LinkedIn ads offer a wide range of targeting options to help you reach your ideal audience. Here is an overview of the main targeting options available.
Location Targeting
You can target your ads geographically by country, state/province, city, or postal code. This allows you to focus your ads on the locations where your ideal customers are based.
Country Targeting
At a minimum, you must target a single country with your LinkedIn ads. You can choose to only target a single country, or target multiple countries in the same ad campaign.
State/Province Targeting
Within the countries you are targeting, you can choose to target specific states/provinces. For example, you can target New York, California, and Texas all within one ad campaign in the United States.
City Targeting
You can drill down even further and target specific metro areas and cities within the states/provinces you are targeting. This allows for highly localized targeting.
Postal Code Targeting
For the most precise location targeting, you can target specific postal codes. However, you can only choose one postal code per ad campaign when using this level of targeting.
Company Targeting
One of the unique targeting options LinkedIn offers is the ability to target specific companies. You can directly target the employees of the companies you want to reach.
Single Company Targeting
You can target just one company. This is useful if you want to place all your focus on reaching employees at a single organization.
Multiple Company Targeting
For greater reach, you can target multiple companies in a single ad campaign. You can select specific companies you want to target, or target by industry, company size, geography, and other filters.
Job Title Targeting
Since LinkedIn has extensive professional profile data, their ad platform allows you to target by job title and seniority.
Individual Job Title Targeting
You can target very specific individual job titles like “Marketing Manager” or “Software Engineer.” This allows you to target the exact roles you want to reach.
Seniority Targeting
You can target by seniority, such as targeting only C-level executives in an ad campaign. The seniority targeting options are C-level, Director, Manager, and Entry Level.
Job Title Category Targeting
For greater reach, you can target broader job title categories, such as “Business Development” or “Information Technology.” LinkedIn has over 100 job categories available.
Targeting by Skills and Interests
By targeting LinkedIn members based on the skills and interests listed on their profile, you can further refine your targeting to reach your ideal audience.
Skills Targeting
Target people based on skills like “Social Media Marketing” or “Copywriting.” You can select from over 50,000 different skills to target.
Interest Targeting
Target people based on their personal interests, such as “Running” or “Reading.” There are thousands of interest targeting options available.
Demographics Targeting
You can also target LinkedIn ads by age, gender, educational degree, and other demographic factors.
Age Targeting
Reach specific age ranges like 25-34 or 45-65+. Helpful for targeting millennials, Gen Xers, etc.
Gender Targeting
Target only men or only women.
Education Level Targeting
Target by highest education level obtained, such as high school diploma, associates degree, bachelors degree, or postgraduate degree.
Audience Targeting Options
LinkedIn provides several audience templates you can use to target broader segments, such as small business owners, IT decision makers, and more.
Job Seekers
Target people who have indicated they are open to new job opportunities.
Business Decision Makers
Target senior-level personnel who make B2B buying decisions.
Opinion Leaders
Target influencers and thought leaders.
Mass Affluent
Target individuals with household incomes of over $100k.
Small Business Owners
Target founders and owners of small businesses.
Targeting by LinkedIn Metrics
You can also target LinkedIn members based on their level of activity and influence on the platform.
Target by Profile Views
Target people who have achieved a certain number of profile views in the past 90 days.
Target by Number of Connections
Target people with 500+ connections, indicating an extensive network.
Target by Share Updates
Target people who regularly share updates on LinkedIn to reach influencers.
Retargeting
You can create retargeting campaigns to keep engaging people who have already shown interest.
Website Retargeting
Target people who have visited specific pages on your website using website pixels.
Matched Audiences
Target people who are already in your email lists and customer bases by uploading contacts.
Engagement Retargeting
Retarget people who have already engaged with your LinkedIn ads or pages.
Lookalike Audiences
With lookalike audiences, LinkedIn will identify people who are demographically similar to your existing customers to help you expand your reach.
Email Lookalikes
Target people similar to contacts on your email list uploaded to LinkedIn.
Website Traffic Lookalikes
Reach people who are similar to visitors of specific pages on your website.
Ad Engagement Lookalikes
Expand your audience by finding people similar to those who engaged with your other LinkedIn ads.
Third-Party Integrated Targeting
You can also layer on additional targeting data by integrating third-party data providers.
Acxiom Data Integrations
Incorporate additional demographic, interest, and intent data from Acxiom into your targeting criteria.
Oracle Data Cloud Integrations
Utilize Oracle’s wealth of consumer data for more precise targeting beyond LinkedIn’s own data.
Partners Program
LinkedIn’s partners program allows for integrations with additional third-party data providers for expanded targeting capabilities.
Conversion Tracking
To measure the effectiveness of your targeting, make sure to implement LinkedIn’s conversion tracking.
Offline Conversion Tracking
Track offline leads and conversions generated from your LinkedIn ads using offline conversion tracking tags.
Ad Accounts
Manage conversion tracking at the ad account level to attribute conversions across multiple ad campaigns.
Deduplication
Conversion tracking removes duplicate conversions during a given time frame to provide accurate conversion counts.
Audience Expansion
If needed, you can expand your targeting to increase reach using LinkedIn’s audience expansion tools.
Broad Targeting
Use broader targeting parameters, such as targeting job title categories rather than individual titles.
Lookalike Expansion
Expand your target audience by increasing the percentage you want LinkedIn to match on lookalike criteria.
Interest Expansion
Add additional interest targeting to your ads to reach a wider potential audience with similar attributes.
Audience Measurement
Measure your current audience and how much it overlaps with your target audience using LinkedIn’s audience measurement tools.
Your Target Audience
Upload your target account list or customer list to see how many of those contacts are currently reachable via your ad targeting.
Audience Demographics
View the job titles, seniorities, industries, company sizes, and other attributes of your current target audience.
Audience Benchmarking
Benchmark your audience reach against benchmarks for your target industry and location.
Saved Audiences
Save targeted audiences for easy re-use in future ad campaigns.
Named Audiences
Save audiences with custom names so they are easy to find later.
Shared Audiences
Audiences can be shared with other coworkers or managed centrally at the ad account level.
Audience Filters
Complex audiences can be created by applying multiple layers of demographic, firmographic, interest, and job targeting filters.
Similar Audiences
Find additional audiences similar to your saved audience to extend your reach.
Browse Similar Audiences
LinkedIn will suggest additional audiences similar to your saved audience to simplify targeting.
Audience Insights
View insights into the demographics and attributes of similar audiences to confirm they align with your goals.
Expand Reach
Add one or more similar audiences without having to rebuild targeting parameters to easily expand your ad’s reach.
Account Targeting
Target advertising accounts rather than individual users to simplify audience management.
Shared Audiences
Audiences can be saved and managed centrally at the ad account level.
Consistent Targeting
Ads will be targeted to the same audiences regardless of which campaign they are used in.
Campaign Flexibility
Ad campaigns can be adjusted without impacting audience targeting set at the account level.
Audience Analytics
Monitor audience analytics to optimize your targeting approach over time.
Audience Size
View the estimated number of people in your target audience.
Audience Performance
See engagement rates and conversion rates for your audience.
Demographics
Analyze the top demographics like job title, industry, and seniority of your audience.
A/B Testing
Run A/B tests to determine which targeting options perform best.
Targeting Options
Test different audience targeting methods, such as location vs. company vs. job title.
Lookalike Audiences
Test lookalike audiences based on different source audiences.
Interest Targeting
Try layering on interest targeting for some audiences vs. others to see the impact.
Bid Adjustments
Use bid adjustments to optimize ad spending on top performing target audiences.
Increase Bids
Raise bids on audiences that drive more conversions or engagement.
Decrease Bids
Lower bids for underperforming audiences to reduce spend.
Auto-Bidding
Let LinkedIn’s auto-bid technology dynamically adjust bids based on audience performance.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn provides a robust set of targeting options to reach specific professional audiences and integrate external data. Key options include location, company, job role, interests, demographics, retargeting, lookalikes, third-party data, and more. By combining multiple targeting methods, marketers can zero in on their ideal customers and improve LinkedIn ad results. Flexible audience management features make it easy to save and optimize audiences over time. With rigorous testing and audience analytics, you can refine LinkedIn ad targeting for greater precision and ROI.
