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Create LinkedIn Audience: Strong Leads and Results

Want to get more results from your LinkedIn campaigns? The secret lies in assembling the right target audience. When you know exactly who you want to reach, you create campaigns that perform better, generate high-quality leads, increase your conversions, and make optimal use of your marketing budget. But how do you ensure you are addressing exactly the right people? In this article, you will discover how to use LinkedIn’s advanced tools to assemble an audience that aligns with your goals. Take the first step towards a LinkedIn strategy that reaches your target audience and delivers measurable results.

LinkedIn: The platform for your business audience

LinkedIn is the platform where companies and individuals come together to network, share knowledge, and seize business opportunities. What makes LinkedIn unique is access to a huge business-oriented audience. With over 900 million users worldwide, many of whom are decision-makers and professionals, it is a powerful channel for assembling target audiences. This makes LinkedIn perfect for B2B marketing, as you connect directly with companies and the decision-makers within these organizations.

What makes a good LinkedIn audience?

But how do you reach those business professionals who matter to your company? LinkedIn offers handy filters to refine audiences, such as job titles, industries, experience levels, and even specific companies. With these filters, you can precisely target your ads and content to the professionals important to your marketing goals. An effective LinkedIn audience meets several key criteria:

  • Relevance: Focus on professionals who fit your ideal customer profile and may be interested in your offering.
  • Focus: Keep your audience specific enough to convey a clear and targeted message, but ensure it remains large enough to reach sufficient people.
  • Size: LinkedIn recommends assembling an audience of at least 300 people. This ensures your campaigns have enough reach to be visible and achieve results.

Different audiences on LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers various ways to assemble your ideal audience, from retargeting existing customers to reaching new professionals with targeted filters. Depending on your marketing strategy, you can choose from three main types of audiences, each with unique benefits and applications:

  1. Matched Audiences

Matched Audiences are audiences you assemble based on data you already have. An important tool here is the LinkedIn Insight Tag. This is a piece of code you place on your website to collect data about your visitors. With this, you can, for example, target people who have visited specific pages. Based on this behavior, you can show targeted ads on LinkedIn to re-engage these visitors. This approach is ideal for retargeting because you reach people who have already shown interest in your company. Additionally, with Matched Audiences, you can upload email lists to show ads to existing customers or leads, or use Lookalike Audiences to reach similar new professionals.

  1. Custom Audiences

With Custom Audiences, you assemble an audience entirely yourself using LinkedIn’s advanced filters. You can filter by location, job title, industry, or company size, for example. This type of audience is perfect if you want to reach a specific group of professionals who do not yet know your brand, for example, to promote a new product or raise brand awareness.

  1. LinkedIn Ads Audiences

LinkedIn Ads Audiences, also called predefined audiences, are pre-assembled groups you can easily select. They are based on standard criteria such as industry, experience level, or job title. This type of audience is ideal for broader awareness campaigns, where you want to quickly reach a large audience without spending much time assembling an audience yourself.

Step by step: How to assemble a LinkedIn audience

Assembling an audience on LinkedIn may seem complicated, but with the right approach, it is simple and effective. Use this step-by-step plan to assemble your ideal audience and get the most out of your campaigns.

Step 1: Define your marketing goals

The first step is determining what you want to achieve with your campaign. Without a clear goal, you risk having an audience that is too broad or not relevant enough. Your marketing goals not only determine how you assemble your audience but also which type of ad and message you use.

Step 2: Understand your ideal customer profile

To assemble an effective audience, you need to know clearly who you want to reach. It is therefore important to map out the characteristics of your ideal customer:

  • Job title: Which roles are relevant to your product or service? Which people do you want to address?
  • Industry: In which sectors are your customers located?
  • Experience level: Depending on your focus, your audience may consist of entry-level, managers, or senior executives.
  • Location: You can target a specific region or city, or choose a broader geographic reach, such as national or international customers.
  • Company size: Depending on your strategy, your customers may be small startups, medium-sized companies, or large corporations.

Step 3: Use LinkedIn’s targeting options

LinkedIn offers extensive options to precisely assemble your audience. These options ensure you can specifically target your campaign to the professionals most relevant to your marketing goals.

  • Demographic data: Filter by location, gender, and age to specify your audience.
  • Professional characteristics: Use filters such as job title, industry, experience level, and company size. This allows you to target specific professionals and companies.
  • Behavioral data: Target people based on their interests and previous interactions with ads.
  • Own data: Use tools like the LinkedIn Insight Tag to retarget website visitors, or upload an email list to reach existing customers or leads.

Step 4: Test and optimize

An important step in the process is testing. Assemble different audiences and run multiple versions of your campaign through A/B testing. Test job titles to measure engagement, regions to find the largest reach, and broad versus narrow audiences to determine the most effective approach. Analyze the results and pay attention to metrics such as CTR, cost per click (CPC), and conversions. Use these insights to further refine your audience and optimize your campaigns.

Common mistakes when assembling a LinkedIn audience

Although LinkedIn offers powerful tools to assemble audiences, there are some common mistakes that can affect your campaign. By recognizing and addressing these challenges, you can refine your strategy and ensure your campaign achieves the desired result.

  • Audience too broad: One of the most common mistakes is choosing an audience that is too broad. This makes your campaign less effective because your ads are not specific enough to address the right people. Use LinkedIn’s filters, such as job titles and experience levels, to further refine your audience. Make sure you target people who could actually be interested in your offering.
  • Insufficient optimization: Many campaigns are set up once and then not adjusted. A shame, because without optimization you do not get the most out of your budget and efforts. Keep your campaigns actively monitored and analyze the results in LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Use these insights to refine your audience and ads.
  • Forgetting retargeting: Retargeting is a powerful strategy but is often overlooked. By re-engaging previous visitors, you can increase the chance they take action. Install the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website and use it to retarget visitors. Combine this with Lookalike Audiences to also reach new, similar users.
  • Ignoring exclusion options: LinkedIn offers the option to exclude certain groups. Use the exclusion options to exclude irrelevant groups, such as existing customers or internal employees, from your audience.

Our added value

At Merkelijkheid, we understand the challenges involved in assembling the right audience and setting up effective LinkedIn campaigns. That is why we offer a solution. We take full campaign management off your hands so you can fully focus on your core activities. Together, we determine what the ideal audience is, which goals best align with your strategy, and how we can design campaigns that truly make an impact. Through our experience, we know what works and what doesn’t, and we are happy to share this knowledge with you.

With our guidance, you will not only achieve better results but also gain valuable insights and knowledge that enable you to confidently run successful campaigns yourself. Whether you want to generate more leads or increase your brand awareness, we ensure your LinkedIn strategy fully aligns with your business goals.

Curious about our approach or want to discover how we use LinkedIn Advertising for other B2B companies? Contact us or call 020 854 01 88. We are happy to discuss what we can do for you.