Log in
Request a demo
Willow Logo WordmarkBook Demo
Book a demo
Start free trial
Back to Course

Best Practices for Ad Targeting on LinkedIn

Your LinkedIn campaign is only as good as how well you've defined your target audience. This short lesson will teach you how to create that target audience within your LinkedIn Ad Campaign.
Social Media Fundamentals
2 min read
Mirelle Hassler
Last Updated
October 22, 2021

Why understanding your target audience matters...

It helps to decide your

🎯 Campaign objective: Who you are targeting decides what action you need them to take when they see an ad. Eg. If they are existing customers who you want to promote an additional product to, you might choose for them to click on a button on their dashboard. LinkedIn will call it a Website Conversion.

👩‍💼 Targeting: Of course, understanding the people who you want to see the ad will help you narrow down your LinkedIn targeting so only they see the ad and get value from it.

💬 Messaging: And lastly, the better you understand your target audience, the more personalized your ad copy can be towards them. You can speak to them directly. You can even address them in the copy: "Are you a [insert profession] facing [insert problem]…"

What LinkedIn Targeting consists of

Start with who you want to target. Jot down their behavioral & demographic characteristics

  • What are the similarities among people in that segment?
  • What topics are interesting for them?
  • What are their pain points or main frustrations?
  • What do their routines look like?
  • Where are they located?
  • What is their age group?
  • How many years of work experience do they have?
  • Are you targeting individuals in a few known companies?
  • What is their primary language?

Now start building your audience in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

LinkedIn allows you to target your audience by:

🔡 Language

🗺️ Location

💼 Company

💻 Job experience

🎓 Education

👍 Interests

👱 Demographics

So it helps to have a good idea of who this ad + product or service would serve best.

You can also choose to exclude certain people from seeing the ad eg. existing customers.You can do this by clicking on Exclude and defining the audience by the parameters given above.

Enabling Audience Expansion allows LinkedIn to show your ad to more people who look like your defined audience.This feature is the same as Facebook's Lookalike Audience. According to experts, LinkedIn's Audience Expansion tool isn't as good as Facebook's.

Next Chapter
Creating LinkedIn Ads
Go to next