When running

Dynamic Ads

campaign, keep

in mind:

• Great for targeting broad audiences. Targeting by industry,

function and/or seniority provides more scale.

• A/B test your creative and optimize towards best performing

option.

• Use creative with real people, avoid company logos.

• Get creative with personalization

Dynamic Ads Example

When running Sponsored

Content campaign, keep in mind:

• Versatile ad unit that works great for all campaign objectives

• Align your targeting and content strategies

• Keep targeting broad at first (at least 300K+ members in each

audience) to understand who’s engaging.

• Avoid hyper targeted campaigns: they tend to have lower

performance and much lower scale.

• Deliver personalization in the feed by tailoring your targeting to

subsets of your target audience

Leverage targeting for deeper personalization in the feed

When running Sponsored InMail

campaign, keep in mind:

• Campaigns perform best when the messaging is tailored to a

very specific audience.

• Works great for smaller audience segments

• 60-day frequency cap

• Smaller audiences means you can experiment with specific job

titles, skills or locations.

Using LinkedIn targeting to reach the

executive audience via InMail

55%

Open Rate

In general, targeting best

practices include:

Map campaign goals to channel and targeting

strategy.

1

2

3

4

Find the balance between scale and relevancy.

Align content with the targeting strategy.

Be willing to experiment and test.

1. Use Campaign Demographics to optimize your campaign targeting

2. A/B test various targeting facets

3. Create a website retargeting audience and let it start building

4. Use Account Targeting to help your sales team nurture their target accounts

5. Exclude customers from your prospect campaigns using contact or account targeting

6. Try Audience Expansion

Top 6 things to try today

©2015 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Appendix

1

2

SUMMARYHow can I use Account

Based Marketing on

LinkedIn?

Subscribe to our newsletter

http://lnkd.in/AgencyNewsletter

Marketers can match key accounts to LinkedIn’s

database of companies to ensure they reach the right

audience

Account based marketing lists can be leveraged for

Sponsored Content or Sponsored InMail but must consist

of at least 300 companies

3Popular use cases include re-engaging with lost

customers, deepening relationships with current accounts,

and targeting specific leads

IP or member entered

• Sponsored Content will be

delivered to members who fit

the geo-targeting criteria by

either IP or member entered

geography

• Like Sponsored Content, Text

ads do not have a priority of

delivery for IP or member

entered location

Member entered geo

• LinkedIn Dynamics ads only use

member entered location for geo-

targeting

• Sponsored InMail will primarily

use member entered location for

targeting. IF the member within

the target audience does not have

a location specified in their profile,

IP will be used as back-up

IP only

• Traditional display ads are the

only ad type on LinkedIn using IP

only targeting.

Some things to keep in mind when

targeting by Geography

Influence the Influencer Not All Products are Equal A/B Test and Test Again

Need brand exposure?Consider broader targeting with

products that are designed for branding

and advocacy

Need Leads?Drive net new traffic to your site while

staying focused on a more specific

targeting audience

Want to be granular?Consider products designed for a

highly personalized outreach

Testing Targeting FacetsA/B test to see which audience is

engaged

• Titles vs. Function + Seniority

• Group members + Seniority

• Skills + Seniority

Testing CreativeUse one audiences with multiple creative

assets to see what content works best

Use a Consistent MeasurementYour measurement should align with your

campaign goals

Define your audienceThink members first. Who would find the

content relevant?

Establish your goalsWhat does success mean for this

campaign?

Resist temptation to hyper targetHyper targeting significantly reduces your

scale and ability to optimize

A savvy approach to targeting is essential for success

Find the right balance between relevance and scale,

and try to avoid hyper-targeting

Make sure your audience aligns with the objective, the

channel, and the content

1

2

Consider combinations of targeting options for greater

audience coverage and easy optimizations3

What are best practices

for targeting on LinkedIn?

SUMMARY