For most of us, LinkedIn is seen as the most powerful network in terms of recruitment. With nearly 774 million users in more than 200 countries in 2021, LinkedIn has indeed become the reference for professional social networks.
But the platform is now also proving to be a powerful tool for online advertising. Like Facebook, Instagram and Google, one of LinkedIn's main revenue sources is advertising. Whether you're a marketer looking to increase a company's online visibility, or a recruiter looking for new profiles, the possibilities for advertising on LinkedIn are many.
Indeed, the platform is improving day by day by offering new ad formats, new features but also personalized targeting. Like Facebook and Google, audience targeting is indeed one of the keys to successful advertising campaigns. It is indeed necessary to broadcast the right message, at the right time and especially to the right people! So let's review the different targeting options available.
As on other platforms, LinkedIn offers basic targeting options, i.e. create an audience based on :
- Geographic location (show ads to people in a certain area)
- Demographics such as age and gender
- Specific audience attributes related to company size, industry, education, degree, current position, skills, etc.
- Customized segments (Matched Audiences) such as people who have already interacted on your site, visited your LinkedIn page, etc. (remarketing audiences)
These different attributes already allow you to refine your audience to keep only the people most likely to interact with your ads. But there are still other features on LinkedIn to optimize your targeting as much as possible, and thus generate better performance for your campaign:
- LinkedIn Audience Network: which allows ads to be served on an additional network to LinkedIn to increase the reach of the campaign
- Interest Audience: it is possible to target people who have shown an interest in a certain topic, based on their searches on LinkedIn, their engagement with a page, etc.
- Group targeting: it is also possible to target all people who are part of the same group on LinkedIn (sports, finance, movement, etc)
- Creation of Lookalike audiences to further expand the target while remaining relevant
As with any platform, remember that even when you have found the best targeting for your LinkedIn campaigns, it is important to regularly optimize these audiences! Here are some best practices:
- Perform A/B tests with different targeting criteria to compare audiences
- Adapt the content of the ads (texts, images, CTAs, etc.) according to the best performing audiences
- Compare your audiences to LinkedIn audience models and adapt if necessary (many insights available on pre-designed models)
- Test the Audience Expansion mode, which allows you to reach an additional target similar to the original audience
Juliette Ten Hoorn
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