5 tips to get the most from LinkedIn Ads segmentation

Targeting is fundamental in every digital platform. Getting your targeting right leads to higher engagement, and ultimately, higher conversion rates. But it is especially crucial when we talk about campaigns on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn targeting is different: members have their profiles up to date for networking, personal branding, and job opportunities. So, when you target decision-makers and executives, as long as your segmentation is correctly built, you know you are impacting the right audience.

This means you can target any LinkedIn member based on company information, job experience, education, interests, and demographics. But with so many options, it is usually difficult to understand what is the best way to build an audience. Here, to help you out, we share with you 5 tips to get a great audience:

1. Start broad so you can optimise

Start with a broad audience and then narrow it down based on what performed best. After a few days of running your campaign, you can get insights into the demographic reporting based on Job Titles, Job Functions, Company Industries, Countries, and other information to help you optimize your audience. There is always time to narrow down afterwards.

2. Be precise with your selections

When picking categories for targeting, for example, Seniority and Job Function, it is very different to pick the option “and” and “or” between both categories. The first one will include only members that fall in both categories, while the other will include members that fall in any of both categories. One broadens the audience, and the other narrows it.

3. Combine categories for better targeting

If you know exactly what kind of decision makers you want to target, you should combine different categories to segment the exact audience that you want to impact. For example, a very common combination is the Job Function option with the Seniority option. If you’re looking to reach decision-makers in the IT function, try targeting the Information Technology, Engineering, and Operations functions and pairing that with a seniority targeting of Senior, Manager, Director, VP, CXO, and Owner.

4. Skills, company size, industry

Although Job Function, Job Title, and Seniority are the most common filters used to create an audience, there are many other options to have in mind. Skills, for example, are a good tool when combined with Function and Seniority. Company Size is also a good way to include or exclude specific kinds of companies that you are not interested in. The company industry is also a powerful filter to analyze the results of your campaign and target those that are performing better.

5. A/B test your audiences

Try different combinations of targeting criteria and see which one is more effective. To do this, try not to make fully different audiences, but to change just tiny details. For example, Try testing Skills versus Job Titles, Industry versus Job Function, etc. This way you will get valuable information on what kind of combination works better for your campaign.

With these five tips, you’re good to start building your audience. Of course, you should always improve your campaigns by analyzing their performance and getting insights, both in terms of metrics and demographics.