Last Updated 1/31/24
Advertising is only effective if it reaches the right audience. As delicious as the latest offering from the Golden Arches might be, commercials touting the McAmazing burger are going to fall on deaf ears in a vegan household.
The same applies to LinkedIn ads. It’s easy enough to decipher a user’s intent based on the query they typed into a search engine, but you had no way of knowing whether they were a hobbyist down the street or an employee at a multi-million dollar company. LinkedIn Profile Targeting was developed to provide a solution to this issue, and can be a valuable tool for manufacturing companies seeking to gain an edge over their competitors.
Target Users Based on Professional Profiles
LinkedIn Profile Targeting is a way to reach highly relevant audiences for your paid advertising campaigns by using professional information from LinkedIn profiles. It allows you to deliver text ads, Dynamic Search Ads, and shopping campaigns to specific users based on criteria such as:
- Company: Target employees at specific companies, including subsidiaries, parent companies, and competitors. You can even target by company category (e.g., Fortune 500).
- Industry: If sorting through 80,000 individual companies is too overwhelming, advertisers can alternatively target all the employees working in one of 145 different industries, such as consumer goods, human resources, and healthcare.
- Job Function: Regardless of their industry or company, individuals will play different roles and have different interests. Reach professionals in specific roles, like marketing managers or software engineers. You can even target people with specific levels of experience, like “entry-level” or “senior-level.”
LinkedIn Profile Targeting allows you to bid differently based on parameters you can set up. It is the perfect complement to other audience targeting solutions.
Benefits of LinkedIn Profile Targeting
LinkedIn Profile Targeting is a valuable tool that offers many benefits, such as:
- Highly relevant audiences: You can target your ads to people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer, increasing your chances of conversion. Go beyond basic demographics like age and location to reach your ideal audience based on their professional background.
- Improved ROI: LinkedIn profile dimensions can help you target the right audience. More targeted audiences allow you to boost your bids more precisely and help improve your return on investment (ROI) compared to broader targeting methods.
- Quick and easy to use: Setting up LinkedIn Profile Targeting is straightforward and can be done within the Microsoft Advertising platform. It's integrated with familiar campaign creation and management tools, making setup a breeze.
Outside of LinkedIn itself, Microsoft Advertising is the only digital advertising platform to offer LinkedIn Profile Targeting.
Key Considerations
There are a few considerations to keep in mind. LinkedIn Profile Targeting is not exclusive. It doesn't exclude people who don't meet your targeting criteria; innstead, it allows you to adjust your bids for specific audience segments. Think of it as “bidding higher” for relevant audiences rather than excluding others. This targeting is most effective for campaigns where you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile and their LinkedIn information.
You can use LinkedIn Profile Targeting in combination with other targeting options for even more precise targeting. This gives it a unique competitive advantage over Google’s limited options — an attractive feature to countless B2B companies struggling to place their ads in front of the right audiences. B2C advertisers benefit as well, given that peoples’ professional lives influence their personal purchasing behaviors. This could also help qualify a user’s relative income. A vacation package may not be tailored for a B2B audience, but an advertiser may be willing to bid more to attract a well-paid CFO or senior executive than they might for other audiences.
FAQs
- What is LinkedIn Profile Targeting?
- It's a feature in Microsoft Advertising that lets you reach specific professionals on LinkedIn based on their profile information like company, job title, skills, education, etc.
- What are the benefits of using LinkedIn Profile Targeting?
- You can reach highly relevant audiences, improve campaign performance, and achieve higher click-through rates, conversions, and ROI.
- What information can I use to target profiles?
- Company, job title, skills, education, demographics (limited), and more.
- Can I exclude certain profiles from seeing my ads?
- No, targeting focuses on "bidding higher" for relevant audiences rather than excluding others.
- Can I target people based on keywords in their profiles?
- No, you can't directly target keywords, but targeting skills or job titles with relevant keywords can achieve similar results.
- How do I set up a LinkedIn Profile Targeting campaign?
- There are guides and tutorials available from Microsoft Advertising.
- What is the minimum audience size for a targeted campaign?
- You need at least 300 people in your target audience.
- How much does it cost to use LinkedIn Profile Targeting?
- You pay per click on your ads, similar to other online advertising campaigns.
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