Ad targeting best practices

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Why ad targeting on LinkedIn is different

Even if you’re an experienced digital marketer, targeting on LinkedIn is different from other platforms. You can target based on what people do professionally instead of what they do in their personal lives.

Read on to understand the key steps to effective LinkedIn ad targeting.

1. Location, location, location

First, define where you would like to reach LinkedIn members. Location is the only mandatory targeting field. Get specific with a city or metropolitan area, or go broad with a state or country. This attribute can be based on the location a member has included in their profile or their IP address.

2. Build your audience

Next, it’s time to choose your audience from a wide range of targeting attributes. Here is a full list of criteria to choose from:


• Company: Company Connections, Company Followers, Company Industry, Company Name, Company Size

• Demographics: Age and Gender

• Education: Degrees, Fields of Study, and Member Schools

• Job Experience: Job function, Job Seniority, Job title, Member Skills, and Years of Experience

• Interests: Groups and Member Interests

Download the tactical eBook Unleashing LinkedIn’s Targeting Capabilities for an in-depth explanation of how to use each facet effectively.

3. Utilize an audience template

If you’re new to advertising on LinkedIn or just want a bit of help setting up your targeting - try starting off with an audience template. Audience templates can help you target key audiences, such as Event Planners, Medical Doctors, Members with a Bachelor's Degree, IT Decision Makers, and more, without the manual step of selecting the right mix of targeting options.

Ultimately this can help save you time during campaign setup while still effectively reaching a precise audience.

4. Avoid hyper-targeting

Limited scale will hurt your initial campaigns, so we recommend not adding more than two to three targeting facets. A good rule of thumb when starting out is to keep the target audience over 50,000 for Sponsored Content and Text Ads, and over 15,000 for Message Ads. Campaign Manager will show estimated reach and a suggested range while you’re building your audience.

This helps you cast a wider net initially. Through use-testing, you can learn which content and targeting strategies are most effective for your business.

5. Increase your reach with custom targeting options

On our platform, you have the option to enable Audience Expansion or build a lookalike audience. When using either option, LinkedIn’s algorithms will identify additional audience members similar to your target audience. As you’re beginning to test and refine, these options will help you reach a broader (but still relevant) audience and generate more data to help you optimize your campaigns.

Use Matched Audiences to customize LinkedIn targeting with your own business data. This set of targeting options helps you re-engage website visitors with Website Retargeting, nurture prospects with Contact Targeting, and run account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns with Account Targeting.

6. Know your audience with free insights

Audience insights are actionable intelligence about your audience's interests, locations, jobs, and companies powered by the world's largest professional network. Review insights to feel confident you're reaching exactly the right people. Every insight maps to an audience attribute available for targeting - when you see a meaningful insight, fine-tune your targeting and get more for your advertising dollar.

You can also leverage insights to align your ad content with your audience.

7. Tailor your content to your audience

Once you know more about your audience, you can begin to tailor content to be more relevant for each segment and test to learn what performs best.

For example, if you’re targeting C-level executives, deliver thought leadership content pieces that address the challenges they face. If you’re targeting senior individual contributors who can influence buying decisions, try more tactical content.

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8. Monitor how your campaign's performing

Once your campaign has accumulated enough data, click the Demographics tab in Campaign Manager. You’ll see detailed information (such as job title, job seniority, industry, and more) about the professionals who clicked and converted on your ads. Use these insights to inform your content, targeting, segmentation, and testing.

How to analyze campaign performance

9. A/B test your audiences

By testing two similar campaigns with variations in targeting criteria, you can see which combinations are more effective. To perform an A/B test on targeting: create a campaign, duplicate it, and then slightly alter your targeting parameters.

Change only a few criteria at a time to isolate which part of your test impacted performance. Try testing Skills versus Job Titles, Industry versus Job Function, etc. Keep refining over time, and you will learn how to reach the people who matter most to your company.