With more than 500M members, LinkedIn is home to the world’s largest professional network. Discover how you can tap into this network to reach the right audiences with your LinkedIn ads. In-house marketing experts Ray Hwang and Cassandra Clark show you how to leverage the power of LinkedIn’s targeting options to reach the professionals that matter most to your business. You'll also learn about our new targeting feature, Matched Audiences. You’ll come away from this deck knowing: • What targeting facets are available on LinkedIn and how to use them • How to integrate your own data and unlock customized options through Matched Audiences • Tips and best practices to optimize your targeting strategy Let’s find your targeting sweet spot on LinkedIn.

1. Unleashing LinkedIn’s
Targeting Capabilities
Jeff Weiner
Chief Executive Officer
Ray Hwang
Product Marketing Manager
Cassandra Clark
Senior Marketing Manager

2. We’ll cover…
1. What are the basics of targeting
on LinkedIn?
2. What are Matched Audiences and how do I
use them?
3. What are best practices to
optimize my target strategy?
4. How does LinkedIn do targeting
on LinkedIn?
2

3. Be the most effective platform
for marketers to engage
with professionals
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions’ mission
Be the most effective platform
for marketers to engage
with professionals

4. 4
What makes LinkedIn targeting unique?
LinkedIn has 500M+ registered members, and gains a
new member every 2 seconds.
A member’s LinkedIn profile contains relevant
professional data points.
LinkedIn ads targeting is based on member-declared
data.
Accuracy is fueled by the member value exchange
Reach & Scale User-Provided, Accurate Data
• 8.2MM+ C-level execs
• 14.4MM+ Opinion leaders
• 45MM+ Decision makers
• 73MM+ Senior-level influencers

5. LinkedIn’s members bring a professional mindset -
an important context for advertisers
A Professional Audience
Brand loyal professionals with
more purchasing power than
other social platforms
In an Aspirational Mindset
Opportunity for marketers to
align their brands with member’s
with member’s professional
success
Influenced by Their
Professional Networks
Opinions from their professional
peers impact personal
buying decision

6. LinkedIn Targeting 101

7. User-provided targeting fields
Title
Company
Member-
specified
location
Group
Membership
Company
Following
School
Field of Study
Graduation Year

8. Danie
Seattle, Washington USA
Boston University
Communication
Bachelor of Science
2011, 25-34
Simply Measured
51-200 employees
Internet
Senior Marketing Manager
Marketing, Senior IC
CMA, LEWIS, Social Tools
SEO, Social Media,
Digital Marketing,
Blogging

9. LinkedIn’s Targeting facets
As of 5/30/2017

10. Targeting by Function and Title
User-entered Title
↓
Standardized Title
↓ ↓
Seniority Function
Inferred from user-entered title

11. Targeting by Seniority
1
1
Focus on hands-on influencers
• Target senior individual contributors (ICs) as
part of your audience
• Senior ICs test products and influence the
purchase
• Senior ICs represent a much bigger
audience than the person that will ultimately
sign the contract
TIP
Craft different messages for
ICs versus Owners/Partners/CXOs.
Manager
Senior
Entry
Director
VP
Owner
CXO
Partner
Training
Unpaid
*Entry and Senior are Individual contributor (IC) which include highly skilled
professionals e.g. engineer, teacher, doctor, lawyer, etc

12. Targeting by Company Name, Industry, Size
Member industry is directly inferred from their current experience
12
Company Entered Name
↓
Company Entered Industry
↓
Company Entered # of employees
Sample:
Company Name → LinkedIn
Company Industry → Internet
Company Size → 5,000-10,000
Large companies may span several industries but
can only choose one. Spot-check company pages to
ensure you are targeting the correct industry.

13. Targeting by Professional Skills
Reach experts in their fields who
have:
• Explicitly added their skills into
the skills section
• Have skills mentioned on their
profile text
• Have inferred skills based on
the explicit skills and mentioned
skills in their profile

14. LinkedIn Matched Audiences

15. Reach decision makers at
your target accounts
Combine the power of
demographic targeting on
LinkedIn with your target
account list
Re-engage your
website visitors
Use one tag for
website retargeting
and conversion tracking
Website Retargeting Account Targeting
15
Import or integrate your
contact email lists
Connect to your contact
management platform(s) or
upload a list of
email addresses
Contact Targeting
Matched Audiences
Introducing a new way to reach audiences that matter most to your business on LinkedIn

16. Re-engage your
website visitors
Website Retargeting
• Exclude converters from your net-
new campaigns
• Exclude website visitors from
awareness campaigns
• Retarget converters of offer 1 with
offer 2 to move them through the
funnel
• Retarget your LP visitors who
have yet to convert

17. Reach decision makers at
your target accounts
Account Targeting
• Align with sales on high-priority
accounts and personalize content
• Reach the buying committee at
high-priority accounts
• Target customers to show them
product updates or cross-sell opps
• Exclude competitors by adding
them to a list to exclude

18. Import or integrate your
contact email lists
Contact Targeting
• Exclude a list of customers from
prospecting campaigns
• Add a list of customers to show
product updates and cross-sell
opps
• Add a list of leads to remain top of
mind during their buying journey
• Integrate your contact
management platforms

19. 19
Targeting Best Practices

20. Guiding Targeting Principles
• Lump all of your buyer personas into one
campaign
• Use the same content & targeting tactics
regardless of product
• Hyper-target your campaigns
Don’t Do
• Make sure your buyer personas are clear and
well-defined
• Tailor your content to your audience
• Add two or fewer targeting facets in addition
to Location

21. Utilize Campaign
Demographics
Best Practices
Understand who your ads
resonate with, then focus on
your best audiences

22. Experiment and A/B test your targeting
Use multiple targeting combinations in order to reach your ideal audiences

23. Our approach to targeting
on LinkedIn

24. Three Audience Objectives
Top Funnel Engagement
● Branding
● Thought leadership
● Filling our marketing funnel
with net new contacts
Engaging our known
audiences
● Account targeting
● Customer marketing
● Website retargeting
Persona Targeting
● Industry marketing
● Agencies
● SMB Marketers

25. Job functions: Marketing, PR and
communications
Seniority: Senior, Entry, Manager,
Director, VP, CXO, Owner,
Founder
Region: North America
Exclude: Customers (csv upload)
How we use LinkedIn targeting to engage net new prospects

26. Account list: Company names
Job functions: Marketing, PR and
communication
Seniority: Senior, Entry,
Manager, Director, VP, CXO,
Owner, Founder
How we use LinkedIn to nurture target sales accounts

27. How we use LinkedIn for customer engagement
Leverage email contact
targeting to reach our
customers on LinkedIn for
ongoing product education

28. How we use LinkedIn to retarget website visitors
Segment website
visitors based on the
pages that they visit.
Example #1:
Product and pricing
visits receive a $50
promo code to try
LinkedIn ads

29. How we use LinkedIn to retarget website visitors
Segment website visitors
based on the pages that
they visit.
Example #2
Home page visits receive the
Sophisticated Marketer’s
Guide to LinkedIn

30. How we use LinkedIn to build personas
Technology Marketers
Industries: Computer
Hardware, Computer
Software, Computer
Networking, Internet,
Semiconductors,
Telecommunications,
Information Technology and
Services, Computer and
Network Security, Wireless
Job Functions: Marketing,
Media and Communication
Seniority: Manager, Senior,
VP, Partner, CXO, Director
Region: Canada, United
States

31. LinkedIn targeting examples and
tips by product

32. When running
Dynamic Ads
campaign, keep
in mind:
• Great for targeting broad audiences. Targeting by industry,
function and/or seniority provides more scale.
• A/B test your creative and optimize towards best performing
option.
• Use creative with real people, avoid company logos.
• Get creative with personalization

33. Dynamic Ads Example

34. When running Sponsored
Content campaign, keep in mind:
• Versatile ad unit that works great for all campaign objectives
• Align your targeting and content strategies
• Keep targeting broad at first (at least 300K+ members in each
audience) to understand who’s engaging.
• Avoid hyper targeted campaigns: they tend to have lower
performance and much lower scale.
• Deliver personalization in the feed by tailoring your targeting to
subsets of your target audience

35. Leverage targeting for deeper personalization in the feed

36. When running Sponsored InMail
campaign, keep in mind:
• Campaigns perform best when the messaging is tailored to a
very specific audience.
• Works great for smaller audience segments
• 60-day frequency cap
• Smaller audiences means you can experiment with specific job
titles, skills or locations.

37. Using LinkedIn targeting to reach the
executive audience via InMail
55%
Open Rate

38. In general, targeting best
practices include:
Map campaign goals to channel and targeting
strategy.
1
2
3
4
Find the balance between scale and relevancy.
Align content with the targeting strategy.
Be willing to experiment and test.

39. 1. Use Campaign Demographics to optimize your campaign targeting
2. A/B test various targeting facets
3. Create a website retargeting audience and let it start building
4. Use Account Targeting to help your sales team nurture their target accounts
5. Exclude customers from your prospect campaigns using contact or account targeting
6. Try Audience Expansion
Top 6 things to try today

40. ©2015 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

41. Appendix

42. 1
2
SUMMARY
How can I use Account
Based Marketing on
LinkedIn?
Subscribe to our newsletter
http://lnkd.in/AgencyNewsletter
Marketers can match key accounts to LinkedIn’s
database of companies to ensure they reach the right
audience
Account based marketing lists can be leveraged for
Sponsored Content or Sponsored InMail but must consist
of at least 300 companies
3
Popular use cases include re-engaging with lost
customers, deepening relationships with current accounts,
and targeting specific leads

43. IP or member entered
• Sponsored Content will be
delivered to members who fit
the geo-targeting criteria by
either IP or member entered
geography
• Like Sponsored Content, Text
ads do not have a priority of
delivery for IP or member
entered location
Member entered geo
• LinkedIn Dynamics ads only use
member entered location for geo-
targeting
• Sponsored InMail will primarily
use member entered location for
targeting. IF the member within
the target audience does not have
a location specified in their profile,
IP will be used as back-up
IP only
• Traditional display ads are the
only ad type on LinkedIn using IP
only targeting.
Some things to keep in mind when
targeting by Geography

44. Influence the Influencer Not All Products are Equal A/B Test and Test Again
Need brand exposure?
Consider broader targeting with
products that are designed for branding
and advocacy
Need Leads?
Drive net new traffic to your site while
staying focused on a more specific
targeting audience
Want to be granular?
Consider products designed for a
highly personalized outreach
Testing Targeting Facets
A/B test to see which audience is
engaged
• Titles vs. Function + Seniority
• Group members + Seniority
• Skills + Seniority
Testing Creative
Use one audiences with multiple creative
assets to see what content works best
Use a Consistent Measurement
Your measurement should align with your
campaign goals
Define your audience
Think members first. Who would find the
content relevant?
Establish your goals
What does success mean for this
campaign?
Resist temptation to hyper target
Hyper targeting significantly reduces your
scale and ability to optimize
A savvy approach to targeting is essential for success

45. Find the right balance between relevance and scale,
and try to avoid hyper-targeting
Make sure your audience aligns with the objective, the
channel, and the content
1
2
Consider combinations of targeting options for greater
audience coverage and easy optimizations
3
What are best practices
for targeting on LinkedIn?
SUMMARY