How LinkedIn Advertising Works – The Ultimate Guide
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 5:01 am
By advertising on LinkedIn, you get your message in front of the right people when they’re most engaged, and you can reach a professional network of over 690 million users, in over 200 countries and territories, leveraging a huge volume of accurate data that is provided by users themselves.
In this guide, you'll learn how targeting works on LinkedIn and the various ways you can promote your offering to the people who really matter to your business.
You’ll also find helpful tips and best russia whatsapp mobile phone number list practices to apply right away to your campaigns.
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LinkedIn targeting is unique because users keep their profiles up to date to network, promote their personal brand, and find job opportunities. With LinkedIn, you can reach a quality audience of leaders, influencers, decision makers, buyers, and executives.
When people spend time on LinkedIn—sharing and consuming content, celebrating milestones, and posting professional updates—they provide information about their work experience, skills, interests, and more.
This means you can target users based on professional attributes from their profile, re-target your website visitors or those who interact with your ads, and upload contact lists or companies for account-based marketing campaigns.
On LinkedIn, you can reach users using these professional targeting options:
LinkedIn Professional Targeting Options
To get started, head over to Campaign Manager, LinkedIn’s self-service platform for creating and managing your ads.
You will be asked to select the goal you want to achieve with the campaign, as shown below.
The image shows how to select the campaign objective on LinkedIn
Once you have selected your objective, you will need to define the audience you want to reach.
Campaign Manager will suggest the best ad formats based on your campaign objective and targeting options.
Options include:
Sponsored Content: Single-Image, Video, and Form-Form Ads
Sponsored Posts: Message and Conversation Format Ads
Right Section: Text Ads, Spotlight Ads, and Follower Ads
Lead generation forms
Campaign Manager lets you segment your audience in multiple ways and combine multiple targeting options to reach the people most relevant to your content and business.
TIP: To track performance across different audiences, set up a separate campaign for each audience type.
This section explains the various options available on the audience selection screen in Campaign Manager.
Audiences in campaign management on LinkedIn
Estimate the size of your LinkedIn audience
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The image shows the audience estimate on LinkedIn
As you set up campaign targeting, you can look at predicted results to learn more about your audiences.
Audience size indicates the total number of LinkedIn users who match your targeting options.
In the Segment Report drop-down menu, you can see professional attributes such as job function, years of experience, company size, industries, and interests.
These attributes are based on information users provide in their LinkedIn profiles.
As you select your targeting criteria, your forecasts update to reflect your audience.
In order to launch the campaign you must target at least 300 users.
If your audience size is too small, you will see the message “Your audience is too small” and you will not be able to save your targeting to move on to the next step.
That said , the optimal audience is at least 50,000 users for text or image-only ads, and 15,000+ users for message-style ads.
TIP: When in doubt, start with a fairly broad audience and then narrow it down after you see what works best. Using LinkedIn Demographics Reports, you can uncover anonymous information about the people who click and take action on your ads, based on job titles, functions, company industries, etc.
REQUEST A CONSULTATION TO SPONSOR YOUR COMPANY ON LINKEDIN
How to Use Different Targeting Options to Reach Your Audience on Linkedin
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Let's take a closer look at the targeting options you can use for your LinkedIn campaigns.
Location and Language
First of all, define the location and language of the users you want to reach.
Location is the only required field.
The user's location may be as indicated on his or her profile or deduced from his or her IP address.
The user's language is the language used for their profile. Typically, the ad text should be written in the selected language.
LinkedIn Profile Language Selection Mode
When you set up your audience, Campaign Manager lets you customize it by combining targeting criteria with Ands and Ors.
You can use E to further refine your targeting by narrowing your audience.
For example, you can target people who have the qualification “Software Engineer” AND at least 5 years of experience.
You can use OR to broaden your audience to users who match one criteria or another. For example, you can target people who have the title “Software Engineer” OR software engineering skills.
And you can also combine AND/OR to define your audience even more precisely. For example, you can target people who have the title “Software Engineer” OR software engineering skills AND at least 5 years of experience.
Job Experience and Function
Job functions are based on standardized groupings of job titles entered by LinkedIn users.
For example, the Medical function includes doctors, nurses, veterinarians, surgeons, dentists, and other users with similar occupations.
The image shows the fields of experience and job function on LinkedIn
Combine Job Function and Seniority options to reach decision makers with specific experience. For example, if you are looking for decision makers in the IT function, try targeting the Information Technology, Engineering, and Operations functions while also combining the seniority targeting of Senior, Manager, Director, Vice President, CXO, and Owner.
Qualification
When users update their profiles with a new role, these titles are grouped by LinkedIn algorithms and organized into standardized titles that you can use for campaign targeting.
For example, while most engineers fall into the Engineering function, you may want to target software engineers and petroleum engineers differently since they have different skill sets.
In this guide, you'll learn how targeting works on LinkedIn and the various ways you can promote your offering to the people who really matter to your business.
You’ll also find helpful tips and best russia whatsapp mobile phone number list practices to apply right away to your campaigns.
[ back to index ]
LinkedIn targeting is unique because users keep their profiles up to date to network, promote their personal brand, and find job opportunities. With LinkedIn, you can reach a quality audience of leaders, influencers, decision makers, buyers, and executives.
When people spend time on LinkedIn—sharing and consuming content, celebrating milestones, and posting professional updates—they provide information about their work experience, skills, interests, and more.
This means you can target users based on professional attributes from their profile, re-target your website visitors or those who interact with your ads, and upload contact lists or companies for account-based marketing campaigns.
On LinkedIn, you can reach users using these professional targeting options:
LinkedIn Professional Targeting Options
To get started, head over to Campaign Manager, LinkedIn’s self-service platform for creating and managing your ads.
You will be asked to select the goal you want to achieve with the campaign, as shown below.
The image shows how to select the campaign objective on LinkedIn
Once you have selected your objective, you will need to define the audience you want to reach.
Campaign Manager will suggest the best ad formats based on your campaign objective and targeting options.
Options include:
Sponsored Content: Single-Image, Video, and Form-Form Ads
Sponsored Posts: Message and Conversation Format Ads
Right Section: Text Ads, Spotlight Ads, and Follower Ads
Lead generation forms
Campaign Manager lets you segment your audience in multiple ways and combine multiple targeting options to reach the people most relevant to your content and business.
TIP: To track performance across different audiences, set up a separate campaign for each audience type.
This section explains the various options available on the audience selection screen in Campaign Manager.
Audiences in campaign management on LinkedIn
Estimate the size of your LinkedIn audience
[ back to index ]
The image shows the audience estimate on LinkedIn
As you set up campaign targeting, you can look at predicted results to learn more about your audiences.
Audience size indicates the total number of LinkedIn users who match your targeting options.
In the Segment Report drop-down menu, you can see professional attributes such as job function, years of experience, company size, industries, and interests.
These attributes are based on information users provide in their LinkedIn profiles.
As you select your targeting criteria, your forecasts update to reflect your audience.
In order to launch the campaign you must target at least 300 users.
If your audience size is too small, you will see the message “Your audience is too small” and you will not be able to save your targeting to move on to the next step.
That said , the optimal audience is at least 50,000 users for text or image-only ads, and 15,000+ users for message-style ads.
TIP: When in doubt, start with a fairly broad audience and then narrow it down after you see what works best. Using LinkedIn Demographics Reports, you can uncover anonymous information about the people who click and take action on your ads, based on job titles, functions, company industries, etc.
REQUEST A CONSULTATION TO SPONSOR YOUR COMPANY ON LINKEDIN
How to Use Different Targeting Options to Reach Your Audience on Linkedin
[ back to index ]
Let's take a closer look at the targeting options you can use for your LinkedIn campaigns.
Location and Language
First of all, define the location and language of the users you want to reach.
Location is the only required field.
The user's location may be as indicated on his or her profile or deduced from his or her IP address.
The user's language is the language used for their profile. Typically, the ad text should be written in the selected language.
LinkedIn Profile Language Selection Mode
When you set up your audience, Campaign Manager lets you customize it by combining targeting criteria with Ands and Ors.
You can use E to further refine your targeting by narrowing your audience.
For example, you can target people who have the qualification “Software Engineer” AND at least 5 years of experience.
You can use OR to broaden your audience to users who match one criteria or another. For example, you can target people who have the title “Software Engineer” OR software engineering skills.
And you can also combine AND/OR to define your audience even more precisely. For example, you can target people who have the title “Software Engineer” OR software engineering skills AND at least 5 years of experience.
Job Experience and Function
Job functions are based on standardized groupings of job titles entered by LinkedIn users.
For example, the Medical function includes doctors, nurses, veterinarians, surgeons, dentists, and other users with similar occupations.
The image shows the fields of experience and job function on LinkedIn
Combine Job Function and Seniority options to reach decision makers with specific experience. For example, if you are looking for decision makers in the IT function, try targeting the Information Technology, Engineering, and Operations functions while also combining the seniority targeting of Senior, Manager, Director, Vice President, CXO, and Owner.
Qualification
When users update their profiles with a new role, these titles are grouped by LinkedIn algorithms and organized into standardized titles that you can use for campaign targeting.
For example, while most engineers fall into the Engineering function, you may want to target software engineers and petroleum engineers differently since they have different skill sets.