LinkedIn Ads Targeting Options

Linkedin Ads: Targeting Options Infographic

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What are LinkedIn Advertising Targeting Options?

LinkedIn advertising targeting options provide you with the unique opportunity to target over 467 million professionals. You can target anyone from an organization including CFO's, CPA's, CEO's, Marketing Managers and everything in between. If your ideal customer is on LinkedIn and works for a business you can target them. With LinkedIn advanced targeting options you can target by experience, education, and account targeting.

Experience Targeting

Facebook advertising options on LinkedIn allows you to target professionals based on their traits as well as the company where they work. More specifically, you can target by:

Job function- inferred from member entered job title
Job title- current or past title standardized from member-entered and industry standard job titles.
Job seniority- inferred from member-entered job title
Skills- member entered skills in the skills and endorsements section on their profile, skills mentioned in their profile text, or inferred skills based on their listed skills
Company Name- current or past employer listed on member's profile
Company Industry- the industry of the company at which the member is employed
Company Size- as listed on the company page of the member's current employer

All these segmentation options allow you to target virtually any professional, across any industry. For example, you could target analysts working at an advertising agency like Ogilvy. You could even go a step further and target marketing analysts working in the respective agency. Using the LinkedIn advanced targeting options really provides users with an advanced new way to reach business professionals across virtually any industry.

The following screenshot was taken in the advanced search settings when conducting a LinkedIn targeting campaign. The screenshot shows just how many targeting options are available and how easy the software is to navigate. All you need to know is who you want to target and some of their characteristics.

Education Targeting

LinkedIn also allows you to reach members across a wide range of education programs and institutions. More specifically, you can target by:

School-member entered education facility
Degree- standardized from member-entered degrees
Field of study- standardized from member entered degrees

This is incredibly useful for recruiting companies or anyone looking to hire employees with a desired level of education. Perhaps you are looking for a someone with a masters degree in finance or marketing, or a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences. Using LinkedIn advertising targeting options you can find the exact level of education you want so your company hires the best possible candidates. The screenshot below shows where to find the education targeting when navigating through the LinkedIn advanced targeting options.

Account Targeting

You can also target your specific list of priority accounts with LinkedIn's new account-based marketing (ABM) tool. This tool allows you to match up to 30,000 target accounts to LinkedIn Company Pages. LinkedIn account targeting then checks to see which of the 8 million companies on the network match your account before targeting their pages. As Senior Product Manager for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Lindsey Edwards has stated, this is the first time LinkedIn has allowed businesses to bring their own data to the platform. In the past marketers could only target up to 100 companies, mostly by a grueling manual selection process.

Other Targeting Options

There are also many other online advertising options LinkedIn can utilize to target other businesses. Two very useful segmenting options are location and years of experience. The first option, location, is a fantastic starting point for any business. No matter what position you are looking to fill, chances are most local professionals will be interested. Therefore, targeting by location is a perfect starting point. It is also useful because you can set a certain distance you wish to target from the desired location. This is particularly useful because it shows how far a potential employee is willing to travel for work. If you were looking to hire a sales representative for northern Alberta, and someone from Calgary is willing to drive up to Edmonton for an interview, chances are they would be willing to drive around the northern part of the province for their profession.

The second option that is very useful is years of experience. Both recruiting firms and businesses can benefit from this targeting option. No matter what the position is, you always want someone who is qualified and has the right amount of experience. It doesn't matter if you are hiring an account supervisor, marketing manager, or CFO, you want the potential candidates to have experience. There are also a few other helpful targeting options listed below.

Location (required field)- based on specific geographic region or IP address of relevant target members
Groups-specific LinkedIn groups that members of your target audience have joined
Gender- inferred in English from the first name of member
Age-inferred from member's last graduation year
Years of Experience- inferred from member-entered experience

Best Practices for LinkedIn Advertising Targeting Options

To enable further filtering and targeting, some options have the ability to exclude. This tool is incredibly handy as it can help you filter out potential candidates you know you don't want to target. In the example below the goal was to target high ranking construction professionals in the Edmonton area. High ranking professionals are selected for this option because they have the greatest ability to make changes in their companies. Therefore, targeting lower employees such as unpaid, training, entry, manager or even senior wouldn't be a good use of our resources. This is why the exclusion tool is used. To guarantee only high ranking construction professionals will see our advertisement.

It is important to note that you can over target, which will severely limit your reach and you will be notified that your "Audience Is Too Narrow." This is the case in the example below. High level construction professionals are targeted, just like in the previous example. However, only females are wanted, which ends up over constricting the results as there are not enough high ranking females in the construction industry in Edmonton.

In February 2019 Linkedin updated its targeting options and create a new ad creation experience. You can now target profiles based on language settings.

Why LinkedIn Advertising Targeting Options Are Best For You

Using the advertising options can help you market directly to your ideal customers. The advanced targeting helps you build your brand awareness, and generate new leads within LinkedIn. You can also decide which kind of ad you want to show to your target market. LinkedIn allows you to use personalized dynamic ads to grab attention, display ads to drive brand awareness or text ads to help drive high-quality leads for your business.