Since launching in May of 2003 LinkedIn has owned the market when it comes to business-to-business social networking. The site has experienced steady growth, boasting over 467 million users at the start of last year. Part of the reason for their continued success has been their ability to connect businesses with each other through a whole suite of options. Today we’ll be focusing on LinkedIn ad options available to individuals and company pages. Whether your social media goal is to increase awareness, boost website visits, or generate sales leads, you need to be talking to the right people. LinkedIn’s targeting ability lets you narrow down those 450+ million users to the sales reps, purchasers, or engineers that matter most to you.
Targeting Options
While social media is an easy way to get your message out to the masses, when it comes to industrial B2B updates, Aunt Sally may not be your ideal target. LinkedIn can help bridge this gap to make sure your message is reaching the right people. LinkedIn targeting lets you push content to specific groups of people based on information in their profile such as, location, industry, company name, company size, job title, years of experience and more. For example if a company wanted to promote their sale on conveyor parts to plant managers, they could use targeting to reach people who had never seen their LinkedIn page before but who matched their criteria.
A screenshot of the LinkedIn targeting options and layout can be seen below:
A full list of targeting options and more information on LinkedIn targeting can be found here.
Feeling more adventurous than the average LinkedIn marketer? You can specifically target users who have visited your website by placing a tag on your site with the help of LinkedIn or import your own list of contacts you are interested in reaching. Both options however require a minimum number of visitors or emails before you are able to use them.
The more specific or in-demand a targeted group is the more expensive it will be to target them. LinkedIn has a variety of tools and levers to pull when you are creating your segment for messaging, so it may take a few tries before you feel comfortable with who you are reaching out to and how much it will cost. The good news is that after you find the right settings you can save your segment to use again and again.