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How are LinkedIn ads targeted?



How are LinkedIn ads targeted?


When it comes to advertising your business via social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, you have plenty of choices when it comes to choosing where to advertise. But what if we told you that there was an even bigger platform out there than those popular sites? That’s right – LinkedIn has become one of the most effective tools in your digital marketing toolbox. 

With so much competition among all these different social networks, having a unique strategy to stand apart from others could be key to achieving success. And while other social networks may not offer as robust of features as LinkedIn does, the network certainly offers its own set of advantages over competitors’ offerings. Let’s take a look at some of them.

One thing that sets Linkedin apart from its peers is that it boasts over 500 million users across the world - which makes it the largest professional networking site available today. It also boasts the third-largest number of members outside America (behind only China and India), making it a prime place to make connections between professionals worldwide. With this large user base, businesses can use this social network to connect with potential clients, partners, employees, suppliers, influencers, etc., giving them ample opportunity to spread their message far and wide.

But just because the network is massive doesn’t mean it will always work in your favor. As with any form of social media, using social media channels correctly requires the correct targeting strategies and tactics. In order to succeed with a LinkedIn advertising campaign, you must understand what kind of audience you want to attract, who they are, and what type of content you should create around them. This article will provide a brief overview of each of these important topics.

How targeted can you get with LinkedIn ads?

Targeting audiences on LinkedIn is pretty easy, but it isn't necessarily simple either. There really aren't too many differences between the ways you would target someone on Facebook vs. LinkedIn, except for a few minor details. For example, instead of clicking “I am interested in...," click "My Interests" under People You May Know. Then you'll see a dropdown menu containing several categories to choose from. From here, you can select the category that matches up best with your product/service offering -- whether it's careers, leadership, or another related topic

You're able to add keywords directly into the search box as well, which allows you to filter results based off certain criteria. So, if you wanted to target anyone looking for jobs in San Francisco, California, you'd enter the keyword “jobs san francisco california." If you were selling products that appealed to women ages 35-54 within 50 miles of Palo Alto, CA, then you might try something along the lines of “women age 35-54 within 50 miles of Palo Alto, CA."

Another handy feature includes being able to exclude certain groups of users from seeing your advertisement. You can do this by adding the word ‘exclude' after the group name. For instance, if you wanted to keep your advertisement from showing up to college students, you could enter ‘college students' without 'exclude.' The same goes for job seekers, military veterans, and so forth.

Can LinkedIn ads target specific people?

Yes! One of the main reasons why marketers choose to utilize LinkedIn’s ads is due to the fact that the platform actually lets advertisers customize their campaigns specifically toward individual profiles. By doing so, you can ensure that everyone sees your advertisements no matter what demographic information they put on their profile page. All you need to do is include the first letter of every field you want to match up against. For example, if you wanted to display an advertisement about buying cars, you would simply write “car,” followed immediately by the person’s full name. 

This method works great for smaller organizations, but larger ones may prefer to opt for custom audiences. These allow you to define a persona of sorts based upon information provided through a website, mobile app, email address, or phone number. Once you've identified your ideal customer, you can then build a custom audience that contains data matching up with your chosen characteristics.

Additionally, you can track how successful your ads are by setting up Google Analytics accounts. This way, you won’t ever miss out on valuable insights regarding your performance metrics, such as clicks, impressions, conversions, CTR, and ROAS.

In addition to tracking the performance of your ads, you can also monitor the effectiveness of your brand ambassadors. The idea behind creating brand ambassadors is to incentivize individuals to promote your company and services online. Because of this, you can easily measure the impact your ambassadors have had on driving traffic to your website.

If you don’t already have a strong presence on LinkedIn, consider getting started with a free account today. Not only can you learn how to optimize your posts and improve engagement, but you can also test out various types of ads before committing yourself to spend money on paid ads.  



How many companies can you target on LinkedIn ads?

The answer depends largely on how big of a budget you have allocated towards your advertising efforts. While there are quite a few limitations when it comes to selecting multiple targets, it still remains possible to send ads to thousands of users simultaneously. There are three ways in which you can go about accomplishing this task.

1) Create one ad campaign that targets all users connected to your organization.  For example, let’s say Company A has 10,000 people listed in their database. They decide to run five separate ads, one per 1,000 users. Each ad will therefore appear once to 5,000 people.

2) Use the Advanced Targeting option to target a particular segment of your audience. For example, let’s say you want to focus your ad campaign on female executives aged 40-50 years old living in New York City. To accomplish this, you would set up a campaign that targets both male and female users with the following parameters: location = NY, gender = Female, and Age Range = 40-50.

3) Finally, you can set up a Custom Audience comprised of a single contact record. After building your initial campaign, you can modify it to target a wider range of contacts. For instance, if you know that your clientele consists mostly of salespeople, you can create a new audience consisting of all sales personnel. Then, whenever you upload a new ad, it will automatically show up to all of the salespeople in your database.

What is a good audience size for LinkedIn ads?

As mentioned above, you can create a variety of different targeting options depending upon how involved you want to get with your advertising effort. However, some general guidelines apply regardless of the level of customization you wish to implement.

First, you should aim to create a broad enough audience so that you aren’t sending a ton of messages to nobody. Ideally, you should strive to hit somewhere between 100-500 leads. Although this figure may seem low at first glance, remember that this represents hundreds or possibly even thousands of actual prospects.

Second, you shouldn’t worry too much about hitting exact numbers. Instead, stick to your goals and continue monitoring your progress throughout the course of your campaign. Don’t forget to check out how many leads convert into paying customers, since this metric provides insight into the overall performance of your ad campaign.

Finally, you can increase the chances of converting qualified leads into buyers by keeping things interesting. Keep your messaging fresh by regularly updating it with relevant news stories, industry trends, and other trending content. Also, pay attention to the language you use in your ads. Some words tend to evoke emotions better than others, meaning that you may want to avoid terms like “save time” or “easy to use” altogether. Instead, try to think of phrases that convey value rather than convenience.

After launching your campaign, you can use the analytics dashboard to view reports detailing everything from the total amount spent to the percentage of new leads generated. Additionally, you can access detailed statistics pertaining to the demographics of your audience, including age, gender, city, state, country, income bracket, occupation, marital status, educational background, and more.

These stats give you vital insights into the kinds of people you should be reaching out to, allowing you to hone down on your future targeting decisions. When done properly, your LinkedIn ads will ultimately lead to increased revenue and higher profits. And although it takes a bit of finesse to get your ad campaigns running smoothly, it pays off in the long term.

LinkedIn’s advertising platform allows you to advertise your products or services to a specific group of people based on their profile information or interests in certain topics. This helps businesses connect with prospects who have common goals and interests that they can use for further communication and engagement. 

In this article, we will provide an overview of LinkedIn’s different ad platforms along with detailed descriptions of each one as well as examples of what they look like when used. We also explain which type of advertising works best for your business and provides insight into how it all comes together so you can get started right away!

What is LinkedIn account targeting?

LinkedIn offers three main ways to target users depending on the purpose of your advertisement. The first method is called “account targeting,” where advertisers choose whether they want to show ads only to people with accounts on LinkedIn (people), both people and groups they belong to (groups) or any combination of these.

The second way to target users is through the various interest categories or keywords that appear throughout the website. These include: Jobs & Careers, Education & Training, Business Development, Marketing Ideas, Career Advice, Networking Events, and many others. You may even be able to create custom interest lists if none of those exist yet.

Finally, there’s location-based targeting, which lets you select a geographic area such as city, state, country, region, etc., and then see results from only within that zone.

All three forms of targeting allow you to specify keywords related to your product or service as well as demographic data about whoever sees your advertisement. For example, some of the features offered by LinkedIn’s advertising tools include age range, gender, job title, education level, income bracket, industry, company size, number of employees, and much more. Each of these details is useful for creating relevant advertisements because it means the person viewing them will most likely fit your ideal customer profile.

You can also filter out profiles who don't meet certain criteria, such as having less than 100 connections (for B2B companies looking to build relationships with potential partners). This makes sure you won’t waste money showing up in someone else's feed who doesn't fit your needs.

Also note that when using account targeting, you must make sure you set your bid price appropriately. If not, you could end up paying too little to attract visitors and get no conversions at all. In contrast, setting bids low enough to drive traffic but high enough to generate leads isn't always effective either. It depends largely on the quality of the content displayed on your page and its relevance to the user browsing.

What targeting options are available on LinkedIn?

Once you decide which form of targeting you wish to implement, you need to pick between several options that differ mainly in terms of how much control over the process you give yourself. Some offer you more flexibility while others require far more time and effort upfront. Here are the four basic choices:

1. Account Targeting – Ads shown only to individuals with an active LinkedIn account and/or members of other social networks or websites connected to LinkedIn.

2. Interest Targeting – Select a category from a list of dozens of options like jobs, marketing, training, career advice, networking events, and more.

3. Location Targeting – Choose a geographical location such as city, state, or countries.

4. Demographic Targeting – Specify attributes like gender, age, occupation, salary, and education level among others.

Each of these options has its own pros and cons. Let’s take a closer look now at each one individually.

Which LinkedIn ad option generates the best response?

If you ask 10 marketers what the best kind of targeting should be, you'll probably hear quite a few answers. That being said, here are our top recommendations for the three primary forms of LinkedIn advertising:

Account Targeting - As mentioned before, this is the simplest and least expensive choice since it only requires selecting whether you want to run ads only to people, or both people and groups. However, it does come with limitations. Namely, the amount of control you have over the ad itself and the amount of attention you receive from viewers.

Interest Targeting – This is great for finding people interested in similar subject matter or industries. Unlike account targeting, however, it gives you very little control over the message or the appearance of the ad. Also, it limits your ability to track performance and learn lessons from past campaigns.

Location Targeting – This is the most customizable option, allowing you to focus your efforts on specific areas of the world. But it takes considerably longer to set up compared to the previous two, meaning you might spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly which locations work best and why. Plus, you're limited to just seeing ads in your current location.

To sum things up, the ideal form of targeting for your particular business model depends mostly on the nature of your offering and your budget. If you plan to sell products online, you should consider investing in account targeting since it provides you with the greatest degree of personalization and control over the display of your ads. On the other hand, if you intend to promote local events, you'd benefit greatly from choosing location targeting instead. And finally, if you prefer a middle ground approach, try combining both account and location targeting.

For example, if you were running a promotion for a particular event happening in San Francisco, you would put up ads promoting that event only to residents living in California. At the same time, you would still show ads to everyone visiting the site from anywhere else around the globe. By doing this, you ensure anyone searching for something in SF gets exposed to your brand without wasting money by showing ads to people outside of the city.

What are the seven types of targeting?

There are actually eight different kinds of targeting listed below, though not all are applicable to every situation. To simplify matters for you, we've grouped them into the following categories:

Gender – Men vs. Women

Age Range – Young adults, Millennials, Gen X, Baby boomers, Generation Z

Job Title – Engineers, IT Professionals, Sales Representatives, Financial Advisors

Education Level – College dropouts, High School Graduates, Bachelor Degrees, Master degrees

Company Size – Small Businesses, Medium Companies, Large Enterprise

Industry – Healthcare, Technology, Finance, Consulting Services, Retail

Geography – US States, Countries, Cities, Regions, Counties

We hope this brief explanation gave you an idea of what LinkedIn’s targeting options entail and how they compare to each other. Now let us answer some frequently asked questions regarding Facebook’s equivalent feature: Audience Insights.

If you’re a business owner looking for ways to increase your revenue with effective marketing strategies, then it may be time to consider advertising on LinkedIn. This social network has over 400 million users in 190 countries around the world, so if you can tap into this market of professionals who already have an established relationship with other people within their industry, then there’s no better way to connect with them than through paid advertisements that will hopefully result in greater interest and conversions.

But before you start spending money on these ads, make sure you know what type of information LinkedIn gives advertisers about its user base. And whether you should use only one method of targeting versus combining several different types together. Let’s take a look at some of the most important things you need to understand when creating a successful LinkedIn advertisement campaign.

How do you target content on LinkedIn?

On LinkedIn, users can search for specific topics they want to learn more about based on personal interests as well as professional ones. They can also create lists of colleagues and friends whom they would like to follow up with after interacting online – which makes it easy for businesses to reach out to potential customers directly via email or phone call. You can even create custom audiences based off of keywords related to products or services you sell, allowing you to send messages tailored specifically to each person instead of broadcasting a general message across everyone on LinkedIn.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to pay extra to advertise on LinkedIn since all of this data comes from within the platform. But that doesn’t mean it won’t require additional work on your part to get started. To begin generating leads, you first have to decide where you want to spend your budget. How much do you want to invest per click (CPC), CPM, or CPV? CPC means you’ll pay per impression while CPM allows you to set a maximum amount you’d like to spend. The last option, CPV, lets you divide your total budget among clicks, impressions, views, engagements, etc. Each term refers to a slightly different metric but all three allow you to determine how much you want to pay per lead generated.

Once you figure out the right price point for your campaign, you’ll need to find the right keyword(s) to optimize for. For example, if you run a dental practice, you might choose “Dental Practice,” “Hospitality Dental Office,” or “Dentist” as keywords to focus on because those terms relate closely enough to your area of expertise. However, it’s not always possible to pick just one word to go after because many people have similar names with the same job title. So you might opt to combine multiple words into one phrase.

Another thing you might notice when browsing LinkedIn’s Ad Library is that some companies offer free campaigns while others charge a premium fee to access certain features. For instance, some offers allow you to upload a video, whereas others let you customize your ads with images or text. Some platforms include advanced analytics tools such as heat maps to track the performance of your campaign and see where visitors came from. Others give you detailed reports showing exactly how long someone stayed on your page, clicked links inside your ad, read articles, viewed videos, etc., while still others provide only basic stats without any further details. It’s worth noting that although some of these features come at a higher cost, they can prove useful during the course of your campaign.

As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn provides plenty of data to marketers interested in finding qualified leads. If you manage to capture the attention of someone who visits your site, chances are high that he/she will eventually convert into a customer. In fact, according to research conducted by Salesforce Marketing Cloud, 88% of LinkedIn members said they were likely to buy something from a company featured in an advert they saw on the platform. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your landing pages match the personality of your brand and appeal to the individual viewing your ad.

You can also test different versions of your ad depending on factors such as language, location, gender, age group, occupation, and more. These tests can help improve your conversion rates and generate leads faster.



How do I build my target audience on LinkedIn?

To grow your LinkedIn following, you must first identify who you’re trying to attract. Once you’ve decided on the kind of profile you’d like to promote, you can select from various categories including Education & Training, Job Opportunities, Industry Profiles, Company Pages, Groups, Events, and More. When selecting groups, however, remember to stay away from spammy groups filled with irrelevant posts. Instead, try choosing relevant channels that your ideal clients hang out in, such as a local Chamber of Commerce chapter or a trade association.

After deciding on the category you want to target, you can browse through hundreds of profiles and start building relationships with individuals whose background matches yours. Then, once you’ve reached out to these people personally, ask them questions about their career path, current position, and hobbies. Doing so helps you establish trust with them, giving you a chance to present yourself as both a helpful resource and a potential employer. Afterward, invite them back to your website to learn more about your product or service.

It’s also a great idea to join existing communities centered around industries relevant to your own niche, especially if they share common values and goals. By participating in discussions, you’ll discover valuable insights that could benefit your business. Plus, joining a community often results in invitations to events or networking opportunities, making it easier for you to meet face-to-face with prospective clients.


Author

Anyleads

San Francisco

We are the leading marketing automation platform serving more than 100,000 businesses daily. We operate in 3 countries, based in San Francisco, New York, Paris & London.

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